The Making of Us (30 page)

‘Oh, nothing much,’ she said. ‘I’ve been at Libby’s all morning. With the baby. That was nice. Oh, and I went to your flat. There was some mail. Just the usual junk. And this.’ She rifled through her handbag for the hand-written envelope. ‘Look,’ she said, passing it to him. ‘It’s from France.’ She attempted to keep her voice buoyant, but she knew even as she passed it to him that the letter might not be a welcome development.

She watched his face carefully and saw it tremble and then sink. He sighed. ‘Ah,’ he said eventually, nodding his head up and down, very slowly and knowingly. ‘Here it is.’

She looked at him expectantly.

‘It is my brother. Either my mother is dead or she is about to die or my brother is dying or maybe I am wrong and something truly
wonderful
is happening …’ He sighed again and tore through the paper of the envelope with one gnarled finger. She watched him read, his dull eyes skimming the lines fast and then slow and then fast again. He came to the end of the missive and then he laid it down upon his lap and stared at it unhappily.

Maggie caught her breath, her fingers lightly touching the skin of her neck.

‘Well,’ Daniel said eventually, ‘he is coming. My brother is coming.’

‘Oh,’ said Maggie, who had expected worse, ‘really?’

‘Yes. Next week. He is coming next week. And expects to find me in my nice cosy flat, waiting for him with a bottle of Sancerre and a cheery welcome.’

‘He doesn’t know that you’re ill?’

‘No. He does not. This is the first I have heard of my brother in almost five years. Last time we were in touch I was fit as a flea.’

‘Oh, your poor brother, he’s going to get such a nasty shock.’

‘Pah! No! It is I who will have the nasty shock, not he. I was the one who chose to live elsewhere. I was the one who chose not to be there any more. And now he is coming here. To my place. Never once in thirty years has my brother come to this country. It is all too much. He cannot speak a word of the language. He has never left France, except once, to pick up a dog in Belgium. Some small thing, I don’t know, with hair like this …’ He described a quiff with his fingers. ‘Anyway. No. It is I who should be worried. It is I who will be
invaded
.’

‘Can’t you just …
not reply
?’ Maggie suggested, though it went against her nature. ‘He’ll never know where you are.’

‘No.’ Daniel closed his eyes for a count of three and then opened them again. Maggie feared that she was trying his patience, and swallowed. ‘No,’ he continued. ‘He is my brother. I am dying. The fact that he has chosen this time of all times to come and see me … it must mean something. I am weak. I will see him. But, Maggie May, please can I trouble you once again? I am so sorry but please could you send him a message, from your computer? I will write it down for you, in French. Please. Just this and then nothing more. I will ask you for nothing more. You have already done too much.’

‘No!’ said Maggie, with unexpected emphasis. ‘No, I haven’t done too much. I haven’t done anything, Daniel.’

‘How can you say that? You have been my God-sent angel, Mrs Smith. Truly. Now, please, can you ask that lovely fat girl called Pippa to come in here and help get me back into my wheelchair? My vertical time is officially over. It is time to be horizontal. Although, sadly, not with you …’

Maggie’s school French was sufficient for her to translate at least eighty percent of Daniel’s clumsily scrawled message to his brother.

My dear brother,

I thank you for your (typical?) letter. I have received it in (horrible?) circumstances. I live in a hospice(?), and I do not wait to live a long time. It is my
poumons
(lungs, possibly). You have a reason. It is a horrible habit. When you come, if you could communicate with my friend Maggie, she will show you my apartment and bring you to see me here. Five years, it is long to have been in contact. If you could please wait/hope(?)
au pire
(for fire??).

Your brother,

Daniel

It was fiddly trying to insert all the little characters with their accents and cedillas but Maggie wanted it to be totally perfect. She read and re-read it three times before she pressed send. His brother’s name was Marc. Marc Blanchard. She wanted to add a short note at the end, something friendly and welcoming, but he could not speak English and she could not speak more than a few rudimentary words of French and didn’t trust those computerised translator things not to make her sound like a complete ass, so she typed, simply:
Je suis Maggie! A bientôt!

She pressed send and then she went into her neat, nail-polish-red kitchen (another post-divorce treat to herself) and made herself a stir-fry of king prawns and broccoli which she ate alone in front of a re-run of
Ten Years Younger
.

Lydia barely noticed the first time she lent Bendiks £50. She liked to carry cash. Every time she passed a machine she would pull out £100. Having a sheaf of paper money in her purse made her feel secure, in the same way as having a fully charged phone about her person. If it dwindled below £30 she felt uncomfortable, like she was driving a car with a low petrol gauge.

