by Kiley Dunbar
‘Kelsey, can we have a word, just us?’ Mirren sounded desperate.
‘Actually, there’s something I need to show you.’ Kelsey looked as nervous as Mirren and Jonathan now. ‘Jonathan, where is it?’
‘Hmm?’ For a moment he was blank. ‘Oh, the paper? Here.’ He pulled a copy of the Edinburgh Broadsheet out of the suitcase.
‘I think if you’ve got bad news to tell you should just come out with it, right Mirren?’ She took the paper from Jonathan and opened it at the centre pages. ‘Mum kept this to show me. It’s the fourteenth of November edition. She wasn’t sure if I should tell you or not, but… look…’
Mirren’s face lit up. ‘Festive Theatre Minibreaks That Won’t Break The Bank? It’s my article. They ran it! I don’t believe it. I submitted on the Friday before that stuff with Jamesey happened so it’s only right they run it, actually. They’ve changed some of my wording and cut it a bit but, still. Ooh, look at the pictures, they’re lovely.’
Kelsey stepped closer to her friend, speaking softly. ‘Mirr, they didn’t put your name on it.’
Mirren scanned the by-line, recoiling as though she’d been shot. ‘By James Wallace, Senior Reporter? What the…?’ Her mouth opened and closed and her eyes flickered in disbelief. ‘They published it with his name on it? But these are my words!’
‘I know. I don’t know how they had the brass neck to do it,’ Kelsey commiserated.
‘I do,’ said Mirren, gravely. ‘It’s a sign, if a sign were needed, that they hold all the cards, and that they don’t care about me or my feelings. It shows they’ve got all the power and I’m irrelevant to them, they’ll do what they want without fear of consequences, and they’ll champion Jamesey no matter what.’
‘I’m so sorry,’ Kelsey said, rubbing Mirren’s arms. ‘I thought it was better that you knew… but now I’m not so sure. Are you OK?’
Mirren shook herself alert at Kelsey’s words. ‘No, you were right. It is better to get things out in the open… even if they hurt a bit, right?’ All her instincts were yelling at her that no, it wasn’t better at all. Turn around and leave them to say their goodbyes and let them live in blissful ignorance for the rest of their lives, her nerves screamed, and she would have left if it wasn’t for Kelsey staring piercingly at her and stepping even closer, lowering her head inquisitively. Mirren tucked the newspaper under her arm. She’d have plenty time to weep over it later. She had a job to do.
‘Did you… did you find something?’ Kelsey’s voice was slow and cautious and she turned twice to look at Jonathan as she spoke. ‘You said there was something you wanted to tell us?’ The alarm coloured Kelsey’s cheeks. The sense of there being no going back now was already in the room between them all.
‘Something up?’ Jonathan asked.
‘Um, Jonathan, you should sit down,’ Mirren said.
‘Why?’
‘I don’t know. On films they always tell you to sit down when there’s news…’
‘OK,’ Jonathan laughed but his eyes were questioning. He did as he was told and sat on the bed. Kelsey slipped in beside him, clasping his hand and making him even more confused.
‘Has something happened? Look, you’d better tell me quick before I really start to freak out.’
‘OK, um…’ Mirren flustered. ‘Well… we think… we found your dad.’ She jumped at her own words.
Jonathan didn’t react other than drawing his neck back an inch.
‘We found out who he is and he still lives in town and…’
At this Kelsey made a squeaking sound and clamped her hand to her mouth. ‘You know for sure?’
Jonathan was looking between them both, squinting, his mind working.
Mirren couldn’t stop now, not with the tale half told. ‘He… he’s an actor too, well you already knew that, didn’t you? He’s called Jonathan Wagstaff.’
‘Who is we?’ Jonathan asked in a dry monotone.
‘Huh?’ Mirren started.
‘You said we found out who he is.’
Kelsey watched Jonathan’s eyes darken and his profile harden into an expression she’d never seen before.
‘Me and Adrian Armadale,’ Mirren said ruefully.
‘Who the hell’s that?’ Jonathan snapped.
Kelsey, sensing danger, took over. ‘He’s a reporter. He works at the Examiner. You can trust him. I’m sure he’s not going to tell anyone, right, Mirren?’ Kelsey added hurriedly.
