The Accidental Family (30 page)

“All I’m saying is that it might be a good idea to verify the facts before the lives of so many people get seriously complicated,” Iris said. “Louis is tall, dark, and handsome, and from the sound of it, this Seth is tall, dark, and handsome. All that means is that the boy’s mother likes tall, dark, and handsome men.”

“No, Seth is Louis’s son, I’m sure of it. He has exactly the same expression when he’s angry, the same smile, he even kisses like …” Sophie trailed off suddenly, finding Tripod’s attempt to get her to stroke him terribly endearing.

“How do you know how he kisses?” Iris asked as Sophie scratched Tripod under one ear, so that the poor hound leaned rather too far to the left and toppled over onto the floor.

“Okay …I’ll tell you, as you clearly insist on dragging it out of me with your vicious interrogation techniques.” Iris raised an eyebrow. “He tried to kiss me, okay, he actually did kiss me, but he was very drunk and angry and I was very surprised, so I didn’t react as quickly as I probably should have. It’s not as if I fancy him or anything …”

“No, dear, because with your track record that would be a bad idea,” Iris said mildly.

“My track record?” Sophie exclaimed. “What do you mean, Mother? I was practically a virgin until I met Louis.”

“I know, darling, I’m just saying. When it comes to forming relationships, you seem to always pick the rather complicated route. On paper Louis was the last man you should have fallen for. Or the second from the last anyway; I’d say his son would definitely be the last.”

“I have not, am not, and do not at any point intend to fall for Seth. I was caught off guard and he is so like Louis, or like Louis would have been once, fresh and young and untouched by life. Just for a second I wondered what it would have been like to meet him then, when he was young and carefree and without a personal history to rival Henry the Eighth’s …”

“From what you’ve told me, it doesn’t sound like Seth is very carefree to me,” Iris said. “Sounds to me like he’s a rather troubled young man with a mother who puts her own interests before his.”

“I don’t know …I don’t really know what Wendy’s like. All I know is that she really hates me for rocking her boat and seems quite keen to get her own back, no matter what happens.”

Iris watched her daughter thoughtfully in the September sun.

“Well, leaving all of that to one side, you still love Louis, don’t you?”

“I do,” Sophie said hesitantly.

“You don’t sound so sure,” Iris said, pouring herself another cup of coffee and watching Sophie’s face closely as the aroma caused her to unconsciously wrinkle her nose for the briefest second.

“Mum, the thing is, how do you know the difference between love and just really, really, really amazing sex and fun and laughing and getting on really well? Because before Louis, I’d never had really amazing sex, I’d never really even
liked
sex. But now with Louis I can’t get enough of it. And I know he feels the same way about me. I mean it feels like we can’t be alone in a room together for more than five seconds without having to rip each other’s clothes off …”

“Okay.” Iris held up the flat of her hand. “I’m delighted you feel that you can talk to me openly about this, darling, but you are still my little girl and that is a bit more information than I need to have. Thank god Tripod is deaf.”

“Well, anyway, I’m head over heels with Louis. I’m infatuated with him. I can’t think of a single thing about him that I don’t love with a passion. I even like the way he snores, Mum. I even like his
snoring
. And I know that won’t last, I know it’s not real—so what if in a year, or two years’ time, I wake up to him snoring and I realize that I hate it, and I hate him, and the infatuation has worn off and all I’m left with is this man I don’t really know and who doesn’t really know me and all we have in common are his children, who deserve so much better than another failed relationship. That’s what I’m worried about.”

Iris studied her coffee thoughtfully, bending over to scratch Tripod’s tummy.

“You always were far too sensible,” she said eventually.

“What do you mean?” Sophie asked her impatiently. “How is it even possible to be too sensible?”

“I met your dad when I was sixteen and he was eighteen,” Iris said, ignoring her question. “It was at this Christmas party at the old youth club on Seven Sisters Road; it’s not there now, of course, there’s never anything for young people to do these days. No wonder they’re all stabbing and shooting each other—”

“Mum, stick to the point, if you have one, that is,” Sophie prompted her.

