LOUISE CAME OVER AS soon as he called. She was beaming until she saw his face when he answered the door. Then she drew back in alarm.
‘What happened to your face? Why are we at your mum’s place?’
He told her quickly. Looking at her horrified reaction, it struck him for the first time that there might be some danger in the meeting he had arranged with Chris.
‘He’s coming here,’ he told her.
‘What?’
He told her the rest. He ought to be talking to her, he thought, about the wedding and about stopping it all but he couldn’t bring himself to do that yet.
‘Perhaps you’d better go home,’ he said, hoping that she would.
‘Of course not,’ she said. ‘I’m going to stay with you.’
Before he could argue with her the doorbell rang. When he opened the door, Chris was standing there. Seeing Daniel, he frowned a little, as if he was less than happy to see a stranger in front of him.
‘I’m looking for Sarah Benson,’ he said. He seemed to take another look at Daniel, his forehead creasing up in thought. Then his eyebrows went up in surprise. ‘You came to my office last night,’ he said.
‘You noticed,’ Daniel said. ‘Should I tell you to fuck off?’
Chris smiled. ‘Sorry about that,’ he said. ‘It was a bad moment. I heard about what happened. It was all a mistake.’
‘These guys go around beating up anyone who talks to you by mistake?’
Chris shook his head and laughed. ‘No. It’s just business. I’m into imports and exports. I imported animals a while back. For research.’ He saw the puzzled look on Daniel’s face. ‘They were chimps. I had a contract with some research labs. I got targeted by the animal liberation campaign. They put my name on a website. People poured acid on my car. My windows got broken. I got death threats. So I have a lot of security looking after me. Things just got out of hand.’
‘So it was just a mistake.’ Louise had come up behind Daniel. Her voice sounded pleased, full of relief.
Daniel knew how she felt. It really had been a mistake. ‘OK,’ he said. ‘That is no problem. But why did you tell me to…’ he stumbled over the words, ‘to fuck off?’
‘I didn’t know who you were,’ Chris said. ‘They try all sorts of tricks. Honest. I’ve had over a year of it. When you said you were twenty-six I figured that you couldn’t be Sarah’s son. But there were two or three Sarahs, and maybe I mixed them up. The one I was thinking of didn’t have a baby twenty-six years ago.’
‘Why are you lying?’ Daniel burst out. The words had seemed to trigger all his rage. He reached into the pocket of his jacket and took out the photo he had carried for the last few days. He held it up in front of Chris. ‘What’s this? Who’s this supposed to be? You and my mum.’
Chris took the photo without comment and gazed at it for a few seconds. Then he looked up at Daniel. ‘That’s not Sarah,’ he said. ‘That’s her sister Nancy. We were good friends.’
Daniel stared back at him. For a moment he couldn’t make sense of what Chris had said. ‘But you are my dad?’
Chris smiled. He shook his head.
‘No, really – at the relevant time, I was out of the country. I didn’t even know you existed till last night.’
Daniel pointed at the photo again.‘So why are you holding me?’
Chris took another look.‘That’s not Sarah’s son. It’s her sister Nancy’s.’
That was the moment that his mother and George appeared at the gate. His mother’s walk seemed even more upright than usual. Her shoulders were held straight back. When she came in, her face didn’t react to seeing Chris. Daniel didn’t waste any time in showing her the photo.
‘What about this, Mum?’ He pointed at Chris. ‘He says it’s not me.’
His mother sighed and looked at Chris. ‘This is why I never answered your calls,’ she said. ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about. You weren’t there. You’re making a big mistake.’
She looked directly at Daniel for the first time. ‘What happened to your face?’ She got up and held his chin to take a good look, but he turned away.
‘It’s a long story, Mum,’ he said. ‘I’m all right. What I want to know about is this guy. Why didn’t you want to talk to him?’
‘I didn’t want him to tell you this,’ she said. ‘Your father’s dead. There’s no point in trying to find out more. There’s no mystery. You go asking people about it and they’re confused. They confuse you even more. Why didn’t you just ask me?’
Daniel’s head was spinning. This was what she’d always said, and he felt the way he used to do as a little boy – that there was something more behind her words, something he would never know. After all he had wished for during the last few days, nothing had changed. ‘Why didn’t you tell me about knowing Chris?’
For a moment she made no answer.
‘Tell him,’ George said suddenly. ‘This has gone far enough. Whatever it is, he’s got a right to know.’
His mother’s eyes flickered sideways. ‘Don’t, George,’ she said. ‘Just don’t.’
‘I mean it,’ George said. ‘I said I’d come to help, but if that’s it, let’s go right now.’
All of a sudden there were tears in Sarah’s eyes. Her face twisted and she began to cry. George bent down and put his arms round her. He whispered something and Sarah looked up and wiped her eyes. ‘It was stupid to lie about Chris,’ she said. ‘I just didn’t know what he would say if you found him.’
‘What could I say?’ Chris asked her.
‘You’ve already said it.’ She stared at Daniel as if she was trying to send him a message with her eyes. ‘The thing is, I’m not your natural mother. You were my sister Nancy’s baby.’
Daniel was speechless. The entire room seemed to be holding its breath.
‘Nancy was pregnant when she got married,’ Sarah said. ‘There was a good chance that it wasn’t her husband’s, but she didn’t think it would matter.’
‘But my birth certificate,’ Daniel stammered. ‘You were my mum.’
Sarah smiled.
‘Nancy registered herself as me. She had my passport, but she was confused at the time. Somehow she thought it would protect her husband. She just made up all the details, including the father. I don’t know who helped her. I only knew this after.’
‘Why didn’t you just tell me?’ Daniel broke in. ‘Does that mean my dad’s still alive?’
