The Making of Us

by Lisa Jewell

  She returned his smile. He was wearing a white shirt and beige trousers and looked fresh and scrubbed. But from his eyes she could see that he had quite possibly been crying. “I’ve got some things,” she said, “for you to look at.” She held up the pile of notepads. “I think they might be your brother’s journals. I was wondering . . . maybe you could have a look at them, if you thought that was appropriate? Maybe you could tell me what they’re about?”

  She made two cups of coffee and brought them out onto the terrace a few minutes later where Marc was sitting in the shade of a red parasol, leafing through the books. He did not look up when Maggie emerged and his hand found his mug of coffee without any assistance from his eyes. Maggie sat gingerly on the chair next to his and stared into the distance. She waited until Marc was ready to talk and then she smiled at him. “So,” she said, “anything interesting?”

  “Well,” said Marc, closing a book and blinking at her, “these are his journals. They are very, how you say: sporadeek? Yes?”

  She nodded.

  “But it seems that we can now solve the mystery of how my brother lived such a life”—he gestured behind him at the comfortable flat—“without a job. It seems that he had a benefactor. A lady, called”—he leafed through the book again to a particular page—“Bettina. It seems they had a long affair, and then she died and she left him this flat and all her money. It also seems, my dear Maggie, that my brother was very much in love with you.”

  Maggie blanched.

  “Yes. He says it here: ‘Finally, I have found a woman with whom I could truly wish to grow old, a beautiful woman, a refined woman, a woman with class and style and a good, kind heart, and it is too, too late. Oh, Maggie, I do love you. I hope that one day I will tell you this, but knowing me, I will not.’”

  Maggie gulped and turned away from Marc so that he could not read the expression on her face. She felt tears pressing against her eyelids, bruising and sore. She felt her stomach lurch, once with happiness at the fact of his love for her, but again with misery as she thought of what she’d lost. She waited a beat until the tears had been forced down and then she turned to Marc and smiled. “Well,” she said, “isn’t that nice? Oh, and how funny about the rich lady! Imagine that! Only Daniel,” she said, “only Daniel could possibly charm a lady into leaving him her entire estate.” She laughed, a nervous laugh. She was uncomfortable with this peeling back of the mysterious layers that had surrounded him. Maybe, she thought to herself, maybe she would rather leave him like this. A strange, sad and perfect memory. Maybe she should leave these journals with his twin, let him explore the interior life of his brother. Maggie didn’t want to know. No, she really did not want to know. Not now that it was too late to do anything with the knowledge.

  “Come on,” she said, “we should probably get going. Let’s go and say good-bye to your brother.” She held out her hand for Marc and he took it shyly.

  “Yes, Maggie,” he said, “let us say good-bye.”

  LYDIA

  Lydia’s empty house echoed with the sound of her arrival. Juliette didn’t work on Sundays and Bendiks was out. Queenie ran down the stairs at the sound of her entrance and immediately began to love her, rubbing herself frantically against Lydia’s legs and smiling at her with delight. Lydia lifted the cat and carried her through the house, checking rooms as she went, checking them for change, for disturbance, and more than anything for signs of Bendiks. But everything was as she’d last seen it. Clean. Immaculate. Sterile.

  Lydia continued her ascent through the house and then straight to her office. It was early afternoon and there was nothing else for her to do except work. She had a meeting the following week with a client. She had been neglecting her work these last few days. Now that everything had been tied up, her siblings found, her father dead, her history explicated and her life made sense of, it was time for her to get back to real life. She pulled a file from her cabinet and laid it open upon her desk. Then she booted up her laptop and scrolled through some e-mails, and then she sighed, raised her eyes to the ceiling and tried to remember just exactly what it was she was supposed to be doing. It all seemed so unconnected to the person she’d been for the past few days, so far removed from the woman who’d gotten stoned with her little brother and sister on a terrace in Bury, who’d slept on the floor like a teenager on a sleepover, who’d had sex in a sauna, and drunk wine with an uncle in Wales.