Mirren had texted Kelsey to tell her about the night she’d spent with Adrian and how sweet and kind he was and how she might actually have turned a corner, but Kelsey knew nothing about him disappearing since then. There hadn’t been time to let her know. Mirren was looking at her now with sorrowful, guilty eyes.
Jonathan processed the information. He dropped Kelsey’s hand and clasped his fingers together, his knuckles whitening. ‘Adrian Armadale? I know who that is. He’s the hack who wrote that hatchet job exposé on me and Peony. The whole damn thing was lies! He said we were getting married, talked about Peony like she was trash. Do you know how much hurt that article caused us? And all for some front page gossip.’
Kelsey gulped. ‘No, it can’t be!’ She still had that newspaper shoved somewhere under her bed with the rest of her books and magazines and she rummaged for it now, pulling it out and scanning the front page. ‘He’s right,’ she said slowly. ‘Look. It was written by Adrian Armadale. There’s his name. I’m so stupid. I should have remembered that name, remembered he was a two-bit hack.’ She turned the front page towards Mirren who peered at it with growing dread.
‘This is the guy you trust to keep it a secret?’ Jonathan raised his voice and Mirren stepped back against the kitchen cabinet. She knew her tears were on their way, but Jonathan wasn’t done yet.
He turned on Kelsey now. ‘You knew about this? And you didn’t tell me?’
‘I didn’t know know. I just had an inkling and… I asked Mirren to investigate.’
‘How did you get this inkling?’
‘Show him the book, Mirren. Wagstaff’s biography with the pictures in it. You looked so similar, it got us wondering…’
Mirren was shaking her head, blanching horribly. ‘I don’t have the book. I gave it to Adrian.’
‘And where is he now, this Adrian guy?’ Jonathan practically growled the words.
Mirren still didn’t know and her blank look said as much. It also signalled to Kelsey there was more to tell about how Mirren now stood with Adrian Armadale after their cosy Christmas Eve together.
Jonathan forced an exasperated breath.
‘It’s not Mirren’s fault, it’s mine.’ Kelsey was standing now, spreading her hands pleadingly. ‘I didn’t want to tell you until we had some real proof – other than you two looking identical.’ Her eyes welled with tears.
‘What proof do you have?’ Jonathan asked, his voice increasingly terse.
All eyes fell on Mirren and she tried to explain. ‘It um… it was Adrian’s boss who told us. He used to know your mum and Wagstaff and he remembered…’
It was Kelsey who snapped this time. ‘Mr Ferdinand knows? Oh my God, Mirren!’
‘No, he doesn’t know; not about Jonathan anyway. He only mentioned the pregnancy. He doesn’t know you’re the son.’
Jonathan sprang to his feet. ‘You’re talking about me,’ he jabbed at his chest, ‘and my mom like we’re some trashy newspaper story!’ Distraught, his jaw softened and tears fell fast down his cheeks. When he spoke again his voice was curt and suspicious. ‘Why did you really want to know?’ He was feeling the pain and finding his voice now. ‘You lost your job recently, didn’t you, Mirren?’
‘Jonathan, please don’t,’ Kelsey begged, to no effect.
‘A scoop like this is just what you needed to impress Mr Ferdinand and this Adrian and get yourself back in the game, isn’t it? I can’t believe you’d do this to me.’
Mirren was silent.
‘Jonathan, you’re wrong,’ Kelsey cried out through her te
ars.
‘And you!’ He turned his burning eyes on Kelsey. ‘You let them do this. You didn’t even think to mention it to me first!’
‘I did, I tried. You said you didn’t want to know the truth, but I…’
‘What? You what?’ he barked.
‘I thought everybody deserves to know who their dad is.’ She gasped a deep breath. ‘Everybody should be able to talk to their dad if he’s out there somewhere, missing them. And I thought…’
‘But he’s not missing me. He’s never missed me. He broke Mom’s heart, he ended her career, and he abandoned us both.’ His face was wet with tears.
Kelsey couldn’t help herself. ‘He’s old and he lives right here in town. If you’re going to meet, you should do it soon. I know he’ll love you and…’
‘Meet?’ Jonathan pushed a hand through his hair. ‘Meet?’
