The Butterfly Storm (32 page)

‘Maybe that’s not enough.’

‘You’re throwing everything away.’

‘No more than you did when you got pregnant with me.’

‘That’s totally different.’

‘No it’s not.’

‘I had no choice. I couldn’t have any kind of life in a place I wasn’t wanted. I wanted to keep you. I
didn’t kiss goodbye to everything because I wasn’t happy.’

‘Don’t trivialise my situation.’

‘You can’t always have everything you want. You have to compromise.’

‘I’m aware of that,’ I say. ‘Alekos needs to compromise too and he’s never been willing to do
that.’

Mum tucks a loose hair behind her ear. She flicks the kettle switch on. Her face is drawn into a
frown. She folds her arms across her stomach. ‘From what I’ve seen, Alekos is one hell of a decent guy. I
even approve of him punching Ben…’

‘You have it in for Ben.’

‘Maybe. But how can you walk away from Alekos?’

‘You’ve broken up with plenty of decent men.’

She doesn’t reply straight away. Her eyes search the floor. I sit down at the kitchen
table.

‘This isn’t about me,’ she says after a while. ‘I’ve messed up every relationship I’ve ever
been in and I’ve learnt to deal with that. I thought you were different, particularly when
you met Alekos. I thought you were crazy leaving everything and running away to Greece
but I understood you were in love. I’d have done the same for Elliot, dropped everything
for him. But I had no choice. I couldn’t be with him, even though I desperately wanted
to.’

Mum turns her back on me and puts a teabag in the teapot. Her shoulders are hunched.

‘Did you get pregnant on purpose?’ I ask.

She pauses. ‘No. But I wasn’t shocked. We weren’t careful. At least I wasn’t. I didn’t care. I was in
love.’

The sun’s nearly disappeared behind the hill. It’s dark in the kitchen, with only a dull pinkish glow
seeping through the window. Mum pours boiling water into the teapot. Steam rises into the dusky
kitchen.

‘Do you regret not being with anyone?’

‘I’m always with someone,’ she says dryly.

‘You know what I mean. What about Robert?’

Her shoulders tense. ‘What about him?’

‘You get on well.’

‘Nothing’s worth risking our friendship for.’

‘But it might work.’

She snorts. ‘I’ve never made a relationship work.’

‘Maybe you hadn’t met the right person before.’

She looks at me sharply. ‘Your father was the right person.’

Suddenly she’s on the verge of tears. The honesty of what she’s just said hits me. Of course she’s
never been able to move on if she’s still in love with Elliot. I scrape my chair back and move towards
her. She doesn’t flinch as I put my arms around her.

‘I didn’t mean to upset you. I wasn’t thinking.’

Her shoulders and back are fragile beneath my hands. I feel her struggle to control a
sob.

‘You haven’t upset me. I’m just being stupid.’ She pulls away from me and plucks a tissue from the
box on the worktop and wipes her eyes. ‘It’s pathetic. Thirty bloody years later and I’m still crying
over him. And the truth of it is, I’d rather have had you, than be with him,’ she says firmly. ‘He
wouldn’t have been happy if he’d left his wife, I’d have felt guilty.’ She looks at me. ‘Guiltier. And I
wouldn’t have the life I have now.’

I nod, unconvinced.

‘I was with a married man who happened to be my father’s best friend, either way it
would have been a mistake.’ She turns to the teapot and pours us both a mug of strong
tea.

She’s subdued for what’s left of the evening. I never make it to the beach because it gets dark. We
both sit and watch television for an hour before going to bed. Our conversation must have
played on her mind during the night because she’s waiting for me at the bottom of the
stairs in the morning, and the first thing she says to me is: ‘Pack a bag. We’re going to see
Elliot.’

A month after Mum first told me about Elliot, I went to see him. It had taken me less than twenty-four
hours to decide that was what I wanted to do. I spent the next three or four weeks trying to find out
where he lived. It was pointless asking Mum. Firstly we didn’t talk much after that night. Secondly, I
didn’t want her to try and stop me.

When Mum was out doing a Body Shop party one night, I phoned Grandma. I hadn’t seen her or
Grandad since I was a child. For years Christmas and birthday cards with a token fiver tucked inside
was the only contact I had with them.

‘Sophie, is that you?’ Grandma said quietly.

