Diane led Mark into the house, shutting the door to the front room as she passed it and continuing to the rear of the property. She entered a decent-sized kitchen – light wood-effect worktops with white gloss painted cupboards – that looked on to a small backyard.
Mark stood in the doorway for a minute, feeling like a spare part, not knowing whether to take a seat at the circular pine table or just to keep standing. He opted for the latter, figuring it would be rude to sit down without being invited to do so. He stared at the back of Diane’s head as, without speaking, she rooted around in one of the cupboards. He still couldn’t get used to seeing her with such short hair; never mind the burgundy colour. It made her skin look so pale; gave her a totally different look to Hannah, which could only be a good thing as far as he was concerned.
Before getting there, Mark had expected to find the place in a total mess. He wasn’t sure why exactly. It just fitted in with the idea of Diane being in trouble. In fact, the opposite was true. The kitchen looked like it had barely been used in the past few days, with no dirty or recently washed-up cutlery or crockery in sight. Everything he’d seen so far of the inside of the house looked clean and tidy.
After continuing to hunt through the cupboard for a little while longer, Diane let out a loud sigh, shut the door and turned around to face Mark.
‘Well, I’ve no tea or coffee,’ she said. ‘If you want a drink it’ll have to be either tap water or cordial.’
Mark wanted to say that he didn’t need anything, but in truth he was parched, so he told her a glass of water would be perfect.
‘Aren’t you going to come in and sit down?’ she asked, filling his glass. ‘You’re making me nervous standing there in the doorway.’
‘Sure,’ Mark said. ‘I, um, wasn’t sure whether you’d want me to or not. You didn’t seem too pleased to see me outside a minute ago.’
‘Sorry.’ She placed the glass on the kitchen table, gestured for Mark to grab the wooden chair in front of it and then sat down opposite. ‘I was just a bit, er, taken aback to see you. You could have called ahead to let me know you were coming.’
Mark cleared his throat. ‘Really? Like you did when you turned up in Manchester, you mean? Plus you’ve not exactly been answering your phone recently.’
Diane sighed again. ‘Fair point. So what’s going on? How come you’re here? I’m guessing you didn’t travel all this way just to see me, especially not dressed like that.’
‘I’ve been visiting the office of a company we recently took over in Southampton.’
Diane raised an eyebrow. ‘Right. Not that close then. You must have been keen to check up on me.’
‘It didn’t take long by train, actually. But yes, of course I’m keen to catch up with you, Diane. What do you expect?’
‘Does Hannah know you’re here?’
‘Of course.’
Diane nodded, scratching the side of her neck with one finger. ‘And Mia?’
‘Yes, Mia too. She’s the one who gave me your address. I, um, think she’d appreciate it if you stayed in more frequent contact with her while you’re apart. She obviously misses you.’
Diane scowled at Mark in a way that instantly reminded him of Hannah. The look she used was the exact same one his wife did when she was annoyed with him. It literally could have been her at that moment. The shocking similarity of it felt eerie and disconcerting; it brought up unpleasant memories, which he instantly wanted to eject from his mind.
It appeared that Diane was about to say something – no doubt to rebuke him for daring to question her actions as a mother – but, for whatever reason, the words never came. Instead she closed her eyes and took a couple of long, deep breaths. Puzzled by this apparent attempt by his sister-in-law to calm herself down, which was very untypical of the hot-headed Diane he remembered, Mark resisted the temptation to speak further. He watched and waited.
Eventually, speaking in a steady, almost robotic voice, she asked: ‘How is Mia? Has she settled in with you and Hannah okay?’
‘Yes, she’s doing fine,’ Mark replied. ‘Hannah’s even found her a friend of her own age. Well, in the year below her at school, I think, but near enough. It’s this lad called Todd, who’s the grandson of one of our neighbours. They seem to get on pretty well.’
Diane looked pleasantly surprised by this. ‘Really? That’s nice.’
As Mark took a big swig from his glass of water, it struck him as weird their chatting about Mia like this, as if she was simply his niece. There was one heck of an elephant in the room and he had a strong feeling Diane wasn’t going to be the one to mention it.
He coughed nervously before leaning forward on the table, balling his hands together and resting them under his chin. ‘What about you?’ he asked. ‘How are you getting on with, um, sorting things out?’
‘So you’re here to check up on me, are you?’ she snapped. ‘Makes sense. Hannah’s idea, was it?’
‘Mine actually. There’s no need to have a go at Hannah. She’s the one currently looking after your daughter, remember.’ He left a long pause before adding the next bit, which took some courage. ‘Or should I say our daughter?’
So there it was. He’d said it. Now he stared across the kitchen table at Diane and waited.
Her eyes darted all around the room, looking everywhere apart from at him, like cornered prey desperately seeking an escape route.
He waited.
Diane continued to squirm.
Then finally she spoke. ‘I don’t know what to say to you, Mark.’ Still refusing to meet his eye, she stared down at the table, rolling around a stray peppercorn with one finger. ‘That’s why I wrote you the letter rather than speaking directly to you in Manchester. It’s … I don’t know. Where the hell do I even begin?’
Mark fought to keep his voice steady, his temper under control. ‘What about explaining why you chose to lie to me for all these years? Why would anyone deliberately keep a father and his child apart, unaware of each other? It’s beyond me, Diane. I get furious just thinking about it.
