by Minna Howard
Verity left the room and opened the front door. An extremely good-looking man around her age stood there. He said, ‘Mrs Walton?’
‘Yes.’ He looked familiar; he had thick dark hair touched with silver at the temples, he was tall and well dressed and despite herself she felt a surge of attraction for him.
‘Mark Gilmore. I’ve come to discuss my son, Justin, with you. I don’t think you understand him.’ He took a few steps towards her as if convinced she would ask him in.
She was appalled. How dare he come around to her home to discuss his wayward son? She said, ‘You must make an appointment at the college and I’ll see you there.’
‘I haven’t time; I work all day or am away on business. It will only take a minute.’ He smiled but she could see a determined glint in his eyes. He was obviously used to getting his own way and probably used to women collapsing with desire, at his feet.
She kept her hand on the side of the door and moved to cover the whole entrance. ‘You have no right to accost me in my house. You must make an appointment. Parents’ evening is coming up and we can discuss him there, and with the other people who teach him.’
‘It will only take a moment.’ His mouth was set in a line of determination.
‘Who is it, dear?’ Delia came up behind her, peering out at Mark Gilmore with interest. Seeing his good looks lit up by the light outside the front door, she straightened, patted her hair saying in a syrupy voice, ‘Oh, don’t stay on the doorstep, it’s so cold, come in. Are you a friend of Nathan, my son?’
‘No, Delia, he is the father of one of my students and he’s making an appointment to discuss him one evening at the college. He’s leaving at once,’ Verity said firmly, trying to shut the door but Delia came closer to her, peering over her arm so she could get a good look at him.
‘Verity is such a good teacher, I’m sure your boy will pass all his exams with flying colours. It’s so much better to have small classes and be able to discuss one’s child whenever you want. I know these crammers cost a bit, but well worth it, don’t you think, Mr…’ She gave him one of her best smiles, flirting with him with her eyes.
Scott had now joined them, though Verity had no idea why. She felt like screaming and wondered if she might not escape to a friend’s house, the pub, or go for a walk and leave them all to Delia.
‘Look, Mr Gilmore; we will discuss Justin at the college, not here in my home. He left my class early today to go to the dentist, so he did not get the homework I set.’
‘The dentist? You can’t get him near the dentist!’ his father protested, obviously thinking she was making this up.
‘That was his excuse but tell him the homework is an essay on the consequences of Henry the VIII’s stance on the church, to be in by Friday. Thank you.’ She tried again to shut the door, but Scott and Delia were hovering round her like annoying wasps. Delia was going on about her school days and Scott was saying he had to go but would stay in touch and he so hoped Saskia was his daughter, though it might be difficult for his wife to accept at first.
‘And you’ll be a granddad,’ Delia added warmly. ‘So you’ll be getting two children for the price of one.’
TWENTY-ONE
Delia could never resist attractive men regardless of their age and Mark Gilmore was young enough to be her son.
Before Verity could put a stop to it, Delia had somehow got him into the house, saying what a conscientious father he must be, coming to discuss his son’s education, after what was no doubt a long and taxing day at his office.
‘Of course, Basil and I were so lucky with our son, he got top marks all the way up,’ she added smugly, making Verity cringe. It made Nathan sound like some goody-goody swot, which he was not, but nor, she was certain, had he been badly behaved like Justin.
She tried unsuccessfully to send Mark on his way but now Delia had him inside, it was more difficult. Then somehow Scott also came back into the living room and Delia announced that she’d bought some prosecco which she was about to open, and before she knew it, they were all in the living room drinking it.
Mark eyed her with amusement. ‘Your mother-in-law understands my concerns. Surely you could hear me out, just for a moment.’
‘Mr Gilmore—’
‘Mark, please, I insist.’ His voice was soft now, seductive, and she felt a frisson of desire that unnerved her.
‘Now is not the time,’ she said. ‘It’s been a long and difficult day and I’m tired. My mother-in-law is very sociable while I am not.’
