The Leading Lady

by Cathy Bramley

  Theo walked past the window dragging an enormous fir tree and waved in at us.

  ‘Even he’s getting into the Christmas spirit.’ She sighed contentedly. ‘The last two years have been awful but I’m determined to make this one special.’

  I swallowed a lump in my throat: Christmas in Brightside Cove. ‘That sounds perfect.’

  ‘Why don’t you join us this year, you and Archie?’ She wrapped an arm round my shoulders and pressed a rosy cheek to mine. ‘You have an open invitation, if your filming commitments allow, of course.’

  ‘Thank you, I’ll definitely bear that in mind.’ I smiled serenely.

  If my plan worked out as I hoped, my filming commitments wouldn’t interfere with Christmas at Brightside Cove one jot.

  ‘Oh, that reminds me,’ she said, wiping her hands on her apron and picking up the little notepad we normally kept by the phone. ‘Your brother called and left a message. He said he’ll be here at about eleven thirty. Something about an email from Tim. He’s arranged for you all to have a chat over Skype at lunchtime.’

  ‘Oh, thanks.’ My voice came out in a whisper and my heart leapt into overdrive. It was really happening. Today was the day we’d find out who Tim was and hopefully get to speak to Dad for the first time in nearly twenty-five years too. Unbelievable. I gulped at my coffee to moisten my dry mouth.

  I couldn’t wait to find out what secrets Mum and Dad had been keeping for all these years and why …

  Theo and Kate were in Penguin’s Pad decorating their Christmas tree when Archie arrived. He set his laptop up on the kitchen table while I raced up and down the stairs in a flap like a teenager getting ready for her first date: changing my outfit three times, doing my hair, putting make-up on and taking it off again in case I looked like I was trying too hard. But by noon we were ready for our Skype call with Tim Penhaligon. Whoever that was.

  Right on time, Archie’s laptop began to make a ringing sound and Penhaligon’s flashed up on the screen.

  Archie clicked to answer the call and a man with short blonde hair appeared onscreen. He had a deeply tanned face, sculpted eyebrows and wore a pink open-necked shirt. He had a pair of sunglasses perched on top of his head just behind a neat little quiff. He looked to be in his mid-sixties and clearly looked after his appearance. Behind him was a row of optics and above that a shelf of cocktail glasses.

  ‘Och, look at you two.’ The man clapped his hand over his mouth and shook his head. His voice was warm and bubbly, his accent broad Scottish. ‘Hello, darlings, I’m Tim and no need to tell me who you are, I’ve seen you on screen, Nina, and Archie, you’re the image of Graeme.’

  My pulse began to thrum in my ears; so we had found the right Penhaligon. Archie and I exchanged looks and instinctively reached for each other’s hands across the table.

  ‘Hi, Tim.’ I swallowed hard. ‘Thanks for calling. We were trying to get in touch with our father?’

  Tears sprang out of Tim’s eyes and he made no attempt to brush them away.

  ‘I’ve been both hoping for and dreading the day you found us. I’m so sorry but your dad—’ His voice cracked and he shook his head. ‘He’s no longer with us.’

  Chapter 38

  ‘He passed away?’ I gasped. Tim nodded, reaching into his pocket for a tissue.

  So Dad was dead. I had found the man I’d loved and who I was convinced loved me, but we were too late.

  I thought my heart would break. I was devastated, but even as the sorrow began to gather like a hard ball at the back of my throat, I realized that this was what I’d suspected ever since I’d received those flowers: Your Dad would be so proud. T x

  Archie lowered his head to his hands and swore under his breath. I put my arm round his shoulders.

  ‘Tell us, Tim,’ he said huskily. ‘Help us understand what went wrong for our family.’

  Tim nodded, took a sip from a glass and blotted under his eyes with a tissue as if being careful not to smear his make-up … I put my face up to the screen. I couldn’t be sure but he did seem to have overly prominent eyelashes.

  ‘Shall we start with a tour of Penhaligon’s?’ said Tim, reaching towards whatever device he was calling from. He turned it round so we could see a raised stage hidden behind long gold curtains, white wooden tables and chairs, and a long white and glass bar which ran along the length of the place. Two women walked past dressed in long white marabou-trimmed gowns and waved at the screen. ‘We’re still closed at the moment but the boys and girls start arriving about now for morning rehearsals. This was your father’s empire, his pride and joy. It wasn’t called Penhaligon’s when we first bought it. It was called The Paradise Club then. I changed the name after Graeme died as a lasting memory.’

