Something Only We Know (22 page)

‘You’re scaring me.’

‘No, I just think you need to know the truth.’

‘Come on, out with it now you’ve started.’

‘Jen, the reason Mum’s so angry is that Dad had an affair.’

There was a moment where the words sat intact, like droplets of water on material before they’re absorbed. Dad. An
affair
? My dad? Old, fat Dad? My lovely dad? No.
No
.
‘Fuck off, Hel.’

‘I’m sorry. It’s true.’

‘It can’t be! No way.
No way.
It must be some story Mum cooked up to make you feel sorry for her. The plot of some bloody TV soap she’s been watching and fancies
trying on for size. She’s mistaken, she’s confused. The whole thing’s sick. It’s
sick.
Shut up!’

Helen sat impassively till I’d finished. Then she said, ‘Mum didn’t tell me.’

‘So how do you know?’

‘I found out myself.’

‘You’re trying to tell me you saw them together?’

‘I came across this pair of earrings in his car. I took them to Mum because I thought they were hers. They weren’t. They were Jeanette’s. You remember, his work
secretary?’

My head was ringing. ‘Not that blonde?’

Helen shook her head. ‘You’re thinking of Steph. Jeanette had brown hair. Quite plump and mousy.’

‘When? When was this supposed to have happened?’

‘I was still at high school. You’d have been in first year juniors, so about six, seven.’

‘But earrings don’t mean anything! Dad might have simply given this woman a lift somewhere.’

‘No, he admitted it there and then. You know Dad, he’s not the world’s most artful liar, is he? Mum challenged him and he just confessed. Swore it was over and would never
happen again. I heard it all; I had my door open, listening.’

That description of Dad made my eyes prick with tears. Hel was right, he’d be rubbish at deceit. He wasn’t built that way. The very last person in the world I’d have thought
would cheat on us. My dad.

She said, ‘And don’t you remember the rows, Jen? God, I mean, they tried to hide it from us, but there were so many arguments that bubbled up over nothing. You must remember that
business on holiday where Mum completely lost it, dragged us out of the café and announced she was taking us home?’

Yes, I did recall that. Sitting in the Cornish sunshine on a plastic chair, Mum snatching at her handbag and standing so abruptly that the table nearly overturned.
I’ve had
enough
, she’d said. Enough of what? I didn’t know at the time. I thought it must be me or Helen, or the heat. The shot of pure fear as she took my arm and started to lead us away
down the road. Were we going home? I didn’t want to go home. It was our holiday. Then Dad was running after us. And unbidden came another memory overlaying the scene – this morning in
the Empire Hotel, and Ellie eating her heart out over Joe—

‘Are you OK, Jen?’

‘No, I’m bloody not. How could I be? Why would Dad cheat on Mum? He’s
nice.
I thought he was nice.’

‘I think it was my fault.’

‘Aw, come on. You?’

Helen drooped, and her voice sounded small. ‘I think things were so bad at home. I mean, things with me. The bullying and school phobia, and Mum going on at him to solve it when it
couldn’t be solved, and me getting ill. I think – you know what Dad’s like – Jeanette was probably a sympathetic ear. Obviously more than that in the end. I don’t
know. I’ve tried to make sense of it, and that’s the best I can come up with.’

Part of me was still completely stunned. Everything I thought I knew about our parents was upside-down. The good guy was not the good guy; the mean-spirited turned out to be the betrayed. Over
the years, all those moments of allegiance and outrage and triumph and pity that had been misjudged. My family memories were founded on a lie. Why hadn’t Helen told me? Why
had
she
told me? And here, now, in this fag-end of a pub which even the locals shunned.

‘I can’t get my head round it.’

‘It’s OK.’ Hesitantly she put out her hand and placed it over mine.

‘No it isn’t.’

‘No. It isn’t.’

I said, ‘But if she was that upset, why didn’t she kick him out?’

‘Because she needed him around. She couldn’t cope on her own. Everything was such a mess. Which of course was my fault too.’

‘So she let him stay and just got angrier and angrier.’ My God. It explained so much. The constant sniping, the way he blocked her out. And she’d been living with that. How
had
she lived with that? My dad, in the wrong for so many years. ‘I don’t know either of them any more. Fuck, it’s as if my real parents are gone and there are these two
imposters in their place and I’ll never get them back again. It’s horrible. I still can’t process what you’ve told me . . .’