Delia overheard her remark. ‘Nonsense, dear, you and Nathan are very social, and surely it is a good thing for Mark – no, Mr Gilmore here – to discuss his son in a family atmosphere and with the help of a little drink?’ she simpered.
‘We could have a quick chat in another room if you’d rather,’ Mark said, moving a little closer to her.
She took a step back. ‘Your son disrupts the class the whole time. He doesn’t take notes, never hands in any homework and I think I am wasting my time with him as the rest of the class want to pass their exams and are working hard.’
Mark opened his mouth to defend his son, a glint of anger replacing the one of flirtation in his eyes, but Verity ploughed on.
‘I also think you are wasting your money on sending him there and perhaps you could find something else that would interest him, get a job or do an apprenticeship or something that would suit him better.’ She rushed the words, aware that his anger was mounting and he was having trouble containing it. She turned away and made to leave the room to go upstairs to Nathan’s small study that had a lock on the door, but he put his hand on her arm to detain her, squeezing it a little. She shook him off, frowning at him. Delia intervened.
‘Verity, dear, Mark is obviously worried about his son, surely you—’
The doorbell interrupted them again. Verity felt she’d go mad, it was like some desperate pantomime. But the doorbell gave her an excuse to get away from Mark, so she went to open it. It was Saskia.
‘Sorry, I should have rung you but my mobile’s run out. I just came to get some more of the clothes I left in my room. We had a fire in the house and my things stink of smoke, so I’ve sent them to the cleaners.’ She hovered on the doorstep as if she felt unwelcome.
‘A fire? How terrible! In the house you are staying in?’ Verity was shocked, and ushered her in, closing the door behind her.
‘Yes, Ivor was away, and it was in the flat underneath his. The old lady in the flat, left on one of the rings on the cooker and there was a cloth over it. The fire brigade came very quickly and put it out before much damage was done, though the old lady is still in hospital. You know what smoke is like, gets into everything.’ She glanced towards the living room, hearing the chatter.
‘Oh, sorry, I’ve called at an awkward time, I’ll just slip upstairs and fetch a few things then go again and leave you in peace.’
‘It’s fine.’ Verity dropped her voice. ‘My mother-in-law is here and a parent of one of my students and… oh, and… Scott, the man who thinks he could be your father. He rang here before I got back, and Delia invited him round.’ She sighed, looking fed up. ‘I won’t say anything if you don’t want me to. You can hide upstairs, and he’ll be gone soon.’
Saskia glanced towards the living room; Verity had pulled the door to when she went to answer the bell. She chewed on her lip and then said with determination, ‘Well, I’d better confront him, get it over with. Nathan is back this weekend, isn’t he? With any luck I’ll know who my father is one way or another quite soon.’
‘If that’s what you want to do,’ Verity said, feeling yet one more drama added to the mix couldn’t do much harm. If Scott turned out to be her father then Nathan would be let off the hook though she felt he might also be a little disappointed, having, after getting used to the idea, quite warmed to the idea of having a daughter.
‘As he’s here, better to deal with it.’ Saskia’s face was set with determination.
‘I’ll g
o in and fetch him.’ She dropped her voice further. ‘As I said, there’s another man, a parent of a tiresome boy in my class, who’s called round unexpectedly, and Delia who is making a party of it. It might be better if you talked to Scott in the kitchen.’
‘Yeah, that’s a good idea,’ Saskia agreed, moving down the passage towards the kitchen.
Before she could get very far, Delia opened the living room door and came out into the hall. ‘Oh, Saskia,’ she said, ‘I thought you’d moved out to your friend?’
‘No, she’s left her things here. There’s been a fire in the house she’s in and she’s come back to fetch more clothes.’ Verity wished Delia would stop interfering.
‘Well, it’s fortuitous that you are here as there is a man in the living room who says he is your father,’ Delia said in triumph and before they could stop her, she turned back into the living room and said, ‘Scott your daughter is here, what good timing!’ She put out her arms as if to usher them together.
