The Accidental Family

by Rowan Coleman

  “But I haven’t been wondering about it, not at all,” Sophie said as she heated a pan of milk. “If anything, I’m the one who wants to get married, most especially now …” Sophie trailed off and thought of the brochure for Fineston Manor, in the drawer with the unread bills. “The funny thing is,” she said thoughtfully as she watched the milk, waiting for bubbles to break out on the peaceful surface, “that since all of this happened, I’ve felt that I might lose him.”

  “Well, that’s obvious,” Mrs. Tregowan said. “You met him in a stressful situation, you fell for him during difficult times. When everything seems settled and peaceful, when you have a chance to really listen to your heart, that’s when you have doubts. Now everything is kicking off again, there’s another drama and another woman to boot, you don’t have time to listen or think, and that suits you because now all you have time to do is to try and fix things for him and try to keep him.”

  “I can’t work out if you think that is a good thing or a bad thing,” Sophie said, setting Mrs. Tregowan’s chocolate on the windowsill to cool. Mrs. Alexander had told her that last year Grace had burned her stomach badly on a drink that had been too hot and too heavy for her arthritic hands. So Sophie and Mrs. Alexander always took care to fill her cups only halfway and wait for the beverage to cool before they gave it to her.

  “Well, it’s a good thing if you just want to marry him and hang the consequences,” Grace said. “But then to feel happy, you’d have to create yourself a drama every few weeks just to drown out your real feelings, and you’d end up on morning telly with that bloody awful man shouting at you.”

  “That doesn’t sound so good,” Sophie said, sitting down opposite Grace with her own chocolate as she waited for the coffeepot to fill.

  “Better to find a quiet place, away from all of this, and give yourself a chance to listen and feel, because the thing is, Sophie, I don’t doubt that you love Louis—it’s just that what with all this rushing and panic and drama I don’t think you really believe it yet.”

  “Maybe you’re right,” Sophie said thoughtfully, tasting the thick chocolate that coated her tongue. “Maybe it would be a good idea for me to get away for a bit. But I don’t want it to seem as if I’m running out on him, leaving him and the girls when they need me.”

  “It would only be for a few days, the girls would barely know you’d gone,” Grace said. “And as for Louis, give him a chance to miss you. It never does them any harm. I left my third husband for three months, went to Morocco with this charming young man I met in the supermarket. Meat aisle, it was. I can tell you that Donald appreciated me more than ever when I got back. Every time he looked at me, he thought of me and that young man, which made him really jealous, which in turn made him want me even more. It worked wonders, I can tell you.”

  Sophie spent several seconds trying to think of something to say, but for once Grace had left her entirely speechless.

  “So did you leave this Donald for your last husband then?” she asked, because Grace’s love life seemed to cover every kind of marriage there could ever be and Sophie was finding it an invaluable resource when it came to working out what her own marriage would be like.

  “No.” Grace’s smile was rueful. “He had a heart attack in bed one night. I missed him, the poor old bugger, but it was the way he would have wanted to go. I had ten wonderful, passionate years with him, so I can’t complain.”

  “So you would say that you can base a marriage on passion alone?” Sophie asked, thinking that certainly the last few months of hers and Louis’s relationship had been based on just that.

  “Yes, as long as one of you dies before you stop fancying each other,” Grace said. “Otherwise, once the passion wears off, you usually find you hate each other’s guts and have nothing to talk about.”

  It wasn’t exactly the answer Sophie was hoping for.

  “I’m going to take this coffee to Seth,” Sophie said, filling the largest mug she could find. “Want a hand getting to your room?”

  “No thank you, love.” Grace smiled. “I can get around perfectly well. But if you could hand me my hot chocolate before it goes stone cold that would be lovely.”

  Sophie paused and looked at Seth, sprawled on the sofa, his head tipped back, his mouth open; he looked disconcertingly like Bella when she was in a deep sleep, given over to unconsciousness with such abandon that you could almost believe she lived her real life in dreams.

  “Seth.” Sophie crouched down and shook his shoulder lightly. “Seth, I’ve got you some coffee.”

