by Rosa Temple
‘No, she was just in the right place at the right time. Jumped your father before he had a chance.’ Mother wasn’t eating as hungrily as she had been.
‘I must say, you seem to be rushing to his defence all of a sudden,’ I said, raising my eyebrows at a strange lump in the brown stuff on my plate. ‘I thought you told me you two were better off apart.’
‘We were always better as friends,’ said Mother. ‘And I’m concerned about his happiness.’
‘Well from what I can tell, this new woman is giving him the runaround.’
‘Is that what he said?’
‘Not in so many words but it was implied. Said she blew hot and cold and he wasn’t sure where he stood.’
‘The problem with your father is he doesn’t know a good thing when he sees it.’ She began eating with gusto again.
‘So you’re saying he should see this other woman?’
‘Oh do keep up, Magenta. I’m not saying that at all. I’m saying that your father doesn’t understand women. He lived with five of us and he’s still clueless. He needs to listen more and stop trying to be the boss all the time, then maybe his new girlfriend wouldn’t blow hot and cold so much as she supposedly does.’
I watched Mother eating the brown and green stuff. I wondered not only why she should do this to her stomach, but why she was being so vocal about Father.
On the kitchen table was the daily newspaper. The politician being hounded by cameras wherever he went and the growing list of allegations against him hadn’t lost its appeal. I hated the way the media were tearing this man apart, accusing him of taking bribes and now of neglecting his family. Like this poor politician, Mother was tearing my Father’s character apart. He might not have been perfect (and, let’s face it, does such a man exist?) but he had always been a good father to me and my sisters. That had to count for something, surely.
‘About your father, Magenta,’ Mother went on, as she poured me a glass of white wine and herself some coconut water.
‘Yes,’ I said reaching for the wine and pushing my plate aside.
‘Keep an eye on him for me, will you?’
‘You mean spy?’
‘No, that’s not what I mean,’ she said and tutted. ‘You live closest to your father and he might need someone.’
‘I’ll do what I can but Father and I rarely see each other these days. Not now with my job and his other women.’
‘Magenta, please. He isn’t a gigolo.’
‘Really? That’s what you called him when Suma came on the scene. You never got off his case about something or other.’
‘That was five years ago. I’ve changed. The yoga has helped me stay calm. The menopause wasn’t easy and I know I was an absolute witch at times.’
‘So you’re taking some responsibility for your marriage breaking up?’
‘No, Magenta. I blame your father and the menopause. I didn’t do anything wrong.’
‘Yes, Mother.’
I looked at my abandoned plate, knocked back some more wine and peered at the newspaper.
‘Aren’t you going to eat?’ Mother asked.
‘Do you have any normal food in the house?’
‘Oh, just go, Magenta. I know you want to.’
I jumped out of my chair and kissed her.
‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘I love you, Mother, but please don’t ask me to dinner again unless you employ staff.’
‘Goodbye, Magenta, and don’t pick up any junk food on the way home.’
I was already at the door. I jumped into my new car and stopped for some Chinese food before heading for my flat. On my big red sofa I began trying to make sense of my conversation with Mother. One wonton soup, three pan-fried dumplings and one prawn curry with chilli and black bean sauce later, I was none the wiser but I vowed to keep an eye on Father anyway – just in case.
Chapter 19
About a week after I’d heard from Hugo, and at a time when I was on a roll at work with the beginnings of my fashion show plans under way, I got an email from the man himself. I was thrown by the strange subject line, which read: Ten Years And Down. I thought it was some marketing gimmick and clicked Open just to see what these people were trying to sell me this time, not looking at the address the email originated from.
I was being bombarded by all kinds of emails from salespeople from all walks of life since my search history on Google made it clear that I was in the market for male models, advertising space, leather, theatres, galleries, art directors, PR companies, venues for hire, fashion students – in fact, anything and everything that sprang into my head to do with the fashion show ended up in my search bar. I needed a fabulous location (Ebony wasn’t able to swing it with Harrods) and as much publicity as possible.
But when I did click Open, I wasn’t faced with a wave of logos and promises from a company, just two simple words: Hello Magenta. That’s when I looked to see who the sender was. My mouse hovered over the Delete button but my eyes cast down at the blocks of text that seemed to go on and on for ever. How was I going to resist reading on?
I looked over at the mug of coffee I’d made, which was already going cold, and grabbed for it. I looked at my open office door and I could hear Anthony talking to someone on the phone in Italian to ask about shipping some of his forgotten artwork over to the UK as I had suggested. He sounded like he was in full flow and, if my GCSE Italian served me well, it sounded more personal than business and he might be tied up for a while. No one was likely to walk in. I began to read Hugo’s email.
Hello Magenta
And before you click Delete, please read on. I have a lot to say and I really want you to know what these ten years have been about.
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath and then a sip of lukewarm coffee.