Scott blushed, his face blank for a moment in shock. He moved towards the door while Saskia turned back from the kitchen and they confronted each other in the hallway.
‘Oh, well… it’s good yet strange to meet you,’ Scott said cautiously. ‘You do look very much like your dear mother. I’m so sorry… shocked she died so young.’ He floundered.
‘Thank you, I miss her dreadfully,’ Saskia said and the two of them stood rather awkwardly together, smiling shyly at each other.
Verity watched them while Delia gushed about how lucky it was that they had found each other, father and daughter. Mark joined them, obviously not knowing anything about the situation and Delia explained it to him and they all went back into the living room, Mark trying again to get Verity’s attention to discuss his wayward son. Verity ignored him and went over to Scott to try and suggest that he and Saskia might like to talk alone in another room. The two of them were now discussing Saskia’s mother and Greece and Scott’s time there. Delia wanting their attention, tried to explain that her son had also been named as Saskia’s father, and that she’d even been given her his surname.
‘Poor woman, I quite understand – she obviously knew that my son was reliable and chose to use his name, though I’m sure it was not him,’ she finished smugly.
Saskia looked troubled, saying, ‘Well, when he’s back, we are having a DNA test to make sure, but… Scott was out in Greece at the same time as Mum, as was Nathan and lots of other people. She was very popular.’
‘I’m sure she was,’ Delia said, but not in a nice way.
Verity thought Delia had no right to criticise anyone else’s love life as she had had – and probably still did have – a very chequered love life herself.
‘So, when were you in Greece with Helen?’ Verity asked Scott to smooth things over.
‘Oh… well, I went quite a few times but the time I knew Helen was the whole summer of 1993, then I went back to Edinburgh to finish university. I did an extra year and didn’t go back until…’ He frowned, his face thoughtful. ‘2008, with my wife.’
Saskia regarded him intently. ‘Are you sure of the date? I was conceived in the summer of 1995, so unless you were with Mum then, you couldn’t possibly be my father.’
TWENTY-TWO
There was a stunned silence quickly broken by Delia.
‘Well, it was so long ago, perhaps you went out another time and met up with her mother, or misremembered the date?’
‘No… I didn’t. I’m quite certain of that,’ Scott protested, looking awkward now.
Saskia guessed that Delia had been only too relieved to pass on the identity of her father to someone other than her precious son. Though why would her mum have given her Nathan’s surname if she wasn’t his?
She excused herself and left the room, going upstairs to fetch her things because she couldn’t bear to be part of this argument any longer. It was obvious that Delia did not want her as a granddaughter and that Scott just wanted to prove that he could father children. She thought back to the letter she’d had recently seen from him to her mother, apologising for running out on her when she thought she was having his child.
Was Helen pregnant then, a good two years before her own birth? And if she was, what had happened to that child? Did she have a half-brother or sister somewhere?
She went into the bedroom, shutting the door behind her, and sat on the bed, yearning to be able to talk this over with someone. If only she could speak to her mother. Or Darren.
They had spoken again the night of the fire when, yearning to touch base with someone close to her, she had rung him.
‘Are you safe? What about the baby?’ Knowing him so well, she could detect the panic in his voice.
‘Yes, I just needed to talk to someone, and old habits die hard… anyway, I thought you might be awake with your time change.’
‘Yes, I couldn’t sleep. Too worried about you, Sass. You must admit our relationship didn’t stand a chance with us being apart so much.’
‘Other people’s have, but I don’t want to discuss that. I just needed to talk to someone familiar. I’m fine about things now.’ She wasn’t and ringing him was a mistake, an act of weakness, but a habit she hadn’t yet kicked. He was a kind man and he would talk to her, but he did not love her anymore.
‘Please let’s keep in touch, Sass. Let me see our child and have some part in its upbringing when it’s older,’ he pleaded.
‘You’ll have children with this other woman and ours will always be second best,’ she said.
