Are You My Mother?

by Louise Voss

  ‘What are you doing here? Where’s the bike?’

  ‘Oh cheers, Emma, is that all the welcome I get? A cuddle and a cup of tea wouldn’t go amiss. It’s not one of your massage days, is it?’ He picked up the rose and twirled it, coquettishly, in my direction. ‘The bike’s just down there, I didn’t want you to see it and ruin the surprise.’

  I shook my head, unable to think what to say. I wanted to take a running jump into his arms, strangle him with hugs, inhale the motorbike oil and CK One smell of his stubbly chin, smack his face with kisses. But I didn’t. I couldn’t.

  ‘Gavin, you dumped me. You can’t come swanning round here, months later, when you fancy it, expecting me to fall into your arms. I’ve only just got used to you not being around. It’s not fair. And Stella told me you’ve got a new girlfriend. So what are you doing, bringing me a rose?’

  Gavin scratched the side of his thigh with the stem of the rose. ‘Ah, yes, well, I haven’t any more. Got a girlfriend, that is. She dumped me. Said I was too fat, can you believe it?’

  He patted the soft mound of his little beer belly, an outraged expression on his face. Come to think of it, the belly wasn’t as small as it used to be. It looked like something was in the process of melting down the front of his shirt, pooling above his belt in his own private reservoir of fat. And was that half an inch more forehead exposed, in only four months? He’d be as bald as a coot in a year if he continued at this rate.

  But he was still Gavin, smiling his wicked smile on my doorstep. Nobody was perfect, I told myself. We were both getting older, and there were plenty of reasons for Gavin to criticise my own body, if he chose to. All in all, he looked pretty good for his age.

  Predictably, I relented. ‘I suppose you’d better come in, then.’

  To neither of our great surprise, the one cup of tea turned into a lengthy lunch at the River Café - Gavin claimed to be flush from a deal he’d just managed to pull off. I didn’t want to know the details. It was like that with Gavin. Too much knowledge was a bad thing; you just enjoyed the experience. And, half an hour earlier, flying through the streets of Hammersmith on his Harley, my arms wrapped around his waist, the wind whipping my hair in a mad maypole dance across the visor of his spare helmet, I sensed that I was already enjoying an experience of which there might well be more to come.

  We had a great lunch. I marvelled at how comfortable I felt with Gavin; how I never felt shy with him, and I talked more than I’d talked to anybody, including Stella, in months. I told him about the man on the tube, all the Ann Paramors, my planned trip to Nottingham the following day, the holistic fayre, the house in Harlesden. For once, he couldn’t jump in and outdo me with one of his own stories, because this was something outside even his realm of experience. He just listened, and nodded, and said, ‘wow’ occasionally. I revelled in the telling, and in the unspoken implication that even though he’d dumped me, I had not fallen to pieces. Instead I was finally doing something for myself – not him, or Stella, or my various aromatherapy clients with their low blood pressure, their dicky backs, or their PMT; but me, Emma.

  ‘So you heard about the business with Stella then, and that bloke?’ I asked casually, over sticky toffee pudding.

  Gavin made himself an expertly-rolled cigarette, a tiny, perfect cylinder, put together as delicately as if he was constructing a banister for a doll’s house. He sealed it shut with a cat-lick of his tongue, and flicked his lighter open. Then, obviously remembering how much I hated him lighting his smokes while I was still eating, he put the roll-up on his side plate, where it lolled reproachfully. I was impressed at his consideration.

  ‘What bloke?’

  ‘Charlie, his name is, the one from her college who attacked her. Weren’t you there that day, when she got a message from him on the answer phone?’

  Gavin looked out of the window, and although his voice was calm, his fingers fiddled with the cigarette. ‘Oh yeah, poor Stella. I’ve never seen her so gutted.’

  You comforted her, didn’t you, I wanted to say. Suddenly there was a pall cast over the conversation. I was afraid to say it, in case I asked him what I’d been wondering about for weeks now, on and off, what Stella’s shifty expressions and Gavin’s studied casualness seemed to be confirming: how much, exactly, did you comfort her?

  ‘She all right now, then?’