‘I don’t even have one dad,’ Kelsey sobbed. ‘You’ve got two, Jonathan! I thought you’d want the chance to at least know about your other father, and maybe you could talk…’
‘This isn’t about you, Kelsey, or your dad.’ He drew up short at the shock on Kelsey’s face.
There was so much at stake that Kelsey knew she had to go on. ‘It’s not only your dad I thought you deserved to meet; there’s others too. You might have half-brothers, nephews as well. You could have a whole family if we’re right about Blythe having Wagstaff’s child in the sixties…’ Her voice broke when she saw his anger. Now she really was afraid.
Jonathan was deathly pale and shaking from his shoulders to his knees. ‘These are people’s lives you’re interfering in!’
‘I know, I’m sorry,’ Kelsey said unsteadily. ‘I thought you might like the idea once you had time to get used to it. You could double your family in an instant…’
Jonathan made a grab for his coat and threw it on before angrily pulling on his scarf.
‘I only wanted to increase my family by one person today and it wasn’t with the addition of some old soak who didn’t want me when I was a child. What am I going to tell Mom? How is she supposed to take this? We had nothing growing up, you know? Nothing!’ He yelled the last word, making the women flinch. Kelsey grabbed for his hand. He dodged away, knocking the bedside cabinet and sending books and photo frames tumbling to the floor.
‘I’ll take the car back to the hire place now, then I’ll get a cab to the airport. I can’t even look at you two now.’
‘Jonathan, I’m sorry,’ Kelsey cried out as the door closed behind him.
The friends turned to face one another wordlessly, Kelsey distraught, Mirren wiping away tears and reaching for her mobile.
‘I’ll try to call Adrian again, find out what he’s up to.’ She had the phone to her ear, listening to it ring straight to voicemail.
‘How can you trust him, Mirren? When he stitched up Jonathan and Peony like that? His article – his lies – were responsible for keeping me and Jonathan apart all summer. What do you even know about this guy, Mirren?’
She hung up and let the phone slide to her side. ‘I thought I knew him.’
Kelsey slumped onto the bed, reaching to the ground to pick up the framed picture of her and Jonathan taken at Norma’s wedding in September when they were grinning and doe-eyed in love. A little velvet box she’d never seen before lay amongst the mess on the floor, it caught her eye and she grabbed for it, flicking open the top.
Gold bands entwined in an Elizabethan love knot and dotted with tiny faceted sapphires sparkled in the artificial lights of the bedsit. Her voice shook. ‘He was going to propose?’
‘Oh my God, what?’ Mirren seemed to forget that Jonathan had stormed out seconds before, momentarily wrapped up in the revelation that her best friend had come so close to getting engaged. ‘Surely, that’s a sign he’ll be back any minute now, once he’s cooled off a bit?’ she enthused. ‘Wow, it’s so beautiful, Kelse!’
Kelsey looked at Mirren, incredulous, and snapped the box shut. ‘Please, just leave.’
‘But…’ Mirren was going to argue, but the look on Kelsey’s face – of fury and heartache – frightened her, so she quietly closed the door behind her, while Kelsey strained her ears to listen to the sound of Jonathan’s hire car pulling away from St. Ninian’s Close.
When she was alone, Kelsey doubled up as if in pain and wept over the beautiful engagement ring Jonathan had abandoned in his haste to get away from her.
Chapter Thirty-Four
‘That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruin’d choirs, where late the sweet birds sang’
(Sonnet 73)
The phone call home that night hadn’t helped at all. Mari had tried to soothe her daughter, who was frantic and shaking with great sobbing convulsions as she told her the news.
‘He dropped a ring on the floor when he raced out, Mum. An engagement ring.’
Mari hadn’t been as surprised as Kelsey expected.
‘Kelse, love, on Christmas Day when we were doing the dishes together Jonathan asked me if he could propose to you.’
‘He did? That’s so like him.’
‘And he asked your grandad. He even asked Calum.’
His respect for her family’s wishes made the discovery hurt all the more. ‘That’s why Jonathan was so jumpy on Christmas night, he was nervous about asking? And that’s why he was so keen to come to Scotland to meet you all!’