First of all, let me start by saying that there wasn’t a day that went by in all this time that I didn’t think about you and didn’t miss you. I guess you could say I’ve been on a journey. Corny, I know, but it’s true. It was a journey to find myself and the journey is over. What I found was a man who had made too many mistakes in his life and who met the girl he would love for the rest of his life at the wrong time and probably in the wrong place.
Lately I’ve come to realise that we tell ourselves that there is a right time and place for things to happen in our lives because sometimes we’re just not ready to accept that a change is happening. We run away instead.
You see, I thought I knew it all. I’d been a smart-arse teenager who cheeked his teachers, defied his parents and left school knowing how to play a mean drum solo and not much else. I didn’t learn the important things. I only dreamt of something big, something else and something more than life was already giving me. I thought my path was to follow my music. I thought it would find me recognition, fame, money, respect. I thought I had something to prove to my teachers, my parents, my whole family, even the ones from halfway around the world that I hadn’t even met. I wanted the world to know me and I thought that by banging a few drums I’d be introduced to a wealth of possibilities.
I ran away to London when I was seventeen and my life changed dramatically. Seeking my dream I found a great band to join and blew all my chances with them because of drugs. They got rid of me and I was on a mission to prove to them they’d made a mistake and joined the band I was in when I met you. We had average success but we were more or less coming to an end when that tour was arranged. Hence my plans to keep on travelling after the tour, to see where life took me.
I needed something to work for me because I’d spent nearly eleven years in the music industry, in and out of rehab and distancing myself more and more from family and true friendships. My mission was still to keep going and make everyone see that I could come good in the end.
And then one night a friend convinced me to leave my dingy flat, a week before the band went on tour, and go with him and some people I’d not seen in ages to have a few drinks at a pub I never ever went
to. And you were there.
I wasn’t drunk. In fact, I only sipped twice from a pint I didn’t even want. I saw you and I looked into the pint glass and back up again just to make sure I wasn’t dreaming. But you were real. You smiled at me. You have a beautiful smile, Magenta, and the whole place just fell away and all I could see was you. I’d never seen a girl like you and no other girl made me sit up and pay attention in the way you did.
When I walked over to you my feet took me there without my mind willing them to. And you looked at me as if we’d know each other all our lives.
Isn’t it corny to talk about love at first sight? I’m thirty-eight and I feel silly saying it now. But maybe you’ve already clicked Delete and maybe I’m sparing myself some blushes. I don’t know. But I hope you’re still with me on this.
Is any of this making sense, Magenta?
I felt myself nodding, yes, and sipping the last of my by then cold coffee.
I hope so. You see it took me a while to make sense of why I did it. First of all, I was true to my intentions, to leave London, go away for as long as it took for me to get my act together and then decide where I wanted to be. But I knew I had something with you, I felt something for you and I asked you to come. It might sound weird now but I was happy when you said no. I mean, what right had I to ask so much of you? You were a teenager, about to start your own journey. You were right to refuse. You were right to be strong.
But that day at the airport, I blew it. I let my heart rule my head and I said I’d call. What was I thinking? You were free of me. Free of my hang-ups, addictions, self-doubt. Free of a person who didn’t know who he really was or what he wanted to be. I went and opened up a possibility and gave you hope. False hope.
The second I got on the plane I vowed to set you free of me and my baggage. And that’s what I did, Magenta. I set you free. You were too good a person, too special to waste your life on me. I would have done to you what I did with every other aspect of my life – I would have ruined you, Magenta. I loved you too much to ever do that.
I knew you’d come to hate me and I thought that would be better than loving this big-time loser. That’s all I was then, that’s all I was for years to come.
Just six years ago I had a breakthrough. I nearly died falling during a mountain-climbing incident in South America but I survived and I felt like something in the ether had not only given me a lifeline but a second chance, too. I cleaned up. I straightened up. I began to live in this community in Brazil, quite near to the rainforest. I worked. Hard. I lived on next to nothing and saved all the money I could and bought some land. I acquired a bit more and developed it. I now run a retreat in Las Plancas in Brazil and opened a spa sanctuary in Rio from its success. A publishing house executive stayed there once and wants to pay me shitloads of money to publish my memoirs.
I’d love to write that memoir but I want it to have a happy ending. One that involves you, Magenta.
Once again I am asking you to believe in me, trust me. I am more than prepared to give up everything I have to be anywhere you are, to do anything you want me to do and for you to say you’ll give me a chance to try again with you, Magenta.
Any terms you want. You just say the word and I’ll be there.
So now you have my email address and below is the address of my parents’ farm in Cumbria as well as my phone number in case you didn’t save it.
I leave it all up to you.
With all my love
Hugo
I was filled with every emotion possible. What right did Hugo have to make me feel so many things at once? He’d derailed me completely, once again. Just at a time when I knew who I was and where I was going. Did he really expect me to blow all of that just because he’d found himself? He had some nerve.
With my heart pounding in its cavity, I rushed off the next few words without pausing to think and hit send straight away.
