Moving On

Finchley

Finchley

IN FEbrUARY 1991, ELLEN GOT A LETTER FROM Danny.

Hey you,

It’s finally happening. I suggested to Bobbi that I make an honest woman of her, so on Valentine’s Day next year – her birthday, as it happens – we’re going to go to church and do the deed. I’m letting you know in good time, so you can make what arrangements you need to make to come and throw confetti at us – and of course we’d love if Leo and Juliet could be here too. Bobbi’s parents have already booked the golf club for the reception – I suspect they’re thinking ahead to when they can’t look after themselves any more, and they’ll remind us of how our wedding nearly bankrupted them, and we’ll be forced to take them in.

You can stay with us while you’re here – everyone else has booked into hotels – and Juliet can learn to swim in the pool if she hasn’t learnt already. Come for at least a week – it’s a long trip.

Hope you can make it,

D x

PS My latest mobile phone – they’re called cell phones here – can now handle international calls, so you’ll have no peace. They’re getting smaller and lighter all the time – and you’ll have your own within a couple of years, guaranteed.

She wrote back saying she’d be there. Between you and me (and possibly Bobbi, if you swear her to secrecy), I would love to marry Leo, but there’s still no sign of a proposal, and I’m too proud, or too cowardly, to ask him, so I must accept it and be glad for what we have.

She said she’d travel alone. Bringing Leo and Juliet would involve far more organising, and we have a wonderful nanny who I’m hoping will still be with us this time next year (and for the next several years). Juliet will be three in May, can you believe it? Since Joan had Trisha she’s been on a mission to convince me to go again too, and I will, some day.

She told him of a second advertising award that had led to a salary hike and a job offer from a bigger agency. Leo was all for it; they’re very prestigious and it would have meant more money for sure, but in the end I decided to stay put. I love Creative Ways, and Lucinda and I work really well together, and I earn enough. Great that someone wanted me, though.

In May, she tried again with Leo.

‘I’d love another baby,’ she said, ‘and it feels like the right time. I know you grew up an only child, but I really think it would be good for Juliet to have a little brother.’ No harm to plant the suggestion that the next child would be a boy, to carry on the Morgan name.

It took time, and quite a bit of coaxing – ‘You’re so good with Juliet; being a father comes naturally to you’ – but by the middle of July she had finally won him over, and she came off the pill.

On her thirtieth birthday they got Maggie to babysit and went to see The Mousetrap . Ellen hadn’t stepped foot inside a theatre since having Juliet, and feeling again the joy of watching a live performance, she vowed not to leave it so long before the next.

She was sad to leave her twenties behind. They’d been where she’d got to know Frances properly, and where she’d fallen in love, not once but twice, and found success and fulfilment in the working world. And of course she’d become a mother in her twenties too, easily her greatest achievement to date. Her thirties, she resolved, would be even better.

In August, assuming that another pregnancy was just a matter of time, she began quietly exploring the possibility of moving to a new house. Leo’s was charming, and the location was great, but it wasn’t a family home. It had no garden to speak of, just a little paved patio, and the two flights of stairs were definitely not child-friendly.

They were getting away with it so far, but when the second baby came along she felt it would quickly become unsuitable. So she began studying estate agents’ windows whenever she was out and about, and noting the areas that featured what she was looking for. Just doing her homework. Just seeing what was out there.

In September, Joan rang to say she and Seamus would be moving to Cork before the end of the year. ‘He’s being transferred. It’s a promotion; we decided he should take it.’

‘That’ll be a big change. What about your job?’

‘Plenty of schools in Cork. I can sub for a while if I have to.’

‘Mam will miss you.’

‘She’ll be OK. I’m sorry she won’t be around to look after the kids, but you can’t have everything.’

Ellen phoned her mother once a month or so. Trying, as she’d promised Frances, to reconnect, to bridge their gap, but the calls were brief, the topics general. They talked of the weather, and the latest political scandal, and Juliet’s milestones, and Joan’s children’s goings-on. They limped through five or ten minutes and then disconnected, and Ellen felt no closer at the end of each call.

‘We’ve put our house on the market,’ Joan said, ‘and we’ll rent in Cork until we find one.’

‘Best of luck. Let me know how you get on.’

‘I will. Any news yourself?’

She’d told Joan that she and Leo were trying for another baby. ‘No news yet,’ she said. She said nothing about the covert house-hunting – better not, when Leo didn’t know about it.

A few weeks later she decided to view a house in Finchley, just to get a feel for what sounded like a suitable family home, to walk through rooms and imagine herself there with Leo and Juliet. She took an afternoon off work, and sat on a train for forty minutes, and followed directions to the house.

It was bright, with nicely proportioned rooms and just one flight of stairs. The smallest of the four bedrooms held a child’s bed, and a train set on the floor, and a poster of Spiderman on the wall. Ellen stood on the landing and looked down at the back garden that had a swing and a slide in it, and she imagined the flowers and herbs and shrubs she would plant there if it were hers. Yes, this was the kind of house they needed. As soon as she got pregnant she’d talk to Leo.

