Why should I trust him?
He put an arm around the woman he was with and introduced us to Angie. I took a sly look at Mum out of the corner of my eye, trying to gauge if there was a reaction. To me it looked like she couldn’t care less who her ex-boyfriend had his arm around.
Gran told them to sit down while she put the kettle on and made a pot of tea. It’s her answer to any tricky situation. She asked me to give her a hand carrying things in.
‘You all right love?’ she asked when we were alone.
‘Yeah, I’m fine,’ I said. I don’t know what else she expected me to say. Did she think I was going to ask her if what my parents had told me was true? Yeah well, I didn’t ask her anything. I didn’t give a toss who Uncle Rob really was.
She had two trays already prepared and all that was left to do was actually make the tea. She flicked the switch on the kettle and it immediately made a sound that told me it had been very recently boiled. As soon as the kettle turned itself off she warmed the pot, then poured the water into the teapot and put the lid on. She put the pot on a tray with a matching milk jug and sugar bowl that I had never seen before. She asked me to take one tray and said that she would bring the other.
I hadn’t really noticed what was on the tray that she was going to carry but when I saw that it had matching cups and saucers on it I couldn’t help being annoyed. We’d only ever got mugs before and yet as soon as he ’d turned up the good stuff came out. What the hell was that all about? Didn’t we deserve the good stuff too?
‘Shall I be mother?’ she asked when both trays were on the coffee table. ‘Do you still have one sugar in yours, Robert?’
‘No,’ he said ‘Just milk, thanks.’
Gran’s hand shook so much that the cup rattled on the saucer as she handed it to him and he at least had the good grace to look a bit embarrassed that he was being served first.
On that occasion tea did little to make the situation better. They all sat on the edge of their seats sipping out of the best china.
Gran kept calling him Robert but he told her that everyone called him Rob these days. ‘Really?’ she said, like it was something random that he would make up. Angie laughed and said that she’d never heard anyone call him Robert before. Gran’s face looked like she was sucking on a lemon when she heard that. She said that it would take a bit of getting used to but she would try and remember. I can tell you right now that I have never heard her call him anything but Robert.
Rob made a point of asking Dad about us kids but he didn’t even try to hide his pride when Dad told him how well my GCSEs had gone.
‘So, what are you going to do now?’ He looked me in the eye as he asked the question. Dad had been right when he said that they looked alike. They definitely had the same eyes. People have always said that I had my dad’s eyes but I try not to think about that one too much because I feel like I could drive myself insane. I mean yes, I have my dad’s eyes but are they my dad’s eyes or my uncle’s? Strictly speaking my dad is my uncle and my uncle is my dad. Told you it’s enough to drive you crazy.
Anyway, to get back to the question he’d asked. ‘Art college,’ I said, ‘like my dad.’ I couldn’t stop myself from adding that bit on the end. I made sure that my eyes didn’t move from his as I said it.
He nodded his head slowly. ‘To do what?’
I felt like asking him what the hell it had to do with him but good manners stopped me and I told him. ‘Graphic design.’ I got the impression from the look on his face that he didn’t think that was a proper subject, not one that would lead to a proper job anyway. Shows what he knows because I’ve done all right for myself, thank you very much.
Dad and Rob might not have had a lot to say each other that afternoon, but Grand-dad said even less. Now and again I would see him looking at his eldest son but I don’t remember him saying anything. Gran on the other hand, well, you couldn’t shut her up. She was asking him about the pub and she was all over Angie like a rash. To be fair to her she was probably only trying to make up for lost time but back then I was just a kid and I didn’t see it that way.
Angie talked to Michael and Anthony about what they liked to do at school and stuff like that but she didn’t say much to me. Rob didn’t either come to that, not after the graphic design thing anyway. Not that it bothered me.
The conversation was pretty full on for a while, but it started to tail off after an hour or so and not long after that Rob made noises about going.
‘We need to get back before the Saturday night rush starts,’ Angie said and it sounded like she was apologising.
Gran stood up to see them off but Rob ignored her and went to Dad. He held his hand out and Dad took it. ‘Your sons are a credit to you, Tom,’ he said. ‘All of them.’
Dad thanked him.
The fact that he’d said all three of them wasn’t lost on me and I guessed that he’d decided that he didn’t want anything to do with me after all. Mum said later that he probably realised that I thought of his brother as my dad, but I wasn’t so sure. Would the man that they had described to me give up so easily? Well he could sod off because I didn’t want anything to do with him anyway.
