The Bad Mother (8 page)

‘So her solution was to turn up on my doorstep but not tell me who she was? That doesn’t make sense!’

‘You’re
our
child. Well, hardly a child. But Erin didn’t want to destroy that. That’s why she turned up here the next day, to explain what she’d done.’

Tessa nodded. ‘She wasn’t expecting to find me here as well.’

‘No,’ agreed Pamela. ‘She wanted me to know she’d been so that if you ever asked about her, you’d know your mother
had
come to see you.’ The words felt strange in her mouth: no matter how riven with guilt she’d been whenever she’d used the word
mother
to refer to herself, it was alien to say the truth out loud.

‘But why
would
I ask about her?’ pressed Tessa, reminding Pamela of what she had been like as an argumentative teenager. ‘Why would anyone enquire into a secret they never even knew existed?’

The previous night Erin had revealed that although Averil had written her a weekly letter full of local news, she had never once referred to the birth or adoption. And when, in the early years, Erin had begged her to come out to Sydney to see her, Averil had simply ignored her
request. Pamela knew, without Erin having to say it, that she had been no more forthcoming herself. ‘It’s my fault,’ she told Tessa now. ‘I should have ignored my mother and taken you out to Australia years ago, when you were small. I should have told the truth.’

‘Why didn’t you?’

‘I knew what Averil would say. I wasn’t able to defy her.’

‘And now?’ persisted Tessa.

‘We all tried to do what was best,’ said Pamela. ‘I’m not saying we got it right, but we tried. Erin was little more than a child herself, and Averil had so much on her shoulders after our father died. We tried to arrange things as best we could.’

‘Why didn’t Erin stay longer? Did she really have to get home for her dogs?’

Pamela’s heart bled for the pain in her daughter’s voice. She had begged Erin to stay on, to remain as long as she liked; but Erin had said that it was all too much, that she’d made a new life for herself, and returning to Felixham had turned her into a child again, expecting Averil to come in at any moment and disapprove of her. Pamela had understood perfectly. ‘Maybe we’ll all go out soon to visit her,’ she suggested.

‘Erin didn’t come back because she wanted to see me, did she? Not really. She only came because of a deathbed promise. And to see you,’ Tessa added.

Pamela thought for a long while, hearing the echoes of Erin’s confession and tearful pleas for understanding all those years ago, of Averil’s harsh rejection of Erin’s
story, of her own horrified but frozen silence. When she glanced up she found Tessa watching her, a deep frown on her face. ‘I don’t think that’s true,’ said Pamela carefully. ‘But it was complicated. What happened was a catastrophe for her. And if anyone got it wrong, it was me.’

‘You mean you didn’t want me either.’

Pamela felt her lips close tight in the familiar rictus of secrecy. She hated it, resented it, yet felt helpless to overcome it.

‘You didn’t, did you?’ asked Tessa, upset.

‘That’s not true!’ The words burst out and Pamela reached for Tessa’s hand, but Tessa whipped it away childishly behind her back. Pamela strove to explain: ‘Every time I held you in my arms, every time you hugged me or snuggled up to me, it was like a knife in my heart because of Erin.’

‘You used to push me away.’

Pamela stood up. ‘You were hers. It wasn’t fair for me to have everything while she had nothing.’

‘But look at her!’ cried Tessa angrily. ‘She’s fine. She’s perfectly all right. She never wanted me anyway! Why didn’t you all just get rid of me, abandon me in a phone box or on the church steps?’

Pamela took her yellow gloves from the basin and watched her hands shake as she smoothed them flat. ‘Let’s have a coffee,’ she said, herding Tessa out of the bathroom. ‘Go and sit in the lounge while I make it. I won’t be long.’

To her relief, Tessa did as she was told. Pamela slipped into the kitchen, closing the door softly. She opened the
fridge and poured a little orange juice into a glass, aware that the tremor in her hand was more pronounced. Reaching into a cupboard she drew out the bottle of gin she kept hidden behind the bags of flour and poured a handsome measure into the juice.

By the time the kettle had boiled, the alcohol had done its job and she felt calm and empty. She made the coffee, put everything on a tray and took it through to where Tessa waited in the lounge.

‘No family is perfect,’ she said with a glassy smile as she handed her daughter a steaming mug. ‘Every parent makes mistakes, but we try to do our best.’