  His eyes flickered open and then fixed on her.

  “Am I really at your place?” he asked her, his voice dry. “Or did I dream that?”

  “You are at the B and B I stay in,” Sophie said, setting down the coffee, taking his hand, and pulling him into a near sitting position. “I’ve booked you a room for the night. You can go and talk to your mum in the morning, when you’ve got a clear head.”

  Carefully she handed him the hot coffee. “I put sugar in it, I hope that’s okay.”

  Seth took a sip of the coffee, his hand cupping the mug like Izzy’s did when she was drinking hot chocolate. “That’s perfect,” he told her. “You are very nice, you know. You didn’t have to rescue me. You could have left me in the gutter to sober up. I’ve done it plenty of times before.”

  “I couldn’t do that,” Sophie said, smiling, settling into a kneeling position on the floor, leaning her elbow on the seat of the sofa. She had seen two sides of Seth, flirtatious, then angry, and now she was seeing a third. He looked very young, like a blank page, and vulnerable, unprepared for what life might write on him. “Besides, can you imagine if Louis found out that I’d walked away and left you in that state? I’d be so chucked.”

  Seth sipped the coffee in silence for a moment, looking around at Mrs. Alexander’s sitting room through half-closed eyes. Sophie guessed that it wasn’t easy to embrace a hangover in a room decorated with flower prints and a menagerie of china animals.

  “Why are you going to marry him then?” Seth asked. “I mean, you are a very beautiful, lovely, kind, proper woman. What did he do to get you?”

  Sophie mused for a moment on what the phrase “proper woman” meant, but decided it probably had something to do with her age, so she decided not to ask.

  “I was looking after his children, my best friend’s children. Carrie—my friend—she died and I was the girls’ guardian. Louis had been overseas in Peru—”

  “Ran away from the kids then,” Seth surmised.

  “No, well, not exactly—it’s a really long story, but the short version is that I thought that about him too. I thought he was a good-for-nothing, low-life loser who abandoned his wife and children and then just turned up years later, thinking everything was going to be all right because now he was ready to play daddy. But then I got to know him, and I found out about his story—his reasons for doing what he did. I realized that he is a great person, a wonderful person. And his daughters found that out too. I think the three of us fell in love with him at the same time.”

  “He’s got you properly taken in,” Seth said, shaking his head. “You look so clever too.”

  “Clever?” Sophie questioned him.

  “I mean, you don’t look like the sort of woman who’d end up in some backwater, living in a B and B, following a man around. You look like you’re your own person.”

  “I am my own person,” Sophie insisted. “I chose to come here. It’s not like Louis hypnotized me to get me down here.”

  “That you know of,” Seth said, his eyes widening. He and Sophie smiled at each other for a second.

  “Let me ask you something,” Sophie said. “Louis didn’t leave you, he didn’t even know about you—not until really recently, and as soon as he knew, he wanted to meet you, he wanted to work out how to be part of your life. So how can you hate him?”

  Seth shrugged. “I’ve never had a dad, not really. Oh, there was Ted, the bloke who was stupid enough to
marry my mum, but he didn’t stick around for long. And I’m fine about it now, I actually don’t give a toss. When I was a kid, that’s when it was hard to cope with. You know, the fathers’ race at sports day, or the other kids going off to a football game or on a camping trip with their dads? I had my granddad, and he did his best, but it wasn’t the same—you know? Not the same as having your own dad around.”

  “I know,” Sophie said, remembering her first Christmas without her dad. But at least she had known exactly what it was that was missing from her life. Seth had never had a chance to understand that.

  “Anyway, that’s when it hurt, back then. But I got on with things. Mum did her best, never let me go without, and Nan and Granddad were always there. I got used to it, came to terms with it. But I couldn’t help but think about him, this man—my father who Mum told me she had loved very much and who had loved her back. I used to lie in bed at night and try and imagine him and wonder why on earth he hadn’t come to find Mum, the woman he loved so much, and his son. I used to wish for him to turn up at the school gates one day or be on the doorstep, out of the blue, on a Christmas morning. And he’d fling his arms round Mum and kiss her and he’d look at me and he’d say, ‘Son, I’m never leaving you again.’ And I wondered and wondered if he was lying awake staring at his ceiling wondering about me too.