With time to spare she strolled through Finchley’s main street. Halfway along, her attention was caught by a man walking ahead of her. Something in the way he moved . . . what was it? Yes, a little turn-in of his right foot when he planted it on the ground.

Exactly like her father had done; some long-ago knee injury to blame.

But it wasn’t her father. It couldn’t be him. His hair was grey, and he wore an anorak, which was all wrong. A sports jacket in summer, a heavy coat in winter; that was always what he’d worn. And the footwear was wrong too – he’d never owned a pair of runners.

And then he slowed to glance through a window, and she got a view of his profile – and her heart gave a little squeeze. He was so like him.

Was there any possibility? The height was right, the build was right. Hair turned grey as people aged, and clothing styles could change too.

She was ten paces behind him. She was probably wrong. She’d seen men over the past few years that had resembled either him or Ben, and none of them had turned out to be who she’d thought. People could look alike, especially when you hadn’t seen them in years.

He pushed open a café door and entered. She held back and peeked in, and saw him cross the floor and embrace a young woman who had got to her feet at his approach. He took a seat facing the window.

Facing Ellen. She saw him clearly.

There was no doubt. It was him. After fourteen years, she was looking at the man who’d walked out on them.

She felt her breath quicken, her colour rise. A pulse pounded in her ears. Her mouth was dry. He was there, just yards from her.

People walked around her as she stared in at him – and then maybe he sensed her, because he glanced up and looked right at her. For an instant, their gazes held – and without thinking about it she strode to the door and pushed it open and entered the café on legs she could no longer feel.

He rose as she approached the table. It seemed to take forever. She bumped against someone’s chair and kept going. She took in his startled expression – and now the young woman he was with was turning to look at her too.

‘Ellen,’ he said – and the sound of his voice saying her name stopped her dead. She stood rooted, feeling all the blood draining now from her face.

‘Ellen,’ he repeated, arms coming up – and she found her voice.

‘Don’t touch me!’ Not shouted, more hissed, with quiet vehemence. ‘Don’t!’ she repeated, although he had already dropped his arms. She couldn’t think what to say next, her brain buzzing with a thousand questions that she couldn’t articulate. She was aware of the woman looking fixedly at her, but she kept her eyes locked on his.

‘Why?’ she said. ‘Why? Why?’ She was like a robot that had malfunctioned, unable to move past the word.

‘Ellen—’ He seemed every bit as paralysed as her. ‘Will you . . .?’ He indicated a vacant chair – and that gesture unleashed something in Ellen.

‘You left us!’ Louder now, her words sharp and harsh, heedless of the heads that swung around. ‘You left us, you just walked out! How could you do that? How could you do that to us? What kind of a father are you?’

She became aware that tears were spilling down her cheeks; she dashed a hand up to swipe at them but they kept coming. ‘And who is she ?’ she demanded, pointing at the woman who shrank away. ‘What are you doing with her? How dare you! I hate you! I hate you!’

And at that she swung around and marched blindly from the café, eyes still streaming as she stumbled again into chairs, pushing her way out, half-running down the street, almost tripping over an uneven kerbstone but somehow managing to stay upright, her only thought to get away, get away – but he was coming after her, he was calling her name repeatedly.

‘Wait! Ellen, wait! Please, Ellen, wait! Please!’ – and in the end she had to stop because the breath was gone from her body. She had to stop and lean into the stitch that was stabbing her, and take panting gulps while he caught up with her.

‘Ellen,’ he said, panting too, ‘please let me explain. Please let me. Will you let me tell my side, Ellen?’

She shook her head, so forcefully it almost unbalanced her again. ‘I don’t want to talk to you – you’ve hurt me enough! Go away! Leave me alone!’ She cast around wildly, but she’d lost her bearings and couldn’t figure out the way back to the Tube station. She swiped at the tears that kept coming. ‘Stay away!’ she ordered. She couldn’t let him get close. She was terrified of him getting close.

‘Are you alright?’ a man asked, glancing in her father’s direction. ‘Do you need help?’

She was mortified. He thought she was in danger. ‘I’m OK,’ she told him, knowing that her face told another story. ‘It’s OK,’ she said, ‘thank you’ – and giving her father another swift glance, he walked on.

They stood facing one another. ‘Will you let me explain?’ he pleaded. ‘Please.’

‘I don’t want to hear whatever you have to say,’ she replied, but the fight was gone out of her. She was exhausted from emotion. ‘Excuse me,’ she said to a passing woman, ‘where’s the Tube station?’ and the woman gave directions, eyeing Ellen curiously.

‘I’ll come with you,’ he said. ‘We can talk on the train. Please give me a chance, Ellen,’ and she ignored him and kept going, and he kept following, and there was nothing she could do to stop him.

And on the train, he told her.

