Chapter 22

The flight from Barcelona had just landed on time. Bristol Airport was packed with travelers. Lara, having turned up early to be on the safe side, was drinking coffee and people-watching, one of her favorite pastimes. A married couple was getting emotional, preparing to be separated. The wife was hugely overweight, the husband superskinny, and they kept giving each other one last hug-and-kiss before he headed upstairs to Departures. At least, they were both wearing wedding rings; maybe they weren’t married to each other.

Next, Lara turned her attention to a gaggle of girls off on a bachelorette weekend, exchanging saucy banter with a separate group of men setting out for a bachelor party. If they were all on the same flight it would be a rowdy one… and who knew which of them might end up sharing more than a plane.

Finally, a vignette that tugged at the heartstrings: a mother in her midfifties saying good-bye to her early-twenties backpacking son. Determinedly upbeat and cheerful, she stood at the foot of the escalator and waved as he called out, “Bye, Mum, see you next year!” Only when he’d disappeared from view did she turn away and allow her composure to crumple, the tears spilling down her face.

Oh God, poor woman. Lara felt a lump expand in her own throat; saying good-bye to your children had to be the hardest thing in the world. It was going to be bad enough when Gigi left to go to university… OK, don’t think about that now. She finished her coffee and headed over to Arrivals; it was time for the travelers from Barcelona to start filtering through the gate.

She didn’t have long to wait. With only a carry-on bag and no reason to wait at baggage claim, Jo Finnegan was one of the first to appear. Lara recognized her at once from the photo on her blog and waved to attract her attention.

“My goodness, look at you!” Jo greeted her with a warm hug. “Little Lara, all grown up!”

It was an oddly emotional moment. She didn’t know many people who’d known her mum. Lara felt a surreal urge to plug Jo into a computer and download every last memory she had.

“It’s lovely to see you. Thanks so much for changing your plans.”

“My pleasure. I’ve always been the impatient type. Now, let me take a proper look at you…”

Lara did the same. Jo Finnegan was browner and wrinklier in the flesh, and she was sporting bright coral lipstick today. Her earrings were again huge and dangly, her faded brown hair haphazardly pinned back. She was wearing a purple linen shirt and matching loose linen trousers, with dusty leather sandals on her feet.

“I can see your mum in you,” Jo pronounced with satisfaction.

“I know.” Lara loved being able to pick out the similarities in the few photographs she had of her mother: the tilt of the chin, the line of the eyebrows, the same legs.

“And your father. Is he… well?”

There had definitely been a moment of hesitation. “He died a few weeks ago.”

“Oh, I’m sorry.”

“No need. I’m not.”

They exchanged a long look, signaling mutual understanding. Lara felt a swizzle of excitement in her stomach.

“Oh, my darling girl.” Jo reached for her hands and clasped them warmly. “We have so much to talk about.”

The swizzles ramped up to the next level. This was so thrilling. There was definitely something here to find out.

***

Some conversations you simply couldn’t have while you were driving a car. During the journey back to Bath they chatted instead about Jo’s time in Spain. Happily divorced nowadays and working as a potter, she had made many friends and adapted well to life in a mountain village, although regular trips back to visit her aged parents meant she didn’t miss out on such vital aspects of British life as Marks & Spencer and Marmite.

As they approached Bath, Jo said, “Do me a favor, will you? Be a darling and pull in at the next rest area. I just love the view from here over the city.”

Spooky coincidence or what? Lara did as she asked and switched off the ignition. “It’s my favorite place too. When I came back for the first time after eighteen years, I stopped at this exact spot to show my daughter where I used to live.”

“You have a daughter?” Jo looked pleased. “That’s lovely. How old?”

“Eighteen.”

“Oh my goodness! Really? But that means…”

Lara opened the driver’s door and said, “Yes, it does.”

They sat together on the grassy slope below the pull off, drinking in the view. Lara told Jo the story of how she’d come to leave Bath. Jo listened without interrupting once.

“So that’s it,” Lara concluded several minutes later. “Everything worked out fine. It could have been a disaster but it wasn’t. Gigi’s perfect. And now she’s getting to know Flynn… all in all, the last few weeks have been pretty eventful.” She paused, then tilted her head. “But you can see why I said what I did about my father. It sounds awful to say I’m not sorry he died, but it’s the truth. I don’t think he ever liked me and I could never understand why. Then there was the will-reading in the lawyer’s office and I found out the house had never been his, it had been bought in my mum’s name. But how could that happen? Where did the money come from? And was this why he hated me, or was there some other reason…?”

Jo had been watching her intently. “If you’re asking me if he was really your father, the answer is I don’t know.”

“Right.” Lara was sitting with her arms wrapped around her knees. She was squeezing so hard her knuckles had turned white. Damn.

“But I do know there was a… friendship. With another man.”

