A Stranger in the Family

by Robert Barnard

  ‘I get the impression – correct me if I’m wrong – that since our parents separated Isla has been … call it the head of the family.’

  Maria nodded vigorously.

  ‘Oh, she has. Pat may dispute that now and then, but Mum has been in charge … naturally enough, I’d say. They were divorced, by the way, Dad and Mum. When you were with us they were Catholic, at least nominally.’

  ‘I don’t suppose I knew what that meant. I was so young.’

  ‘No, I suppose you wouldn’t. But after they’d separated Mum let all that slide, and we none of us today would say “Catholic” if we were asked our religion. Oh, except Dad, perhaps.’

  ‘He still is?’

  She shrugged.

  ‘Search me. I haven’t talked to him for years. And he went along with the divorce, so he’d have to be a very bad Catholic indeed, wouldn’t he?’

  ‘Micky says he’s pretty au fait with things sometimes, at other times quite far gone.’

  ‘I know,’ she said, seizing on the point quickly. ‘That’s why I can’t see any point in going to visit him. He lost interest in us anyway, even while he had all his marbles. He’s lucky to have found somewhere that will look after him well.’

  ‘The nursing home?’

  ‘The Four Bells. Sounds like a pub, doesn’t it? Micky says he’s perfectly happy there. But Mum’s the one you need to talk to. She’s been head of the family for as long as I can remember. I think Dad couldn’t stand all the fuss about the abduction. Your abduction – sorry, your being here takes some getting used to.’

  ‘Of course it does.’

  ‘So Dad just moved out, and moved on. In the early days we met him, went out with him now and then. But then it sort of stopped. We didn’t want it and he didn’t want it – that’s how I read it now.’

  ‘So if there was any problem, you went to your mum with it?’

  ‘Our mum. Yes, we did. Oh, I don’t mean she was one of those matriarchs. We may have taken problems to her, but in the end we did what we thought right, or best, or whatever. Like when I married.’

  ‘Ah! Yes, I did get the feeling that—’

  Maria shot a quick glance over her shoulder, and said: ‘You must come round as soon as Ivor gets back from his trip. It was planned long ago, so there was no way he could come tonight. He’ll be so excited to meet you.’

  That embarrassed Kit.

  ‘I don’t feel exciting. I was just a kid who got abducted.’

  He stood up. A look shot round the room assured him that the person seated with her back to Maria’s position on the sofa was the one whom Pat had called Aunt Flora. He guessed that she might be a collector and disseminator of gossip. He let his gaze wander gracefully around as he poured himself a second glass of Rioja from the wine box. He felt he wanted to talk to someone who was not too obviously of the family, but rejected Aunt Flora as not someone whom a long-lost son would want to spend much time on. He wandered instead over to a niche by a window, where stood, with a lurid-coloured liquid in her hand, the girlfriend or partner of his brother Dan.

  ‘Hello, you’re Wendy, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes, Wendy Maclean.’

  She squeezed out words, as if they were rationed.

  ‘And you’re my brother Dan’s girlfriend, aren’t you? I’m glad they asked you.’

  ‘Oh, they didn’t. Dan rang me and told me to go along, so I rang Pat and told her I was coming.’

  Kit gaped.

  ‘Let me get this straight. We’re going to ring Dan later to tell him I’ve suddenly turned up out of the blue, but in fact he already knows and has sent you along to report on my reappearance. Is that right?’

  ‘No, not really. He doesn’t know you’ve reappeared. He knows – from his mother – that the Novellos are meeting tonight, partying, and that he’ll be rung up with some surprising news. He didn’t say much to me on the phone – too mean to run up big phone bills. He’ll be surprised by your return to the family fold but Isla’s promise of a surprise may have taken the edge off his. You are the big surprise the Novello family have hoped for for twenty years. He was only a baby when you went out of his life, but he’s lived with all the talk about you.’

  Kit digested this.

  ‘I see. And what will be his reaction, do you think?’

  ‘Oh, it’ll just be a question of money. It always is with Dan. He left the country because someone told him he could get a whopping wage from a first-rate Australian soccer team.’