Once Gran had seen them off she came back into the living room and smiled.
‘That was nice wasn’t it,’ she said, but nobody said anything either way.
Uncle Craig came to see us the following day.
I was at the top of the stairs about to come down when Mum opened the door to him. He didn’t see me as he focused his attention on his sister. They hugged each other.
‘Are you all right?’ he asked. Mum might have said something but I didn’t hear it. Uncle Craig caught sight of me at that point and asked me the same question.
‘Yeah, I’m fine,’ I told him and then asked, ‘You?’
He gave a non-committal shrug of the shoulders by way of a reply.
Dad appeared at the living room door and he went through the same routine that I had with Uncle Craig. The three of them disappeared into the kitchen and I went into the room Dad had left my brothers in. They were watching cricket on one of the sports channels.
They say that they used to be really good friends, but Uncle Craig wasn’t pleased to see his mate return. When we were little Mum and Dad used to talk about when they were younger and there’d been stories of how Uncle Craig had got into fights to protect his little sister. I couldn’t help thinking that if it came to The Battle of the Uncles it wouldn’t end well for Rob. I knew who my money would be on anyway. It never has come to that but I think that’s down to Mum persuading her brother not to rock the boat.
Anyway, once Rob and Angie had gone home, life got back to normal. I started Art College as planned, Anthony helped Michael to find his feet at secondary school and Mum and Dad carried on being our parents. It was the only thing that could happen really.
We didn’t tell my brothers the truth for a long time. There didn’t seem much point at first because nothing had changed in terms of my relationship with them – they were still my brothers just like they always had been – but then there reached a point where we thought, why not? It wasn’t like it was going to change anything.
They took it in their stride, just like I’d known they would, and I got the impression that they wondered why we had even bothered. Nothing changed: I was still the big brother that I had always been.
In the years since that first meeting, despite what Dad feared, Rob has never mentioned that he is my biological father. Dad always says that he can’t understand it. He says that maybe his brother has changed but he also says that he wouldn’t trust him as far as he could throw him.
Perhaps they hadn’t needed to tell me about what he actually is to me after all, but I’m glad that they did. If anything, I love them more than ever because of it. They, especially Dad, risked so much by telling me the truth. My mum was always going to be my mum but he risked me turning my back on him, risked me telling him that he wasn’t my dad so he couldn’t do anything. He told me that
he didn’t want me hearing it from Rob and had risked everything to avoid that.
My dad is an amazing man.
We see Rob and Angie a couple of times a year and, to be honest, that’s enough for me.
We’re seeing them today in fact. We normally meet up at Gran’s house but we’re going to them this time which makes a change. Today is a special occasion. He and Angie are getting married. I don’t know why they’re bothering, I mean they’ve been together for more than twenty years.
Dad’s going to be his best man.
‘Who else would I ask?’ Rob had said when Dad asked him if he was sure there was no one else that he would rather ask. ‘You’re the one person I can rely on. You’re my brother.’
RIBBONS IN HER HAIR
Colette McCormick
Jean seems the perfect wife and mother but she struggles to love her daughters unconditionally.
When the youngest daughter, Susan, brings ‘shame’ on the family, Jean can think of only one response. She has to make the problem disappear.
Examining the divide between generations, between mothers and daughters, this emotionally charged novel asks whether we can ever truly understand another, however close our ties.
THINGS I SHOULD HAVE SAID AND DONE
Colette McCormick
Ellen has everything to live for, so when her life is cut short by a drunk driver running a red light she is unwilling to let go.
From the limbo that she now inhabits Ellen can only watch as her husband struggles as a single parent and her mother falls apart. That is until she realises that her daughter can be a link between the two worlds.
From beyond the grave there are things that Ellen can do to influence the life that she left behind.
Published by Accent Press Ltd 2019
Octavo House
West Bute Street
Cardiff
CF10 5LJ
www.accentpress.co.uk
Copyright © Colette McCormick 2019
The right of Colette McCormick to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
The story contained within this book is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the written permission of Accent Press Ltd.
ISBN 9781786156532
elSBN 9781786156549
Printed and bound in Great Britain by Clays Ltd,
Elcograf S.p.A
Proudly published by Accent Press
www.accentpress.co.uk
Not My Brother's Keeper Page 20