Yes! Yes yes yes! Tears of joy sprang without warning into Lara’s eyes. It had to be that; it explained everything. Her father had hated her because he knew he wasn’t her father. It made perfect sense. Thank you, God.

“Who was he? Did you know him?” Go on, say yes, tell me all about my mother’s secret lover… no, stop it, don’t shake your head…

But Jo said with regret, “Sorry, no I didn’t. It was before I met your mum. She told me about him, though. I’ll tell you as much as I know. His name was James.”

James. That was a nice name, a good name for a father to have. James? Are you my father? God, I really hope so.

“James who?” said Lara, but Jo was already shaking her head again. Life was never that simple, was it?

“No idea. Your mum never mentioned his surname. Or showed me a photograph. She met him a couple of years before you were born.” Jo paused for a moment to gently bat away a hovering dragonfly. “He was married.”

“Oh.”

“And he’d been married and divorced before that.”

“Ah.”

“Well, quite. Back in those days that was a pretty racy history. He was wealthy too. Some kind of successful businessman, but don’t ask me what kind of business—I haven’t a clue. The marriage wasn’t a happy one, apparently. He was in love with your mother. Well, he told her he loved her.”

“What does that mean? She didn’t believe him?”

“She wanted to. But from what she said, she didn’t know if she could completely trust him. He’d been married, divorced, married again… I got the impression your mum was afraid he might be the type who just got bored easily.”

Lara’s fingers were cramping. She unclenched her knuckles and gazed out over Bath, with its curving streets of higgledy-piggledy biscuit-shaded houses. There, just down there to the right, was her own home. Had James paid for it? If he had, surely that must mean he was her father?

“Are you OK?”

She nodded at Jo. “I’m fine. This is all good news. Frustrating, but good. Anything that means my father might not be my father is brilliant. Look, I know you don’t know, but do you think it could have been James?”

“Oh, darling, who can say? Your mum never said he was. It wasn’t the kind of question I felt I could ask. This may sound unbelievably old-fashioned, but we didn’t talk about sex so much in those days. It really wasn’t the hot topic it is now. Maybe if we’d been friends since childhood I might have done, but we weren’t, we just got to know each other because I worked in the café near your school and we hit it off from there. That was when you were nine or ten. Your mum used to come in for a cup of tea. She’d hear me moaning about my useless husband. Then when I had to take our dog for a walk after work, she’d join me. Maybe it was that neither of us had happy marriages. It can be a bonding thing, you know? Nice to have someone else going through a miserable time. Your father sounded like the domineering type.”

Jo glanced at her for confirmation and Lara nodded. “Yes, he was.”

“I only went to your house once. He made it clear I wasn’t welcome.”

“He hated visitors.” Theirs had been a silent home, singularly lacking in laughter whenever the three of them had been in it together. Lara felt sickened by the memory of it. Back then, she hadn’t realized the extent of her father’s controlling behavior, simply because she’d had nothing to compare it with. Nowadays it made her shudder. And how proud she’d been when Gigi, without any prompting from her, had recognized the wrongness of her last boyfriend’s attitude toward her. Good-looking he might have been, but as soon as he’d started criticizing her choice of clothes and tried to stop her seeing her friends, Gigi had called him a loser and calmly ended the relationship.

Why couldn’t her mum have done the same? Lara’s jaw tightened. It was a question that had haunted her for years.

“What are you thinking?” said Jo.

“Just wondering why she didn’t leave him. Our lives could have been so different.”

“Your mum knew that. The problem was, she was worried it might turn out to be the wrong thing to do. Your lives could have turned out better, but what if they’d turned out worse?”

Lara exhaled. “How could it have been worse?”

“In her eyes it was possible. She used to say, ‘At least he doesn’t hit me, he’s never hit me.’ And she was filled with guilt about James. I think she felt she deserved to be punished for that. Almost as if Charles was entitled to make her life miserable. Oh, who can say what it was like for her? Bullies undermine their partners’ confidence. Who knows what he might have threatened her with?”

“I know.” Lara had been over it all in her head a million times. “She did what she thought was best.”

“For the two of you.”

“Oh God, I want to find James.” She threw herself back on the grass and watched the tiny clouds scudding across the sky.

“I don’t know how you can,” said Jo.

“I found you. Well, Flynn did. There must be a way.”

“Did she have any other friends you can ask?”

“No, I wondered if you’d know anyone.”

Jo shook her head. “I don’t, darling. I’m sorry.”

Lara gazed up at the vapor trails crisscrossing overhead. Where were those planes headed? Who were the passengers flying in them? They could contain anyone, be going anywhere. One of those passengers might know James. Or be him.

That was the thing, you just never knew.

“You’ve done well for yourself,” said Jo. “You’re living a good life. Your mum would be so proud if she could see you now.”

“Thanks.” It was lovely of Jo to say it and Lara was grateful to her. But she was only hearing half the story and it was no longer enough.