“Sorry—I saw him playing snooker with his mates, full mod outfit, the suit, the tie, the hair, and I melted on the spot. I fell for him so hard that I couldn’t look at him, let alone talk to him. Whenever he was around I had trouble breathing, and the only way I could deal with it was to ignore him. This went on for about two years. He went out with every single one of my friends but never me, he never asked me out. I’d lock myself up in my bedroom at night and play my records and cry my eyes out.”

“Why didn’t you tell him you fancied him?”

“I don’t know. Why didn’t you ever engage in a proper relationship until you were in your thirties? I was shy and a bit repressed, I suppose, and a child, which is a pretty good excuse,” Iris explained. “Besides, he was the best-looking, most popular boy in our group and I was a skinny kid with lank hair and no breasts. I protected myself by staying away from him.”

“You and Dad got married when you were twenty-three, didn’t you? What happened?”

“Well, for one thing I got breasts—but anyway, at eighteen Dad went off to university and I stayed in London, working in my mother’s dress shop. You know, you don’t get shops like that anymore, little boutiques. My mum running up patterns in the back room, me out front talking fashion with the girls …those were happy times.”

“Okay, get to the bit where you met Dad again,” Sophie urged her. Remarkably, her mother had never told her this story. Perhaps she hadn’t been interested when she was a child, and after her father died it was probably too hard for Iris to talk about it.

“So one day—years later, when I was, let me see, twenty-two—I was at the cinema, can’t remember the film, some piece of rubbish, black-and-white northern kitchen-sink type thing—I love a good musical, you don’t get enough musicals anymore—”

“
Mum
.” Sophie tapped the tips of her fingers on the tabletop.

“I was there with this other boy, Justin Parker, I think his name was, when I saw your dad in the foyer and all those feelings I used to have for him, the stomach churning and the chest tightening and the butterflies and the goose bumps, all just whooshed back and I felt like that silly skinny little kid again. He had his back to me and his arm around another girl. I don’t know why, but he turned around and looked right into my eyes and he smiled, and I realized that he knew who I was—he remembered me. And in that second I knew that I was going to marry him. I knew it right then.”

“So how did you get together then?” Sophie asked her, enthralled. “What happened next?”

“He left his date standing there and came over, said hello like we’d always been old friends, and because I wasn’t young or scared or shy anymore, and because a lot of lads used to ask me out back then and I knew I wasn’t bad looking, I suddenly found I could talk to him. We stood there just talking and laughing about old times until the foyer of the cinema was empty, his date had walked off, and I had to tell mine to go.”

“What a scandal!” Sophie laughed.

“We went to this little coffee place behind Upper Street, open all night, full of cabbies and truckers and kids in black turtlenecks with too much eyeliner who thought they were cool. You don’t get
places like that anymore.” Iris caught Sophie’s expression and rolled her eyes at Tripod, who seemed to be listening intently despite his deafness.

“Your dad bought me a lot of coffee—espresso, because I wanted him to think I was sophisticated—so it might have been the caffeine that was making my heart race, except that it only happened when I looked at him. We’d been in there about an hour, laughing and joking, when he suddenly reached out and touched my hand and I felt this surge of electricity go through my body. It was so strong that I thought I should have been jolted across the room and sitting in some cabbie’s lap with my hair standing on end! I’d never ever felt anything like that before. He looked into my eyes and he said, ‘Why did you never talk to me back then? I was crazy about you, but you always ignored me. I went out with all your friends to try and get your attention, but you never once looked my way.’ I just laughed and told him about my crush on him and we couldn’t believe it, we couldn’t believe that the pair of us had felt like that all those years ago and had never managed to do anything about it.” Iris trailed off, a tiny smile playing around her lips as she relived that night.

“He had a little flat on Balls Pond Road. Bloody horrible place it was, cold and a bit damp, but he took me there that night and I stayed out until the morning for the first time ever. My mother had my guts for garters, I can tell you—but it was worth it.” She smiled at Sophie. “That was the night I found out I liked sex. We were engaged four months later, married within the year.”

“That’s so romantic,” Sophie said, feeling those all-too-familiar tears building behind her eyes again. “So when did that bit wear off?”