So handing over two twenties and a ten to Bendiks the previous week had barely made a dent in her consciousness. He’d said, ‘You can take it out of next week’s money, if you like?’ but she’d said, ‘No, no, don’t be silly. It’s a loan, pay me back when you can.’

Now here she was, for the third time in ten days, hurriedly retrieving her purse from within the depths of her handbag once more, pooh-poohing his words of apology: ‘No, no, it’s fine. Of course I understand.’

‘But, really, Lydia, I feel so bad. I still have not paid you back what you lent me last week.’

‘Honestly, it’s fine. Please …’ She held the notes out to him, and he looked at her apologetically from beneath his extravagant eyelashes and said, ‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes. Totally. Take it.’

He took the notes and then bowed, very slightly. Then he lifted her right hand with his, and placed a very small, very dry kiss against the back of it.

‘Oh,’ said Lydia.

‘Thank you,’ said Bendiks.

He sauntered away from her and collected his gym bag before checking his reflection just once in the mirror in the hallway, sliding the notes into his back pocket and leaving the house. Lydia turned to continue her journey towards the kitchen where she had been headed to refuel herself with an artificially sweetened drink. Juliette was standing near the entrance, posing unconvincingly with a tea towel and a bottle of Flash kitchen cleaner in her hands. She gave Lydia a look. Lydia tried to translate it. It seemed to suggest both pity and concern. Lydia bristled slightly and swept past Juliette towards the fridge. She could feel Juliette behind her, unmoving, vibrating with unsaid words. She pulled the bottle of Sprite from the fridge, and while she was there also picked up two slices of pre-sliced Cheddar and a handful of cold green grapes. Then she closed the door, smiled wanly at Juliette and headed back upstairs to her office with her booty.

She didn’t know what to feel. Fifty pounds was nothing to her. Indeed, £150 was nothing to her. She could absolutely afford to chalk £150 up to experience. But she wasn’t entirely sure just exactly what sort of experience she was having. Bendiks had been living here now for a month. He had been charming, considerate, quiet and friendly. And he had made it clear that he wanted more from her than just a roof over his head. He clearly found her appealing and interesting and worthy of his attentions. And all of this he did in a sincere and genuine manner. The longer he had spent in her home, the more she had grown to like him. The better she got to know him, the more she knew she’d done the right thing in asking him to move in with her. There was so much more to him than just a pretty face and fit body. He had hidden depths and a gentle personality. He was real. But still, he was poor, she was rich. It could all be a big act, to get at her money. The whole wonderful concept of ‘Bendiks’ could quite easily be an illusion. And she could quite easily be a pathetic fool.

But she would not worry too much about Bendiks and his unpaid debts. Not for now. For now Lydia had more pressing concerns. Three of them; first was Dean. He had disappeared. He replied to her text messages, cursorily, non-committal. He would not commit to a further meeting, using words like ‘busy’ and ‘maybe’ and ‘I’ll be in touch’. Lydia knew what it was. She’d pushed him too far with the grand house and the housekeeper and the chichi little restaurant in the St John’s Wood back street. She’d also completely blown it by coming on too strong about the fact that she thought he should face up to his responsibilities to his baby daughter. Too much, too soon. She knew how to fix it but she wasn’t sure if she herself was ready to take such a step. The second issue was the other girl. Her name was Robyn, and she had finally responded to Lydia’s request and wanted to get in touch. Except that Lydia was now so pole-axed by issues number one and number three that she could not quite put her mind to the concept. Because issue number three was the biggest deal of all.

Her father had registered.

Her father wanted to get in touch.

She had, for some reason, not factored this possibility into her vision of what might happen after she’d put herself on the register. She’d imagined somehow that the ‘father’ would want no part of a reunion, that the ‘father’ would be sitting under a palm tree somewhere, giving neither a fig nor a hoot nor indeed a monkey’s about the random scatterings of his DNA. But there he was. A man called Daniel. Fifty-three years old and living in Bury St Edmunds.

Suddenly Lydia was crippled by the order of priority. How should she manage this? In what sequence should she live the next few chapters of her life? Realign herself with Dean, meet up with Robyn, then all bundle up together with Daddy Daniel as a big happy gang? Or see each participant in this bizarre scenario individually? Should she allow herself to get to know each player slowly, or schedule meetings one after the other? Would the others have any interest in seeing the ‘father’? Or would it be just her? And if that were the case, wouldn’t he want to ask her questions about ‘the others’? And how would she fend them off? And what of the fourth spawn? Should they wait for him to sign up?

