Coming Home (27 page)

Tom looked sadly at me. ‘No, Evie. Not only biologically. Those weekends he spent on “lecture tours”? He didn’t go
on lecture tours. Well, not that many. He lived with Mum and me. In our house. In Maidstone.’

‘Seriously, Tom, I like you, but you need to get a grip. I know it must be hard for you, knowing that Dad chose to stay with Mum and me, not you. It can’t have been easy growing up without a father, but really.’ I stared at him. He looked so normal, but was obviously delusional.

Tom shook his head. ‘Evie, think about it. Think about all the weekends he disappeared after work on a Friday and came back only on Sunday night. He wasn’t touring the country, Evie, he was at home with Mum and me.’

‘No.’ I was shaking my head. ‘If that was true, he’d have left something for you in his Will. And he didn’t. I’ve seen it. You and your mum aren’t even mentioned.’

‘We don’t need to be in the Will. He set up a Trust for us.’

I stood up. ‘Sorry, Tom. I’m not buying it.’ I picked up my bag, my coat, and prepared to leave—if he had nothing sensible to say, we were done. I was so disappointed, bitterly disappointed. I’d spent hours wondering what my relationship with Tom might be like, but never in a million years would I have guessed it would all turn sour. What was he trying to do? Claim something from Dad’s estate?

Tom stood up, too, tried to get between me and the door. ‘He played Mastermind with me, too.’ His voice was gentle. ‘Four reds? His default position?’

Well, that was true. But I may have mentioned that in an email. Still, I paused and Tom grabbed the opportunity. ‘Your trip to Corfu? Did you ever wonder how he knew the area so well? Knew where to stay, where to eat? He’d
already been with Mum. I was only little, but Mum has the photos.’

I slumped back into the armchair and Tom paced the room, nibbling at his thumb.

‘My favourite bedtime story?
Paddington—
same as yours, right? Dad put on that funny voice when he read it to me, too. He read it to me every night he was with us, till I was too old. And even then some, too.’

He paused. Still I couldn’t say anything. My head was shaking in disbelief. Could Tom be making all this up? Could he be? What kind of a person would make this up? What sort of a stalker was he?

‘If you’d talked properly with Mum the day you phoned her, she’d have told you the same. She actually wanted to be the one to tell you. It wasn’t supposed to be me who told you.’ He laughed bitterly.

I struggled to comprehend what Tom was saying. I had to admit it could be true. But how would we not have noticed? It was obvious: with his work, Dad had had the perfect cover. We never expected him to be home at the weekends. He could have had ten wives, thirty children and a house in Spain and we wouldn’t have known. I couldn’t believe—didn’t want to believe—that Dad would have lied to us for twenty years. If he was living a lie, we all were. How would he have kept that up for so long? I was finding it hard to understand the enormity of what Tom was saying he’d done.

‘But I don’t get it. Why would he do that? Why would he lie to us? Why wouldn’t he just choose one way or the
other? There’s no shame in divorce these days.’ I stood up again, ready to leave.

‘Funnily enough, I grew up believing that Dad was away all week for work. I guess he had his reasons. Maybe he loved us all in his own weird way.’

I said nothing. Tom carried on: ‘I also couldn’t believe he’d been living with another family. My first question was why the bloody hell he couldn’t just choose one family and stick with them. We talked about it a lot. I was really angry with him, Evie. You have to understand that. I thought he was weak. I was furious; I raged at him, I despised him. I wouldn’t acknowledge him in the house; I even tried to run away. But Dad argued that he couldn’t leave your mum because she was too fragile.’ Tom was speaking fast, trying to get everything in. ‘He loved you and he was scared that if he left, your mum wouldn’t let him see you any more. Or that she’d do something stupid and you’d lose her as well as your brother. He said she’d tried in the past …’ He stopped himself, then carried on. ‘You were always his priority, Evie. Dad cared a lot about your mum as the mother of his children but honestly? He didn’t stay with her for love.’

‘That’s ridiculous! How can you say that?’ But even as I said it, I realised it could have been true. Mum had been far from stable in the years after the accident. Maybe she would have tried to kill herself again. Maybe she would have made Dad cut off all contact; I didn’t know. It was all too much. I didn’t want to hear any more.

