She braked and looked over at him. He was sitting stock-still, staring straight ahead, his fingers twisted in his lap.
“Is this really that bad?” she asked him, regretting the impatience in her tone immediately, working hard to curb her own misgivings about what they were to do. “I mean yes, yes, it is bad, I know, and it’s a shock. But we’ll face it together and we’ll work out how best to handle it. If this is what you want, then I’m here for you. Or we could always just turn around and go back—”
“No, you’re right,” Louis said, looking at her and reaching over to take her hand. He squeezed her fingers hard. “This is something I have to face. I’m so glad you’re here with me, Sophie. I haven’t had anyone in my corner since …well, since Carrie.”
“So,” Sophie said, trying not to feel regretful that Louis didn’t want to turn around and leave. “It’s not that bad, is it?”
“It’s just …what if Wendy hates me? I wouldn’t blame her. I got her pregnant and abandoned her when she was fifteen.”
“You didn’t abandon her, you didn’t know until a couple of days ago! She never gave you a chance to do the right thing, whatever that would have been at sixteen. But now you have a chance to do something at least. She won’t hate you, none of this is your fault.”
“You’re right,” Louis said. “I don’t know why I’m so nervous about seeing her again …” Louis trailed off and Sophie knew that in that moment he was thinking about the summer he had spent with Wendy all those years ago. She dragged him back into the present, where he belonged to her.
“Look, that’s unit thirty-three, so it must be …” Sophie put the car into first and crawled along a few more units. She turned to look at Louis. “We’re here.”
The radio had been playing when Sophie and Louis pushed open the door. There were a couple of girls in their late teens packing underwear into boxes, probably to fulfill online orders, after all, it was at bridebodybeautiful.com that Sophie had finally tracked down Wendy Churchill. She saw that Wendy guaranteed delivery within three to four working days for all orders made online. These girls must be in charge of delivering on that promise.
“Yeah?” one of the girls asked them as they came in.
“You can’t buy the stuff here,” another one said. “You have to go to a fair or buy online.”
“We’re not here to buy,” Sophie said. “We’re here to see Wendy.”
“Oh, right, out back,” the first girl said, nodding in the direction of a small office. “WENDY, VISITORS!” she yelled.
“We’ll go through,” Sophie said, pulling at Louis’s hand and then pulling again when she realized that he didn’t seem to be moving his feet.
Wendy’s smile froze on her face the second she saw who her visitors were.
“You told him,” she said to Sophie.
“I had to,” Sophie said calmly. “Surely you must see that.”
Wendy sat back in her chair and looked at Louis. Sophie waited for the hate and thinly veiled anger she had experienced from Wendy at the wedding fair to be unleashed on her fiancé, but instead Wendy smiled. It was a rueful, regretful smile. A pretty flirtatious smile.
“You poor bastard, you must have been going through hell,” she said warmly.
“It’s been a bit of a shock, I’ll admit,” Louis said, tentatively smiling back at her.
“Look, I’m sorry I got all stressy with your girlfriend at the fair.” Wendy gestured at the one empty chair in the room and Louis sat in it. “It was a bit of a shock for me too, having my deep, dark secret outed like that by some strange woman. I probably didn’t handle it as well as I should have.”
“We understand, don’t we, Soph?” Louis said, reaching up over his shoulder and taking Sophie’s hand.
“Yes we do,” Sophie said, trying, largely unsuccessfully, to repress the violent feelings of hate that Wendy effortlessly seemed to inspire in her.
“So—what do you want to do?” Wendy asked him pleasantly. Sophie wondered where her evil twin had gone, where the vicious threats and anger from the fair had gone and, more important, why? She told herself it was just childish jealousy and resentment that made her feel so negatively about the woman. After all, she had thrown a twenty-year-old, six-foot-two spanner in the works of what was supposed to be Sophie’s fairy-tale ending, but it wasn’t just that. There was something about Wendy that troubled her.