‘It means,’ Sarah said harshly, ‘that I don’t know who your father is. Nancy was pissed one night and she had it off with three blokes on the trot.’ She stretched out her hands towards him, pleading. ‘Can you see why I didn’t want to tell you?’
Daniel didn’t answer. In any case he couldn’t think of anything to say. The ground seemed to be slipping away beneath his feet.
‘Then you turned up,’ Sarah went on. ‘A black baby. It wasn’t fashionable in those days.’ She made a sound halfway between a sob and a laugh. ‘Two of the guys were black. She didn’t know which one it was, didn’t even know their names. Her husband said he would stick by her, but his family hated it, and he wasn’t able or willing to stand up for her. Chris was a big pal of hers. He used to meet her here because her friends weren’t really welcome in her husband’s house. She went a bit crazy. She used to leave you with me when she went out. One day she didn’t come back.’
Daniel felt a tear trickling down his face, but he didn’t bother to wipe it off. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘I don’t know. I should have. When Nancy had her accident I was looking after you. Her husband didn’t want you and he didn’t object to me keeping you. It seemed so natural. The first time you spoke you called me “Mum”. I didn’t want to tell you all this stuff. It seemed better at the time. You were mine and I loved you so much. I’m sorry. You’re still Daniel. That was the name I gave you.’
Daniel got up and walked over to the window. He stood looking out at the garden. It was as if he’d always known that he wasn’t really who he thought he was. In the moment when his mother told him her secret he had felt a stab of grief and loss. Minutes later most of what he felt was relief. It was as if a door had opened up into another world. If he wasn’t who he thought he was, Daniel thought, he could be who he wanted to be.
‘Your sister,’ he heard Louise saying. ‘She was your real sister?’
‘Yes,’ his mother replied. ‘She was. Of course she was.’
‘Well, that’s all right,’ Louise said. ‘Your DNA will be nearly the same.’
‘Yes.’
‘Good,’ she said. Her tone was pleased, as if all this was the most normal thing in the world. That was just like Louise, Daniel thought. His mother may be his aunt, but in her world it would always be the small, down-to-earth values which came first. To her this was a blip, and in the next hour she would think he was the same old Daniel just with a new mum. She could turn any mountain into a molehill. The thought made him smile, then he thought about the wedding. He really didn’t want to marry her. He had to think about himself. He had to try and decide how all this would affect him. He couldn’t be certain, but he knew one thing: he couldn’t go back to his old way of living, going along with the safest option. If he married Louise, he would be back in the same place he started. Sooner or later he would have to break out and it was better to tell her now.
‘We’re going home,’ he told Louise.
‘I think I’d better leave too,’ said Chris, quickly, looking glad to have seen a way out. He held his hand out awkwardly to Daniel.
Daniel shook it without saying anything. Chris gave Sarah a nod in farewell and quietly left the house.
She waited till she heard Chris close the front door, then Sarah hugged Daniel tight. ‘Nothing’s changed,’ she murmured in his ear.
‘Nothing except me,’ he told her.
Their eyes met. All of a sudden she looked tired and older. ‘No, you haven’t,’ she said. ‘It doesn’t matter where you start. It’s where you’re going that counts.’
Daniel smiled. He’d managed to work that out for himself, he thought.
‘That’s right, Mum,’ he said. ‘That’s exactly right.’
On the way home he told Louise that the wedding was off.
‘There was something about the way you were acting,’ she said. ‘I thought you had cold feet. I was going to tell you we didn’t have to.’
He didn’t answer, thinking about how to explain.
‘What are we supposed to do now?’ Louise asked.
Her voice sounded normal but there were tears running down her face.
Daniel thought about saying something comforting, then decided not to.
‘We’re having a baby,’ Daniel said, ‘but you don’t really know lots of things about me. How I feel. I don’t want to pretend.’
Something else struck him. ‘I’ve been so busy being the person I thought I was supposed to be that I’m not sure I know you either.’
‘So what do we do?’
When Louise said that an image of Judy stretched out on the bed in front of him came into Daniel’s mind. He couldn’t give her up, he thought. It wasn’t just Judy, though. Being with her had made him feel in control of his life. It was something about being free to do what he wanted. At the same time he knew that he couldn’t let his child grow up without a father.
‘Let’s go on the way we are and see what happens,’ he told her.
There would be plenty of time, he thought, to work out what to do. Louise was going to be hurt, he guessed, no matter what he did. But maybe she would learn to make the sort of bargain with life that he had always been forced to accept. Between them, perhaps they could change the meaning of the word ‘normal’. That would be his best offer. He still didn’t know what he wanted, but now he knew that he didn’t have to settle for any less.
‘I don’t know,’ Louise said. ‘What shall we tell people?’
‘Tell them we changed our minds, tell them anything we want. It’s our life.’ He paused, thinking about it. ‘I don’t even know who my father is and I probably never will. The woman I thought was my mother isn’t but I’m still here. I’m still who I am. I don’t need to be like everyone else to be me.’
‘And the baby,’ she said. ‘Have you thought about that?’
‘I have been thinking about it,’ he told her. ‘Let’s just take it one step at a time. I’m not going anywhere but I have to be the person I want to be.’
He thought about it. Maybe Sarah had been right not to tell him until now. But everything had changed. He thought about Nancy’s face in the photo. She had kept him, and if she hadn’t died they would have been together. She hadn’t let anything stop her living the life she wanted, though. The funny thing was that he didn’t feel very sad. He felt relieved as much as anything else. His real mother, he thought, would have wanted him to live his own life, the way she had tried to.
‘Don’t worry about the baby,’ he said. ‘At least he’ll know who his father is.’