‘I’m sorry. I should never have come. This was a really bad
idea. At least we tried. What were we thinking, imagining this could work?’ I picked up my bag and rushed to the door, ripping it open and almost falling through it.

‘Evie! Wait!’ Tom shouted.

I ran down the narrow staircase and straight through the tea room. I tore open the front door, sending the bell jangling, and tore out onto the street. I could hear Tom’s footsteps clattering behind me. Looking both ways, I chose right and dodged down an alley that ran behind the tea rooms, my feet slipping on the wet cobblestones. In the delivery bay that lay behind, I doubled up against the wall behind the bins while I got my breath back. The stench of rotten food filled the air.

‘Evie! Evie!’ Tom had followed me down the alley. I held my breath, hoping he’d go away, but suddenly there he was, standing in front of me, hands on hips, breathing hard. A fine drizzle misted us both.

‘Go away!’

‘He loved you very much.’

‘I don’t want to hear it!’

But Tom persisted. ‘He said he’d already lost one child and he couldn’t bear the thought of losing you, too.’ His voice was earnest. ‘He wanted to do the right thing by all of us, I think.’

‘So he split his time between us? How very convenient for him! Two women! Two families! My poor mum!’ I looked up at Tom, disgusted.

‘I know it’s no excuse, but she doesn’t know. He was always very careful.’

‘Duplicitous? Devious?’ I spat. ‘Anyway, he wasn’t
that
careful—I managed to find out after about, ooh, three days? Without even looking? He’s lucky Mum wasn’t great with computers!’

‘He used different names. He was Rob Peters when he was with us. I wanted to come round to your house and meet you and your mum when I found out. But they begged me not to say anything.’ Tom’s words were staccato like gunfire; they rained down on me like bullets. ‘Mum hated the idea that he was someone else’s husband. She didn’t want to cause a scandal; she tried to accept that he’d only ever be a weekend husband to her.’

‘Why did she accept it at all? If she felt that bad about stealing someone’s husband, why didn’t she let him go?’

‘She wanted me to grow up knowing Dad. But mainly I think because she really loved him. She was crazy about him till the day he died—probably still is. He was the love of her life. She was completely in love with him—and him with her.’

I shook my head. ‘You’re wrong! Of course he loved Mum. He stayed with her. He didn’t leave her. That tells you everything!’ Even as I said it, I wondered, Had he really loved her all this time? Or stayed with us out of duty? Convenience?

Tom looked at his feet, nudged at a piece of loose stone with the tip of his shoe. ‘There’s just one more thing, Evie. I can’t get this far and not tell you everything.’

‘Oh please. What more could there be? How could this be any worse than it already is?’

‘Mum’s pregnant. We’re going to get a baby brother or sister. Mum found out just before Dad died …’

I shoved past Tom and stormed down the alley.

He shouted after me. ‘He didn’t know! She hadn’t had a chance to tell him!’

As if that made it any bloody better.

I
slumped in the car, unaware of my surroundings, as Clem drove me to the station. She’d been hovering near the door, waiting for me after I’d crashed past her earlier and now she drove in silence, patting my hand when we stopped at the traffic lights.

All I could hear was Tom’s voice in my head: ‘Mum’s pregnant, Mum’s pregnant, Mum’s pregnant’. I squeezed my fingers against my temples, trying to stop the loop from playing. The fact that this woman was pregnant scared me: a baby was immediate, it was real, and it was the future. What would it do to Mum? I scrunched my head into my hands and moaned.

Things had started off so well with Tom. That morning of hope in Harry’s Café now seemed a lifetime away. I’d imagined we were going to forge a glorious relationship and now everything lay in tatters—not just my relationship with my new brother, but my memories of my father, too. Dad may have been distant, but I’d never have guessed he’d do something like this. I’d built it up in my mind that Tom’s birth was just a one-night stand, a lapse at a critical time, but Dad had lied to Mum and me for twenty years. In a matter
of minutes, Tom had redrawn the landscape of my childhood. My life, since Graham had died, had been a sham; my family’s existence based on lies. I hadn’t known my father at all. The man I’d called Dad had been nothing more than a pencil sketch—and Tom had just rubbed him out.

I shrunk back in the car seat as I remembered Tom talking about how Dad had been with him. Dad had stopped reading bedtime stories to me when Graham had died, yet he’d read
Paddington
to Tom until he was ‘too old’ for it. He’d also played Mastermind with Tom. I felt like such a fool for writing those emails to him. What was going to happen now? Was my fledgling relationship with Tom over already?