  ‘Well. She seemed to be getting better, but this morning she told me someone’s been ringing the flat and hanging up when she answers – I’m assuming it wasn’t you.’

  Gavin gave me a ‘don’t flatter yourself, darling’ look.

  ‘He’s really bitter about being arrested and kicked out of college, and now she says that she’s been seeing him hanging around in our street.’

  ‘I’ll sort him out for you, if you like. I told her that, and I meant it. I could get Heavy Eddie onto him. Just get a photo and – ‘

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake, Gav, you’re not in the bloody mafia,’ I snapped, more harshly than I’d intended, and then bit my lip. Getting cross with Gavin never got me anywhere, however tempting it was. ‘Sorry. I’m just so worried about her.’

  He reached out his long dry hand, chapped and sandpapery from riding a motorbike gloveless in winter, and put it on top of mine. ‘Seriously, babes, if he comes anywhere near either of you, you let me know immediately, and I’ll be there, I promise.’

  I snorted. ‘This, from the man who takes six weeks to return a phone call? Fat lot of help you’d be in an emergency. I rang you after you came round to see me that time, you know, when I was out and Stella was upset. Why didn’t you ring me back?’

  Gavin lit the cigarette and poured me another glass of Chablis. ‘Oh. Yeah. Sorry about that. I meant to ring you but, to be honest, I’d just met Julia and was, well, a bit distracted.’

  Taking too big a swig of the wine, I clenched my teeth to avoid showing pain at the mental image of my Gavin being distracted by another woman.

  ‘So if you were all that busy in the first flush of love, why did you come over to the flat in the first place?’

  Gavin shrugged. ‘Just being sociable. Bumped into Stella, offered her a lift home, came in for a chat, hoping to see how you were. That’s all.’

  ‘Oh. Right. Is Julia the one who said you were too fat?’

  ‘Yup. Nice bird, did PR for BT Cellnet. Hey, if you don’t want that, I’ll finish it.’ He dragged my dessert plate across to his side of the table and enthusiastically spooned up the remainder of my pudding – which I’d been fully intending to eat myself. I was just having a rest.

  ‘Good. I’m glad she’s ditched you. Now maybe there’s a chance you might answer my calls again.’ I grinned at him, suddenly relaxing back into the old familiar banter I’d missed so much. I decided to forget my paranoid suspicions about him and a weeping Stella alone in the flat together.

  He made a soppy face, and licked the last drips of syrupy sauce off my spoon. I saw my own tiny face reflected convex and inverted on the silver back of it.

  ‘I can never remember why reflections are upside-down in the back of spoons,’ I said, feeling a little tipsy. ‘My Dad was always really good at explaining that sort of thing; you know, how planes don’t fall out of the sky, how microwaves work, where the whirlpool of bathwater down the plughole comes from, how waiters do that origami thing on napkins in posh restaurants.’

  Too bad he was killed before he could solve the teaspoon conundrum for me, I thought. I didn’t even consider asking Gavin if he knew, since there wasn’t a snowflake’s chance in hell that he would. Gav was the most unscientific, un-practical male I’d ever met. He couldn’t even wire a plug – rolling a cigarette was the pinnacle of his dexterity, and that was only because he’d been practising for twenty years.

  ‘Tell you what,’ Gavin said. ‘Why don’t you stand on your head, right now, and we’ll see if your face appears the right way up in the spoon. Plus, I get to see what colour knickers you’re wearing.’

  ‘Ha, ha, very funny. I
knew I could count on you for some truly scientific experimentation.’

  Gavin grinned. ’And in answer to your question, yes, I might.’

  ‘Might what?’

  ‘Return your calls. I’ve missed you, actually.’

  ‘Have you?’

  Had he? Was he saying that we should get back together again? Did he really think that he could just decide to pick up where we left off, after all my heartache and soul searching? This smacked more of mid-life crisis than true love.

  And what effect would it have on me, if we did? I’d gradually been coming to realise that my lethargy and despondency, the rows with Stella, my obsessive reminiscing over the past few months weren’t just manifestations of newly-dumped emotions. I’d been depressed, in a rut, feeling that I had no future, no motivation. Even the aromatherapy, the one thing in my life I had succeeded at, was becoming old and stale. Only the search for Ann Paramor, however protracted and tortuous I was making it, had been a distraction.

