The Lost Child (23 page)

Dan let her hand go and watched her walk from the room, her frame as taught as a bow. He had the feeling he’d have to ply her with a whole bottle of whisky before the night was out. If only to stop her battering her newfound brother to death for his incomprehensible level of self-absorption.

As soon as she had gone Tony leaned forward in his chair, ‘While she’s gone, there’s something I’ve got to tell you mate.’

Dan wondered why these men kept thinking that he was their mate. What kind of asshole did they think he was?

‘Go on,’ he said, waiting for the next gem to fall from Tony’s lips.

Tony had the good grace to look a little shamefaced before he spoke, ‘It’s Fern, my other sister. She did an interview today with one of the papers, an exclusive. She was kicking off at me about where Brodie was staying because Miriam wouldn’t tell her. Only I think the press might have got wind that they’re here.’

Dan closed his eyes and flung his head back against the sofa, groaning. He couldn’t believe what was coming out of this idiot’s mouth.

‘I’m sorry mate, I had no choice but to tell her.’

Dan was a great believer in there always being a choice, ‘Really, why’s that?’

‘Well, there’s something else. It’s going to come out anyway, so maybe it’s better coming from me. You see, Fern is Brodie’s real mum. That’s why I had no choice but to tell her. I mean she has some rights.’

Dan took in a long, patient breath. Maybe he would try some of that whisky himself. ‘So does Elaine have to break that to her too?’

‘Break what to who?’ Brodie said from the doorway. She sidled in wearing her onesie, her hair still damp from the bath. ‘All right Tone?’ she said as she shuffled on cloth-covered feet to the other chair.

Jesus, Dan thought as he looked at her curled up in the chair, she’s only a baby herself. At that moment he wondered if her life could get any worse.

‘Brode, I’ve got some news love, it’s about Fern. It might come as a bit of a shock to you, so I don’t want you to get upset OK?’ Tony began, looking at Dan for reassurance.

Brodie was picking at a loose thread on the leg of her onesie, ‘Tone if you’re about to tell me that Mum isn’t my real mum and that Fern is, don’t worry about it. I already know. I’ve known for years,’ she said baldly, seizing the thread and snapping it off with her fingers. ‘Only she isn’t my mum is she? She’s just a pisshead that doesn’t give a shit.’

Both men sat there in stunned silence.

‘If you’re wondering how I found out, I worked it out. It wasn’t hard. First of all it didn’t add up. If Mum, Shirley mum that is, had me when she was forty odd, who was my dad? Your dad buggered off years ago, before I was born. And Mum might be a lot of things but she was never a tart. Fern on the other hand is the biggest tart going, so it stood to reason. Anyway, I found my birth certificate in Mum’s bedroom. It said “Mother: Shirley Fern Miller and Father: unknown”. That told me two things. First, Mum’s middle name is Jane and second she has to be the worst forger on the planet. A monkey could have told you that she’d added her name to make it look like she was my mum.’

Dan had to admit to himself that he was impressed. The sanguinity of the scatty, bedraggled midget was admirable. He was also beginning to think that Jean Ellis had done Elaine a favour. God knows who she would be if she’d grown up with this shower.

‘You all right about it then, Brode?’ Tony asked, looking both relieved and incredulous.

Brodie bit her thumbnail and shrugged, ‘It is what it is. Sometimes you get diamonds, sometimes you get rocks. I wish Mum was my real mum, then Elaine would be my real sister. As it is I dunno what she is, seems pretty gutting that she’s your sister and not mine. Is she my aunt? I don’t suppose it matters really, she’s mine more than she’s anybody’s. I found her.’

Dan wanted to laugh, but settled instead for shaking his head in amused disbelief. He stood up, ‘Excuse me will you? I’m just going to see where Elaine has got to. Want another beer while I’m up Tony?’

‘Cheers mate, nice one.’

*

Elaine was still loitering in the kitchen, her fingers drumming on the worktop. She turned as Dan entered, her face flooding with relief when she saw it was him. ‘This is unbearable,’ she said.

Dan went to the fridge and took out more beer, ‘Did you hear all that?’

She nodded her head, ‘Am I really supposed to admit that I’m related to these people? I don’t have a problem with Brodie, she’s a child, but him? Fern?’

Dan just looked at her; he didn’t know what to say. Instead he put the beer down and put his arms around her, crushing her face into his chest in an attempt to stem the tears that he knew were coming.