Back in Woodside, I took the bus to the edge of the fields that flanked the town’s little river. From the road, a narrow footpath led through a thicket of tall trees to the fields and the water beyond. The path was smaller and narrower than I remembered from my childhood and neither did it look as safe and inviting as it had twenty years ago. Checking my mobile phone was on in my pocket, I set off towards the river.

Mum and Dad used to bring us here on sunny Saturday afternoons. Dad would lug the heavy picnic basket and Mum would carry the groundsheet and blanket while Graham and I skipped along, constantly stopping to adjust the fishing nets and gaudy plastic buckets we were carrying in the hope of catching tiny minnows, tadpoles and other minute
river-dwelling life. It was a long walk from home and my legs would often be aching before we even got to the open fields that spilled down to the water’s edge. Although a river in name, it was essentially a small, fast-flowing stream, which, at the part where we used to play, could almost entirely be traversed in children’s wellies.

Dad had loved nothing more than being by water and I long suspected the Saturday afternoon outings with sandwiches, biscuits and orange squash—and a flask of tea for the grown-ups—enjoyed on the grey groundsheet with the car blanket over the top, were more about him watching the water and daydreaming than any thought of fun for us.

Still, we loved it, loved the challenge of catching something and even the long trudge home at dusk, the thought of hot, buttered crumpets reeling us back in to the warmth and light. These outings were as much a part of the furniture of my childhood as school and Brownies.

Today, the trees looked unfriendly, their bare, winter shapes stark against the cold, grey sky. When the footpath ended, I followed a well-walked trail through wild grass down to the part of the river where it widened and shallowed—the prime fishing spot for small children and, I think, just downstream from the place where Luca had photographed the swans at dawn.

I stood where the water licked the gravel at the shallowest part of the riverbed, and I took ten deep breaths in, expelling them slowly in an attempt to rid myself of the stress and tension of the disastrous meeting with Tom.

‘I know, by the way,’ I said to the water that scurried over the shingle. ‘I know about your other family; your double life.’ Between each sentence, I paused before carrying on. ‘I bet you never imagined we’d find out? Mum and me … Why didn’t you tell us?’ I stared at the river, willing myself to see some connection to Dad in the movement of the water. ‘Were you really trying to protect us, or were you too much of a coward? You couldn’t face it, could you?’ I kicked angrily at the gravel scattering it into the water. The sky was unforgiving. ‘What a mess. What. A. Mess. Now what am I supposed to do?’ I kicked out again, enjoying the violence of the movement. ‘You should have told Mum. Why should I do your dirty work? Why should I clear up your bloody mess? Thanks a lot!’

The water continued to run, as it always had, under the bridge, its fast current already starting to push back the gravel I’d disturbed with my kicks. A raindrop hit my cheek. Another. I took one last look at the water, then turned to start the long walk home.

Mum was in the garden with Richard when I finally got back. By the looks of it, he’d managed to get hold of a scarifier: he was attacking the moss with gusto while Mum hovered about, raking leaves. They barely noticed me arrive. The walk had helped to dissipate some of my anger and I slunk quietly up to my room and lay on the bed, my mind playing over events from the past, replaying them now in the light of my new knowledge. It was horrible
to think that every day of my life, from when I was nine till his death, Dad had duped Mum and me. Had done it deliberately.

Try as I might, though, I couldn’t find any clues; Dad had never acted odd in any way. I hadn’t suspected a thing when he’d gone off on his ‘lecture tours’; I wondered if Mum had. Had we really both been so blind? Or had Dad been that good at covering his tracks?

The phone interrupted my thoughts. Luca’s name was flashing on the screen.

‘How was your meeting with Tom?’ he asked. ‘I’ve been thinking about you.’

‘Don’t ask.’

‘That bad?’

‘Worse.’ A bark of a laugh.

‘How about you tell me everything over dinner?’

‘Oh, Luca. I really don’t feel like dinner. You know, dressing up, conversation blah, blah. I just feel like crying. On my bed. On my own.’

‘Therapy,’ said Luca. ‘Think of it as therapy. Don’t do your hair. Come as you are. Honestly, you’ll feel better after talking to Dr Luca. My treat.’