  ‘And has he found he can’t?’

  ‘He’s found there’s no such thing as a first-rate Australian soccer team.’

  There seemed to be considerable glee in her voice.

  ‘I see. I did wonder when I heard he had a second job over there in insurance. Perhaps he’s selling it door to door. Soccer doesn’t have that big a hold Down Under. And I still don’t see what my return to the family has to do with money.’

  ‘He’ll be imagining that at best your mother’s estate will be divided up into four not three equal portions. At worst, you – as favourite and long-lost child – will cop the lot. That really would cheese him off.’

  ‘The question of money and inheritances hasn’t come up with my mother. That’s how important it is. Besides, she’s still young. I don’t want a share of her estate. I was the only child of my … my other family, and I inherited the whole estate. That’s more than enough for me. Too much, if you want to know the truth. Because I don’t like all the responsibility.’

  ‘Worth a bundle were they, then, your other parents?’

  ‘Not really. Just comfortably off.’

  Calculation flooded into her lightly mascaraed eyes.

  ‘Depends what you mean by “comfortably”. I find I can always use a little extra. No – quite a lot extra, if you want to know the truth.’

  ‘Sounds like my money-conscious brother has made the wrong choice if he wants to hold on to his ill-gotten gains,’ said Kit. Wendy put out her tongue, but undressed him with her eyes. ‘Anyway, we can only talk about an “estate” because the price of pretty ordinary houses has gone up like crazy, though they’ve plummeted since the crunch. Isla’s fairly ordinary house, divided by three or four, won’t amount to riches by a long chalk. Dan had better stick to scoring goals for the best team he can find in Australia. Better still, come home and play for a Premier League team.’

  Wendy began caressing his hair, forming the lock that fell over his eye around her finger in a parody of a ring.

  ‘He’s not that good. You’re cute – you know that?’

  ‘Oh, I know it,’ said Kit, getting up. ‘I’ve been told it by half the nubile girls in Glasgow.’

  ‘Well, they’re right. Don’t go—’

  ‘I’ve got to meet all the family before I talk to your money-mad boyfriend.’

  But in fact he landed up with the family member he already knew. Micky was standing by a bookcase that mostly contained recipe books. He was surveying the gathering with a satisfied but slightly cynical eye.

  ‘You did well to get away,’ he said, as Kit came near. ‘She’s a one-woman disaster zone. I’m afraid our brother Dan always chooses girls who are like-minded to himself.’

  ‘Not a good idea?’ said Kit, knowing the answer.

  ‘The worst possible idea. Dan could only be saved by a sweet and sensible little thing who wanted a cosy nest and three or four children to look after.’

  ‘Instead of which, all he and Wendy share is an obsession about money.’

  ‘Exactly. Standing here I could almost see the realisation crossing Wendy’s face that Dan was never going to make the big bucks, and that you were a better bet.’

  ‘In her dreams. By the way, she seems to think that Dan will feel rather threatened by my reappearance.’

  ‘I suppose he may be,’ said Micky, thinking. ‘He’ll be totting up the financial implications.’

  ‘That’s what darling Wendy thought. Not that Isla is likely to die for many years, but how
much of an “estate” will there be? Say that the house in Seldon Road would have fetched fifty thousand fifteen years ago, and now could fetch two hundred thousand. A very nice increase in value, but is two hundred thousand that big a deal, however it’s divided up?’

  ‘To people with nothing much it’s a nice little sum. And Dan and I have nothing much. You’re forgetting—’

  But Kit, who was preternaturally alert at this gathering of the clan, had noticed the little line of Micky’s children, standing by the door, their eyes fixed unalterably on him.

  ‘Your brood?’ he asked Micky. ‘Becky and Ben and something else?’

  ‘Tom.’

  ‘Why are they looking at me like that?’

  ‘Because you’ve always been just a name to them all their lives, someone they’ve always assumed was long dead – as frankly we’ve all made a similar deduction, even though we all hoped you were alive. And then suddenly you turn up, alive – large as life, in fact. You ought to be some kind of ghost, but you look perfectly normal – ordinary, if you don’t mind the word.’