‘Can’t we just wind the clock back a week and make it all go away?’ she mumbled into the cloth of his shirt.

‘No, we can’t, I wish we could. Besides, I’d still be looking at having to buy you dinner before getting you into my bed tonight,’ he quipped, hoping the humour might lighten her mood.

It seemed to work because she pinched him, ‘I’m sorry, I’m being a complete pain in the ass,’ she said.

He pulled away from her and grabbed the beer, ’No, you’re not, but he is. Right, pour yourself a drink and grit your teeth, we’re going back in there and we are going to do this graciously, for Brodie’s sake.’

‘OK, for Brodie’s sake,’ she agreed.

*

Tony finally made the decision to go up to bed at eleven, closely followed by Brodie. Elaine breathed a huge sigh of relief. It had been an arduous night. Despite her origins she could feel no connection to the man, or see any connection between him and Brodie. She thought of Shirley languishing in the hospital and wondered how the woman was coping, if she was coping at all. Were any of them coping?

From her corner on Dan’s sofa she watched him as he cleared away the empty bottles and glasses, the contents of which had lubricated a very difficult evening. The little devil of doubt, which was grafted onto her shoulder, whispered in her ear, demanding to know what on earth Dan could see in her. She was a mess.

He was a good man and deserved better than a screwed up woman and a screwed up kid riding the coattails of his good nature. It occurred to her that she should leave, and take Brodie with her. She should allow this man to have his uncluttered, uncomplicated life back. The devil told her that she wasn’t that brave, or that generous, and she hated the little creature for its honesty.

In the kitchen Dan was putting the last of Tony’s bottles in the bin, he looked up as Elaine came in. ‘He can’t half sink a few’ he said.

‘I think we all did tonight, even Brodie looked like she could have used a drop of the hard stuff at times. That’s the first time in my life that I’ve ever relied on alcohol to get me through something.’

Dan turned to her, ‘But you got through it, that’s the important thing. By the way, the press know you’re here, I imagine they will be here by morning. It appears that Fern sold everyone out.’

Elaine groaned, ‘I am sooooo looking forward to meeting her.’

‘Yep, she sounds like such a sweetheart,’ Dan said with a laugh.

Reaching up, she put her hand over the scar, suffocating and silencing the devil which fed on it. ‘Dan, in all seriousness I think Brodie and I should leave. You don’t deserve to be embroiled in all of this, it’s not fair. I can’t believe you’ve done so much for us as it is.’

Dan rounded on her. ‘Will you stop with this? I’m doing what I think is right and what I want to do. Stop feeling so bloody responsible for everyone, if I want to make it my problem, then I will. It’s a choice not an obligation. Now if you’re saying you don’t want me to be involved, that’s your choice and I’ll respect it.’ He faced her with a mixture of exasperation and frustration. ‘Is that what you’re saying?’

Elaine was taken aback. She had expected him to be relieved that she was going to let him off the hook. ‘No. I… I mean, well… why on earth would you take this on?’

Dan balled his fists. ‘Christ woman, are you really going to make me say this, now?’

‘Say what?’ She was genuinely confused.

He turned away from her and leaned against a cupboard, banging his head against the wood.

‘Dan, what? What is it?’ She was worried now, the tension in the room was escalating and it was raising her anxiety exponentially.

‘And I had you down as an intelligent woman,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘I can’t believe you’re making me say this, I thought you knew. I bloody love you, you stupid woman. Ever since you threw orange squash in my face and your bloody mother told me I couldn’t see you, you’ve been up here,’ he tapped the side of his head, ‘getting in the way of everything and making me feel like an idiot for not being able to get you out of my mind. I’m a grown man Elaine, I should be married, have kids, but I never did, because of you. I’m a grown man who couldn’t get over a childhood crush. Do you have any idea how many women have had to suffer because they weren’t you? You’ve been squeezing the life out of my masculinity for twenty bloody years and I ought to hate you for it, but no, you come trotting back into my life and here I am, mooning after you like a love-sick puppy. Do you have any idea what it’s like to be a man and have a woman hold you by the balls for your entire adult life and then hear that she hasn’t got a clue?’

It was speech made without romance, without hearts, flowers or sentiment and it left Elaine reeling.

‘Well, don’t look so surprised,’ he said, looking like a man who had just condemned himself to a lifetime of ridicule.

‘But why? Why me?’ was all she could say.