  He turned the phone back to himself. ‘I changed my name too. Penhaligon has a much nicer ring to it than O’Boyle.’

  ‘I like it too,’ I said. ‘We weren’t sure whether we’d be meeting a new family member today.’

  ‘Out here, far away from home, we were each other’s family, I suppose,’ said Tim wistfully.

  ‘I’d like to hear about Dad,’ Archie said, his voice thick with emotion. ‘Like how he ended up in Brazil and why he never got in touch.’

  But I understood exactly what Tim was doing: he was introducing us to Dad’s life, easing us into it gently. Whatever Dad had been doing since leaving us twenty-four years ago, it was worlds away from his life as a father and a husband in Manchester.

  ‘Tim,’ I said, resting a hand on Archie’s arm, ‘I think we’re ready. To know the truth about Dad.’

  Although I think I knew what was coming. Tim had clearly loved Dad and I guessed Dad had loved him back.

  ‘Okay, if you’re sure.’ He blew out his cheeks. He picked up his glass and settled himself in a corner against high white upholstered cushions. ‘But if it’s okay with you, I’ll start at the beginning?’

  We both nodded.

  ‘So, even as a boy Graeme felt like an outsider in his village in Cornwall,’ he began.

  Tim paused now and then as he told us about Dad’s family life, how he’d loved his mum but never felt comfortable in his own skin and didn’t feel at ease with people. His mother tried to get him to settle down and marry but Graeme didn’t find it easy to talk to girls. He’d got so frustrated with her pushiness and interference that when he was offered a job selling catering equipment in Manchester, he left without a backwards glance. His mother had felt so abandoned that they’d rowed and she wouldn’t speak to him for years. He’d felt less judged and less obtrusive in a big city. He was good at his job and got promoted several times, and eventually made it up with his mother, but he’d always lived alone, wondering if he’d ever meet someone and fall in love like his friends had. By then he’d begun to suspect that he might be gay, but he hadn’t known what to do about it, how to investigate the feelings he was having.

  Tim stopped, his eyes worriedly scanning our faces for a reaction. ‘This is probably a shock, are you both okay?’

  I was holding everything in, determined to keep it together until he got to the end of his story. Archie’s face was as unyielding as granite, I had no idea what he was thinking.

  ‘Okay?’ Archie murmured to me.

  I nodded. ‘You?’

  ‘Yeah, it’s starting to make sense,’ he said gruffly.

  ‘Poor Dad,’ I said to Tim, who was patiently watching us. ‘So where did he meet Mum?’

  ‘At a fortieth birthday party of a colleague’s sister. He was over forty himself by then, a confirmed bachelor, as they say. Diane was quite tipsy.’

  My eyebrows shot up. ‘She never drank at all! Said it didn’t agree with her.’

  Tim nodded. ‘Graeme thinks someone might have spiked the drinks, he’d only had a couple but felt quite woozy himself. She confessed to him that she was nearly forty and still a virgin and would he show her what all the fuss was about.’

  ‘Good grief,’ Archie spluttered.

  ‘Which I think was you
r father’s reaction,’ said Tim. ‘Given that he was pretty much in the same boat.’

  A drunken encounter at a party. Two lonely people on the periphery of the action, who’d somehow not been given a copy of the rules. It should have been the start of their love story, but it already felt like a tragedy waiting to happen. Archie held my hand while Tim told us that Mum had got pregnant on the night of the party. There was no doubt in her mind that they would have to get married but Dad had been mired in guilt, knowing that he’d be living a lie, but at the same time wanting to do the right thing by her. Archie was born and then three years later, I came along, by which time Dad had almost managed to convince himself that he was living the life he should be.

  ‘Graeme’s mother was delighted,’ said Tim, ‘I don’t think she ever really got on with Diane, but she loved you two with all her heart.’

  ‘We visited her in Cornwall,’ Archie said. ‘We had family holidays with her.’

  ‘Without Mum,’ I added.

