Andrew is lying in bed trying unsuccessfully to go back to sleep. Outside in the passage Farah is whispering to Lala and Samira to be quiet, but they’re having trouble containing their excitement about going on a ferry trip. He hears her hurry them down the stairs, their excited voices rising as they head for the kitchen. He closes his eyes and considers going back to sleep, but his mind has started buzzing again. Being here in the house with Gerald gone is so very different, he feels free at last from the constraints of the past that stopped him from venturing along paths that attracted him. The past is peeling away, pushing him towards something new and, most of all, towards a new sense of himself. There is a tap at the door.
‘Are you awake, Andrew?’ his mother calls, and comes in with a cup of tea.
He sits up. ‘Tea in bed, what a treat. What have I done to deserve this?’
‘Nothing yet,’ she says. ‘But I’ll think of something.’ She sits down on the edge of the bed. ‘You haven’t got plans for today, have you?’
He shakes his head. ‘No, just going to see if Ted is around to help me move the furniture down from the study.’
‘Well, Chris could help with the furniture. They’re coming down for the day. They’ll be here mid-morning.’
‘Really? They were here just a week ago, taking Erin to the ship.’
‘Yes, but I called them yesterday evening and asked them to come. I need to talk to you – all of you together.’
‘About what? Is anything wrong? You’re not sick, are you?’ He puts down his cup and leans forward to peer into her face.
‘I’m fine,’ Connie says. ‘Just been doing some thinking and now I need to act on it. And don’t bother asking me; I’ll tell you all at the same time and not before. Drink your tea, dear, and maybe you could pop out for some milk and perhaps some Danish pastries for when they get here. Take Brooke with you, she’ll be better at choosing them.’ And she pats his arm, gets up and disappears down to the kitchen.
*
‘So what’s going on?’ he asks Brooke later as they drive to the bakery.
‘Er . . . we’re buying Danish.’
‘I meant what’s going on in a macro rather than a micro sense,’ Andrew says. ‘Seems we’re having a family meeting.’
‘Mmmm, seems like it.’
‘Okay,’ Andrew says, ‘you know something, don’t you, so tell me.’
‘Dad, I don’t know anything, honestly. I have a thought but I’m keeping that thought to myself.’
‘So you definitely know something – it’s about Flora and those other people, isn’t it, the ones in the photograph?’
‘I don’t know, but that’s the thought. All I know is that Nan wants to tell us something and we all have to be there.’
‘So it must be something important for her to get Kerry and Chris to drive down here again so soon.’
Brooke’s phone rings and she pulls it out of the pocket of her anorak. ‘Hi, Mum . . . Oh, nothing much, just in the car with Dad going out to buy some Danish . . . what? Oh yeah, I know, he’s not allowed to choose them . . . Nan told me . . . yeah, he always gets the ones that have been in the display cabinet too long . . . dry, yeah, I know . . . well, men don’t see those things, do they? So how are you, Mum, did you get some new furniture yet?’
Andrew rolls his eyes. ‘What’s so special about choosing pastries?’ he mumbles, but Brooke ignores him. He drives on, wondering about Connie and this meeting. What could be so serious that she would destroy photographs, and what’s it got to do with Flora?
‘Mum says hi,’ Brooke says, pointing at the phone.
He waves at the phone. ‘Hi from me. Tell her I’ll be back at the end of next week if she needs any help at the house.’
Brooke passes on the message and hangs up.
‘I don’t like this secrecy,’ he says.
Brooke bursts out laughing. ‘That’s just what I told Nan the other day. Too many secrets, too many people deciding what other people can or can’t know.’
‘You told Nan that? What did she say?’
‘She said I was right and that she’d think about it.’
Andrew nods. ‘So you do know something after all.’
‘Stop hassling me, Dad, I’ve told you, I don’t know what’s going on.’
‘Stone the crows,’ Andrew says, banging his fist on the steering wheel. ‘Well, it’s obviously something serious, something big.’
‘Yep,’ Brooke nods. ‘She probably discovered Granddad had a love child.’
He laughs. ‘Now you’re just being ridiculous,’ he says, pulling up outside the bakery.
*
Connie steps out of the shower, drags a towel off the rail, and walks back into the bedroom drying herself. The luminous numbers on the bedside clock say it’s nine-thirty; not long now. She’d woken at six and was up, dressed and walking Scooter vigorously along the footpath by twenty past, desperate to do something to take the edge off her anxiety, trying instead to concentrate on the conversation she’d had yesterday about the choir that was being started at the university. ‘I’d love to be involved,’ she’d said, ‘and I do have some experience . . .’ and by the time she put down the phone she’d agreed to join the organising committee as well as being part of the choir. But even this couldn’t hold her attention or calm her nerves this morning. Back home from her walk she’d made tea for everyone and, despite Farah’s protests, breakfast for her and the girls, and then for Brooke and Andrew. Now they’ve all gone for a while and she has time to spare, which is the last thing she needs. She sits down on the bed, wrapped in the towel, and ponders whether to check her email now or leave it a little longer.