She sighed and wished herself a family. She wished for a brother or a sister or a best friend, someone she could share all of this with. But her only friend was currently packing all her possessions into cardboard boxes and was about to move herself, her five-month-old baby and her bearded partner to a small cottage in the middle of the Snowdonia National Park. Just as Lydia had predicted, once the seeds of moving back home had been sowed, it had been a very speedy process, helped by the fact that their flat was only a rental. No time even for a farewell party, for which Lydia was secretly grateful.

She glanced at the time on her computer screen. It was almost three o’clock. She eyed her bottle of Sprite and looked at the time again. Then she pulled open her filing cabinet and brought out a bottle of Bombay Sapphire. She topped up the green plastic bottle to the brim, probably a generous double measure, she estimated. It would help her to focus. It would help her to think.

By half-past four Lydia had had four more generous doubles (she still assumed they were generous doubles) and was dancing to videos on YouTube whilst Queenie watched her forlornly from the armchair, as though she were thinking:
What happened, Lydia? You used to be like me, you used to be cool and elegant, and now you are dancing really horribly to Biffy Clyro. I am terribly disappointed in you
.

Lydia ignored the cat and felt the untying of her own guy ropes, the collapsing of her internal canvas. Lydia had never been a social drinker. Nor a social dancer, for that matter. She kept this kind of personal abandonment to herself. She didn’t feel it necessary for anyone else to see what she looked like naked with alcohol.

She spent an hour on YouTube, picking out favourites, everything from Bowie to Morrissey to Snow Patrol, spinning around the room, stopping occasionally to top up her bottle with Bombay Sapphire, until there was no Sprite left. Then she wandered across the landing towards the spare bedroom and pushed open the doors on to the small terrace there and considered the view for a while. It was 5.30. Darkness would not fall for a while, the late-afternoon light was golden on the leaves of the trees in her back garden and, despite an ominous bank of charcoal cloud looming menacingly on the horizon, it was a glorious evening. Lydia let the lacy haze of drunkenness wash over her for a while. If she let the detail blur she could be back in her flat in Camden with Dixie; she could be sitting on the big scruffy sofa watching Dixie baste a chicken, her bare feet pulled up in front of her, her laptop at her side. She could be listening to the sounds of Camden mayhem rising upwards from the street below and she could be feeling like a normal young person instead of a scary rich woman with a blue cat in a too-big house.

And it was at that moment that she knew what she wanted to do. She could not face the unknown of her newfound sister and father without first knowing herself. And she could not know herself without knowing what had happened that terrible day on a balcony not dissimilar to this one in a block of flats near Tonypandy.

She’d been toying with the idea for a few days, ever since Dean had walked out of that restaurant the other night and gone cold on her. But now, at last, she felt clear about it. She walked back into her office and she pulled her mobile phone from the desk. She then composed a new text message, to Dean:

Hi, Dean, I need your help. I want to go back to Wales. I want to see Rodney and find out what happened. And I want you to come with me. Maybe tomorrow, if you’re not busy. Please say yes. Lx

She waited a beat to reassure herself that this was the right thing to be doing and then she pressed send.

Lydia collapsed in her bed at 8.30 p.m. and slept until 8 the next morning. A full twelve hours, she thought to herself as she awoke, like a baby.

Her head felt a little fuzzy but not as bad as it could have done, probably because she’d had her last drink so early. She was dressed in clean pyjamas, and yesterday’s clothes hung neatly in the dressing room next door. She unfurled her bedroom blind and appraised the day. It was bright and the sky was a kind of watered down blue, stained with patches of white. The man on the radio told her that the temperature was to be around eighteen degrees. She slipped into her dressing gown and hurried down the stairs to fetch her breakfast before Juliette arrived at 8.30 and Bendiks emerged and started pulping things in his noisy machine. She piled Weetabix into a bowl, grabbed a carton of milk and a banana, and disappeared into her office. She had a coffee machine there so she made herself a double espresso and then she checked her phone which was sitting charging on her desk (she had no recollection of having set it to charge last night, just as she had no recollection of hanging up her clothes). There was no message from Dean. She was partially relieved. It had felt like a great idea last night but now, sober and in daylight, it probably wasn’t such a good thing to undertake. For a start, she had only the vaguest idea of where to find her uncle, and also, what was she actually hoping to find?