Hel shuffled closer on the seat and attempted to embrace me. After a second’s embarrassment I let her, though it was hard to relax against her unfamiliar contours. Nothing, nothing was
what it had been half an hour ago. If only I could unwind my life and return to where I had been before.

‘I’m really sorry, Jen. Maybe I should have told you sooner, only I wanted to protect you. That’s why I kept quiet. You seemed too young to be burdened with it. But then lately
– for a while, actually – it’s felt almost as if you were older than me. More mature. Like you’ve caught me up and passed me by.’

‘Don’t say that.’

‘Anyway, you had a right to know why Mum’s the way she is. When she’s cross, it’s not with you, or me, even if it feels that way. Do you see?’

‘I’m not sure.’

‘So you’ll be nicer with Mum, yeah?’

‘I am nice with her.’

‘And Dad . . .’

‘I can’t think about that.’

‘He’s spent a lot of time paying for one slip.’

‘Don’t.’

‘I’m just saying, no one’s a villain. Some things happened.’

Some things. I pulled away from her and took hold of my glass. ‘And I thought this was going to be a relaxing drink together.’

‘Well, I mean, it’s been good to talk. We don’t do it very often. Even if what’s been said is a bit painful.’

I felt a flush of heat rising up my chest and realised it was fury. With Dad for turning his back on the family to pursue his own lust, with Mum for putting up with it, with Helen for uncovering
the affair, with all of them for being in on it and excluding me. Wires of tension criss-crossing around me, sly and meaningful looks exchanged, with me in the middle of this cat’s cradle of
secrets. I was tired of people closing doors against me and mouthing over my head. Helen’s illness, Dad’s affair. God knows what else had gone on that I hadn’t discovered.
I’d had enough of being the baby of the family. I’d had enough of the family. I wanted to step over the lot of them and stride off into my own life. Wherever that was.

‘And I know you’re upset now, but that’ll lessen, Jen. I sobbed my heart out when I first realised. You get used to it, though.’

‘Do you?’

The barman reappeared and began polishing glasses. The log fire spat and crackled, the old sheepdog scratched its ear. How long we sat in silence like that I don’t know. I was aware of my
own thumb stroking up and down the side of my Coke with ever increasing speed. Before my eyes rose that picture of Ellie bent over the sink, her face pink and tender with crying. I’d not been
intending to tell my sister about what I’d witnessed seven hours ago in the Ladies’ at Americana because I wasn’t sure what effect the news might have. It could be reassuring for
her, make her finally understand what a lucky escape she’d had when she and Joe broke up, and therefore banish some of those tormenting memories. On the other hand, depending on how she felt
towards Ellie, it could dredge up sympathies that would draw her again into her own darkest place. It might even, worst-case scenario, lead her to believe Joe was on the market again and in need of
consolation. Potentially dangerous. So at the very least I’d wanted to mull over the possibilities.

But I was overtaken with the surge of power that comes from holding charged information. This was my turn to break a revelation over someone’s head.

Beside me Helen sat twisting strands of bright copper hair around her index finger. ‘I’m really sorry, Jen.’

I took a deep breath.

‘You know, it’s odd you should mention people having affairs,’ I heard myself say, my voice trembling slightly, ‘because you’ll never guess who I saw in Chester
today.’

CHAPTER 7

WOMAN’S WORLD

The Festive Five – our Top Tips on How to Avoid a Stressful Christmas!

You know what it’s like: so much build-up, so much expectation, so much darned hard work. No wonder many of us have come to dread the demands of the yuletide season.
Tensions run high as family members are cooped up together in overheated rooms for hours on end. There aren’t enough kitchen helpers, or there are too many, and meanwhile the rubbish bags are
piling up and the TV remote’s gone missing and no one thought to check the household battery stocks before the shops closed. You’re convinced that under every other roof in the land,
Christmas is going like a dream. The reality is, though, very few households are advert-perfect, and almost everyone’s bound to run into conflict at some point over he holiday. Here are our
simple suggestions for relieving he pressure and making sure we all have the relaxing break we need and deserve.

I read back my copy and it sounded like the most pat advice ever. Because God knows how my own Christmas was going to be this year, playing happy families with
parents-who-no-longer-felt-like-my-parents. For so many years I’d believed that, for all our spats and grumbles, everything was basically fine with the Crossleys, when in fact it was nothing
like. World War Three had played out behind my back. The idea was unbelievably hurtful. I felt like the biggest fool in the world.

