Loving Susie: The Heartlands series

by Harper, Jenny

  But good sense doesn’t come into it. ‘No,’ Susie says flatly. ‘Sadly, I can’t.’

  ‘Talking about it really seems the only way forward. I know you feel he kept something really important from you, Susie, but I’m sure Archie sees it differently. I mean,’ she rocks back in her seat and holds Susie’s gaze, ‘Archie’s the straightest man I know. He must have had good reasons for keeping it from you, don’t you think?’

  ‘Oh sure. But they all seem to weigh on the side of my parents – my adoptive parents, I mean. And rest on the glib assumption that if I didn’t know...’ her voice trails away.

  Karen glances at her watch. ‘We’ve got ten minutes before your Cross-Party Group meeting. Can we talk about this later? I need to go over these papers with you.’

  ‘Of course.’ Susie takes another gulp of coffee, tries to focus on the job.

  Maybe Archie was right.

  Chapter Ten

  Jonathan has a headache. It feels like the beginnings of a migraine, but it could be a side effect of the ill-tempered atmosphere in the house.

  He wanders into the bathroom and opens the cabinet, searching for his migraine pills. If the thing blows up, he’ll have to call off work tonight, and that will be bad news, because if he doesn’t work, he doesn’t get paid. Not that there’s much to spend cash on at the moment, since he split with Claire he hasn’t had another girlfriend.

  There have been a couple of parties where he managed to hook up for a one-nighter. Good for the ego to know he can still pull when he exerts enough effort to charm, but hardly satisfying.

  My fault, he thinks. How can I even begin to care for someone else when I can’t stand myself?

  He dismisses the thought. It’s not down to me: it’s all down to my circumstances.

  He swallows a couple of pills and prays he’s taken them in time. Most of his friends, he reflects, have jobs already, some have moved away, others are in long term relationships. He’s left with itinerant Aussies and the odd student. Not that he’s desperate for a girlfriend, but a bit of congenial company would be nice.

  He closes the cabinet door and scowls at his reflection in its mirrored front. Like his father, he analyses what he sees with logic and reason.

  a) I look a bit like Mum.

  b) I think more like Dad.

  c) I thought I inherited my caring side from Grandma MacPherson, Mum’s mother – but it turns out she wasn’t her mother after all.

  So d) who was? And e) what was my real grandmother like?

  Fuck it.

  He turns away. His first instinct was right. What does it matter anyway? What is, is. We are who we are.

  Outside, the weather has changed and what looked to be a wet morning has transformed itself into a sunny one. Jonno grabs a paperback and decides to sit in the sun. Perhaps a little warmth on his face will burn off the migraine. He’ll give it twenty minutes and see if the pills work.

  On the bench outside the kitchen door, he can’t concentrate on reading. Instead, he ponders the question of inheritance. He isn’t much given to talking about his thoughts or feelings, but this stuff has been subtly eating away at him ever since the great revelation.

  It’s been affecting them all in some way or other. Take Mannie, for instance – she’s gone absolutely mental, pushing Mum to find out about her birth mother with typical Mannie impatience. Mum’s refusing to do anything at all and worst of all, she seems to have fallen out completely with Dad.

  Jon swishes at a fly that’s buzzing irritatingly round his head. Being jobless is bad enough, but having his parents at war with each other is much worse. Not even at war – if they’d just shout at each other and make up, it’d be a lot better. But that isn’t their way, and never has been. His mother has a temper. It can flare suddenly and magnificently, and is a thing to be feared, but it’ll die just as quickly, and hugs and tears and declarations of love will follow. You know where you are with that kind of temper.

  But his father is different. His father hates arguments. He would rather put on his jacket and head off for a long walk than face confrontation of any kind. With his father, temper turns inward and morphs into moroseness.

  Just like me.

  Jon closes his eyes. Half an hour and he’ll have to set off for his shift. Bar work doesn’t faze him, but he doesn’t get much out of it either. He wants to put into practice all the technical expertise he learned at college and he yearns to find an outlet for all the ideas that buzz round his head. Even though he sits at his computer for hours, he’s frightened he’ll lose his hard-earned Photoshop skills or forget the intricacies of Illustrator and Dreamweaver.

