Family Secrets

by Liz Byrski

‘Do you actually want her to come home though, Brooke?’ Kerry asks, giving her a long look. She thinks that Brooke looks totally wiped out, her face is grey with exhaustion, her eyes red. ‘I mean, I’m not going back to work before the holidays anyway, so I can stay on with you for a while if you like.’

  ‘But Linda needs to know,’ Chris interjects. He looks at Brooke. ‘I know that all this – the break-up as well as what happened today – has been pretty grim for you, Brooke, but we don’t want to make things more complicated by keeping Linda out of the loop.’

  Brooke watches as Kerry starts to unwrap the bundle of fish and chips. ‘I think Mum needs to know,’ she says eventually, picking up a stray chip and putting it in her mouth. ‘But it would be better if you could stay,’ she says, looking at Kerry. ‘If she came here to stay with me Zachary would be hanging around too.’

  They sit down at the table and share out the food. Chris pours wine for himself and Kerry. ‘You too, Brooke?’ he asks, indicating the bottle, but she shakes her head. ‘He sounds like a bit of a tosser,’ Chris says, ‘and not at all the sort of bloke I’d expect Linda to go for.’

  ‘He’s really vile,’ Brooke says. ‘And the worst thing is there’s this girl at school, a sort of friend, or at least she used to be, who goes out with a boy called Danny who lives right near here, just down the end of the road. She says Zachary goes there to buy drugs and …’ she pauses, blushing. ‘Oh well, just to get drugs and stuff.’

  There is silence around the table and Kerry glances across at Chris with raised eyebrows. She puts her hand on Brooke’s arm. ‘What stuff, Brooke?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You said he goes there for “drugs and stuff” – what are you trying to say?’

  Brooke looks from one to the other. ‘Well, you know, just stuff …’

  Kerry shakes her head. ‘What aren’t you telling us, Brooke? Because whatever it is I think it’s really serious and you’re worried about it.’

  Brooke blushes, looking down at her plate. ‘I … well, I haven’t told Dad … I mean, I didn’t know how …’

  She pauses, obviously very aware now that both of them have stopped eating and are waiting for her. She puts down her knife and fork and buries her face in her hands. Kerry shifts her chair closer and puts an arm around Brooke’s shoulders. ‘If you tell us, we can help you decide what to do and if you need to tell Andrew.’

  Brooke nods without looking up, and draws in her breath. ‘Donna, this girl, says that Zachary is … that he’s having a … well … you know, having sex with Danny’s sister.’

  Kerry looks up sharply at Chris, who pulls a face and sips his wine. ‘Do you know how old this girl is?’ she asks.

  ‘She’s older than me,’ Brooke says, looking up at her. ‘I think she finished school last year.’

  Chris lets out a slow whistle between his teeth, shaking his head, and Kerry sits up straighter, pausing before she speaks.

  ‘And why did you think you couldn’t tell Andrew?’

  Brooke shakes her head. ‘Because he’ll have to tell Mum …’ she pauses and then the words tumble out almost faster than Kerry can grasp them: ‘… and she’ll know I told Dad, and she’ll be so upset, and she’ll think it’s just me being horrible because I hate Zachary so much, and then she’ll really hate me and I’ve been so horrible to her anyway, and it’ll all be my fault, and she won’t ever want to see me again.’

  Twenty-four

  It’s almost four o’clock by the time Flora leaves The Ivy and starts to walk back to the hotel. The rain has stopped and a watery sun brings shimmering light to the pavements.

  ‘We’ll get a cab and drop you off,’ Phillip had said.

  But Flora preferred to walk. It’s not far to Russell Square and she needs time alone to think about what’s happened. The last few hours have turned everything on its head and she’s determined that nothing, absolutely nothing, will spoil this for her. She strolls on, joyful and still a little bewildered by the suddenness with which things can change. After all these years alone, out on a limb, cut off from her family, she had been looking forward to a holiday in Hobart and the adventure of getting to know her niece and nephew and their children. And now another family has simply fallen into her lap, and despite her concern for Connie, all Flora can feel is the sheer joy of discovering this connection and what it means.

