The Making of Us

by Lisa Jewell

  “What d’you want her birth certificate for?” asked Rose suspiciously.

  “I need to, er, it’s for, like, child tax credits or something. I had a letter through.”

  “Send it to me. I’ll deal with it,” Rose barked.

  “No. It says it has to be the registered parent. It says I have to apply.”

  “Hmm,” she murmured dubiously. “I don’t remember ever having to do anything like that with the rest of them . . . Saffron, I’ve got Dean on the phone: did you ever have to send off the kids’ birth certificates to apply for your tax credits?”

  Dean held his breath, heard Sky’s sister in the background saying: “No idea. Don’t think so, though. Think the government gets all the information through computers and stuff.”

  “No,” said Rose to Dean. “I’m not letting you have her birth certificate. End of.”

  “But she’s my kid. It’s my name on that certificate.”

  “Yeah, well, you’re lucky it’s on there. To be honest, I was that close to saying ‘Father unknown’ because, quite truthfully, Dean, you may as well be.”

  And then she hung up.

  Dean stared at his phone for a moment. He was not surprised. She’d been quite civil considering. And he didn’t have the energy or the wherewithal to fight back. So that was it. The flat would be taken away from him. He’d be back with his mum. And a small deep-seated part of him was glad. This whole moving out, getting a job, having a baby thing, looking after himself . . . it had never felt right. It had always felt too soon. He rested his phone on the table and looked around the bare flat. Yes, he thought, yes. His conversation with Rose had sealed it. He would move out. Back with his mum. He would pretend none of the past twelve months had ever happened. He would start all over again. And maybe, in starting all over again, he might discover what exactly the point of himself was.

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  Dean and Tommy sat side by side in the Alliance, just across the road from the benefits office. Tommy had just been in to sign on—“For the first time in my life,” he’d muttered disconsolately. Dean had signed on, too. Not for the first time in his life. Dean had been unemployed for nearly a year now. Once he’d moved in with Sky he’d let things slide a bit with the driving job. It hadn’t seemed worth getting up for, really. His mum always gave him a few quid every week and in the past he’d saved it up, for his future. Ironic that the moment he started building a future he’d thrown it all away. It was almost as if he’d known there wasn’t going to be one.

  It was 3:35 and on the table in front of them were two pints of Dutch lager and two bags of chips, torn from top to bottom and displaying their silvery, oily innards. Both men stared into the middle distance in silence. Tommy was all or nothing. You couldn’t get either a word out of him or a word in edgeways. It didn’t bother Dean either way.

  He let the silence draw out for a while and pulled together his thoughts. There was something he wanted to talk about but he didn’t really know where to start. So he started at the place he knew Tommy would find the most interesting.

  “So, I went home with that redhead on Friday night,” he said.

  “Oh yeah, I thought you might.” Tommy winked at him. “How was it?”

  “Yeah,” he said, “it was all right. She’s a bright girl.”

  “A bright girl, eh?”

  “Yeah. She’s a student.”

  “Wow. What the fuck did you talk about?”

  Dean laughed.

  “Oh, right, I see. No talking required, eh?”

  “No, it wasn’t that. We didn’t even . . . you know?”

  “What? Seriously?”

  Dean shrugged.

  Tommy picked up his pint. “Yeah, well,” he said, “I reckon it’s fair enough. A bit soon probably. A bit soon for all that. You’re probably wise not to get involved.”

  “Well, yeah, it was a bit more than that, though. I mean, I liked her. She was cool. And something happened.” He inhaled and threw Tommy a quick glance from the corner of his eye.

  Tommy looked at him quizzically. “Oh, yeah?”

  “It’s a bit weird really, and I haven’t told you any of this before, but while you were away my mum told me something. She told me that my dad wasn’t who she’d said it was. That my dad was . . .”

  “A donor. I know. My mum told me. Years ago.”

  “What, you knew?”

  “Yeah. Sworn to secrecy. I wished she hadn’t told me.”

  “Fucking hell! I can’t believe you knew that all along and you never said anything.”