TEN

Later in the week, Tessa returned from the farm shop laden with the staples of the organic cooked breakfasts she advertised on her website. Upset by the owner’s cheerful assumption that she’d surely be familiar with every detail of the contract to supply Sam’s brasserie, she was irritated to find Hugo in her basement kitchen helpfully checking a loose washer at the sink. His retirement had more or less coincided with Sam’s departure to London, when Hugo had possessed himself of a set of keys ‘just in case’, then striven to give Tessa the impression that, with time on his hands, it was a kindness to let him potter about and find odd jobs. Even though she knew he had plenty of more attractive occupations to keep him busy she played along, pretending to an exasperation she sometimes actually felt – as she did now.

‘Hi, Dad,’ she greeted him. The look of delight on his face puzzled her for a moment, until she realised it was in response to the word ‘Dad’.

He came to kiss her cheek, grasping her shoulders. ‘How are you?’ he asked.

‘Fine.’ She kept hold of the carrier bags, rebuffing his attempt to take them from her.

‘We thought we’d let you alone, allow a bit of time for things to sink in. But maybe now you’d like to talk?’

‘Not really.’

‘Especially when … Mitch told me about you and Sam,’ Hugo explained gently.

‘Right.’ She opened the door of the big fridge ready to put away the meat, relieved that she didn’t have to find the words herself.

‘I’m so sorry, Tessie. It can’t be easy.’

‘No.’ Tessa began filling the fridge, moving things around to make room to put the fresh produce at the back.

‘If you want advice over the legal stuff, I know a couple of good people. Divorce lawyers,’ he added unnecessarily. ‘I’m sure you’ll want to be fair, but equally you don’t want to-’

‘Leave it, Dad, please!’ Flushed with anger and distress, she buried her face in the carrier bags.

‘Ok. Sorry. But you’re not on your own, Tessie. We’ll get past this together, I promise.’

‘Same old cosy pretence, you mean?’

‘No. Let’s start afresh, shall we?’

Tessa nodded, not able to meet his eyes. Hugo leaned down to pick up an escaping tomato that had rolled out of its bag. ‘So what did you make of Erin?’ he asked. ‘How did the two of you get on?’

‘Fine, I suppose. I mean, maybe if I’d known all my life that my real mother was out there somewhere …’ Taking the tomato from him, she saw him wince and continued unwillingly. ‘If I’d always known I was adopted, then perhaps meeting her now would be different. But – I really don’t care.’

Tessa’s shameful fear was that Erin hadn’t bothered to stay longer or offer more because, like everyone else, she’d found her daughter such a disappointment. And her heart clenched tight at unbidden thoughts of Lauren and Mitch accepting Nula’s welcome, of them finding what they needed elsewhere. She banged the fridge door shut with more force than she intended. ‘I don’t know how to feel, frankly.’ She turned to face Hugo squarely. ‘What should I feel? What do you feel?’

He returned her gaze steadily. ‘You’ve every right to be angry with us.’

‘Would you ever have told me?’

‘I’m sorry you found out like this.’

‘Would you have told me otherwise?’

‘Probably not,’ Hugo conceded. ‘Not after all this time.’

‘Why not?’ The question burst from Tessa, though she shrank from the answer.

‘Because, to me, you were always my daughter.’ He cleared his throat. ‘Right from the second you were placed in my arms.’

Embarrassed, they both looked away, but Tessa stored away each precious word to take out later when she could fully appreciate them.

‘And I think Pamela was afraid that if you knew the truth, you’d never forgive her. But that’s no excuse,’ he added. ‘We should have told you years ago.’

Glancing around her utilitarian kitchen, a new thought struck Tessa: ‘I thought Grandma Averil left this place to me because I’d earned it. But that wasn’t the reason, was it? This is Erin’s inheritance. That’s why she wanted me to have it; not because I’m me, but because I’m Erin’s daughter and Grandma Averil felt guilty for what she’d done.’

‘Perhaps,’ Hugo admitted with a sigh.

Her grandmother’s legacy was this well-run, sterile machine: despite the perpetual warmth of the overworked Aga, Tessa always felt reproached by the discipline and efficiency of her kitchen, by her failure to create a proper home.

‘I take full responsibility for keeping you in the dark,’ Hugo went on. ‘When the subterfuge began, I suppose I never believed it could remain secret. But it did, and then the right moment never came, and we put it off. And besides, I always felt it was Pamela’s secret, not mine.’