Since that confronting conversation with Brooke, and then her encounter with Lady Slane, Connie has been in a spin cycle of anxiety and indecision. Time and again she has gone over everything that both Flora and Phillip said to her, and as she has done so her image of herself has taken a beating. The more she chewed on the bone of her discontent the more her sense of righteous hurt and anger began to wither, so that now it seems just selfish and inconsiderate. She doesn’t like the picture of herself that now runs through her head like a movie on constant replay. She sees that none of what happened at The Ivy was directed at her. She can understand Bea’s dilemma over whether or not to tell her, and Flora’s overwhelming desire to embrace her niece. The situation was of Gerald’s making, and it throws new light on his motives and his behaviour both then and in their life together. She’s not yet sure what that actually tells her about him that is new, rather, it seems that she must open her eyes to what she has always known but had chosen not to see.
Connie wants reconciliation but the price seems so high, for the price is telling Andrew and Kerry and the impact that the news of a half-sister might have on them. Andrew, she thinks, will be shocked to find he is no longer his father’s eldest child, but he will probably take it in his stride. But what about Kerry, who has spent so much of her life craving her father’s attention and approval? What about the hurt and anger, which has now transformed into something more peaceful – contentment, perhaps, or acceptance? Connie’s head spins with possible disastrous scenarios, but time and again she returns to Brooke’s words, her frustration over secrets and lies, and the duplicity that creates among people who should be able to trust each other. I no longer need to do things his way, Connie tells herself, I have to find my own way.
Finally, late yesterday afternoon, she had taken the plunge and emailed Flora, then called Kerry and asked if she and Chris could drive down this morning as she had something to tell them. They are already on their way, and now more than ever she needs to hear from Flora. She takes a deep breath and opens her iPad. The little white envelope icon has a small red circle beside it with the number 1 in it and Connie’s heart does a somersault. She steps away from the bed and finishes drying herself so fiercely that it hurts, then turns her back on the screen, and stands in front of the open wardrobe searching for something to wear, anything to postpone the moment when she must open the message only to discover that it is just a message from someone else. Her email to Flora had been full of apologies, of explanations, of ramblings about what had happened and her own part in it, and when she’d read it again before going to bed she’d cringed at its excess, but it was gone by then, too late to do anything about it. All she could hope for now was that Flora would take time to read it, see honesty and genuine regret and forgive the rest. The wardrobe does not distract her, and dragging on her dressing gown for warmth, she clicks the envelope.
‘Dearest, dearest Connie,’ Flora begins, ‘What a joy and a relief it was to get your message . . .’
Connie flops back on the bed with something between a sigh and a sob. Then she hauls herself up to a sitting position to read the message that is as long, if not quite as emotional and rambling, as her own had been. It is filled with Flora’s pleasure in hearing from her, there are no recriminations, just news of the house in Shepherds Bush, of the longer term house-hunting, of life in the bookshop and, of course, the visit to Cornwall.
And yes, I do have pictures of them all and am attaching them, as you asked. I can’t tell you how good it feels to know that you’ve found the courage to do this. I know it’s been incredibly hard for you but I’m sure you’re doing absolutely the right thing now.
Connie opens the photographs and stares into the faces; first Geraldine, so uncannily like her father, although her smile has an unmistakable trace of Bea about it. The two older children are like their father, and the youngest girl is, Connie thinks, a miniature version of Bea, plump and dark haired with a devilish glint in her eye. She reads Flora’s message again, wishing she could call her, speak to her now, but it’s the middle of the night in London so that will have to wait.
*
‘These are really good,’ Kerry says, tucking into a pastry topped with custard and apricot. ‘Where did you get them?’
‘Just down the road,’ Andrew says. ‘Brooke was charged with selection – consensus is that I can’t pick good ones.’
‘That’d be right,’ Kerry says through a mouthful.
She looks so good, Connie thinks, so very different from the Kerry who, for longer than she can remember, has stared at her with those hurt and accusing eyes. I could have helped her, Connie thinks now, I could have helped her years ago; all that longing for Gerald’s approval, the endless disappointment. Perhaps I could have saved her, saved them both, from that.
They are watching her now, waiting, curious, impatient.