‘If he went to the trouble of finding you that beautiful ring, and asking us for your hand then I know he’ll come round. Don’t cry, darlin’.’ Mari was close to tears herself.
‘Will he? If I hadn’t interfered and kept secrets… If I’d just talked to him we’d be engaged, but now he’s on airplane mode above the Atlantic and he won’t be back in Stratford ’til Valentine’s Day. I can’t wait that long to see him.’
‘Have you spoken at all yet?’ Kelsey knew Mari was holding it together but there was a distinct wobble in her voice.
‘No, he texted when he was about to board the plane, saying he needed time to think. Think about what? I don’t know. His dad being Wagstaff? Or proposing to me? And now I’ve got to break it to Blythe. She has grandkids too, surely they deserve to know they’ve a secret uncle, right? Oh, I don’t know.’
‘Why don’t you sleep on it and go and talk to her in the morning, tell the truth, and Blythe can decide what’s best for her own family.’
After a lot more consoling Mari finally wished her daughter goodnight, and Kelsey lay down, still dressed, upon her little white bed, clutching the velvet box which had until this afternoon contained all Jonathan’s hopes and dreams for their future life together.
He’d wanted her for his wife, and she’d been too self-absorbed to know it was coming. If only she’d been focusing on Jonathan’s feelings like he always had hers in mind; instead she’d been distracted by the idea of him reuniting with a wayward, uncaring father who had never even held him as a baby, when in reality he already had a loving dad.
Deep down, she knew Jonathan was right. The search for Wagstaff had been about her all along. She didn’t have any dads at all, and the idea of being presented with two had overwhelmed her. Imagine that, she’d thought. Two fathers to love! Two dads to adore him! Her judgement had been thrown off by her own desires and her overactive imagination, and now Jonathan was hurt, betrayed… and gone.
She cried herself to sleep that night, her phone and the engagement ring clasped in her hands.
* * *
The sapphires shone in the light from Blythe’s pink tasselled standard lamp as the actress inspected the ring.
‘Nothing? You’ve got no advice for me?’ said Kelsey, her eyes red from crying away a sleepless night.
‘No, dear.’ Blythe shook her head with the smiling air of a mystic sage about her.
‘But, you’re so good with advice normally; “wow your bloke”, “grab the s
potlight”, but now you’ve got nothing?’
‘Never, ever pluck your eyebrows?’ Blythe asked solemnly.
‘Thanks.’ Kelsey slumped on the little stool at Blythe’s feet.
‘Always moisturise your neck?’ Failing to get a rise out of her young friend, Blythe took a different tack. She motioned for Kelsey to lean close to her and gently pulled her head onto her lap. ‘You don’t need advice, darling. You simply need a bit of cherishing.’ She raked her fingers across the baby hairs around Kelsey’s temple.
‘Oh, I’ve spoiled everything. Then there’s Mirren. I was the one that told her to go hunting for clues and then last night when she’d told us all what she’d found I chucked her out!’
‘You should have asked me in the first place,’ Blythe said.
Kelsey tensed as the thought struck her. ‘You didn’t look very surprised just now when I told you Wagstaff is Jonathan’s dad.’
‘I wasn’t. I knew the minute I saw him on Christmas Eve. Like twins, they were. I thought I’d had one too many gin jam scones and finally flipped my wig. There he was, John Wagstaff, standing in my salon, transformed from his baggy old self into the handsome boy he used to be.’
‘I’m sorry. I should never have let that happen. I know that you used to know him, back then, and that he spoiled your career by falling off the stage drunk and… obviously what happened with your baby and everything.’
Blythe stopped stroking her hair. Kelsey raised her head abruptly and made panicked goldfish mouths at the older woman. ‘I mean, I figured out what happened and I… at least I thought I’d figured it out… you must have got such a fright, suddenly confronted with your son’s half-brother…’
‘Lorcan’s half-brother?’ Blythe wrinkled her brow.
‘Lorcan? Is that your son’s name?’
‘Yes, but he’s not Jonathan’s half-brother or any other relation.’
‘You and Wagstaff… you weren’t…?’
‘Good lord and all his ministering angels, no! What a notion. Wagstaff was handsome and impressive in his own way, but an utter philanderer and a cad. I would never!’