‘Barbara doesn’t want children,’ Darren said. ‘She had a difficult childhood and anyway she thinks the world is over-populated as it is, and it’s better to adopt ones that are already here.’
‘Doesn’t sound your type at all,’ she said, remembering how he’d criticised a belligerent person they’d met who’d insisted that anyone who wanted children should give a home to the starving ones stuck in camps or hospitals as they had no parents of their own.
‘She’s a good person. You’d like her,’ Darren said gently. She knew she wouldn’t, imagining, perhaps unfairly, that this woman was the kind who blamed people for leaving too large a footprint while they tramped needlessly about leaving far larger ones themselves.
‘So what about your parents? Have you told them they are soon to be grandparents and that we have broken up?’ she asked.
There was a silence before he said rather sheepishly, ‘I will, yes of course, but I just wanted to wait until it is born. Anyway, you’ve only met them once and that was for a few minutes. Besides, they live most of the time in Spain, as you know.’
She felt hurt as though he didn’t care enough about his child to tell his own parents they were soon to have a grandchild. She said, ‘So you haven’t told them yet? Were you ever going to tell them? Or were you just hoping you could slope away with this other woman and leave me to deal with it by myself? What am I to say to our child when it is old enough to ask about you?’
‘Calm down, Sass, of course I’ll tell them. I just haven’t got round to it, but I will, I promise, as soon as I get back.’
Despite feeling annoyed with him for not telling his family, it had helped talking to him after the fire. Though it made her think that he had changed from the man she’d fallen in love with. It surprised her that he’d chosen to be with such a woman as she imagined Barbara to be. As long as she didn’t keep seeing him, especially with this other woman, she’d get over him and strive to make her and her child a happy life, just as her mother had done for her.
But how could she find out if her own mother had had another child? She had never mentioned one to her, not even in her last days before she died. She had vaguely kept tabs on Nathan, the man she said was her father though never, as far as she knew had she tried to contact him.
There was a tap on the door and Verity came in.
‘I’m so sorry Delia is as she is, it’s her generation. They say things most of us would keep to themselves. Also, in her day it was a d
isgrace to father a child out of wedlock so I suppose she’s feeling it would be better if you were Scott’s child, not her own son’s. You don’t even look like Scott,’ she said.
‘It’s okay, I understand, it’s just that…’ She looked up at her; she felt she could trust Verity even if she didn’t belong to this family either.
‘Mum contacted Scott years ago saying she was or might be pregnant with his child. It’s obviously not me as I was born in 1996 and now I can’t help wondering if I have a brother or sister somewhere. But now Mum has gone, how can I even find out?’
Verity had escaped up here leaving Mark and Scott to Delia’s charms, because she was worried about Saskia. She sat down on the other end of the small double bed, bought for couples that came to stay. She said, ‘I may be wrong, as after all I don’t know Scott, but it seems that he and his wife can’t conceive and he remembered your mother saying she might be carrying his child, so he came to find her hoping he could prove that he was fertile.’ She spoke quietly as if trying to make sense of it.
‘Mum knew she was very ill so why didn’t she tell me if there is, or might be, another child out there?’ Saskia thought back to those last painful weeks when her mother struggled to get her affairs in order while battling with the cruel grip of cancer. She had not lost her mind, muddling up her past life and the men she had loved. She had told her about Nathan being her father so why then did she not say there was another child somewhere… if there was?
‘Maybe there isn’t one. She could have thought she was pregnant, or maybe she had an early miscarriage,’ Verity said.
‘Or even an abortion. Perhaps she felt at that time she couldn’t cope with a child without the support of its father?’
‘Could be, though she was prepared to bring you up without a father – and she managed to do it very well,’ Verity said, with a gentle smile.
‘I suppose so,’ Saskia agreed. Her mother had often said they made a great team together and much though men were attracted to her and she had many male friends, she didn’t want to be tied down by anyone. ‘Fly free,’ she used to say if anyone remarked on it.