‘Do we have to have a bloody post mortem on everything? I don’t know, you’re beautiful, you’re funny, you’re kind and you’re also seriously dense sometimes – I just do, and any more of this and I’ll begin to wish I didn’t. Now, can we please just go to bed before I end up punching something out of sheer frustration?’

Without speaking she watched him as he moved round the house, locking the doors and switching out the lights. Then she followed him up the stairs, nursing a sense that beneath the awfulness, beneath the torrent of misery and despite the devil on her shoulder, she probably loved him too.

When the lights were out, the bedroom door was shut, and the house was quiet in the night, Dan’s coat slid off its hook and slumped to the floor. A few grains of Jean, picked up from the boot of Elaine’s car, dislodged from the fabric and settled themselves into a crack in the floorboards. From there they seeded and put down roots, spreading a fine web of doubt and discontent throughout the house. Jean had not been a woman who had ever given up what she coveted so easily.

Chapter Fourteen

Elaine peeped through a tiny gap in the bedroom curtains and groaned. The press had arrived. Men with long lens cameras were scanning the house and mobile camera units jostled for position along the road.

‘Come back to bed, it’s too early,’ Dan said, pulling back the quilt.

‘There are hundreds of them, what are we going to do?’

Dan let out a weary sigh, ‘Drink our coffee and enjoy what bit of the morning we can before one of us has to face them? I rang Jack Pearson last night after I found out about Fern. He’s coming over this morning. I think we should let him speak to them.’

Elaine nodded; it seemed like a good idea, ‘It’s like being under siege.’

‘I’m going to have to get Tony out of here somehow.’

‘Hmmm, that’s not going to be easy,’ Elaine said chewing her lip. ‘If it were me, I’d go out through the back garden then call a taxi to pick him up. I don’t fancy any of our prospects if you go through the front. Even if you don’t talk to them, you and the van will be all over the news.’

‘True, and that’s not a bad idea,’ Dan said.

Elaine flopped back onto the bed and picked up her coffee, she had spent too long at the window and the liquid was tepid, wincing with distaste she put it down. ‘I’m going to have to face them sooner or later I suppose. I haven’t switched my phone on since, well… since,’ she said, waving an arm as if it would illustrate what she meant. Even a double dose of the cold light of day hadn’t made accepting what had happened any easier, and she still felt that if she named the event it would make it indelible. Some tiny irrational part of her was still hoping that it would all go away. Like a small child playing peep-o she felt that if she couldn’t see them, they couldn’t see her.

‘So, how are you feeling about everything? We haven’t talked much about it,’ Dan asked, wary of stepping into uncharted territory.

Elaine interpreted his reticence as an indication that he didn’t really want to know. It didn’t occur to her that he might have been cautious because he was concerned for her feelings.

‘Oh, I’m coming to terms with it, I’ll be fine,’ she said, knowing full well that it was a lie. She was angry, lividly angry. All of the people responsible were milling about in her head like nightmare creatures looming up out of the dark. Even though she couldn’t see their faces, and had no memory other than a single, half imagined flash of something, at that moment she hated them all. If there were a way she could run away and hide, she would take it. If Shirley hadn’t left her that day, if Albert hadn’t been ill, if Miriam hadn’t gone to help, if Fern and Tony hadn’t resented her… she shook her head; where had that come from? Right now, it was she who resented them.

From somewhere in the depths of the house she heard Brodie stir and cross the landing, the old boards creaking under her slight weight. How this small, curious girl had managed to inveigle herself into her emotional landscape was a mystery. Elaine was not a woman who invited intimacy with ease; she had never been allowed to learn how. Perhaps Mandy would have been, but given what she knew about her ‘family’ so far, Elaine had her doubts. Despite her issues with the woman who had brought her up, the current demonization of Jean as the thief of Mandy’s childhood struck her as ironic. Would Mandy have fared better with Shirley Miller, or was the absence of Mandy the catalyst that had changed everyone’s fortunes for the worse? Elaine didn’t know. All she was sure of was that she didn’t want to be either Elaine or Mandy but that sooner or later she would have to choose. Elaine had Dan, a career and prior to this a clear and free future. Mandy seemed to have qualities of mythical perfection born of rose tinted glasses and retrospect, if what Elaine had heard and read were to be relied upon. In the weak light of early morning, with its hinted suggestion of yet another bounteous sun-soaked day, Elaine felt bitter towards any such promise. Neither option could be sustainable yet it remained a Hobson’s choice, as far as the world was concerned she was Mandy.