‘Come on then,’ she says. ‘I know you’re all wondering what’s going on.’ And as they settle down she has a terrible moment of panic that this is not, after all, the right thing to do, that she had been right in wanting to hide the truth, to protect them from it. But they are waiting now and there is no turning back.
‘I have a lot to tell you,’ she says, and she hears the wobbliness in her voice and clears her throat to get control of it. ‘It’s a long story . . .’
‘Just start at the beginning, Mum,’ Kerry says gently.
‘Actually,’ Connie says, ‘I think I might begin at the end, with the most important thing of all, and work back from there.’ She pauses, heart pounding. ‘What I have to tell you all, but particularly you, Kerry and Andrew, is that, when I was in London, I met some of your father’s old friends, and . . . and I discovered that . . . that he had a child with someone else; a daughter born just before he and I married, and so you . . . you . . .’ her breath disappears quite suddenly and she gulps, hesitates, ‘. . . you have a half-sister.’
There is a moment of such pristine silence that Connie stops breathing. Kerry gasps, her hand flies to cover her mouth. Andrew darts a fierce look at Brooke, who lifts her shoulders and shakes her head furiously. Chris gives a wry smile, clears his throat and looks away, and outside in the silent garden Ryan hurls a ball for Scooter and he runs after it barking furiously.
*
Brooke looks from one member of her family to the other and finally at Connie, sitting rigid and upright in her usual chair, hands twisting nervously in her lap. She sees the movement of her throat as she swallows and takes a deep breath as though in readiness for the storm to break. Brooke slips down from her spot on the window seat and sits decisively on the broad arm of Connie’s chair, leaning into her so that their arms touch and she can feel her grandmother’s tension.
It’s Andrew who speaks first, shaking his head, looking across at Kerry, raising his eyebrows. ‘Well, there you go, proof of something I’ve been thinking about a lot in the last couple of months – that I never really knew him. Perhaps none of us did.’
The colour is returning to Kerry’s face. ‘A half-sister,’ she says. ‘And you knew nothing of this before?’
Connie shakes her head. ‘Nothing at all.’
‘And those people you met . . . ?’
‘Yes, Phillip and Bea, university friends. Bea was with Gerald, they were about to move in together. Then for some reason Gerald changed his mind and shifted himself into my life. He dumped Bea, and six weeks later she discovered she was pregnant. He had moved back to live with his parents, but she managed to find him. He gave her money for an abortion and told her to go away, not to contact him again. She took the money but kept the baby, and she sent him a copy of the birth certificate. He never replied and she never heard from him again.’
‘Did you meet her?’ Brooke asks. ‘The daughter, I mean, I know you met Bea.’
Connie looks up at her, her colour deepening, and Brooke sees that she has asked an awkward question. ‘I sort of did,’ she says. ‘I’ll explain that later.’
‘So what’s her name – our sister?’ Kerry asks.
And Brooke, still leaning against Connie, feels her tension increase.
‘Her name is Geraldine.’
Kerry gasps. ‘But that was what you wanted to call me.’
Connie nods. ‘I wanted to call you Geraldine, but your father was against it. I could never understand why. I thought he’d love to have his daughter named after him. We argued, he stormed out of the house and came back three hours later with the certificate showing that he’d registered you as Kerry Ann.’
Brooke watches as conflicting emotions cross her aunt’s face. Kerry sinks her head into her hands and Chris, sitting beside her, puts his arm around her shoulders and pulls her to him.
Kerry looks up, looks around at them all. ‘It’s all right,’ she says, ‘I’m not crying. It was just exasperation, disgust . . . well, everything really.’ She sits up straight. ‘Andrew’s right,’ she says, looking across at him. ‘There is so much that we didn’t know about Dad, and so much that we should have challenged and changed years ago. All that stuff about what we weren’t allowed to talk about.’ She shakes her head. ‘It doesn’t mean I don’t love him, I just wish I’d . . . oh well, it doesn’t matter now.’
Andrew lets out a short dry laugh. ‘Bastard!’ he says, shaking his head. ‘Oh! I mean Dad,’ he says, ‘not her, not our sister.’
And Chris throws his head back and laughs, and Kerry joins him.
Brooke leans forward to Connie. ‘You were incredibly brave, Nan,’ she whispers, ‘really cool.’
Connie softens, leans towards her, grasps her hand. ‘It was you really, Brooke,’ she says, ‘you made me see sense.’
‘A half-sister,’ Kerry says again, still laughing, her eyes bright with curiosity. ‘Well, what’s she like? It’s quite exciting, really. D’you have any photos, Mum? When do we get to meet her?’