  For years she had lived and breathed her work. For years her mind had been a clean and ordered thing, spacious and open-plan as a minimalist loft apartment. Now it felt like a crazed attic, piled full of intriguing boxes and odd treasures. The inside of her head was now too distracting for her to turn any part of it to the matter of work. Half an hour after sitting down at her desk, she stood up again and decided to go for a walk. She glanced through the window and saw in front of her a place she’d avoided for months. She heard the sounds that chilled her heart: the high-pitched shrieks and cries of small children in a playground. She’d never really thought about her aversion to playgrounds, assuming it was connected with her ambivalence toward children in general. But now she knew exactly why she avoided them, and she also knew it was time to face that fear and overcome it.

  She was halfway down the stairs when she heard a key in the lock of the front door and saw the outline of Bendiks through the opaque glass. She caught her breath against a burst of nervous energy and arranged her face into a smile. Bendiks looked at her with surprise as he came through the door. “You’re back!” he said. “Where’ve you been?”

  She was thrown, as always, by his beauty, and felt a dull throb deep down inside herself that told her that her attraction to him had not waned even a degree in the light of his transgressions. “To see my dad,” she said quietly.

  Bendiks looked confused. “But I thought your father was . . .?”

  Lydia sat on a step and sighed. “No. Not that one. My real father. The donor.”

  “Wow.” Bendiks stopped and rubbed his jaw. “Wow. That is a very big deal. How was it? Are you okay?”

  She smiled and told him about the hospice and watching her father die for the second time in her life. Bendiks sat on the step below her and looked up at her with sympathy and compassion. “You are such a strong person, Lydia,” he said sincerely. “Really. You are amazing. Is there anything I can do? Would you like to talk some more? I am free tonight—maybe we could have dinner?”

  Lydia tucked her hair behind her ear and nodded. “That would be good,” she said. “If you’re sure . . .”

  “Of course I’m sure! I care for you, Lydia. And I want to be here for you . . .” He paused then, and cast his eyes awkwardly to the floor.

  Here it comes, thought Lydia, here comes something bad.

  “Listen, Lydia,” he began. “I, er, I have to tell you something. I am moving out . . .”

  Lydia’s heart stopped for a moment and she blinked in surprise. “Oh,” she said.

  “It is nothing personal, I promise you. It is . . .” He paused and looked at the floor while he formed his words. “It is me. I am weak. I have been spending again, Lydia. I have been building up new debt.”

  “Oh, Bendiks . . .” Lydia felt herself soften with relief.

  “Yes, I know. I had one card left, that they didn’t cut up. And so long as I am living here, in this beautiful house, I can pretend that everything is fine. I can pretend that my life is good, that I am a successful man. But my life is not good. My life is stupid. I am stupid. So today I cut up this card. And I have put onto eBay all my things: my clothes and my shoes and my toys. All these things that I thought I needed. That I thought were important.

  “See, here . . .” He pulled a shopping bag from between his feet and showed it to her. “I have bought a pay-as-you-go phone. Ha! Like a teenager! And also, I have found a room, somewhere hideous, I can’t even remember the name of the place, something Park. It is in Zone Three, Lydia, miles from everywhere! But it is cheap and every morning when I wake up there
it will be a reminder to me that I have to work hard and play fair and stay within my means if I ever want to be the kind of man who could live in a house like this on my own merits. You see? So, no, it is not personal. I have loved living here, with you. It has been an honor. But I have to do this if I am to lead a good life.

  “Oh, and also . . .” He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out his wallet. “Here,” he said, pulling notes from it. “One hundred and fifty pounds. Yours, I believe?” He held the notes out toward Lydia and she stared at them mutely. “Take it,” he said, “please.”

  “No, Bendiks, honestly. I don’t want your money.”

  “It is not my money, it is your money. Which I took from you in bad faith, knowing that I was not in a position to repay you. But this is the money I got for my phone. And I want you to have it. So that I can sleep at peace tonight . . .”