  ‘I don’t. Call them over. They can poke me and find out that I’m like everyone else, then perhaps they can forget about me, or at least let me alone.’

  ‘Becky! Tom! Ben! Come and meet your new uncle.’

  They walked over eagerly, their eyes glued to his face, Becky put out her hand.

  ‘Hello, Uncle Kit.’

  The rest followed her lead, as they seemed to do in most things: ‘Hello, Uncle Kit.’

  ‘We thought you’d prefer to be called Kit,’ said Becky.

  ‘I do. I forgot the “Peter” quite quickly, when I was a very little boy. Now, what do you want to ask me, Becky?’

  She had it off pat.

  ‘What did it feel like to be abducted? What did they do to you?’

  ‘Nothing very much,’ said Kit, feeling a wave of disappointment run through the children. ‘The people who took me just told me that my mother was very ill, and they were going to find me another mummy who would take care of me while the one I knew was ill.’

  ‘That wasn’t true, was it?’

  ‘No, it wasn’t.’

  ‘I suppose they demanded a ransom for you, didn’t they?’

  Kit looked genuinely surprised.

  ‘Do you know, I’m not sure. Your grandma would know better than I do. I never heard that they did, but my mother – my new mother – was very ill when she told me about how I had come to her, so I couldn’t really ask her questions.’

  ‘Well, they usually do, the people who nap kids. Pirates and that.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Micky, ‘your grandma called it an abduction, not a kidnapping, for that reason – there was never a ransom demand. I certainly never heard of one, and I was about ten at the time, and knew all about kidnapping. Maybe the kidnappers got money from your second family, the ones you’d been abducted for.’

  Kit shrugged.

  ‘I don’t know. I’d be surprised if there was any arrangement of that sort. And if so my other mother wouldn’t have told me. It would have made it sound too much as if they’d bought me.’

  ‘Well, they did, didn’t they?’ said Becky brutally. ‘Did you like your other mummy?’

  ‘Yes, I did. I loved her.’

  This caused Becky in particular to think furiously.

  ‘If I’d been ab … ducted,’ she said finally and cautiously, ‘I don’t think I’d have loved the man who called himself Daddy but who wasn’t really my daddy.’

  The caution was glaring, and proved her to be a truth-loving child.

  ‘Go along with you,’ said Micky, shooing them with his hand. ‘You’ve had your time in the spotlight with Kit, now go and have some fun.’

  ‘There’s never any fun at adult parties,’ protested Becky. But she marshalled the other two to go into the dining room, where the food was laid out.

  ‘I interrupted you,’ said Kit to Micky. ‘You were about to say something.’

  ‘Was I?’ said Micky. ‘I forget.’

  ‘Something about Isla’s money.’

  ‘Oh … Oh yes.’ Micky had clearly not forgotten, but had had an access of caution since beginning the subject. ‘Well …’ he looked around, taking in the figure of Auntie Flora, now in a nearby armchair, ‘maybe now is not the time. Let’s just say Mum doesn’t struggle along on the standard old-age pension. There’s more.’

  ‘Could you manage a lunchtime drink?’ asked Kit. ‘Not tomorrow – I’m hoping to go to the police. Say Thursday?’

  ‘That would be fine. The Vesper Gate in Kirkstall – I’m working there that day. What are you going to the police for?’

  ‘To try to find out what, if anything, their investigations produced back in 1989, when the abduction happened.’

  ‘But surely all the investigation was done by the Sicilian police?’

  ‘Maybe – if they were not bought off by the Mafia or the Camorra, or just couldn’t be bothered. But you’re forgetting there must have been a British dimension.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I landed up with a new family in Glasgow.’

  Micky looked troubled but then shook himself and murmured: ‘You’re right.’

  ‘Though of course, the British police didn’t know that at the time,’ said Kit. ‘And presumably still don’t know.’

  ‘Yes. Of course … that’s true. Most of the investigation at the time was into the Mediterranean countries. The Sicilian police thought you would be pretty conspicuous, with your light-brown hair and English features.’

  ‘Right,’ said Kit. ‘How did you know that?’

