Tangled Lives (9 page)

And then he’d had to watch his sisters shine. Both of them getting As and Bs, Marsha with a couple of A-stars.

He didn’t begrudge them, of course, but the comparison with his dismal results was painful, even today. Added to which, he hated his poxy job at the bar.

‘Being able to earn enough money is what’s important in life.’ His father’s tone had finally been stalwart, making the best of a bad job. And what he said was partially true. But you had to enjoy
how
you earned it, didn’t you? The trouble was that he didn’t know exactly what he did want to do, even at the ripe old age of twenty-six.

‘It was the way she spoke about him, as if he was this god. So good-looking and clever and charming and just like Great-Uncle Terence …’ He mimicked his mother’s voice. ‘Almost as if she was in love with him.’

‘Don’t be dumb, Eddie. Of course she’s not. You’re jealous!’

‘I know I am … and I know it’s pathetic,’ Ed mumbled.

Emma kissed him firmly on the lips. ‘I’m sure he’s totally grisly. Probably up himself and fake sucky to your poor mum. I loathe him already!’

Ed laughed. ‘Yeah, me too.’

‘Will you have to meet him?’

‘I walked out before we reached that point. But I’m sure Mum will do one of her lunches and we’ll all have to gather and play nice. You can bloody well come too.’

‘Oooh, I wouldn’t miss it for the world. I shall hiss at him from the sidelines.’

Ed’s mobile rang. He checked the display. ‘Mum. That’s the third time. I don’t want to speak to her.’

‘Oh, go on, answer it … don’t be mean.’

When Ed made no move to do so, Emma grabbed the phone from his hand.

‘Annie … hi. Yes, sure, he’s right here.’ She mouthed, ‘Be kind,’ as she handed him his phone. Ed made a face but took the call nonetheless.

‘Ed seems to have calmed down a bit, thank goodness.’ Annie closed her phone. But she had heard the tension in her son’s voice and it cut directly into her heart.

‘What did he say?’

‘He said it had been a shock. He said … well, not much really. He didn’t sound particularly happy – or sorry, for that matter – but at least we spoke.’

Richard took her in a firm embrace which put a stop to her slightly manic clearing of the table. ‘You must be pleased it’s all over, that you’ve finally told them.’

‘I am, very … except for Ed. He’s never done that in his life before. I can’t remember even having a row with him, except about tidying his room.’

‘There was bound to be some fallout, Annie. And we did predict it would be Ed. Leave that, I’ll make some tea.’

She sat down reluctantly and watched him fill the kettle and pick two matching mugs from the mug rack, take the lid off the Chinese-pattern tin caddy, rinse out the teapot with warm water, open the fridge for the milk and the drawer for the spoon. The familiar ritual itself was as comforting as any tea would be.

‘It’ll be better when they’ve met. I’m sure they’ll get on.
It’ll be good for Ed to have a brother … and for Daniel too.’

Richard turned from his task. ‘Whoa, don’t get too carried away here. They might get on, of course, but you can’t manufacture family.’

‘You sound like Marjory … manage your expectations blah, blah.’ Why did everyone have to be so cautious, so negative? Daniel was charming. She couldn’t imagine anyone not liking him.

‘Marjory’s a wise old bird. You should listen to her.’

‘I do! But I just want everyone to like Daniel, to welcome him into the family. That’s not so much to ask, is it?’

Richard didn’t reply and went back to measuring out the spoonfuls of tea.

They carried their mugs up to the ground-floor sitting room. This was Annie’s favourite room. She had painted it in very pale cornflower blue, more a wash than a colour, the sofa and deep armchairs were rich cream, the stripped pine floor covered partly by a Turkish rug in a darker blue and rust. It was always peaceful, and was now flooded with afternoon light as they settled in their chairs.

‘So this Carnegie guy,’ Richard began, not looking at Annie. ‘Will you get in touch with him?’

‘If Daniel asks me to.’ Daniel had replied to her text. They were meeting the following Saturday.

She watched her husband’s face go still. ‘You don’t mind, do you?’

Richard raised his eyebrows, gave a quick shrug. ‘No … no, of course not. Why would I?’

‘Obviously I hate the idea of seeing him, but it’ll just be once, to fill him in. Then it’s up to Daniel.’

He nodded slowly. ‘What was he like? Charles? You never said.’

‘I thought you didn’t want to know. I’d have told you if you’d asked.’