“I don’t know what I want to do, really,” Louis said, shifting uncomfortably in his chair. “I mean, first of all I want to say I’m sorry. I’m sorry I got you pregnant when we were kids. I was dumb, and drunk. I didn’t know what I was doing.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Wendy said, raising a suggestive eyebrow; Sophie had to work hard to stop her mouth from dropping open in horror. “I have fond memories of that night, and besides, it wasn’t just your fault. I went to the same sex-education classes as you. We were both young and drunk …” Wendy shrugged in a way that suggested the last twenty years of single motherhood had been no trouble at all. “We both wanted each other so much.”
“But why didn’t you tell me?” Louis asked her. “I don’t know what I would have done about it. I was a bloody stupid kid with no parents to help me out. But I don’t know—I’d have done something, got a job maybe …”
“I didn’t tell you because I didn’t know, not straightaway,” Wendy said. “When you made it clear you didn’t want to go out with me anymore—”
“When I made it clear?” Louis looked surprised. “You were the one who ignored me! I was heartbroken!”
“You were?” Wendy laughed. “No, you’ve got that wrong. After that party I was so excited about seeing you again, now that we were lovers—but you couldn’t even look at me.”
“No, you’ve got that wrong—you ignored me. I thought I’d disappointed appointed you so much that you’d decided to chuck me on the spot.”
“Far from it!” Wendy actually fluttered her lashes, which made Sophie want to shove her fingers down her throat and vomit. This was not going at all the way she’d expected. For starters, the opportunities for her to be a supportive and understanding fiancée seemed to be negligible, particularly since Louis had carelessly let go of her hand. Plus, there was a distinct lack of shouting or angst. Instead there was flirting. Flirting.
“I can’t believe that …,” Louis said, shaking his head as he smiled at Wendy. “I pined for you for weeks.”
“Same!” Wendy exclaimed. “Anyway, I didn’t notice I’d missed my first period. Mum and Dad announced that we were moving for Dad’s job, and I thought, why not? The only boy I’ll ever love has chucked me—I might as well move on. I was a skinny little thing back then, really petite—”
“You still are,” Louis assured her chivalrously.
“Oh, I don’t know about that,” Wendy said coyly. “But when I started to get a bit of a tummy, Mum said it was my hormones. Puppy fat! We’d been in Oldham for a couple of months when I felt it kick. Of course I didn’t know it was a kick. I thought I had an alien life form inside me. He must have been moving around before then but I’d put it down to indigestion. But this—this was a really proper kick. I went running to my mum in tears, thinking it was cancer or worse. She put her hand on my belly and felt it and suddenly she was crying.
“‘You silly stupid bloody foolish girl,’ that’s what she said to me. I’ll never forget it. Or what she said next. ‘You’ve gone and got yourself pregnant.’ ”
Wendy shook her head, looking over Sophie’s shoulder and through the venetian blind. “But they were brilliant about it in the end.”
“Didn’t they want to know who the dad was?” Louis asked her.
“Yes,” Wendy said.
“And I told them.”
“And your dad didn’t come down here to kick my head in? Why not?” Louis asked her.
“My dad said what bloody use would a kid of barely sixteen be? He said we’d take care of it ourselves. And as for me, I thought you’d gone right off me. I
didn’t see the point in telling you either. I must admit that when we moved back down a year or so back, I wondered what would happen if we bumped into you. But we never did.”
Wendy and Louis looked at each other across the desk with a kind of familiar fascination and wonder that made Sophie feel very uncomfortable. They looked as if they had just rediscovered a long-lost treasure that had once been very dear to them.
“And did he …did Seth ever ask about who his dad might be?”
“We lived with my mum and dad till he was eight,” Wendy told him. “My dad was still young enough and fit enough to play football with him, run in the fathers’ race. The subject never came up, I think because he’d never had a dad, so he didn’t miss one. Actually,” she said, pausing and looking pensive for a moment, “he did ask me when I met someone and got married. He wanted to know if Ted was his dad.”
“Wait, you’re married?” Louis asked her.