  “Christ, I nearly did, a hundred times. My mum should never have told me. But that’s great. Your mum finally told you.”

  “Well, yeah, I guess. And it’s cool and everything. I wasn’t really bothered or anything. Sort of made sense really. But that night, with that girl, Kate, we were really wasted. I mean, like, completely fucked, and we went on to the Internet and she signed me up with this Donor Sibling Registry thing.”

  “Fuck, right. And?”

  “And there were two matches. Girls. Women. Sisters. One’s eighteen. One’s twenty-nine.”

  “Holy shit,” said Tommy, putting his pint glass back down on the table and staring at Dean with wide eyes.

  “Yeah, I know. I didn’t mean to do it. It just kind of happened. And now one of them wants to get in touch.”

  “No way! Which one?”

  “The one who’s twenty-nine. She lives in London. Somewhere up north. And she’s single, not got any kids, lives alone. Her name’s Lydia.”

  “Lydia?” Tommy tested the name against his tongue, almost like he was checking its credentials. He nodded approvingly. “Lydia,” he said again. “Sounds posh.”

  “Apparently she’s Welsh.”

  “Oh,” said Tommy, dismissing his theory.

  “Yeah, she wants to meet up.”

  Tommy blinked at him. “Fuck, man,” he said.

  “I know. It’s just, I don’t know. Part of me really wants to. But part of me is really really really shit-scared.”

  “Have you told your mum?”

  “Yeah. She thinks I should just sleep on it for a bit. See how I feel. You know what she’s like, she never lays it down.”

  “Yeah, I know. But shit. That is massive. That is totally massive.”

  “I know. I know.” Dean drank some lager and chased a few crumbs of chips around the empty bag with his fingertips. “What would you do?” he asked eventually, turning to his older cousin with hopeful eyes.

  “Fuck, I’d go. God, yeah. But then, I’m up for stuff like that. I’m not as, you know, sensitive as you. And I don’t want to make light of it. It’s a big deal. But if I were you, I’d do it. I mean, it’s your blood. You’ve got more blood in common with this woman than with me. The worst thing that could happen is that you don’t get on. The best thing that could happen is that you have a sister, for the rest of your life. All for the sake of a tube journey north and a few hours out of your day. Yeah, if I were you, I’d go for it. What have you got to lose?”

  Dean nodded. He’d known that’s what Tommy would say. And somewhere deep inside he knew that Tommy was right. He should do this. He should meet this woman, Lydia. And he should try to contact the other one, the teenager. His life had come completely untethered from its moorings. His girlfriend was dead, he had no job and his daughter had been taken to live with a woman he couldn’t stand. Maybe it would take something like this to help him see what the point of anything was. Because certainly, from where he sat now, it was very hard to see one.

  He nodded, his gaze casting out across the room into the fug of the early-afternoon gloom. He thought of another pub, across the river, maybe one like this or maybe a posh gastro one. He thought of a woman: he imagined her tall and regal, wearing a mackintosh. He imagined approaching her, examining her profile, which would be aquiline and elegant. He saw her turn to him and smile and say, in a voice like that girl off Gavin & Stacey, “Hello, Dean, I’m Lydia. It’s lovely to
meet you.”

  And then the image was gone and he was here again, in Deptford, nursing a pint with his cousin Tommy and still no surer about what to do next.

  Dear Lydia,

  My name is Dean. I am twenty-one year’s old and I live in Deptford, that’s south-east London. I don’t work right now. I’ve had a tough year. And I’m between houses, just moved back in with my mum. My mum told me three years ago about my dad. When I turned eighteen. It come as a bit of a surprise. I used to think my dad was a man she met on holiday when she was forty-one. It didn’t bother me much. I thought it was quite cool actually. How did you find out? And what did you think about it? Anyway, I think I’m feeling ready to meet up with you, if you are? As I say, I don’t work so I can be free and easy, really. Maybe you’ve got a local? I can come up your way? Or somewhere central? You tell me. Hears all my details. I’m not good on the phone so best to text or something. Let me know.