  Lydia continued to stare at the money. She didn’t need it. She didn’t want it. But she knew, for Bendiks’s sake, that she should take it. “Thank you,” she said, holding the notes in her hand. “You didn’t have to. But thank you.”

  “No, Lydia. Thank you. Thank you for being so kind to me. And thank you for, well, you know . . .” He smiled shyly. “And I hope, you know, that we’ll still see each other. If that’s what you would like? Because I would like it. I would like it very much.”

  Lydia looked at him and thought, Yes. Yes, I would like to see you again. I would like to have sex with you again. And even though I know that you and I will never be a serious item, that we will not get married and we will not live happily ever after, I hope that whatever happens, we can always be friends.

  “Cool,” she said, rubbing her elbows. “I can call you on your pay-as-you-go phone.”

  “Yes!” Bendiks beamed at her and laughed uproariously. “Yes! I will give you my number!” Lydia smiled. And felt all the tiny little bits of her life that had been floating around in a state of irresolution gently slot into place. There, she thought, there. Now everything is as it should be. Now I can get on with it. But then she remembered there was still one fragment of her life that she needed to deal with.

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  The playground was packed. It was four o’clock, the schools and nurseries had just emptied and the sun was high in a pale blue sky. She sat on a bench, deliberately facing toward the playground, and stared in awe through the bars. Look at them all, she thought to herself, just look at them all. Where did they all come from? What would they all become? Were they conceived in love, in duty, in passion, in a drunken blur? Did they know their fathers? Did they know their mothers? Did they have brothers and sisters? Maybe half brothers, half sisters, cousins, uncles, aunts. Each child represented a whole fascinating story of meetings and feelings and moments and consequences, and each child would go on to make their own stories too. It was mind-boggling.

  Lydia had never noticed before the way the whole thing fit together into a kind of vast network, how each individual slotted in and affected everything else around them. It had always been just her. Just Lydia. Nothing to do with anything or anyone, destined to have no story of her own. And that was why she hadn’t ever asked Juliette about herself, because that one single question would have brought forth a whole potential sea of other people to think about. That was why she’d gotten herself a cat even though she was a dog person. A cat didn’t expect you to be friends with it. And that was why she’d been so repelled by Dixie’s baby. Because Dixie was extrapolating herself, bringing forth new people and new stories and new connections. Procreating. The most natural thing in the world. Yet, for Lydia, for so long, a terrifying concept.

  But now she could see where she fit into this whole thing. She had connections and a story. An amazing story. A story unlike anyone else’s. She had a brother and a sister and a brand-new, black-haired niece. She had another brother, buried tiny and snug in a quiet corner of her motherland. She had a housekeeper who was possibly a little overprotective and distrustful but with whom she shared a mutual fondness and respect. She had a kindhearted uncle on her Welsh father’s side and a kindhearted uncle on her French father’s side. And now she had a man who wanted her, who found her desirable and interesting. She had no mother and no father but she had so much more than most people.

  She peeled off her cashmere cardigan and let the sun warm her bare arms for a while. She stared through the bars at the children in the playground, innocent and unaware of their own stories, slowly unfolding, leading them day by day to an unknown conclusion.

  And then she thought of a small girl, growing bigger and bigger in a cottage in a village somewhere in the heart of Wales.

  She thought of Viola Dixon-Parry, her best friend’s child, a baby she’d never even held in her own arms.

  She pulled her phone from her handbag and she typed in Dixie’s number.

  The Making of The Making of Us by Lisa Jewell

  Like most of my books, The Making of Us began life in my head as a very different book to the one you have just finished reading. I was emotionally drained after finishing After the Party, my rather bleak study of an imploding long-term relationship. It had been an incredibly difficult book to write and then the editing process had gone on for weeks and I was totally desperate to do something lighthearted and fun. My thoughts kept turning to About a Boy by Nick Hornby—such a funny, touching book—and I decided I wanted to do something a bit like that, a comic study of a relationship between mismatched people from different generations.