  When Connie walked away from the table Flora had followed her to the door. ‘Don’t, Connie, please don’t go,’ she said, grasping her elbow. ‘Stay; this is family, our family, we need to know more, need to get to know Geraldine and …’

  ‘She may be your family, Flora, but she’s certainly not mine,’ Connie said, pulling her arm away. ‘How can you possibly expect me to stay? The shame of it, the embarrassment. How can you even bear to say her name, and as for Bea, how could she do this to me … ?’

  In that moment Flora wanted to shake her. ‘This is not about you,’ she began, ‘and Bea didn’t know, you could see that …’

  But Connie had pushed open the door and walked out, turning back to look at her. ‘Why didn’t she tell us, Flora? How duplicitous was that, pretending to be a friend, but hiding this? No; what you do is up to you but I want nothing to do with this.’ And she had turned and walked away, crossing the street and disappearing rapidly around the corner.

  As Flora watched her go she felt a fierce stab of anger and resentment. Connie was right, this was her family, and nothing, not their lifelong friendship or the family on the other side of the world, was going to get in the way of it. Taking a deep breath she turned back into the restaurant and made her way to the table where Bea and her daughter and Phillip were still sitting. They turned to her in concern.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ Geraldine said, getting to her feet. ‘It was incredibly thoughtless of me. But I was talking to Mum on the phone yesterday and I suddenly thought how lovely it would be to get on a train and come up here for the day to surprise her.’

  Flora stood facing her for a moment. They were about the same height, and their eyes met easily, eyes just like her own. It was like looking into a mirror image of herself as a younger woman, and uncannily like being eye to eye with Gerald. She put her hands out to take Geraldine’s, and the connection was so overwhelming that a lump rose in her throat stopping her voice; all she could do was search the younger woman’s face. ‘No apologies,’ she managed to say eventually, ‘you have every right to surprise your mother on her birthday.’ She hesitated, trying to get her voice and her shaking hands under control. ‘This is extraordinary and wonderful, and I’m just so happy to meet you, Geraldine.’

  As she thinks of it now Flora is filled once more with the joy of that moment, and stops to savour it. There is a bench nearby at the entrance to a small park and flicking the worst of the rain water from it with the corner of her raincoat she sits down, wanting to savour it again, to fix it in her memory.

  She had seen Bea glance at Phillip with enormous relief, and then look back at her. ‘I’m so sorry about Connie,’ Bea had begun. ‘I would never … I mean, I hadn’t even told Geraldine that you and Connie were here. We rarely talk about the past, it’s not as though she even knew Gerry …’

  Flora had looked at Bea and Phillip and then, glancing up, caught sight of her own reflection in a nearby mirror. Three old people, in reasonably good nick, each of them recognisable from their younger selves, bound together by the past in the most extraordinary way. And she was filled by an overwhelming longing to be part of this, to stay part of it, to hold it and build on it and not let it slip away from her. ‘Well, perhaps it’s time to talk about the past now,’ she said, ‘and there’s so much I need to know.’

  Sitting on the wet seat in the sunlight Flora opens her bag and takes out her glasses and a packet of photographs, photographs that Geraldine had brought with her for Bea.

  ‘You keep them, Flora,’ Bea had said after they had looked at them together. ‘Geraldine will get me more copies.’

  They are fa
mily photos taken over Easter in the garden of the Cornish farmhouse which Geraldine’s husband, Robert, had inherited from his father. Robert is burly and bearded with a weathered complexion and dark, interesting eyes; he looks, Flora thinks, exactly as a Cornish farmer should: solid, earthy and kind. In the pictures Robert and Geraldine are with their children – Ethan, who is eighteen, Lucy, sixteen, and dark-haired Molly, who is thirteen and looks just like her grandmother.

  ‘This is all so amazing,’ Geraldine had said as they looked at the photographs together. And she reached out to take Flora’s hand again, across the table. ‘I have a real aunt, an aunt of my own, not just one of Robert’s. This is so exciting – I can’t tell you how it feels.’

  ‘You don’t need to,’ Flora had said. ‘It’s the same for me – a niece, a great-nephew and two great-nieces; I should pinch myself to make sure I’m not dreaming.’