Hugo
I banned you from calling me. Fine. You didn’t call. But now I ban you from writing to me, too. I’m very happy you found yourself. I did exactly that, too. I’m not the hopeless, helpless teenager you knew back then. I’m a woman. I think like one and I act like a grown-up. In my grown-up opinion I think you should stop sending begging emails to someone who has moved on. I’m glad you’ve moved on and I wish you success, but please don’t email me ever again.
Magenta
After clicking Send I contemplated whether I sounded harsh or bitter. Perhaps. But however it came across, it was too late. The email was winging its way to Cumbria and I was heading to the toilet for a good sob.
In the days to follow I found myself reading and rereading every line of Hugo’s email and just like the first time of reading, I was taken in by every last word.
PART 3
IN WINTER
Chapter 20
Being true to my word, I’d started keeping an eye on Father and making sure he didn’t do something he’d regret, or, in point of fact, something Mother thought he might regret. She did nothing but ask me every other day, ‘What do you know about your father?’ I found myself playing piggy in the middle because, invariably, he would ask me what I knew about my mother, what she was doing, who she was seeing and had she asked about him.
I was prepared at one time to just tell them enough already, speak to each other and stop treating me like some kind of go-between. But then it occurred to me that playing go-between might be to my advantage. Being the only sane person in the family who saw that the pair of them should be back together again, I was in the perfect position to try to make that happen. Maybe I could start dropping white lies, saying that one had said they missed the other and one had said a reconciliation was all they ever dreamed about. Something like that. It would take some planning but I thought I could handle it.
As my parents’ go-between I had seen more of them over the last few weeks than I had when I lived at home. There were endless dinners, theatre visits and shopping sprees with one or the other of them. Between outings with my parents and trying to organise a fashion show for Shearman, I was driving myself mad hatching a plan to get my parents back together.
Anya told me I was crazy and that I should keep out of their relationship problems because, after all, didn’t I have enough of my own?
‘Do I have to remind you that I don’t actually have a relationship, Anya?’ I said to her on the phone. She had called me from sunny LA in the very early hours of a bitterly cold November morning. She was off to a party and reeled off the names of the A-list celebs who were supposed to be there. I felt envious, lying in bed in my mermaid pyjamas and fluffy socks.
‘Vell maybe if you concentrated on your love life you vouldn’t be getting so fretful about your parents. Look, Magenta,’ she said, ‘they’ve had their time. Now you have to think about you.’
Sometimes Anya could frustrate the hell out of me. She was so down to earth it made me sick. I wanted to say to her that she shouldn’t be dishing out advice on love when she was having an on/off relationship with a man she wasn’t allowed to tell anyone about: a divorcee with children and who, as I managed to get out of her, was old enough to be her father.
Maybe she missed her own parents so much she needed a father substitute, but the thing about Anya was she could shut down her feelings and keep you locked out when she wanted to. I thought I was the only person in the world who could break through her tough exterior but her seeing this mystery man had made her an even tougher nut to crack. He had some kind of hold over her I couldn’t explain. Maybe it was love and maybe I should keep my mouth shut about him. She’d told me so often enough.
‘Look,’ I said, yawning and thinking that in a few hours time I was due to get up and start getting ready for work. ‘Are you going to be here in time for this fashion show I’m arranging?’
‘Of course I am. You know I vouldn’t miss it. I’m expecting to have a front row seat.’
‘And I’m expecting you to be in the fro
nt row to make it all look good. I’ll send you the details when they’re all finalised.’
‘Okay, darling. My escort is here. I should go. Bye, lovely.’
‘Bye.’
I hung up but I couldn’t get back to sleep. I thought to call Father and ask him to meet me for lunch but I was sure he wouldn’t want a call at three in the morning. My brain began working overtime and I couldn’t get back to sleep so I decided to get up. I took a leaf out of Mother’s book and tried to practise some yoga before work. I found something on YouTube that called itself, ‘Wake-up Yoga for Beginners.’ Perfect. I was a beginner who was awake and needed to stay that way for work.
I did all the stretching this elasticated woman suggested, following her soothing voice and letting it wash over me, just as she said. My mistake came when I followed her caring words into something called the Crow and found myself leaning forwards in a crouched position, balancing on my hands, feet off the ground, face hovering inches from the floor. I came crashing down, smashing my face quite badly into the floor. A few drops of blood trickled out of my nose and onto the white towel I was using as a yoga mat.
‘Shit,’ I said aloud. ‘How does Mother do this without knocking herself out?’ The YouTube video continued without me as I rushed to the freezer to grab some ice, shove it in a tea towel and cover my nose. It felt broken. I watched the woman on YouTube arch backwards with just her feet and hands on the floor and then lift her right leg. I slammed the laptop shut and grabbed my phone. I called Father to see if he was free for lunch. He took ages to answer and there were loud voices and music in the background.
‘Magenta?’ he said. ‘I can’t really talk now; it’s a bit noisy where I am.’
‘Where are you?’ I asked. ‘Why are you listening to loud music at six in the morning?’
‘I’m at a party.’
‘You mean still at a party?’
‘No, we arrived a little while ago.’
‘We?’