  Could I really risk letting Gavin hurt me again? I needed to be as strong as possible, now that I felt I was getting closer to finding my birthmother. Suddenly I was glad I was going to Nottingham on my own that weekend. It was proof that I was finally putting myself and my goals first, at last. Before, I would without a doubt have rescheduled the trip to fit in with Mack’s schedule.

  As all these thoughts were stirring around in my head like cake-mix, Gavin was looking at me with an unmistakably suggestive expression. He stuck out his tongue and slowly, deliberately, licked all around the rim of the spoon, not for a minute taking his eyes away from mine. I hesitated, and then, under cover of the long white tablecloth, I slipped my foot out of my shoe and slid it up his shin, my toes creeping along his inner thigh until they reached what I knew would be waiting for me in his crotch. As always, he did not disappoint me. Mmmm. My very own horn of plenty, my cornucopia of carnality, I thought with tipsy pomposity. My old friend. I stroked my big toe along the column of muscle, mentally greeting it, wishing it weren’t so unfairly sheathed in indigo denim. The contents of his trousers had always comprised the most important part of our relationship, I realised. Even if Gavin wasn’t exactly the most considerate of lovers, he was certainly enthusiastic and appreciative. I could always forgive him an awful lot after we’d been to bed.

  I drained my wine glass, and picked Gavin’s spare bike helmet off the floor. ‘Back to mine, then, I think. Don’t you?’ I said, putting my shoe back on again. Being assertive was almost as liberating as the sexual energy flowing between us.

  Gavin paid the bill and dragged me out of there so fast that if I hadn’t just seen him laying down the cash, I’d have sworn we’d done a runner.

  Chapter 29

  I did it. With a still-sexy faint throbbing between my legs, I successfully navigated my way up the motorway to Nottingham. I drove into the outskirts of the city on an adrenaline high, singing along with the Hallelujah Chorus on Classic FM, screeching the high soprano in my alto voice until I began to feel dizzy. I didn’t even remotely caring that people in adjoining vehicles were giving me funny looks, because now, yes, I was finally feeling that this was an adventure. Anything could happen, and I was the one to make it happen. Even just getting myself to Nottingham on my own, without once freaking out on the motorway, had to be one of the most empowering things I’d ever done.

  And Gavin had been magnificent. We’d made love all afternoon, and my cup had runneth over. Several times. He had been passionate, repentant, and when he climaxed – for the first time – he called out my name as if nothing had ever meant more to him. I wish he’d stayed the night, though. At about eight o’clock he hauled himself out of bed, fished his Calvin Kleins off my bedside light, where they’d landed when we stripped, and got dressed.

  ‘See you soon, sweetheart.’ He kissed my forehead, my nose, and then my mouth, in one of those gorgeously luxuriant and sloppy post-coital kisses. ‘Let’s give it another go, shall we?’

  Driving through Nottingham, I agreed to myself again, out loud. ‘Yes, let’s,’ I said to an old lady dragging her shopping trolley over a zebra crossing in front of me. I felt ludicrously happy.

  I consulted the hand-drawn map posted to me by Janet and Gil Hawkins, the proprietors of the bed & breakfast, and, without one single wrong turning or hesitation, got myself to ‘Treetops’ within ten minutes. As the line-drawing on their headed stationery had indicated, the house was a lovely Victorian detached villa, whose tiled porch and creeper-clad walls reminded me of a bigger version of my childhood home.

  Hauling my overnight bag from the back seat of the car, I was just approaching the front door when it opened, and a very tall, very beautiful light-skinned black man wearing cream chinos came out, whistling. He wasn’t wearing a cricketing tanktop, but somehow I felt he should have been - although this would have been a minus; I hated cricket. I glanced at his face, and then stared. His eyes were a magnificent tawny amber, crinkling at the corners with what looked like good-humour and flecked with gold specks. Best of all, they were fringed with carpet-sweeper lashes just like mine, and I got a sudden image of us, kissing, accidentally weaving our eyelashes together, like teenagers getting their braces ensnared.

  I looked away again, hastily.

  ‘’Lo,’ he said cheerfully to me, before striding away down the drive.