  He wants a challenge, not mindless pint pulling. And how can he even think of looking for a new girlfriend until he has some self respect?

  A light toot of a car horn rouses him from his reverie. He opens his eyes, squints into the sun and prays the pills will take their effect soon. The postie’s van is coming up the drive.

  ‘Hi, Jon!’ Mike, the postman, is a cheerful guy who is for ever trying to persuade Jon to give up bar work in favour of the postal service. He steps out of his van with a bundle of mail and leans on the roof to watch Jon sift through it. Any break from tedium. ‘Saw the letter there. Franked by the Bank.’

  His curiosity is evident as Jon lifts the envelope in question out of the pile.

  Jon slits it open and scans the letter, tosses it aside. ‘Shit,’ he mutters.

  ‘Another rejection?’ Mike guesses sympathetically. ‘Give up that lark, Jon, I keep telling you. Join the Royal Mail. Good hours, pay’s okay, no worries to take home with you. And you won’t be stuck in an office. What more could you want?’

  ‘I’ll think about it, Mike,’ he promises.

  Right now, it sounds like a good option.

  He gives up on the idea of going to work and flops into bed with a blinding headache. By the time his mother comes in much later, he has managed to emerge from his pit and curl up on the sofa.

  ‘Hello, Jon,’ he hears her call, her voice surprised. ‘Not working tonight?’

  He’s channel-hopping, holding the remote out in his right fist and flicking randomly up and down the air waves, not settling long enough on any one programme to assess whether it might be of interest.

  ‘Jonathan?’ her voice goes up a notch, clearly unsure whether he has heard her.

  He grunts briefly to acknowledge her presence. His migraine has lifted, but has left a ghost of discomfort which is eased by minimising movement. He hears his mother drop her briefcase on the kitchen table and come into the living room. ‘I said, aren’t you working?’

  It has been a long day. Somewhere about six his migraine receded but it left him deeply pissed off in every way – health-wise, job-wise, financially and romantically. Weakened with the pain, he abandoned all efforts at fortitude and resorted to the bottle. Not the best answer, but hey—

  He has a beer in his left hand and there are three empties lying messily on the carpet. He watches a trifle groggily as his mother stoops to pick them up, then perches on the arm of the sofa.

  ‘—built with typical German precision—’ comes the unmistakeable voice of Jeremy Clarkson, before Jon flicks the remote again and some gem-shopping channel appears.

  ‘Nope.’ He doesn’t mean to be so curt, but it’s all he can manage.

  ‘Not on the rota?’

  ‘Didn’t feel like going in.’

  ‘Are you unwell?’ He sees her eye the empties.

  All he can manage is a grunt. He is dimly aware of her walking to the kitchen and putting the bottles in the recycling box, then coming back in. God, he thinks fuzzily, she’s going to quiz me.

  Apparently he is right, because she crosses to the television and switches it off at the set, then turns to face him.

  ‘Hey!’ he grunts crossly, propping his body up onto his elbow so that he isn’t completely supine.

  ‘And don’t tell me you were watching it, because quite clearly you weren’t,’ she say
s. ‘So are you going to tell me what’s up?’

  How does she do that? Put her finger on things so accurately. Is it a thing all mothers do – or just his mother? He says, ‘Nothing,’ not meaning to be surly, just unable to find the right words.

  ‘Did you hear back about the job at the bank?’

  ‘Yeah.’ He’d dismissed things lightly to Mike the postie, but the rejection has cut more deeply than he cares to admit. On another day, he might have tried to discuss it with his mother, but today that’s beyond him.

  ‘I take it they didn’t offer it to you.’

  ‘They said I didn’t have enough experience.’ He turns his face towards her, aggrieved. ‘How am I meant to get experience if no-one will give me a job?’

  His mother sighs. ‘You’ll get something, love. You just have to believe it.’

  He purses his lips, turns his head away from her, says nothing.

  ‘Jonathan. Is that it? Is that all that’s troubling you?’