  Tim smoothed his hair back. ‘The cracks began to show soon after you were born, Nina. Graeme had a nervous breakdown from the strain of keeping up appearances and he lost his job. Your mum refused to face up to the problems they were having and they grew further and further apart. Then one day she stumbled across a gay magazine that Graeme had hidden in his desk.’

  ‘Oh, poor Dad.’ Archie squeezed his eyes shut. ‘I can imagine how that went down.’

  He’d been discovered with something similar when he was sixteen, Mum had threatened to throw him out and yelled at him for being depraved and perverted.

  ‘After that it all came out,’ Tim continued. ‘Graeme said he couldn’t deny it to himself or her any longer. He wanted to live as a gay man. Although he never wanted his mother Bev to find out because he was worried it would kill her.’

  My heart thumped at that. It was so similar to what had happened to Maxine a decade earlier. How sad that people’s attitudes to others were so negative. I resolved that I’d be bringing my children up to accept others for who they were and to love unconditionally.

  ‘Diane told him he had to choose between being gay and having contact with his children.’ Tim smiled sadly. ‘As if your sexuality is a choice. When he refused, she threatened to tell his mother. She made the decision for him in the end and packed his cases while he was out looking for work. She told him that he was sick and that she didn’t want her children knowing what sort of man their father was.’

  I felt tears prick at my eyes. Mum had had her faults but I’d always thought that deep down she wasn’t a bad person. I knew how much this would have hurt and humiliated her, how she would have done anything to prevent the reason for their break-up becoming public knowledge.

  I remembered that day so clearly when we’d come home from school to find Dad gone and a ‘for sale’ sign up outside. We’d left the area as soon as we could. It answered a lot of questions about her extreme views on sex and sexuality. For the first time probably in my life I felt sorry for her.

  My poor unloved Mum. And as for my poor conflicted Dad; what an impossible situation. My heart broke for him.

  Archie pulled a packet of tissues from his pocket, passed me one and dabbed his own face.

  ‘But things got happier for Dad?’ I asked Tim hopefully.

  ‘Initially no. He was beaten up more than once just for being himself. Back then, there wasn’t the acceptance or protection that there is now. Part of him wanted to reach out to you both, he missed you so much, but the other part wanted to protect you from the dangers of his new lifestyle.

  ‘But then he moved to Brazil and found happiness here. He and I met in 1995 when I came to work here as a drag artiste, my stage name is Tammie La Tango. He was the manager then. We bought it together from the original owners in 2005, the year before Nina turned eighteen. We celebrated our civil partnership shortly afterwards, a month after Elton John and David Furnish. They did it on the first day it came into force. Show-offs.’ He made a moue with his lips. ‘We weren’t perhaps the most obvious couple, he was a salesman before running the club, and me a drag artiste. But Graeme said his mum used to say that there was a lid for every pot and I was his. Our party was fabulous.’

  His gaze drifted then, lost in memories. And I smiled a secret smile to myself. I’d remembered Granny Bev’s saying all these years later. It gave me a warm glow, knowing we had ties even though we hadn’t seen each other for so long.

  ‘Why mention my eighteenth?’ I asked suddenly.

  Tim hesitated and pressed his lips together as if choosing his words carefully before he spoke.

  ‘Your parents came to an agreement of sorts when they split. Diane was supposed to tell you about Graeme being gay when Nina came of age so that you could decide for yourselves whether you wanted to get in touch.’

  He hadn’t forgotten us at all; he was simply honouring their agreement. This was possibly the best news of my entire life.

  ‘But Mum didn’t tell us,’ I gasped. ‘Oh, that would have changed everything.’

  ‘She had a stroke that year,’ Archie explained. ‘She was paralysed down one side and lost much of her speech. She died a few months later.’

  ‘Your father’s health was deteriorating too. Dementia. To begin with he’d joke about losing his mind, but eventually it became clear that it was more serious than that.’

  Archie’s eyes met mine: so that explained the message on the back of the photograph.

  ‘I wanted him to get in touch with you without Diane’s blessing but he wouldn’t.’ Tim sighed. ‘We managed to track you down, though; Archie, you’d just started your business in Exeter.’

  ‘And Dad helped me land a big contract.’

  ‘You know about that?’ Tim looked surprised.