“Not anymore.” Wendy shrugged. “It didn’t work out. I tried to love him, but in the end there was always something holding me back …” She looked up through her lashes at Louis. “Or maybe someone.”
To his credit Louis broke Wendy’s gaze first, clearly feeling a little awkward by the implication of her last comment.
“So what did you tell him?” he asked her.
“I told him Ted wasn’t his dad, but that his dad was someone I’d once loved very much.”
“And he has no idea about me now?” Louis asked her.
“None,” Wendy said.
“And are you going to tell him?”
Wendy hesitated and Sophie waited for the same angry denial she had experienced.
“No,” Wendy said, reaching across the desk to take Louis’s hand. “I think you and I should tell him together.”
Nine
As Sophie paced the single and largely empty platform at the St. Ives station waiting for her guest to arrive on the 4:46, she wondered about two things. First, why Cal had never learned to drive and was forcing her to meet him at the station on this chilly and gloomy afternoon, and second, why Louis had arranged one of the most important and momentous events of his life without discussing it with her at all.
After Wendy had dropped her bombshell, Louis had just sat there for a moment. Sophie hadn’t been sure exactly how he would react. She’d expected something radical though—some kind of drama that seemed befitting of the occasion. But instead Louis had merely sat back in his chair, his whole body relaxing as he ran his fingers through his hair, shrugged, and said, “Okay then, when?”
He’d looked relieved, Sophie thought, glad that someone else was taking charge of the situation, telling him what to do. She couldn’t blame him, she supposed, but she also couldn’t help the feeling of unease that blossomed in the pit of her stomach. No matter how reasonable and sensible Wendy seemed now, Sophie found it hard to trust her and she was sure it was due to more than mild jealousy over Louis’s past love. But as Sophie stood in the tiny cramped office at Wendy’s workshop, she realized that regardless of whether she liked Wendy, Wendy was the mother of Louis’s son, and when Sophie married Louis this woman would be in her life forever.
Wendy had smiled, watching Louis’s face closely. “You two are so alike, you know. Of course I’ve known Seth for twenty years, he’s my boy. I did my best to forget what you were like, and I don’t just mean how you look, but your mannerisms …your smile.” Sophie looked on as Louis and Wendy watched each other closely. “Now I look at you sitting in that chair and it’s amazing. He’s the spitting image of you.”
“Sophie mentioned that.” Louis’s laugh was easy and relaxed, as if suddenly he’d decided that discovering a child wasn’t that big a deal after all. “It’s pretty crazy to think that’s he out there, this son I’ve never met …so when shall we go and see him?”
“I need to pick the right time,” Wendy said, glancing at Sophie briefly, as if she was irritated by an eavesdropper. “How about Friday? He’s coming over to my house for dinner, he often does on Fridays, says he needs to get a good feed in before the onslaught of the weekend. How about you come too?”
“We could make Friday, couldn’t we, love?” Louis asked Sophie, looking up at her. Sophie had been momentarily thrown by the fact that he’d called her “love”—a term of endearment he had never previously used and one she’d always thought more fitting for either couples who had been together for more than a hundred years or bartenders.
“Well, Cal is supposed to be coming on Friday afternoon, but this is much more important. I’ll get out of it, he’ll understand and—”
“Actually, I think it would be better if it’s just us, I mean just you and me, Louis,” Wendy said, cutting across Sophie. “It’ll be enough of a shock for the poor kid without strangers trooping in too.”
“Except that Seth’s already met me,” Sophie retorted before she could bite her tongue. “I’m not the stranger, Louis is.”
“No, and you’re not his father either,” Wendy said, directly addressing Sophie for the first time. “Look, I’m sorry, you might have been the one to work out who Seth was, but as far as I’m concerned, for now Louis is the only one who gets to be there when we tell Seth who his dad is.”
Sophie had waited for Louis to object and to insist that Sophie should come with him, but he hadn’t. He’d just twisted in his chair and looking up at her said, “I think Wendy’s right, love.”
Sophie checked her watch. Louis was there now, at Wendy’s house in Newquay. She’d invited him over for four thirty, giving them time to work out how they were going to handle things before Seth arrived around six.