‘Hi. Where does Elliot live?’

Silence. I heard the sigh of an armchair as she sat down. ‘Is your mother there?’

‘No. She’s working.’

‘Does she know you’re ringing me?’

‘No.’

‘She told you?’

‘Yes.’

She cleared her throat. ‘She wasn’t going to tell you.’

It was dark in the hallway except for the orange glow of the streetlight filtering through the
stained-glass panels in the front door. My grip on the phone tightened. ‘So you were happy to deceive
me too.’

‘My interest has always been to protect Elliot.’

‘How touching. Where does he live?’

‘Sophie, you best leave well alone,’ she said and put the phone down.

I lied to Mum. I said I was going to Cornwall for a couple of days with Candy, when really we drove
to Sheffield. Candy was livid with Mum and with my Grandma.

‘You have a right to know,’ she said every time I attempted to justify Mum’s or Grandma’s actions.
And I agreed with her. The fact they believed I would go charging into Elliot’s life and destroy his
family disappointed me. That wasn’t my intention.

‘What are you going to do if you find him?’ Candy asked. We had stopped in a lay-by on
our way towards Buxton and were leaning against Candy’s Fiat, eating prawn cocktail
flavoured crisps. We were on the edge of the Peak District. Stoke-on-Trent and the M6 were
behind us and we faced a rolling landscape of fields heading towards a craggy outcrop of
rocks. At that moment, I didn’t know what I wanted to do or say if I found him. I was just
thankful Candy was with me otherwise I would probably have turned round and headed
home. But together we kept going north to my grandparent’s house in Sheffield. Grandma,
whether she liked it or not, was going to tell me where I could find Elliot, Candy was sure of
that.

As far as I knew, Mum had only one photo of her parents that she kept on her dressing table in her
bedroom. I hadn’t seen Grandma since I was very young and my memory of her was vague. The woman
in front of me had short silvery grey hair and wore very little make-up, and there, the resemblance to a
fifty-something grandmother stopped. She was dressed in a bright red and gold Indian style tunic, loose
over wide-legged black trousers. Her feet were bare. I expected a conservative, uptight woman, not an
older version of Mum. The colour drained from her face. I wondered if it was true that I looked
a lot like Elliot. We stared at each other for a moment. Behind me, Candy squeezed my
arm.

‘We need to talk,’ I said.

She nodded and stepped back to let us in. She ushered us into the living room. There was an old
photo of Mum and me on the mantelpiece amongst lots of photos of people I didn’t know. The windows
were open and a welcome breeze filtered through along with the rumble of a lawnmower. It was
peaceful suburbia on a weekday afternoon in August.

Grandma came back into the room carrying a tray with a pot of tea, cups and a fruitcake on it. ‘Do
you remember this house?’ she asked, putting the tray down on the coffee table. She settled herself in
the armchair by the open window.

I shook my head. ‘I didn’t think Mum ever brought me here.’

‘She did once.’ She leaned forward and poured us each a cup of tea. ‘You were only five. We all sat
out in the garden. You were fascinated by the snails and were filthy by the time we went to the pub for
Sunday lunch.’

Candy fidgeted with her bracelet. Grandma handed her tea and a slice of cake, I think she was glad
to have something else to focus on.

I took a bite of the rich and moist fruitcake. Now I knew where Mum’s love of cooking came from. It
was ridiculous to think how little I knew about my own family. The woman staring intently at me,
fiddling with the crease of her tunic, my grandmother, was a stranger. The man I wanted her to help
me find, my father, no more than a name. I took a deep breath. ‘Why wouldn’t you tell me where he
lived?’

‘Sophie,’ she said with a sigh. ‘We all made a promise – your mother included – that the situation
would never be discussed again. Leila promised she’d never contact him. The best way to protect him
was for you not to know.’

I looked at her in disbelief. ‘Was that your idea?’

‘To begin with. But Leila saw sense.’

‘I bet she had no choice.’

Candy put her cup and saucer on the coffee table in front of us and stood up.

‘I’ll leave you two alone.’

I waited until Candy had closed the door behind her. ‘I can’t forgive Mum for not telling me. But
I’m beginning to understand why she’s not close to you.’

Grandma shuffled in her chair. ‘It was in everyone’s best interest.’

‘Except mine.’