She was suddenly buffeted by images of Sam making a new home elsewhere, and her mind seized on an ugly new suspicion – that she had been more blind than she dared admit, that perhaps Sam loving Nula had gone on for far longer than she’d assumed. What if they’d been seeing each other in London? Or even before?

‘But in a way, you’re right,’ Hugo continued. ‘Maybe it does make no difference.’ He cleared his throat again,
straightening his shoulders the way he did when determined to say what had to be said, however difficult. ‘I love you,’ he uttered. ‘Nothing changes that.’

‘You don’t keep secrets from people you love!’ cried Tessa, thinking of how Sam had not loved her, and failing to notice how Hugo caved inwards, away from her scorching words. ‘It’s selfish. Cowardly.’

‘You’re right,’ he agreed. ‘We lied to you. That was wrong. We didn’t think it through to the end.’

‘Well, that’s your problem!’ she replied. ‘You created this mess.’

It seemed to take a big effort just for Hugo to remain there, staunch in his refusal to evade her bitterness. ‘I’m sorry. And I want you to know that, in my heart, I always have been and always will be your father.’

He stood there waiting. Part of her longed to run to him: what kept her still was a little voice deep inside that feared his pity. Finally Hugo nodded, as if accepting her decision.

‘Try and be kind to your mother.’ His face, until then pale with worry, flushed. ‘To Pamela,’ he amended. ‘She’s not as strong as you think.’

‘Why is it up to me to make everyone feel better?’

‘It’s not. I’m not saying that. Please, Tessie.’

She ignored his appeal. ‘I don’t care. It’s not my mess, and I don’t want to deal with it. I want to be left alone.’

‘Very well.’ Hugo headed for the door, pausing to touch her shoulder softly as he passed. Although Tessa understood that he was obeying her, that she would have protested
if he hadn’t, she also felt cheated. Part of her needed him to fight harder for her.

She stood listening to his slow steps ascend the stairs, then noticed a dirty mug and cereal bowl on the table, left there no doubt by Lauren. It was a relief to sweep them up and clatter them into the sink, exclaiming aloud: ‘Do I have to do everything around here?’

She turned on the tap and the pipes juddered before water spurted out, its force ricocheting off the bowl and spattering the front of her clothes. Tessa almost burst into tears. Hugo was right: the tap needed a new washer. Everything was so unfair.

Realising she had to focus on something to calm herself down, Tessa tidied the kitchen and went up to the ground floor, where she plumped the cushions in the guests’ sitting room. She looked into the breakfast room, but Carol had already cleared and straightened the tables, so she continued to the office where there was always plenty of paperwork to catch up on. At the desk, her fingers hesitated over the keyboard, lured by the promise of a missing piece of puzzle. How could she be expected to be her best self, or to see what was really going on around her, when all her life she had not known who she was? She needed to transform this mess into something positive. Something important was lacking from her life, something that would make her feel whole again, and though she had no wish to upset Hugo of all people, she could not afford to let herself be ambushed again by ignorance. A half-formed decision took on the momentum of inevitability. She
opened Google, typed the name Roy Weaver and pressed Enter. A random list appeared. She searched again, adding ‘architect’ after his name. The new list was equally random. She added ‘Manchester’, then ‘Manchester University’. Nothing gelled. It was too common a name. She would have to think around this, work out how to track him down.

She disowned the unsettling ripple of recognition that possessing a secret of her own would be exciting.

ELEVEN

School had broken up for the Easter holidays. Mitch sat in his window seat, deciding how to spend his day. He expected that, as usual, his mates would gather on the green to exchange banter and the occasional cigarette while lounging against the black Napoleonic canons that faced out to sea. Mitch would usually be happy enough to join in the youthful attempt to project a dangerous rural machismo, except that today he was apprehensive lest Tamsin walk past, observe their posturing, and judge them pathetic.

On the other hand, she might not even be in Felixham. In which case, why rot alone indoors? He could go over and see his dad, but he felt constrained about that too. Mitch liked Nula, she was no stress, and he was pleased for Sam. Although Mitch sometimes wished his dad would just grow up a bit, Sam was far more cheerful these days, far more
normal
. When he’d first come back from London he’d been so
stagey
, as if he were acting the part of a dad rather than just hanging out like he used to when he still
lived at home. Mitch had never figured out why Sam had left home in the first place: it wasn’t as though he and Tessa had shouted and fought, like he’d heard friends talk about their parents, and they’d gone on being just as friendly as they had before. Though Mitch knew that couldn’t last, not now Nula was around.