Sophie had been looking for the spare key in Louis’s hall table drawer to give to Mrs. Alexander, who’d agreed to babysit, when she’d come across the brochure for Fineston Manor. It had been only a couple of days since she’d found out about Seth and since Louis had told her he’d found the perfect place to get married. They still hadn’t looked at the brochure together, and as far as she knew he hadn’t booked the place for any date, let alone New Year’s Eve. She held the glossy folder in her hands for a few seconds, counting backward from ten, trying to snuff out all the irrational and childish feelings that surfaced in her when she considered that all of their plans had been so suddenly and carelessly shelved. Of course discovering Seth was more important than booking their wedding day, but even so, as Sophie looked at the brochure tucked away in the drawer where Louis put credit card bills, bank statements, and everything else he didn’t want to think about, she couldn’t help feeling jealous and neglected.
Only a few days ago the whole world had been about them and the girls, about how she felt about Louis and how he felt about her and the new family they were endeavoring to put together in the best possible way. It had been about kissing in doorways and the awe and delight they felt in each other. Now all of that was gone, and despite herself Sophie discovered she was angry.
“What about this?” Sophie asked Louis as he came down the stairs. He’d dressed carefully in a blue shirt and jeans, a shirt to appear smart and dadlike, Sophie guessed, and jeans to show he was still young and cool. His hair was brushed off his face and tucked behind his ears and he’d shaved too, which oddly made him look younger and undermined the responsible-adult image Sophie thought he was trying to achieve. He didn’t look like himself. The tension, nerves, and fear of the unexpected had altered his face somehow in small, subtle ways so that his features were all slightly out of kilter.
More than that, he hadn’t looked at her in the way he usually did in several days. Instead he looked at her as if he didn’t really see her. It felt like suddenly finding yourself standing in the shadows when you had become accustomed only to basking in the sun.
“What about what?” Louis asked her.
“This.” Sophie held the brochure under her chin, peering up at him over it, like a child peeping over a tabletop. It seemed to take Louis a second or two to register what it was.
“Oh …that,” he said
. “I haven’t booked it.”
“I guessed as much,” Sophie replied, putting the brochure back in the drawer. “And I understand why …it’s just—do you still want to get married on New Year’s Eve? Because if you do, then we should probably sort it out, that’s all.” Her voice was edged with an unreasonable anger that Louis registered with a sigh.
He picked up his keys and looked first at his watch and then at the front door. Sophie knew that he didn’t want to discuss it now. She knew that he wanted to drive to Newquay and be on time to meet Wendy and then eventually his son. She knew all of that and yet still she asked him. She discovered she couldn’t stop herself.
“Of course I still want to get married …,” Louis said, frowning at the front door as if he could somehow will it to open.
“Still on New Year’s Eve?” Sophie pressed him uncomfortably.
“Well yes, why would that change?” Finally Louis focused his attention on her and looked her in the eyes, reaching out to cup her cheek in the palm of his hand. “I love you, Sophie,” he told her, with just a shade of impatience. “All this secret-son stuff is doing my head in, but it doesn’t mean I don’t love you or don’t want to marry you anymore …”
“Really?” Sophie heard herself sounding insecure and needy and felt the muscle in her gut wince. She rested her hand on Louis’s chest, feeling the beat of his heart against her palm. “I’m sorry—I know this is a really important day for you and that you have to go now and that the last thing you need is me asking you if you still feel the same but I can’t help it, I can’t …”
Louis engulfed her in a hug, the kind of all-encompassing embrace that had been absent for the last few days.
“You nut,” he said gently, kissing the top of her head. “How I feel about you hasn’t changed, nothing can change how I feel about you. I really want to marry you more than anything and preferably before they chime in the New Year. I promise you I’ll ring them tomorrow, because I’d be gutted if we lost out on our New Year’s Eve wedding for any reason. But right now I have to go and meet my adult son who I knew nothing about and who has no idea I exist.”
The Accidental Family Page 14