  ‘It’s something Mum always mentioned when your disappearance came up … Oh look – we’re going in for the nosh-up.’

  The guests were trooping across the hall to the dining room, where the large table was crowded with plates – quiches, pork pie, plates of meat and fish, salads and sandwiches, with wine boxes on side tables and plenty of coke and orange pop for the children. As Kit queued and selected he found to his annoyance that he was next to Aunt Flora but way away from any of the other guests. He expected the worst when she pulled at the sleeve of his jacket. The face that looked up at his was avid to impart knowledge.

  ‘Do you know how your family got their money?’

  It wasn’t the sort of question one got asked every day. Kit turned away to indicate his indifference to money.

  ‘I believe my birth father was partner in a solicitor’s firm.’

  ‘That wasn’t where the money came from.’

  ‘I really don’t—’

  ‘The money came from ice cream.’

  ‘Eh …? I mean, I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Ice cream. The Italian firms that cornered the market in Scotland.’

  ‘Oh, I’ve heard all about that.’

  ‘Of course you have. Everybody has. You being Scottish by adoption too. That’s what Pat told me. It’s notorious, is all that. It was bribes from both sides – the old game. Doesn’t do to be sniffy about your birth when you’ve got that in the background, does it?’

  ‘I can’t imagine Isla being sniffy about anything.’

  ‘Oh, you’ve got a lot to learn. I suppose you know your mother’s never been the same since you were abducted?’

  ‘I can understand that. Did you know her back then?’

  ‘Oh no. I mean it’s what everybody says.’

  ‘Well, let’s hope that the everybody who says it has known her better and longer than you have.’

  ‘Oh, snooty!’ said Aunt Flora, with a satirical twist to her face. Kit put his plate forward, spooned up prawns on to it, and went back to the sitting room.

  ‘You’ve made a wonderful spread,’ he said, sitting down next to Pat.

  ‘Thank you. Not bad for short notice. The only way we can get the children into good order on nights like this is to let them help with the preparation – the easy bits – then give them leave to take whatever they like best. It works pretty well, though Becky
tends to stand by the quiches and say “I made these” to all the guests.’

  ‘And has she?’

  ‘Say thirty per cent. And remember the pastry is supermarket frozen … It won’t be long now before your mother rings to Australia.’

  ‘Really? Won’t it be early in the morning there?’

  Pat looked sceptical.

  ‘Dan told your mother when he first went out there that he got up at 5 a.m. every day to train. She took him at his word.’

  ‘Wouldn’t you?’

  ‘Never. He is – pardon my French – a bullshit artist. He says what he thinks will impress people.’

  ‘I’m getting a picture of my brother Dan.’

  ‘To be fair, he has been horribly spoilt by your mother. After you were abducted she transferred all the love she’d been giving you to the youngest. That’s what everybody says, anyway. Dan didn’t have a chance.’

  And half an hour later Kit saw Isla disappear into the hall, then heard her go upstairs. He guessed the phone had been transferred up there to give him a little privacy. Five minutes later his mother appeared at the door and beckoned.

  ‘He’s longing to talk to you,’ she whispered. ‘It’s on the landing.’

  Kit’s inventiveness had left him. All he could think of to say when he took up the phone was: ‘Hello, Dan.’

  ‘Well, well, well. It’s big brother Peter, returned from captivity.’

  ‘It’s Kit, and I had a very comfortable childhood, thank you.’

  ‘I bet you did. I never went along with Mum’s fears that you were being abused, starved, enslaved – you name it, she thought it was happening to you.’

  ‘Why didn’t you believe it? It’s possible, horrible things happen.’

  ‘Oh, I go my own way. Believe what I like.’

  ‘Convenient for you.’

  ‘Don’t get sarky. There’s no reason why we shouldn’t be friends.’

  ‘No, of course there’s not. I don’t remember anything about you.’

  ‘Really? Well, I don’t suppose I’d discovered football when you were snatched.’

  ‘Probably not, since you were a baby. How’s the career going in Oz?’

  ‘Very nicely, thank you. It’ll stand me in good stead when I get home. Which may be sooner than people think.’