  ‘I was going to tell you, Flora,’ Bea said, ‘the first time you and I had lunch together, ask you if I should tell Connie, but I chickened out. I kept thinking that I would tell you if you were going to stay here and work with us, but if you weren’t it would be easier for Connie not to know. How do you think she’ll … ?’

  Flora put her hand on Bea’s arm. ‘Don’t, Bea. This is not about Connie, and while I love her dearly I don’t need her approval to get to know this side of my family. Let’s not spoil this now by worrying about it. I’ll talk to Connie later.’

  Flora shifts on the damp bench and runs her fingers over the photographs again. Then she slips the pictures back into the envelope and into her bag, gets to her feet and walks on towards the hotel, feeling entirely different from the way she did before this happened. She has always seen herself as a solitary figure, a woman walking life’s streets alone; now she is a woman with a family; walking alone but not alone, a woman who is part of something greater than herself. It’s a feeling she’s never had before, not even during that time she spent in Hobart where everything was so much of Gerald’s making. Today she had felt instantly accepted into the heart of Bea’s family; it all seemed so easy and so right. And as she turns into the foyer of the hotel Flora knows that whatever happens next, nothing can take away the pure magic of what has happened.

  *

  ‘Well, you certainly took your time,’ Connie says as Flora lets herself into their room. ‘You must have had a lot to talk about.’

  ‘We did,’ Flora says. ‘I’m sorry you felt you couldn’t stay. It would have been lovely to share it with you.’

  ‘Lovely for you, you mean.’

  ‘Connie …’

  ‘Well, what do you expect, Flora?’ Connie says sharply, her voice tense with hurt and anger, her expression cold and pinched. ‘That I would sit with Bea and with Gerald’s daughter, and pretend it was all wonderful?’

  Flora sighs and tosses her handbag onto her bed. ‘Of course not, we all know something serious happened, something difficult and embarrassing …’

  ‘Embarrassing? Is that what you think – embarrassing? How about insulting, offensive, humiliating … there’s plenty more I could think of. Those women, Bea and her daughter, ride roughshod over my feelings, over my marriage and my family, and all you can say is that it was embarrassing?’

  Before she walked into the room Flora had counselled herself to stay calm; she would reason with Connie, listen to what she had to say and treat it with respect. But her good resolutions are already being rocked. She crosses to the table, picks up the kettle and heads to the bathroom. ‘Look, I’m going to make some tea and we can sit down and talk this through.’

  ‘How could you, Flora? How could you let them do that to me and then stay there with them? Doesn’t our friendship mean anything to you?’

  Flora slams the kettle back on the table. ‘Right!’ she says, her voice rising with the heat of anger. ‘Let me explain a few things to you, Connie. First – nobody has done anything to you. None of this is about you. Geraldine decided to give her mother a birthday surprise – that’s not about you. Bea and Gerald were together, they were going to get married until he decided he wanted to marry you and dumped her. Poor you? I don’t think so! He cut her off completely, wouldn’t return calls, and six weeks later when she found she was pregnant and tried to contact him, she discovered he’d buggered off back to the parents in Tunbridge Wells to organise a wedding in a beautiful church, and a reception at an extremely posh and expensive country club. When she finally went down there and forced him to meet her he told her to go away and get an abortion, gave her three hundred pounds and told her never to come near him again. So, while you chose your wedding dress in Selfridges, and you and I discussed flowers and hymns, Bea wrestled with her future in a very different way. I know it’s a terrible shock, and I understand that you are hurt by it, and I do feel for you in this, but who’s hurt you, Connie? Bea and Geraldine, or Gerald himself? Who’s the loser here, you or Bea?’ She stops abruptly, then picks up the kettle again, fills it at the bathroom tap and plugs it in to the power point by the dressing table.

  Connie drops down into the armchair by the window and sits, her chin resting on her hand, staring out across the park.

  ‘She was laughing at me,’ she says eventually. ‘All the time – that first dinner, then when we met for coffee and went to the shop, she was secretly laughing at me. She must have been or she would have told me.’