Richard was silent.

‘Richard?’

‘Were you … were you in love with him?’

She stared at his bent head, felt the tension behind his question. Please, she thought, don’t make this more difficult than it already is.

‘I was eighteen. I thought I was. As you do at that age.’

‘But you don’t regret your decision not to tell him about the baby?’

She still, after all these years, found it hard to answer that.

‘Charles is the long-dead past, Richard. I’m married to you and we have three beautiful children. How could I regret something that might have prevented that?’

He nodded, but still there lingered a measure of tension in his face.

‘I wouldn’t see him if I didn’t have to,’ she assured him, her voice quiet but firm in her attempt to assuage his fears. ‘But you can’t tell a man over the phone that he has a grownup son he’s never met.’

Richard gave a rueful grin. ‘I suppose not.’

7

Annie saw her mother through the window from Jermyn Street, sitting at her usual table in Fortnum & Mason’s Fountain Restaurant. She loved this place. She could remember when it had been styled as a soda fountain, with dark red plush decor and a bar with high stools, from the times when she’d been brought here as a child, a special treat before returning to boarding school. She would have a Dusty Road sundae, with vanilla and coffee ice cream, macaroons, whipped cream and delicious butterscotch sauce. They still had it on the menu, but the taste had changed. Or maybe she had, and she never ordered it now.

‘Darling, how lovely.’ Eleanor Westbury smiled briefly as Annie bent to kiss her mother’s cheek.

‘This place,’ Eleanor made a dismissive gesture with her right hand, eyeing the most recent refurbishment with rank disapproval. ‘I simply don’t understand it. They spend all this money, and it’s still beige.’

‘It’s not quite … more greeny …’ Annie looked around. ‘No, you’re right, it’s definitely beige. They probably did a psychological survey and discovered beige was the most sympathetic colour for digestion.’

Eleanor snorted. ‘It’s not sympathetic, it’s enervating.’ She wagged her finger at her daughter. ‘And it’s everywhere. Maybe there’s a glut, like fish in the days before those dreadful foreigners stole all our stocks.’

Annie laughed. Her mother was awful, but in this instance she was also right. The colour, or lack of it, was a bit depressing.

‘You should write and complain.’

‘And have the place close again for months while they find another shade? Where am I supposed to have lunch?’ Eleanor sighed. ‘No, one must put a brave face on it. Just accept this is the way things are nowadays.’

‘Beige?’ Annie teased, to receive a sharp look from her mother.

The waiter, a plump, older Italian in a dark suit, who had been corralled by her mother to do her every bidding on her weekly visits, came to the table and bowed obsequiously to Annie. ‘Madam, it’s good to see you again.’

‘Hello, Giorgio. Good to see you too.’

‘Are you ready to order, or shall I give you a minute?’ Giorgio asked with a broad wink – their private joke. Annie and her mother always had the same thing: Eleanor, a single Welsh rarebit with a tomato, mayonnaise on the side; Annie a double with bacon. They would share a
green salad, and Eleanor would finish with a black filter coffee, Annie a strong cappuccino.

‘I’ll shock you one day and order a ham sandwich.’ Annie smiled at Giorgio as he removed the wine glasses from the table.

‘Now,’ said Eleanor, settling comfortably in her beige chair, ‘to what do I owe this honour?’

‘Does a daughter need a reason for having lunch with her mother?’

‘She doesn’t need to, but she usually does.’ Eleanor’s smile was benign.

Annie couldn’t help laughing. ‘OK, you win.’

Her mother’s blue eyes, faded now by age but just as beady, watched her daughter expectantly. Eleanor, for all her protestations to the contrary, loved gossip.

‘Well, I saw him. My … my other son.’

Eleanor raised her eyebrows.

Annie waited while Giorgio poured tap water into the two tumblers. ‘He’s the spit of Uncle Terence.’

For a moment her mother’s expression clouded. Eleanor had been very close to her brother. Closer, Annie had often thought, than she was to Ralph, her husband. Annie knew Eleanor still badly missed Terence, ten years after his death. Eleanor’s brother was all that she complained her husband was not: a man of distinction and probity.

Annie remembered her father as charismatic, certainly: handsome, tall, blond, a chain-smoker, always laughing, and twanging his scarlet braces to amuse her. But
probity, it turned out, was not one of his virtues. He hadn’t been home much, but when he was, he brought energy and a semblance of happiness to the stifled atmosphere of the house. Annie couldn’t say she had known him properly – not like her own children knew Richard – but then neither parent had been particularly involved in her early upbringing. That had been left to a succession of nannies, none of whom lasted long under Eleanor’s iron hand.