It had been a long process of reorientation. Lately there’d been nights when I’d sat next to my mother on the sofa, pretending to watch TV but in reality scrutinising every line and
contour of her face and wondering how on earth she’d held herself together during the discovery of Dad’s infidelity. My whole life she’d just been ‘Mum’; I don’t
think I’d ever
seen
her as a person, as a woman. Lately I realised there was so much more to her, a darker, stronger, fiercer core which must have carried her through the worst. No
wonder there were days when she was raw and snappy. Helen helped me see this as she let me talk it over endlessly in the small-hours privacy of my bedroom. I wanted to tell Mum that now I
understood better, I was sorry I hadn’t been more patient with her. But how would she react if I came out with such a speech? Could either of us bear that sudden burst of intimacy? The raking
up of the painful past? I doubted it. So I just carried on watching, and badgering Hel, and thinking.

At the same time I found myself assessing my father’s body language – the furtive glance up from his newspaper whenever someone walked into the room, or that slight shrinking of the
shoulders he always did when the telephone rang, as if he was expecting bad news. I’d never noticed before but it seemed to me he still moved like a guilty man. Or was I imagining it? Was I
overdramatising? I couldn’t tell. I loved him, I hated him. I had no idea who he was. It was a relief when he took himself out to his den in the garage.

Then there was the more basic (but increasingly urgent) matter of what to buy these people for Christmas. Because how do you shop for the truly damaged family? I’d flicked through
catalogues and browsed online as usual, trawled the Rows of Chester, but every idea I had seemed loaded with subtext. Aftershave for my father?
Yes, but who are you attempting to smell nice
for?
Speciality chocolates?
Grow fatter, Dad, then there’s less chance you’ll cheat again.
Posh hand cream for Mum?
You’re dry and wrinkly, no wonder he
strayed.
A pretty scarf?
Hide that withered neck away, old woman.
As for Helen, who knew what she wanted at the moment? My revelation about Ellie she’d absorbed in a cool
silence, which could have been relief, triumph, anger, pain. However she felt, she wasn’t for sharing. Perhaps I should just buy us all a bumper box of Kalms and have done.

‘Hey, Gerry,’ I said, looking away from the screen.

There was no reply. When I glanced over he was swivelled round in his seat, looking at Rosa’s empty office.

‘What’s going on?’ I asked. ‘Don’t tell me she’s on the warpath again? Do I need to brace myself?’

‘Nah, you’re fine. Do you want a laugh, though?’

‘Depends.’

‘OK.’ He lowered his voice. ‘Soon as the boss walks in, take yourself over to the wall planner and pretend to be making notes. But keep an eye on her window. Alan tipped me
off. Apparently you should see something funny.’

‘What sort of funny?’

‘He didn’t say. Some prank he’s set up.’

‘Where is he, anyway?’

‘Out interviewing the contractors for the new sports stadium. He should be back any minute.’

I saved the Festive Tips document, vanished it and got down to my next project, which was a feature about local restaurant events over the festive period. Gerry had done the spadework on this
one but then Rosa had passed it on to me to finish. Scanning down his notes I was surprised to see that one of the chefs interviewed was my old food tech teacher, Mr Dickson. Wee Rory, we’d
called him. Had hours of fun imitating his Glaswegian accent. But it looked as if he’d known what he was talking about when he chivvied us to roll our pastry thinner. Now he was
Asperge
d’Or
Chef of the Year. Well, good for him. A brave step to pack in a secure job and start up on his own. And I thought of how, as well as cookery, he’d also taken us for PSHCE in
Year 8, when some of us hadn’t been as mature as we should have been and weren’t ready to discuss citizenship and social responsibility. I remembered Stuart Lyons, who’d started a
craze for stapling stuff to your tie and who’d attached himself to his text book cover in the middle of a debate about substance abuse. I suppose we must have been a pain to teach, but you
don’t think about that when you’re drunk on your own wit. Stuart’s daftness sparked off another recollection, this time of a male PE instructor who we called Wiggo because the
popular myth was that he wore a rug – ‘Nobody’s hair’s that crap in real life,’ people used to argue – but we never found out the truth. Which in turn reminded
me of my sister’s favourite, Mr Wolski, because he had his hair spiked like some of the sixth formers and wore almost-trendy shirts. My favourite teacher had been Mrs Patterson because she
taught English, which I loved, and she was the person who told me I could make a career in writing if I worked hard and stayed focussed. Sometimes her name popped up in
The Messenger
because although she was retired, she was very active in the Quakers.