  Flora closes her eyes in frustration, but moderates her tone a bit as Connie has moderated hers. ‘Do you have any idea how ridiculous that sounds?’ she says. ‘Bea was going to tell me and ask me whether to tell you, she was agonising about how and when, or whether it was kinder to say nothing.’ She stops, looking at Connie, who is still staring out of the window. The kettle boils and she makes the tea and carries the cups over to sit facing her. ‘No one has set out to insult or humiliate you, unless you choose to take it that way. No one is laughing at you; in fact all three of them were upset and concerned for you. Be hurt, be humiliated and offended and sulk all you want, but don’t expect sympathy from me. Empathy, yes; it’s a shock, it’s a difficult and painful situation, and you have to explain it to Kerry and Andrew …’

  ‘What?’ Connie swings round to look at her. ‘Kerry and Andrew? There’s no way I’m involving them in this. They will not know about this, Flora, I’m not telling them and neither will you.’

  ‘They have a half-sister, Connie, and they have a right to know.’

  ‘No, absolutely not. How do you imagine they’d feel if I went home and told them this?’

  ‘Well, if they are the nice, sensible, generous people you’ve described to me, I think they’ll cope all right. They’ll be surprised, although perhaps not amazed that Gerald had a secret past. If what Brooke’s told you is right then they’ve adjusted pretty easily to the idea of an ageing lesbian aunt, so I suspect they may find a half-sister quite intriguing. I’d be surprised if they take it as a personal insult. I daresay you’re more concerned about how you’ll feel telling them rather than how they will actually feel.’

  Connie shakes her head. ‘I can’t believe it,’ she says. ‘It makes … well, it makes a mockery of everything, our relationship, our marriage, everything. And to think that I threw everything away for … for it to end up like this.’

  ‘Like what? Nothing has really changed, has it? You still have your family, you have some new friends and now a delightful de facto step-daughter if you choose to accept her. And look, there’s something else I’m going to say while we’re having this conversation, Connie. The longer we’re here the more you keep talking about what you gave up to marry Gerald, and while I understand the circumstances in which you did, the fact is that you had a choice and you chose him. You admit that you grew to love him and that your family means everything to you, but you seem to imagine that you would have had a better life if you’d followed your career. I think you imagine yourself centre stage at Covent Garden, a dressing room filled with bouquets, and maybe married to someone different, maybe someone more l
ike Phillip. Perhaps that’s how it would have been, but the fact is it might not. You might have ended up struggling from one suburban concert hall to another, never quite making the big time, exhausted and short of money, married to a total loser who drank himself into oblivion every day. Dreams are important, Con, but so is reality, and sometimes dreams turn to nightmares. You’re never going to know, and you can’t get it back. But you have the present and the future, you have your home and family and plenty of money, and you can make the future the way you want it, but only if you let go of this illusion of what might have been.’

  They sit in total silence, drinking their tea, both watching the rain that has begun again. It’s Connie who breaks the silence.

  ‘Can we not talk about this anymore?’ she says quietly. ‘I need to think about it, about everything.’

  ‘Of course,’ Flora says, incredibly relieved at the prospect of respite. What she would like is to talk about Geraldine and her family, to share the photographs, to talk about how what happened today has affected her, but that, she knows, is not going to happen. Not tonight, possibly not for some time; for now a lull in the storm is the best she can expect. ‘Let’s go out, maybe see what’s on at the cinema?’

  It’s dusk by the time they leave the hotel and the rain has started again. ‘This weather,’ Connie says irritably, ‘it’s so unreliable.’

  ‘Stop being so grumpy,’ Flora says as they walk to the cinema. ‘If you keep it up you’ll be on your own.’

  Connie mumbles some sort of apology and they walk on, until they are in sight of the first cinema. ‘Nothing with guns or drug deals,’ she says.

  ‘Okay, and no cowboys or parallel universes.’

  ‘No gratuitous sex or violence and no cute kids with supernatural powers.’

  ‘And no baseball heroes, or horse whisperers.’

  ‘No Romans with sandals.’

  ‘Or car chases.’

  ‘And definitely not a rom-com.’

  ‘That’s Hollywood out then,’ Flora says, laughing. ‘Oh! This looks more like us. Judi Dench, Tom Wilkinson.’