“I felt about him then exactly the way you feel about Louis now, even though you’re quite a bit older than I was when I met your father. I adored him, I couldn’t think of a single thing about him that I didn’t love. I even loved his hairy shoulders …”

“And so …did it go off once you were married for a few years?”

“Of course it did,” Iris said.

“See, I told you!” Sophie said, panicked.

“Well no—‘go off’ is the wrong way of putting it—it changed, it
evolved
.” Iris nodded, pleased with the word she’d found. “Life, money, children, work—that’s all the stuff that can get in the way of love, the stuff that can push it to the back burner, make you forget that you are more than just coparents and housemates until one day the flame burns out and dies. The thing is, if you’re worried about how to pay the mortgage or you’ve been up all night with the baby, if you can remember that love, that passion that brought you together and allow yourself to feel it, no matter what else is going on—then it grows, it deepens and becomes your strength, your fortress against whatever life throws at you.”

Iris leaned across the table and stroked Sophie’s face with the back of her hand. “Sweetheart, it’s so rare to be able to look at another person and say that’s the one for me, and to know it with all your heart. And sometimes I think that these days people are more afraid than ever to think about how they really feel. You all get married later, you all have children late, all so worried about living your lives before any of that happens, and that’s crazy because loving someone, loving children—that
is
life. All the rest of it is just ‘stuff.’ You only get the kind of deep, strong, wonderful love that your father and I shared if you’re brave enough to ride the waves that take you there. Your love for Louis will change and evolve— but if you believe in your heart that you do love him, and you never let anything make you forget that, then it can only change for the better.”

“Mum,” Sophie said softly. “That was really profound.”

“I know,” Iris said, nodding sagely. “You see, I do know some things, you’d be surprised by how many things I know if you ever took the trouble to ask me.”

“I know.” Sophie’s smile was rueful. “So what about Trevor? Do you feel that way about Trevor?”

Iris grinned and Sophie couldn’t help but mirror her expression when she saw the twinkle in her mother’s eyes.

“He makes me very happy,” she said, nodding. “But your father was the love of my life. I still regret those six years between the ages of sixteen and twenty-two that we were apart, and I just thank my lucky stars I had him for as long as I did and that he gave me you.”

“So you don’t think I’m bonkers if I marry Louis on New Year’s Eve, not that we’ll ever get the venue now.”

“I don’t think you’re bonkers if you marry Louis at whatever time. Especially not now.”

“Why not now?” Sophie asked her, finishing the last of her tea.

“Especially not now that you’re pregnant.”

At that precise second Sophie’s phone burst to life in the pocket of her dressing gown.

Staring at her mother openmouthed, she reached for it and answered. It was Jake.

“Hey, Sophie, sorry I haven’t called before now—Stephanie has had me all over town running around doing wedding stuff. This morning she feels it is necessary to buy out the whole of Heal’s. I left her haggling over a pod of designer tables—whatever that is. I don’t suppose you could make lunch today, could you?”

“Oh yes,” Sophie said, perhaps a touch too eagerly to be seemly when talking to another woman’s fiancé. “Yes, Jake—fantastic. When and where?”

“How about a late lunch, say two? At J Sheekey’s, do you know it?”

“Great, I’ll see you there,” Sophie said, checking her watch and mentally calculating the exact number of minutes she had to turn herself from aged teenage throwback to foxy girl about town. “Look forward to it.”

“Me too, honey,” Jake said before hanging up. “Me too.”

Sophie set her phone down on the table and looked at her mother.

“I am not pregnant,” she stated, reinforcing her point with a slash of her hands. “Mother? What on earth makes you think I’m pregnant?”

“You’ve gone off alcohol …”

“I’m stressed and my stomach’s all churny, that’s all it is.”

“And the smell of coffee turns your stomach.”

“I’ve never really liked coffee
that
much …” Sophie slowed as she remembered that until very recently she’d downed two cups of the black stuff before even opening her eyes. “Anyway, that’s probably living by the sea and not having to get up at five every morning to be in the office by six. I don’t need caffeine anymore, my body has weaned itself off it.”