‘I keep casting my mind back to that time after your mum died, in 2008, when I specifically asked you if I was Mia’s father and you lied to my face. Well, I assume you did. Unless you’re actually lying now? How the hell am I supposed to know if what you’re telling me today is the truth? Do you have any proof? You told me previously that another man was definitely the father.’
Mark was surprised to see tears rolling down either side of his sister-in-law’s face. He’d seen her cry before: at her mum’s funeral and even the other day in Manchester, when she’d begged for his and Hannah’s help. But it certainly wasn’t something he’d seen her do often. The Diane he knew of old was too hard, too cold to cry.
Seeing her so emotional in their apartment had shocked him; he’d wondered how sincere it was and how much to elicit their sympathy. But witnessing it again now, when it was just the two of them and he was staring right at her, centimetres away, it didn’t feel fake. Either she was a damn good actress – something he couldn’t entirely rule out, based on past experience – or she felt genuine remorse, as she’d suggested in that bloody letter.
Much to his frustration, Mark felt his resolve to take her to task weaken. It was too much like watching Hannah get upset. But was that exactly what Diane intended? Was she manipulating him as she’d done so successfully years earlier? God, how on earth was he supposed to know the answer to that?
He reached into the inside pocket of his suit jacket, which was hanging over the back of the empty chair next to him, and pulled out a pack of travel tissues. ‘Here,’ he said, handing it to her. He wanted to leave it at that; not to appear to weaken. But before he knew it, he found himself asking if she was all right. He did at least manage to stop himself apologising for anything, which would have been ridiculous.
How the hell could he be feeling sympathy towards someone who’d caused him so much pain and misery? There had been a time when he’d violently hated Diane for what she’d done; what she’d made him do. Even after years had passed and he’d learned to live with it, Mark had always viewed her as an adversary not to be trusted.
‘Look me in the eye and tell me one thing,’ he said, once Diane’s tears began to abate. ‘Do you promise me, hand on heart, that Mia is my daughter?’
She nodded and, meeting his gaze, replied: ‘Mia is your daughter, Mark. I’ve lied to you in the past. I’ve made such a mess of things. I hold my hands up to that. I apologise for it – and I totally understand why you’d doubt what I’m saying now because of it. But she’s yours, one hundred per cent.’
‘Can you be absolutely sure?’ Mark asked. ‘I mean … what about that old boss of yours? You told me he’d taken a paternity test.’
‘That wasn’t true,’ she replied in little more than a whisper.
‘What do you mean?’
‘It was a fib. I panicked and made the whole thing up.’ She looked down at the floor, abashed; avoiding his gaze. ‘It was a kneejerk response to you guessing the truth. There was no one else at that time. It could only ever have been you after our night together.’
Mark felt a stab of fury in his stomach at Diane’s use of the word fib, which she made sound so casual and unimportant. Then there was the way she referred to that night: like it was something normal that had happened between the two of them. Like it was just one of those things. The truth was much darker – far more messed up and warped. But he couldn’t afford to go there, so he suppressed his anger, crushing it down before it exploded up into his chest and out via a string of expletives. And yet, from the shadow that fell across Diane’s face, Mark suspected he hadn’t totally managed to conceal the fire burning within.
‘Would you like another drink?’ she asked, gnawing on one of her stubby fingernails.
Mark looked over at his glass and was surprised to see it empty. ‘Um, okay, yes. Another glass of water, please.’
As Diane fetched this, Mark felt a wave of tiredness crash over him. It had been a long day, what with all the travelling and the work, and now his head was starting to hurt. The heat didn’t help. Nor did the fact that he’d not had anything to eat since a late lunch around 2.30 p.m. and his stomach was starting to grumble. Plus this hard chair he was perched on was crying out for a cushion.
He thought back to how Diane moving a young Mia down here and cutting off communications with Hannah had secretly been a relief to him, even though he’d hated what the split had done to his wife. Prior to that, every time he’d seen his sister-in-law, he’d had to fend off memories of that damn night: the booze-fuelled, steamy passion and then the shocking reality of what had just happened, like an ice spike hammered into his skull.
While Diane had been out of their lives, he had at least been freed from the constant fear that she might tell her sister what had happened at any moment. The fact she hadn’t said anything so far was her one saving grace in his eyes, although he realised Hannah would view this differently.
Now that fear of discovery – and the destruction it could cause to his marriage – was back with a vengeance.
‘I can’t stay much longer,’ Mark said. ‘Otherwise I’ll miss the train and won’t be able to get back to Southampton tonight.’
‘But there’s so much still to talk about. Why don’t you stay the night and get the train back in the morning? That would give us more time. Have you eaten? We could order a takeaway if you like.’
‘Stay the night?’ Mark repeated.
‘There’s a spare room. The bed’s already made up. I could drive you to the train station in the morning.’
‘Um, I’m not sure that’s—’
‘Listen, now you’re here, Mark, there’s a lot more I need to speak to you about.’ She lurched forward so she was half leaning over the table, staring him straight in the eye and wearing a look of intensity and desperation. ‘This could be the last chance I get.’
‘What the hell does that mean?’ Mark asked, sliding a few centimetres back into his chair in an attempt to regain some personal space.
She was crowding him. He could feel the heat of her breath on his face and it wasn’t pleasant, like she could really do with brushing her teeth.
But all of that faded to insignificance when Diane uttered her next sentence.
‘It means I’m dying, Mark.’