  “But he never turned up at school or came round on Christmas, and as I got bigger I stopped thinking about him. I worked out for myself how to be a man. And now I’m fine. I got my own place, I got college, I got the band, my mates, and as many women as I can get my hands on. I’m happy. And then suddenly there he is, my dad. There he is suddenly turning up, just like I always wanted him to.” Seth’s laugh was mirthless. “And it turns out that not only has he not been thinking about me, or wondering about me, it turns out that he didn’t even know I existed until a few days ago, and that all of those hours and days I spent wishing for him as a kid meant nothing because I didn’t even exist for him. You ask me how I can hate him, and the answer is, I don’t know what else to feel about him, not now. All this, it’s ten years too late—I don’t need a dad now and I’m not going to pretend that I do to make him, my mum, or even you happy.”

  “I can understand that,” Sophie said, resting her chin on her hand as she looked up at him. “You’re in shock, you haven’t really had time to take in what’s happened. But you might change your mind if you think about it …”

  “I don’t want to,” Seth said with a shrug.

  “But you don’t know anything about him, not really,” Sophie said.

  “I don’t want to,” Seth said, draining the last of his coffee.

  “For example,” Sophie pressed on, “when he was in Peru he was working for a children’s charity—”

  “So what if he couldn’t be bothered to look after his own kids,” Seth interjected.

  “And he likes to surf, I bet you do too—”

  “Hate it.”

  “Well, you’re studying art, aren’t you? Louis—your dad—is building up a photography business. Portraits, landscapes, weddings …”

  “Weddings? Sellout.”

  “And he is a good dad …his daughters …your half sisters, really love him.”

  “They really love him now, after he comes back into their lives after years of leaving them on their own? They’re kids, they don’t know any different.”

  He looked at Sophie again, narrowing his eyes slightly as he examined her. “I bet you had a lot to do with that. I bet you got the kids to like him again, you fixed that mess for him and now you want to fix me, don’t you?”

  Sophie sat back on her heels and shook her head.

  “I wanted his daughters to be happy because I love them, and they are happy now. And I love him, so yes I’d like to help him and you get through this and work out what to do, if you’ll let me.”

  Seth put his empty cup of coffee down on one of Mrs. Alexander’s lace doilies that she had told Sophie were there for decoration and were under no circumstances ever to be used. He sat up, and picked up one of her hands as she knelt before him.

  “I like you,” he said, looking into her eyes. “I’d like you to help me.”

  “Really?” Sophie was relieved and disconcerted at the same time. “That’s great. Just say what you want me to do and I’ll …oh.”

  Before she knew what was happening, Seth’s fingers were in her hair, drawing her lips to his, and he was kissing her.

  For a second, perhaps five, Sophie did not resist; the shock of what was happening disabled her fight-or-flight impulse momentarily. But it was also the heat of the vodka-soaked kiss that pinned her to the spot; it was a very good kiss. Perhaps it was five seconds, maybe ten, that she let Seth kiss her, but in any case it was several seconds too long because she was still a fraction of a second from pushing him away when Cal and Carmen came through the door.

  “Oh my giddy aunt!” Carmen exclaimed as Sophie finally broke away. She pointed. “That’s not Louis!”

  “And when I told you to embrace Louis’s baggage, this is not what I meant,” Cal added.

  Seth sprang out of his seat, still a little unsteady on his feet, and swayed out of the room, crashing into furniture as he lurched toward the door.

  “Seth, wait,” Sophie called after him. “What about the room?”

  “The room?” Carmen repeated, scandalized. “The room?”

  But Seth didn’t speak, he simply found the front door and slammed it behind him, loud enough to dangerously rattle the Doulton figurines on the mantelpiece.

  “Oh bloody hell!” Sophie said, sitting on the sofa and burying her face in her hands. “Bloody bloody hell—how did that happen?”