  At first Lydia was a man. He lived in Lydia’s house and had Lydia’s job, he went to Lydia’s gym and was friends with Lydia’s friends. I was about to introduce him (I can’t for the life of me remember what his name was!) to a young man who may or may not have been his brother, but was certainly going to change his life in some amusing way, when I suddenly realized that I wanted him to be a woman. So Lydia was born. Then I started thinking of ways for Lydia and the younger person to come into each other’s lives, but nothing seemed quite right until I read an article about the Donor Sibling Registry and discovered that it was the perfect route for them to take. And so Dean was born. But as I wrote I realized that there was so much more scope within the concept of donor siblings than I could explore with just these two characters and so Robyn was born. Then I was told that a lady called Maggie Smith had won a “character name” auction for the charity Room to Read and instantly I knew that Maggie was friends with the donor and that the donor was unwell. Once all the pieces of the jigsaw were in front of me it was obvious what I needed to do with them all, and the rest of the book kind of wrote itself. And was absolutely nothing like About a Boy!

  I didn’t do very much research. I wanted my characters’ stories to be entirely personal to them and not influenced by anyone else’s. But I did read a few pieces in the press, coincidentally to writing the book, and was reassured that my instinct to make Lydia, Dean, and Robyn bond so quickly and so deeply was spot on. The sibling dynamic in a donor situation is much more straightforward and clear cut than the relationship between a donor and his offspring, so I deliberately wanted to avoid that aspect. I felt that that was another book entirely.

  I had a personal interest in the concept of donor insemination before, during, and after writing The Making of Us; five years ago one of my very best friends took the incredible decision to go through the process herself. As a result I find it hard to take an objective view. All I have to do is look at my friend’s son playing with my daughter, see how happy and balanced he is and how much pleasure and contentment he has brought to my friend’s life, and I know that there is no right or wrong way to have a family. It’s how you raise your family that counts.

  I also appreciated the chance to write about hospices. My mother died in a hospice in 2005. It was extraordinary to spend so much time in a place so filled with the milk of human kindness. They are places that seem almost not of this world, halfway houses between life and death, where even in the last days of existence, incredible things can sti
ll happen. I rarely say I enjoyed writing a book. Generally I really don’t. But this one was quite nice. The mechanics of it, the concept of the Donor Sibling Registry, the idea of complete strangers having so much in common and the characters themselves with their very different backgrounds and personalities. The book had its own rhythm and momentum that carried me through. I really hope you enjoyed reading it.

  Lisa x

  A Conversation with Lisa Jewell

  1. Which writers or books have inspired you?

  As a child I read anything and everything, from the children’s classics to Dickens to The Thorn Birds, The Grapes of Wrath, and every single Agatha Christie ever published. I read four or five books a week, so on a deeply fundamental level I have been inspired by a huge and eclectic raft of writers. More specifically I do love Nick Hornby and Maggie O’Farrell, both of whom make what they do look so easy. It was a conversation with a friend about High Fidelity that resulted in me writing my first book and you don’t get much more inspiring than that!

  2. What made you want to become a writer?

  Reading made me want to become a writer. I had a vague idea about being a journalist as a child, but life took me far away from that and by the time I was in my twenties I was a secretary. I’d married young and started reading a lot again and my husband told me he thought I’d be able to write a book that other people would want to read. After that marriage broke up I signed up for creative writing lessons to see if he was right. He was.

  3. What’s the best thing about being an author?

  On a practical level it is so nice not to have to wake up every morning and go to the same place and see the same people and do things for someone else that you’re not really that interested in. I love working from home and making my own schedule. On good days it is possible for me to do a whole day’s work in an hour. Then I get to have fun. It’s also a brilliant job to have when you’ve got kids as you can work your days around them and not miss out on anything. Beyond the practical though, I do love it when I’m talking to someone who’s really up on themselves and they ask me what I do and I tell them I’m a published author. It’s very satisfying!