  ‘I’m bloody tired of the atmosphere in this house.’ The words come out in a rush, with a greater vehemence than he expected. ‘You and dad – what the hell’s wrong with the two of you? Can’t you just, I dunno, kiss and make up, for fuck’s sake?’ He feels like a petulant child, wanting everything to be perfect between the two people he loves most in the world, knowing that life isn’t like that.

  ‘Oh sweetheart,’ she sighs, sinking down beside him and enfolding him in her arms, ‘There’s nothing I’d like better.’

  Grown man though he is, Jon allows himself to be hugged. His solidity feels like a deception: flesh and bones covering a fragile soul.

  ‘Saw you last night on the box, Mrs Wallace.’ Danny Robertson, one of the security guards, grins at Susie as she comes into the Garden Lobby. ‘Great stuff. Irene was in floods.’

  ‘Thank you, Danny.’ Susie stops to acknowledge the compliment.

  ‘That bit where you were thrown out by your family – shocking. How could they do that to you?’

  ‘Home, Where My Heart Is’ is based on a book of that name, set in the 1930s, about a young woman from a slavishly respectable middle class family who was thrown out when she found herself pregnant. It was dramatised as a series of five episodes, filmed more than twenty years ago. Susie played the role of the young mother, Jessica Playfair. After a lengthy wrangle over repeat fees, the drama is finally being rescreened.

  ‘Changed days,’ Susie smiles. ‘Doubtful if it would happen now but—’ She’s desperate to go. Danny means well, but the last thing she wants to do is talk about the series. ‘Home’ is proving too close to home by a long way. She can feel emotion welling up in her as she speaks and she turns away from Danny and resumes her brisk stride. ‘Give my best to Irene,’ she calls over her shoulder.

  How many people today will mention the drama? And how can she school herself not to react emotionally?

  Upstairs, Karen smiles as she turned into her office. ‘Morning, Susie.’

  ‘Have you been here all night?’ Susie asks dryly. ‘What’s new?’

  ‘Four invitations to receptions, half a dozen magazines for info, a note from the Presiding Officer about conduct in the Chamber and a couple of nice thank you cards for the launches you did last week. Oh – and a reminder from Facilities about the unseasonably cold weather. All on your desk.’

  ‘What’s Facilities saying?’

  Karen laughs. ‘The usual. Reminding us to use the temperature controls properly. Are you remembering your meeting with the Theatre Trust people at nine?’

  ‘Yup. What else mustn’t I forget?’

  Karen reels off the list of her appointments for the day. ‘Oh, and I’ve already taken a call from Hugh Porteus at Rivo.’

  ‘About?’

  ‘He wouldn’t say.’

  Susie sighs. ‘I guess I’d better find out what he wants.’ If there’s one good thing about her job it is that it takes her mind off everything that is happening at home. She has to keep concentrating on what she’s doing, because slips and trips can be horribly public.

  ‘Hugh? It’s Susie. How can I help?’

  The chairman’s voice coming down the line is a little less relaxed than normal. ‘I’m calling all the Board, Susie. It’s not great news, I’m afraid. I was concerned about things after our last meeting—’

  ‘Yes, there’s been a few rumblings in the media. I’m afraid I didn’t handle them perhaps as well as I should have.’

  ‘—no, no, you’ve been a model of discretion, as ever. But I know you were concerned about this second change of auditors, as were some other Board members. Possibly we should have pursued it a bit more vigorously at the time, but of course, Ricky was so reassuring.’

  ‘What’s the problem? Don’t tell me the grant isn’t going to come through?’

  ‘I think it will, though it’s not through yet. No, I’m afraid there seem to have been some irregularities. I had a friend of mine look through the accounts, I do hope you don’t mind, but as I said, I was a little uneasy. We had something similar, one time, hmm, with a verger, I recall.’

  Hugh Porteous is a decent enough Chair, Susie thinks, but liable to tell long stories that have no clear ending. She tries to get him to focus. ‘Irregularities?’

  ‘Yes, indeed, as I was saying. Of course, my friend has no locus on this, we’ll have to take the matter through the auditors, but he did flag something up. It rather looks as though some funds have been, shall we say, hmm, diverted.’

  ‘Diverted? What does that mean?’