  Archie nodded. ‘I’d never have had the success I’ve had without that leg-up.’ His eyes misted over. ‘I wish I’d been able to thank him.’

  ‘And Nina, he knew you were at uni in Bournemouth studying drama; he said he’d always known you had star quality. Right from when you used to recite nursery rhymes to him when you were tiny.’

  ‘He said that?’ I whispered.

  ‘Oh yes,’ Tim replied with a teary smile. ‘He was so proud when you moved to London. He even saw you on TV a couple of times. Silent Witness, was it?’

  I stifled a groan. Was there anyone who hadn’t seen my body naked and covered in grey body paint? Archie chuckled under his breath.

  ‘He used to scour the internet looking for you in the credits of television shows. And then one day I read a press release saying you’d got an agent.’

  ‘And he sent me flowers?’ I said excitedly.

  Tim wrinkled his nose. ‘By then he was quite confused. Some days he barely recognized me. I sent the flowers on his behalf. I wanted you to know that he loved you, that he was proud …’ His voice faltered. ‘I managed to get him a place in an English-speaking care home. I made sure they put Victory Road on for him religiously and I sent you flowers from time to time to congratulate you on your achievements.’

  ‘Why anonymously? I would have loved to have known who they were from.’ I stood up to switch the lights on. The sun had disappeared behind the clouds and the kitchen had gone a bit gloomy.

  ‘Yes, I wondered that,’ Archie said. ‘We could have come to visit Dad before he died.’

  ‘I know, I know.’ Tim sighed. ‘Believe me, I deliberated long and hard over it, but in the end I couldn’t bring myself to interfere. You aren’t my children; it wasn’t my place to contact you. It was only once he died that I felt it was okay to come clean. But I do regret not doing so earlier. Graeme passed away peacefully last autumn. He had people in his life who loved him, but he didn’t have his children with him, just a photograph of the three of you skimming stones on a beach.’ He stopped to dry his tears again. ‘He was a wonderful man. I miss him so much.’

  ‘Thank you, Tim,’ I said, wishing I could reach through the screen and give him a hug. ‘Thank you for l
oving him and giving him a happy life.’

  ‘And thank you, darling.’ Tim sniffed. ‘I know you’d prefer to hear it from him, but he loved you with all his heart. He really did.’

  Ten minutes later, after the Skype call had ended, Archie and I sat in silence, letting all of that new information sink in.

  ‘I’m glad for him,’ said Archie finally. ‘I’m glad Dad had the courage to let go of the life that was making him unhappy and celebrate the man he truly was. Even if that meant we had to lose him.’

  ‘That’s a lovely thing to say,’ I said, leaning my head against his. ‘And I can’t believe Dad said I had star quality even though I was so small.’

  ‘Everyone could see that, Neen.’ His eyes shone with pride and I felt emotion well up in me.

  ‘He was proud of us,’ I said gruffly.

  ‘Yep.’

  ‘Thank heavens for Tim, that he left this world being loved,’ I said softly.

  ‘That’s all that matters really, isn’t it?’ Archie said. ‘Being important to someone else, being there for them?’

  I nodded. ‘Strip everything else away and the most precious thing we have is love.’

  We went quiet for a moment and then Archie’s eyes lit up.

  ‘Hey, I’ve just had a thought: does this mean we get free holidays to Brazil?’

  I laughed. ‘And more to the point does this mean Tammie La Tango is our stepdad?’

  An email message flashed up on Archie’s computer screen and interrupted our childish giggling. He fell quiet as he scanned it, his shoulders hunched.

  ‘Right. Enough is enough,’ he said grimly. He dropped the lid down on his laptop and sprang to his feet, hurriedly pressing a swift kiss to my cheek and striding to the door. ‘I’m going and I won’t be back until I’ve got all this crap with work sorted out.’

  I frowned at him. ‘What do you mean? You’re not dashing off to Exeter again?’

  He smiled. ‘I mean, I’m going to be the man I really want to be. Just like Dad.’

  I opened my mouth to argue but Archie was off. His car was still spinning out of the drive when I remembered: he was supposed to be taking Molly and Ellis out for pizza tomorrow; I hoped he’d be back in time. My stomach flipped; if he let her down again she’d never give him another chance, and really, who could blame her?