  “What exactly did happen?” Carmen asked her. “Were you drunk and confused?”

  “We were just talking and then he lunged; there was nothing I could do about it,” Sophie attempted to explain, trying very hard to get the memory of Seth’s fingers in her hair out of her mind.

  “It didn’t exactly look like there was anything you wanted to do about it,” Carmen said.

  “That’s not true, he took me by surprise, that’s all.” Sophie looked at Cal, who was looking at her and shaking his head.

  “Go on,” she said wearily. “Say it.”

  “Only you,” Cal said. “Only you could snog your dead best friend’s husband’s secret love child. Now what are you going to do?”

  Eleven

  Sophie had never been unfaithful to anyone in her life and she wasn’t quite sure how to handle it. Technically, a kiss lasting only a few seconds, even if it was several seconds longer than it should have lasted, wasn’t the worst crime one could commit against a loved one. But as Cal insisted on pointing out to her on several occasions, when that kiss was with your fiancé’s son, it put a whole new spin on things.

  She had run out after Seth, who had barged past Carmen and Cal and hailed a cab that was passing at the bottom of the street; before she could reach him, the car had pulled away, taking him god knew where. Wearily Sophie had turned on her heel, taking a deep breath of chilled sea air, before she slowly walked back to face her friends and try to explain to them what they had seen.

  It had taken a lot of explaining. The three of them had sat up for what was left of the night, Cal and Carmen drinking Mrs. Alexander’s Christmas sherry while Sophie made herself hot chocolate after hot chocolate, hoping the sugar rush would help her work out the best thing to do.

  At just after 3:00 A.M., Mrs. Alexander came in and found them all in the sitting room, lounging on her best cushions, scattered on the floor, like teenagers who had been discovered having a party when they thought their parents were away.

  “Still up?” she said, pressing her lips into a thin line, which meant that she had clocked the coffee ring on her best lace doily.

  “Catching up, you know—you don’t mind, do you?” Sophie asked her. “We thought it would be better down here than in one of our rooms. We don’t want to disturb any oth
er guests. We’re being quiet and I’ll replace the sherry and wash the …doily.”

  Mrs. Alexander nodded once, which was the nearest Sophie was going to get to an assent. “Well, Louis got back home about twenty minutes ago if you’re interested.”

  Sophie was interested. In the midst of everything that had been happening, she’d forgotten that Mrs. Alexander wouldn’t be coming back until Louis got home. He’d been at Wendy’s by four thirty that afternoon, and she’d met Seth in the club just before eleven and left shortly afterward. Carmen and Cal had come in at two, and now it was after three. Louis had been on his own with Wendy for the best part of twelve hours. Why had he stayed there so long? Why hadn’t he answered her phone call or at least called her back and asked her to relieve Mrs. Alexander? If he’d called her back, if he’d come and helped her with Seth, then her life would be a lot simpler at this point.

  “Is he okay?” Sophie asked Mrs. Alexander.

  “He was quiet,” Mrs. Alexander replied. “Looked drained. Perhaps you should go over and see how he is.”

  “I’ve had too much to drink,” Sophie lied, nodding at the sherry she hadn’t touched. “I’ll go in the morning.”

  “Right then,” Mrs. Alexander said, looking disapprovingly at Carmen and Cal, as if she suspected they might be guilty of a lot more than staying up late and drinking her sherry. “Clear up after yourselves.”

  “That’s going to be harder to do than she knows,” Cal said as they heard Mrs. Alexander go up the stairs.

  “Just don’t ever, ever tell anyone what happened,” Carmen said. “It’s simple.”

  “But what if Seth tells someone, what then?” Sophie said. “I’ll look like a cradle snatcher, that’s what.”

  “Deny it, deny everything forever,” Carmen added. “It’ll be your word against his. Besides, I’m the only cradle-snatching woman round here, I don’t want you elbowing your way into my territory.”

  “Look, it won’t come to that,” Cal said. “The kid was really drunk, there’s a good chance he won’t even remember what happened, and even if he does, he’s going to be so embarrassed he snogged an old bat like you he’s never going to want anyone to know.”