Make or Break

The whole room was silent save for the chink-chink-chink of Mum fidgeting with a new and unsightly beaded bracelet.

‘That lady Jess saw with Dad is his daughter?’ Annabelle said, stony-faced, leading Mum through the confession while I sat reeling and mentally scanning myself for signs of a stroke.

‘. . . Yes,’ Mum said.

‘And those children . . .?’

Mum flicked her eyes around the room before settling them on her lap. ‘Are his grandchildren.’ Mum lowered her voice. ‘Scarlett and Renzo.’

The fact that they had names shocked me. Scarlett and Renzo. Who were they to me? My half-niece and nephew?

After a long stretch of quiet Mum turned in my direction. ‘It’s not a young wife and young children, you see. It’s not as bad as you thought, Plum.’

I glared back at her, feeling really quite unhinged. ‘It’s not great, Mum!’

‘No . . .’

I fell back against the sofa.

Annabelle sat opposite in her armchair, her inner thoughts indecipherable on her blank face.

Mum looked up from her lap, affecting a problem-solving kind of tone. ‘You know, I have a book at home I bought for such an occasion as this. Shall I pop back and get it?’

She tried to stand and Annabelle fixed her with a glare. Mum sat back down.

‘I think you need to go back to that “work through your guilt” retreat for the next forty years, Mum,’ I said. ‘How . . . how did this even happen?’

‘Well, that’s a rather complicated story.’

‘Then I’ll need food,’ I said, starting to feel a little peaky.

‘That’s a good idea. I’ve hardly eaten since the retreat. You know, I think they use starvation as some kind of mind control thing. I’m not sure I agree—’

‘Mum!’

She flinched. ‘Yes, sorry Plum. Not the right time. I’ll tell you about it later. And you must tell me about your trip.’

I glared at her.

‘At a more appropriate time,’ she conceded.

‘Yes.’

With a plate of lettuce for Mum and seeded loaf toast spread with almond butter for Annabelle and me, Mum began her confession.

‘I met your father when my parents and I came to England for my last year of school. I guess you could say Teddy and I were high school sweethearts.’ She turned to me, her eyes shining. ‘Like you and Pete.’

I swallowed down a tacky mouthful of toast. I’d tell Mum about that calamity after we got to the bottom of the current one.

‘I went back to Bavaria for university and your father stayed here. We spent all our money on train rides visiting each other,’ Mum said, her expression wistful. ‘Then, after university I moved back to London and we lived in a little studio flat in Angel. It was perfect. I had a research job at the local radio station and your father started with a small international real estate company that seemed to be going places. Then the company offered him a promotion but it came with a one-year placement in South Africa.’ Mum’s face dropped. She played with her pendant, seemingly lost in that particular moment of sorrow then continued her story, Annabelle and I listening attentively.

‘I’d just gone back to university to get my master’s so couldn’t go with him. We planned to keep in touch as much as possible, but communications from South Africa were difficult back then. We didn’t have all this chat on the facebooktime or the internets that your lot have, we had to rely on letters or costly phone calls.’ She shook her head at us like our generation were somehow to blame for not coming up with Facebook Messenger earlier. Her jaw tightened and she continued. ‘Teddy’s one-year placement became two, and then three and before we knew it he was based in South Africa permanently and his once-a-year trips home were not enough.’ Mum sniffed and dragged a sad-looking hanky out from her sleeve. ‘I didn’t hear from Teddy for over a year. I finished my master’s, I got a job on the radio, I dated Patrick for a while—’

‘Patrick?! Patrick from your radio show?’ I spluttered. I looked over to Annabelle, checking she was as shocked by this additional bit of information as I was, but she remained, as she had been throughout this entire process, guarded and pensive. ‘Patrick, your producer Patrick?’

Mum looked at me like I ought to have known that information. ‘Yes, Plum.’ She frowned. ‘Oh, but Patrick was a nice enough man and very ethical and, of course, very dear to me, but it wasn’t fair. I’d given my heart to one man and it wasn’t ever coming back.’

My eyes flicked to Annabelle again. She sat very still, waiting for the rest of Mum’s explanation.

‘Then one year, I was at an old school friend’s birthday party and Teddy walked in. I hadn’t seen him for four years.’ Mum blew her nose into her hanky. ‘It was then I learnt that Teddy had married and was expecting his first child.’ Her eyes watered and her face crumpled like she was experiencing the hurt all over again. ‘I was brokenhearted,’ she wept. ‘I left the party immediately.’ She paused to blow her nose again, then composed herself and continued.

‘Your father phoned the next day but I hung up on him. Then he turned up at my flat, calling to me from the street below. It was very romantic. He wanted to remain friends but I couldn’t. I just couldn’t!’ She sniffed copiously. ‘He told me he’d never stopped loving me. But I told him to go and leave me alone and never speak to me again! It was horrible! Horrible. I was a mess. I baked and ate two chocolate fudge cakes and then fell asleep for a day and half.’ Mum sniffed and caught her breath. ‘I didn’t see him for perhaps another couple of years but then his father died and I went to the funeral.’ She rested her gaze somewhere in the past. ‘His wife and his two-year-old daughter stayed in Cape Town because they didn’t have the money to all come out. It was very expensive in those days, you see.’

A lump formed in my throat. How awful it must have been for Mum.

She took in a shaky breath and continued. ‘At the wake I went over to offer my condolences. He looked so sad and yet so happy to see me and we realised none of the feelings had gone. If anything . . .’ Mum’s eyes began watering again. ‘If anything the time and the distance had made our halted love more intoxicating.’

‘Your father stayed in London for two weeks while he moved his mother into a home,’ Mum said, casting her eyes downwards. ‘He spent every night with me.’ She twisted the ratty hanky in her wrinkled fingers. ‘I am ashamed.’ She looked up and wiped away a tear. ‘But I have loved your father from the moment I saw him in his school uniform with his incompetently knotted tie and his text books falling out of his satchel.’ She blew her nose. ‘He was my first and only love.’

‘But . . . but what about us?’ I said, feeling both terrible pity for my mother and also a growing sense of injustice. Annabelle and I were unknowingly made a part of an appalling, hurtful lie.

‘Well, by that stage your father had been made a partner in the company and was spending many weeks travelling with clients. He’d move between the London and Cape Town offices so we saw each other regularly. When he was here he was with me. And we lived life like a normal couple. When he was there he was with . . . with her.’ She had the decency to look embarrassed. ‘Then we had you, Annabelle.’ Mum smiled mistily in Annabelle’s direction. ‘And you, Jess,’ she said, turning to me with wet, adoring eyes. ‘And it’s been going on so long there never seemed the right time to . . . to stop, I guess.’ Mum sniffed, sat back on the sofa and gave a tiny shrug of her tiny shoulders. ‘There, you have it,’ she said, weeping openly. ‘My most wonderful love affair is also a most terrible act of deception.’ She dissolved into tiny hiccuping sobs.

I looked over at Annabelle in the armchair. She was pale and appeared to have gone inside herself, processing everything we’d just heard.

‘I’m so sorry,’ Mum squeaked from behind her hanky. ‘I’m so very, very sorry.’

I edged along the sofa, sat next to my mother and put my arm around her shoulders. I had so many questions: did the other family know about us? Did Dad ever think about leaving us? Did he love both Mum and his wife equally? And if he did, how was that possible? But my main question was, WHAT THE FUCK WERE YOU THINKING?!