  ‘Hi,’ I called after him too quietly, shaking my head. Typical – hadn’t seen a decent bloke for months and then, with the feeling of Gavin still inside me, I bumped into one at a B&B. Still, he’s not my type, I thought, I could never go out with a cricketer.

  I rang the doorbell. A dumpy, sixty-something woman in a crimson Jaeger two-piece and a rather gummy smile eventually answered, introducing herself as Janet. Unable to stop myself judging every new female I clapped eyes on as potential mummy material, I instantly thought, yes, you could be a mummy.

  Following Janet’s magnificent rump down the hall and up the stairs, I called out answers to the questions which were being dropped around my ears like bouncing bombs.

  ‘Up here on business, are you?’ She had a strange, unplaceable accent, not British, not Australian or South African.

  ‘No, not really. I’m….in search of an old friend.’

  ‘Lovely. I got the message that you only need the one room now. On your own, are you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, here we are then. The bathroom’s just next door. Will you be late in tonight? Only, Gil locks up at eleven on weeknights - we do have such an early start in the mornings.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sure I won’t be late. Do you have many guests at the moment?’ I couldn’t help visualising an entire cricket team being put up in the house. Perhaps I could learn to like cricket.

  ‘Just one other gentlemen tonight, a Mr. Tilt from Birmingham. He’s in titanium, so he says. He’s just gone out, but you’ll probably see him at breakfast.’

  Guiltily pushing aside the memory of Gavin spreadeagled on my bed, I hoped that I would. At least it would liven up the cornflakes. I had no idea what being ‘in titanium’ was – some kind of scientific or industrial field perhaps, but nonetheless it seemed rather at odds with the tall, sporty-looking man who’d smiled at me.

  Eventually Janet left me alone. I flopped down on my back on the double bed and surveyed the room: reasonably subtle flock wallpaper, Laura Ashley rather than Indian restaurant; antique pine wardrobe. A faint, sickly-sweet smell of roasted meat wafted around the room, and a distant sound of clanging pots indicated that the kitchen must be below.

  There was something very bizarre about the concept of a bed and breakfast, I thought. Within moments of setting foot in a stranger’s house, you were lying on their beds, smelling their cooking and reading their books. I couldn’t understand how anybody would want to subject themselves and their homes to such a gross intrusion, even for £39.50 per night.

  I sat up and examined the three paperbacks on the bedside table: Jilly Cooper’s ‘Riders’, a Wilbur Smith, and a d
og-eared Anne Rice. Resisting the temptation to curl up under the cool slippery eiderdown and start reading the Jilly Cooper, I got my phone out of my handbag and rang Stella’s mobile. No reply, and I hadn’t taken Suzanne’s number with me, so I tried Gavin instead. No answer there, either, but I left him a very lovey-dovey message, underlined with kisses.

  ‘Right,’ I said, out loud. ‘Ann Paramor Number Three.’ I looked at my watch: two thirty. Plenty of time… for what? With a small shock, I realised that, subconsciously, I’d planned out the day to include not only the possibility of Ann Paramor being my birthmother, but that she would invite me to dinner that evening too. ‘Ridiculous’, I muttered, a leap of hope in my chest nonetheless.

  Clutching my washbag, I slipped out of the room and into the chilly salmon-pink bathroom next door, where I washed my face and hands, brushed my hair, and reapplied my lipstick. The mirror over the basin was faintly but disgustingly flecked with what could only be the detritus of past lodgers’ teeth-flossing endeavours, which seemed like a bad lapse, or, as Dad used to say – paraphrasing Reggie Perrin’s military brother-in-law - ‘Bit of a cock-up on the old hygiene front’.

  I examined myself critically, nervously. If this was the right Ann Paramor, what would she think of me? What would I say to her? Would her eyes be like these brown ones? Would her nose be shiny like mine; would her lips have a tendency to chap? More than almost anything else, I desperately wanted to resemble her. I wanted to know from whom I inherited my eyelashes, the intermittent patch of eczema on my wrist, or the way my hair frizzed so hopelessly in a humid climate. Whether Ann Paramor also had clicky knees, or if she could fold her tongue into a V-shape like I could.