  Yours faithfully,

  Dean Higgins

  Dean reread the e-mail. He thought it sounded quite good. Friendly, but not scary-friendly. And kind of intelligent but not like he was making too much of an effort to sound intelligent. And a bit of information, but not so much that they wouldn’t have anything to talk about when they met up.

  “Mum,” he said, over his shoulder. “What do you think?”

  She appeared in the room, halfway toward being dressed for a date with a man she’d met on the Internet. Her straight hair was sleek and shiny after a session with her ghd straighteners, and she was wearing a printed black-and-white sleeveless dress that showed her cleavage. Dean thought that her arms were probably a bit meaty and slack for a sleeveless dress and her cleavage had seen better days. But she looked pretty enough in a smattering of makeup and some dangling pearl earrings.

  “It’s all right,” she said, “I’m going to wear a cardigan.”

  “No,” said Dean, “you look nice. Honest. You look really nice.”

  His mum smiled at him and squeezed his shoulder. “Thanks,” she said. “If you keep saying things like that then you can stay for a bit longer.” She hadn’t taken too enthusiastically to the news that he was moving back in. “I suppose,” she’d said softly, “while you sort your life out. Yes. Why not?” Dean had been surprised. He’d always imagined that his mum was lonely here on her own, that she’d quite like to have him back. But it seemed that a lot had changed in the year he’d been away. Not least his mother’s attitude toward dating.

  “Let’s have a look at this then.” She pulled another chair toward her desk and squinted at the screen while she read. “It’s great,” she said a moment later. “You might want to run a spell-checker over it. But it’s fine.”

  “Fine?” said Dean.

  “Yes, love. It’s fine.”

  “You mean it could be better?”

  “No, honestly, it’s fine. I mean, it doesn’t need to be any more than that, really, does it? I mean, you’ll do all your talking when you actually meet up with her, I suppose.”

  “You think it’s crap, don’t you?”

  “No. I don’t think it’s crap. It’s just a bit uninformative, that’s all. But, as I say, you’ll have plenty of time to really get to know each other in the flesh.”

  Dean sighed. He was still only half-convinced that this was a good idea. Still only going through with it because the people whose opinions he valued the most highly—his mother, his cousin and Kate with the red hair—all thought he should do it. But really, what would he and this posh bird called Lydia have in common? She was a scientist. He was an unemployed van driver. She was Welsh. He was English. It was going to be a disaster.

  He ran a spell-checker over the e-mail and then, with an odd sense of trepidation, nausea and excitement in his belly, he pressed send. In his mind’s eye he saw the tall lady with the aquiline nose, sitting in a quiet study in her large stately town house. She was wearing a stiff white blouse with the collar turned up, and fingering a string of pearls that sat high on her throat. He saw her click on his e-mail to open it and he saw her reading it, with a small smile playing at her lips. He tried to imagine what would be going through her mind as she read his words. He wondered if she would be feeling as nervous as he was or if she would be feeling nothing but cool contempt for this half-educated yob from Deptford.

  “All right, love,” his mother said, her feet now planted inside navy strappy sandals and her arms covered by a white fitted cardigan with silver buttons, “I’m off.”

  She smelled of something he’d never smelled before. At first he thought it was perfume but then he realized it was something else: heat, vibrancy, nerves. “You okay?” he said, turning in his seat to address her.

  “’Course I am,” she said brightly.

  “And this guy . . . he’s okay, is he?”

  “He’s fine, Dean. Honestly.”

  “And you’ll be out in public, yeah?”

  “Yes. It’s only our second date. Come on.” She laughed and squeezed his shoulder. “What do you take me for? And you, are you going to be all right?”

  He turned and glanced at the monitor. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah. I should be okay.”

  She smiled at him tenderly. “Oh, Dean . . .”

  He looked at his mother and was alarmed to see that she looked a bit tearful.

  “I never thought about all this. I never thought how this was going to impact on you . . . I feel so bad.”

  “What?”