At six o’clock, after she’d had her tea of bread and butter, cake and warm milk, the current nanny would take her down to see her father, on the rare days he came home in time. Just in from work as a headhunter in the City, he would already have a whisky in his hand, the ice cubes clinking merrily in the cut-glass tumbler, the high-ceilinged drawing room pungent with smoke. For a while he would be all hers, balancing her on his pinstriped knee, teasing and tickling her, and playing Strauss waltzes very loud on the gramophone as he danced the length of the parquet floor in his silk socks, Annie high in his arms. Her mother would sit and watch from her armchair, but make no move to join in. Then, when she’d been there barely half an hour, the drawing-room door would open slowly.

‘Time for bed,’ the nanny would say. And her father would wrap her in a tight, smothering hug, whisper on his smoky, whisky’d breath, ‘I love you, Annie-bee,’ then hand her over. She never wanted to leave him, but knew better than to cause a fuss.

But to Eleanor, as Annie later discovered, Ralph was a useless drunk, a waster who’d been over-indulged by family money, who spent most nights boozing and losing his fortune at illegal gambling parties which one of his aristocratic friends set up. And her mother had a point. Her father died leaving his family nothing but massive debts.

Giorgio arrived with the Welsh rarebits, setting them down on the white tablecloth with a Mediterranean flourish. ‘Salad and mayonnaise on its way,’ he said, before Eleanor had a chance to remind him.

‘So what does he do? Your son,’ Eleanor asked. Her mother always wanted to know what someone ‘did’. That and where they went to school.

‘He went to Cambridge, then into advertising. Then gave it all up to write plays.’

‘Not a very sensible choice for a bright man. Unless he’s successful, of course.’ Eleanor’s look was sceptical.

Annie shook her head. ‘I don’t think so. Not yet.’

Her mother harrumphed. ‘No wonder he’s so keen to hunt you down.’

Annie didn’t react. ‘He’s wonderful, Mother. But it was strange, knowing he was my son, seeing Uncle Terence in him … yet not knowing him at all.’

Eleanor was silent, her head bent as she sliced small pieces of rarebit and carefully added a smear of mayonnaise with her knife.

‘Do you regret it?’ her mother asked.

‘Seeing him again? No, of course not. Although I never thought I’d get the chance.’

‘I meant giving him away,’ Eleanor corrected, not meeting her eye.

Never, in the thirty-five years since the baby’s birth, had Eleanor asked her this question. There had always been the assumption that the adoption was the right thing and brooked not even a discussion, let alone regret. Now she posed the question reluctantly, as if she were getting something over with but didn’t really want to hear the answer. And although Annie had the opportunity to say how she felt at last, she hesitated. For years she had blamed Eleanor, as she blamed Charles Carnegie. Easy to do. But in that moment she couldn’t help remembering how relieved she herself had felt in the weeks after the adoption. Relieved in an ashamed way. The regret came soon after, a gradual thing which crept up on her and refused to go away.

‘I regret it, yes,’ she replied, slowly. ‘He was my baby. I believe it’s a terrible thing to do to a child, unless your circumstances are dire.’ Her mother’s gaze remained fixed. ‘But it was my choice. I could have kept him, and I didn’t.’

Eleanor raised an eyebrow, her expression full of disdain, no doubt for what she saw as Annie’s misplaced sentimentality.

‘Damn good thing too. It would have ruined your life.’

‘Why?’

‘I hardly need to explain, Annie.’ Her mother looked around for Giorgio.

Conversation over. But Annie remembered her real purpose, and held her temper.

‘You know the Carnegies? From the school?’ Annie spoke lightly, with a lack of emotion that did her mother credit. ‘We had an order at the bakery for an anniversary cake. A diamond wedding. The name was Carnegie, and I wondered if it might be them?’ She paused. ‘Of course, there must be millions of Carnegies.’

‘Not millions. It’s certainly not a common name’ her mother said.

Annie persevered. ‘The order was placed by their daughter, but her name was Laura Mackenzie. I remember Venetia, but was there another sister?’

Eleanor’s attention sparked up. Annie knew she couldn’t resist reminiscing about anything to do with her beloved Westbury Academy.