  ‘We’re not entirely sure yet. We think that the money given to us for the Youth Literacy Project was switched to do that roof repair. It may have been done with the best of intentions, of course, but it’s quite irregular and there’s now a possibility that we may be asked to return the grant.’

  ‘How on earth could that have happened?’

  She can almost hear him shrug. ‘Truths, half-truths and lies. We were told an officer had been appointed and had started, but it seems that’s not the case. I had a long session with June Mackintosh—’

  ‘I thought she’d been made redundant?’

  ‘Indeed. But she came to me in great distress, with some tales that I should have listened to much earlier. June’s a very loyal person, but it does look, hmm, as if the redundancy was perhaps the result of her threat to expose mismanagement.’

  ‘Goodness. How dreadful. This is Ricky’s fault?

  ‘Possibly. We need to do a lot more work, I’m afraid. I’m just flagging it up. It was June who has been dropping hints to the media, apparently.’

  ‘Really?’ It seems her instincts might have been right.

  ‘Hmm, yes. She feels she wasn’t being listened to. However, rather than go any further, she decided to try to get my ear again and I’m very thankful she did. There may be a chance we can rectify the situation. It will mean a lot of meetings with the new auditors, I’m afraid, and probably some rather difficult meetings with Ricky.’

  ‘Oh how dreadful. Do you want me to do anything?’

  ‘Not for the moment, I’ll keep you informed, of course. But I’m afraid there’s one more thing. And it’s not good.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘It seems that the Trustee Indemnity Insurance policy has not been paid up.’

  ‘What?’ Susie is appalled.

  ‘There may be some exposure to the debt.’

  ‘By us? The Board?’

  ‘The trustees, yes.’

  ‘What are we talking about? Hundreds? Thousands?’

  ‘I don’t really know at this point. I’m sorry, Susie. It’s a pickle we should never have allowed ourselves to get into. Let’s hope we can get ourselves out of it without too much damage, hmm.’

  ‘Right. Well—’ What can she say? ‘Thanks for letting me know, Hugh. Keep me posted, will you?’

  ‘Of course. Goodbye.’

  Susie puts the phone down, dismayed.

  ‘Bad news, I gather?’ Karen asks from across the room.


  ‘Not good.’ She glances at her watch. Five to nine. ‘I’d better go. I’ll fill you in later.’

  She flees in a wild cloud of russet-gold hair and with an energy that is more frenetic than useful. So much for work providing a welcome diversion from problems at home – her life seems to be going down a thorny path at the moment. Well, like Hugh Porteous, all she can do is pray she can get herself through it without too much damage.

  That night, Susie can’t find rest. She thinks of her father, calm, sensible, kind, and wishes she could talk it all over with him, before remembering that he never was her father. She runs her fingers through the thick tangle of her hair and presses her knuckles against her forehead. Why did they never explain?

  It hurts.

  Jonathan is unhappy. Mannie is eager to understand where she has come from. And she needs to find a way of communicating with her husband again.

  No more blame. This is not how she wants her life to be. Maybe the only way of uniting her family once more is through confronting her own fears and insecurities.

  The darkest hour of the night passes, and with its passing comes a new resolve. She will try to find Joyce Miles.

  In the morning Susie sits down at her desk, checks the number she has written down and lifts the phone. She clears her throat. She is unimaginably nervous. Why? It’s just a phone call.

  ‘Hello, yes. I’m looking for my mother,’ she says, her voice coming out like sand scratching on pebbles. ‘Goodness, how silly that sounds.’ She laughs edgily. ‘As if I’d inadvertently left her in the supermarket or lost her at a funfair.’

  The woman on the other end of the phone is sympathetic. ‘It’s all right, we get this all the time at Birthlink. I’m Helen, would you like to tell me your name?’

  ‘Susie.’ Susie hesitates, considers adding her surname, then chooses to shelter in anonymity. Gathering up all the courage she can muster, she blunders on. ‘I understand you might be able to help.’ God, she sounds unhinged.

  ‘Of course.’ The woman makes the request sound as matter-of-fact as if Susie is reporting a mislaid umbrella. ‘That’s what we’re here for. Can you tell me what details you have? Your full birth certificate?’