  “This”—she gestured at the document on his computer screen—“putting you through all this. You must be so scared. And it’s all my fault.”

  Dean stared at his mother affectionately. “What are you talking about?” he said with a laugh.

  “I mean,” she sighed, “that twenty-two years ago I made a totally selfish decision and now you’re having to pay the price for it.”

  Dean laughed again. “Honestly, Mum. It’s fine.”

  She stared at him intently. “Really?” she said. “Is it really fine? Because to tell you the truth, Dean, half the time I feel so guilty.”

  Dean blinked at his mother and exhaled.

  “Honestly. I brought you into this world and it’s done you no good as far as I can see and I just think, I don’t know, doing what I did, to make you, I could have tried a bit harder with you, given you some more opportunities, then maybe, oh, I don’t know . . . I just feel like I’ve done everything wrong.”

  Dean sighed again and then took his mother’s hands in his. They were clammy and soft. “Mum,” he said, “I love you, okay? I love you and I’m glad you did what you did. I like being alive. And this”—he gestured at the screen—“this is good. Yeah? It’s going to be great. It’s all a part of life, isn’t it? The life that you gave me.”

  His mum smiled gratefully and squeezed his hands. “Having you was the best thing that ever happened to me,” she said. “Truly. Honestly. And I’m so, so proud of you.” She leaned toward him and kissed him on the cheek. Then she leaned away from him again and appraised him lovingly.

  “I’m glad you’re back,” she said after a moment. “I didn’t like you being on your own in that place. All alone. With all those memories. You stay here as long as you need to, okay?”

  She bent then to hug him and he hugged her back. His lovely mum. The best woman in the world. He watched her leave, her wide hips straining against the printed fabric of her dress, her chunky ankles incongruous atop the delicate shoes, off on a second date with a man called Alan. His heart suddenly ached for her and he smiled weakly. He waited until he heard the front door closing behind her and then he went into the back garden and made himself a spliff. He smoked it slowly and deeply and sent the smoke from inside himself out into the world, imagining it crossing the London sky, south to north, like an offering from a peace pipe, passing through the tall thin windows of a tall thin house and into the private rooms of a lady called Lydia Pike.

  MAGGIE

  Maggie asked her friend Jeannie over for dinner the following
night. She invited her for three reasons: firstly because she wanted a pedicure, secondly because her eighteen-month-old granddaughter Matilda was staying the night and, as much as Maggie might have given birth to and raised two children all by herself, she still felt a little untethered when left alone with a child she had not directly brought into being. But thirdly, and mainly, because she wanted her help with signing Daniel up to the donor website. She’d had a quick look at it last night when she’d gotten back from his flat, and quickly switched it off again. It had looked horribly convoluted and she hadn’t known where to start in terms of correlating the information in Daniel’s folder with the information needed on the form.

  It was 7:30 and Jeannie was upstairs with Matilda, having offered to read her her bedtime story while Maggie got on with dinner. Maggie could hear Matilda overhead, scampering up and down the landing, screaming with high-pitched excitement, and realized that Jeannie had fallen into the oldest trap in the book: attempting to endear herself to a small child by making it laugh, prompting an endless cycle that resulted, on the whole, in hysteria and ended shortly thereafter in tears. Maggie raised her eyebrows and smiled. It was nice to hear life in her house. She did enjoy living alone, but it was at moments like these that she remembered what it had felt like when her house was full of other people’s lives.

  On the stove was a pot of coq au vin, though Maggie realized it was a little old-fashioned to call it that these days; chicken stew would probably be more de rigueur. On the kitchen counter she tipped some green leaves into a smart white bowl (she’d gotten rid of all the patterned stuff when her husband moved out, and replaced it with this oversized white stuff, like they served on in trendy pubs). She opened a bottle of French dressing and then she sliced a fat French loaf (known as a rustique according to the accompanying signage in Waitrose) into ovals. She unfurled a John Lewis brightly spotted tablecloth onto the kitchen table and laid it with more white plates and matching spotted paper napkins.