‘Elliot’s wife is my best friend. Your grandfather and Elliot play golf together every week. We’re
godparents to their eldest daughter. Leila was reckless and thoughtless. We didn’t kick her out when
she was pregnant. She chose to go. We weren’t involved in your upbringing or what she
decided to tell you about your father. As for why she’s chosen to tell you now, I have no
idea…’

‘He sent her a letter. Mum opened it on the night we were celebrating my degree results. She was
drunk. It took her by surprise. You tell him stuff, don’t you?’

‘When he asks,’ she said quietly.

‘Because he knew I was graduating. And Mum certainly hadn’t spoken to him. Seems to me she
kept her promise and he was the one to interfere. So, I’m giving you the choice. You either give me his
address now so I can meet him, no nasty surprises, or somehow I’ll find it by myself, and believe me I’ll
have no qualms about causing trouble then. All I want to do is meet him. I want to know who he is.
That’s it.’

Grandma stood up and went out into the hall. My hands were sweating and my back ached where
I’d been so tense. The lawnmower had stopped and all I could hear was the tick, tick, tick of the clock
on the mantelpiece. She walked back in with a scrap of paper clutched in her hand and passed it to me.

His house was sandwiched between the wild openness of the Peak District and the urban sprawl of
Stockport and Manchester. Candy and I sat in the car on the grass verge a little way from the house. It
was an impressive stone house, very different from Mum’s terrace or my grandparents’ relatively
modern semi-detached. Its backdrop was a valley of trees and the nearest neighbour an
equally impressive house a hundred yards or so away. Grandma had told me that Elliot’s wife
would be home but I couldn’t see anyone. Candy and I sat in comfortable silence, with the
windows wound down, letting the breeze flow through. We were parked in the shadow of a
tree and I felt camouflaged enough in case someone came out of the house. We waited for
over an hour before a silver Mercedes drove past and pulled into the driveway. I shuffled
upright in my seat and pulled my sunglasses on from where they were wedged in my hair. A
man climbed out of the driver’s side. He was tall, with reddish-brown hair and wore grey
suit trousers, a pale shirt and loose tie. I knew he was in his early sixties but he looked
younger. There was an undeniable familiarity about him. If I walked past him in the street, I
might have turned, wondering where I’d seen him before. But it was the woman who got
out of the car with him that struck me. She was too young to be his wife but a good ten
years older than me. She reached into the car and lifted out a sleeping toddler. Her hair
was the same reddish colour as mine, the shape of her face recognisable. We were too far
away to see the colour of her eyes or the shape of her lips but she looked unmistakably like
me.

Mum isn’t joking about going to visit Elliot. Her bag is packed and by the front door before I’ve even
finished breakfast and we’re on the road not long after. There’s a quiet determination about her. She’s
decisive and calm and I go along with her wishes despite feeling it could be a big mistake. When I
needed a father I didn’t have one and now… now I’m going to be a parent myself. What can he teach
me? What it’s like to miss growing up with two parents? I think of Alekos and swallow back
tears.

I get déjà vu as we reach the Peak District National Park, even though it’s Mum in the car beside
me, humming along to the radio, instead of Candy. The sun is still shining as the landscape opens up
and we leave behind any hint of urbanisation for fast roads winding over high hills and
moorland.

‘I came up here to see him after you told me about him,’ I say when we turn on to the Buxton road
towards Stockport. The road is familiar now: the last part of the route Candy and I took from Sheffield
to Elliot’s over eight years ago.

Mum looks at me. ‘You’ve met him?’

I shake my head. ‘I bottled it. He was playing happy families with his daughter and grandchild. I
was with Candy. We turned around and went straight home.’

Mum reaches into her bag on her lap and pulls out her mobile. ‘Not this time.’

‘Who are you phoning?’ I ask.

She raises her hand to shush me and dials a number. I hear it ring and someone answers.

‘It’s Leila,’ Mum says. ‘We’re on our way to see Elliot. You might want to warn him.
We’ll wait outside his house. If he’s home he needs to make his excuses and then drive
somewhere where we can talk. Yes,’ Mum says, glancing at me. ‘Sophie’s with me. Tell him
he’s got fifteen minutes before we get there.’ She ends the call. ‘I always wondered if you’d
try and find him.’ She pulls the mirror down and slicks berry-coloured lipstick across her
lips.