‘Things weren’t right for a long time. I’m not putting the blame on your mother; there were two of us in it. She was . . . troubled, and I didn’t have the patience to deal with it. I stayed for you and Joan, long after your mother and I had run our course.’

Ellen looked stonily at him.

‘Ellen,’ he said brokenly, ‘you have no idea how happy I am to see you now.’

‘You walked out,’ she said, some of her fire returning. ‘You never once came back. In fourteen years you never came back.’

‘Your mother said I wasn’t to. She said if I left her, I had to leave you both as well. All I could do was write to you.’

‘We didn’t know that. Mam only handed them over a few years ago.’

His face changed. ‘What? She kept them from you?’ She saw the devastation her words caused. ‘I waited,’ he said, so quietly she had to lean in. ‘Every day, I waited for you and Joan to write back.’

‘You could have visited,’ she insisted, determined not to weaken. ‘Even if you couldn’t live with her, you could have come and spent time with me and Joan.’

He shook his head. ‘She said if I ever came back she’d tell you why I went.’

Ellen stared at him. ‘You’ve just told me why you went.’

‘No. There’s more.’

He broke off and looked through the window, giving Ellen a chance to study the features that had been so dear to her. The face as well known as her own had new lines in it, fanning out from his eyes, pleating the skin around his mouth. Skin pouched beneath his eye sockets, tiny blood vessels scribbled over his cheeks. His hair was longer than she remembered, touching the back of his collar.

And then he said, so softly she barely heard above the hum of the train, ‘Ellen, I met someone. She worked in the newsagent’s beside the school.’ He drew in a breath, blinked rapidly. ‘I’m sorry, Ellen. We had an affair.’

She sank her face into her hands. After all the pain, all the tears, all the lonely years, it came down to this. A sordid little affair with a woman behind a counter in a newsagent’s. She remembered the shop dimly; she’d been in it. Couldn’t remember who worked there, had taken no notice of them.

‘It wasn’t what broke up your mother and me, Ellen. We were over by then, honestly.’ He halted. ‘I want you to know the whole truth. Can I go on?’

She looked up slowly. There was more?

He took another breath. ‘We had a child. It wasn’t planned, it was an accident. You saw her in the café.’

‘She’s your daughter ? You had another daughter?’

‘I did.’

She struggled to take it in. She and Joan had a half-sister, had had her for years without knowing it. ‘How old is she?’

‘She was nineteen in January.’

Nineteen. He’d been gone fourteen years.

‘She was five when you left,’ Ellen said. ‘You had another child, and you stayed living with us for five years after that.’

‘It was unforgivable. I couldn’t bear the thought of leaving you and Joan.’

She ignored this. ‘Where did they live?’

He gave a small lift of a hand. ‘A flat,’ he said, ‘on the other side of town.’ As if it didn’t matter – and she supposed it didn’t.

‘Did people know the child was yours?’ She couldn’t believe she was having this conversation. It felt like a parallel universe.

‘Nobody knew. She told nobody who the father was, not even her parents. Not until—’

She finished it for him. ‘Not until you left us, and went to live with your new family.’ She saw him flinch, and was glad.

‘I tried, Ellen. Honest to God, I tried to stay. I couldn’t. Making that decision was hell,’ he said quietly. ‘It was pure hell.’

‘We were there first,’ she said angrily. ‘We were your first children – but that didn’t matter when another one came along.’

‘It wasn’t as simple—’

She cut him off. ‘Did our mother know? Did you tell her?’

‘I told her I’d met someone else. I didn’t tell her about the child.’

‘So you took your new family and moved to Dublin.’

He just nodded. A short silence fell.

‘But you live in London now,’ she said.

‘No, I’m still in Dublin. I’m just over visiting Iris. She works in an art gallery in Covent Garden.’

Iris, her half-sister. The daughter he hadn’t deserted. She smothered a pang of jealousy.

‘Does she know about me and Joan?’

‘Yes. I told her last year.’ He paused, closed his eyes briefly. ‘After her mother died.’

She wasn’t prepared for that. She said nothing. She wouldn’t tell him she was sorry for his trouble, because she wasn’t.

‘She was knocked down by a drunk driver, the week before Christmas. She was out for a walk.’

Still she held her tongue. It was nothing to her.

‘Ellen,’ he said then, ‘I’ve thought about you and Joan every single day since I left. I’ve agonised about my decision, wondering if I made the right choice, or the most selfish one. I never stopped loving you and Joan, I love you both to bits, you must believe me, but I couldn’t go on the way it was.’

‘She tore up your cheques too,’ Ellen said. Wanting to hurt. ‘Joan and I had to get Saturday jobs.’

She saw the wounds her words caused. ‘I’m so sorry, Ellen.’

They were nearly at her stop. She felt drained.

‘I tried to make contact,’ he said, ‘after . . . Iris’ mother died. I rang the house and Patricia answered. She told me you’d both moved out, and . . . she said you didn’t want to hear from me.’

Listening, Ellen felt a surge of rage. Yes, there was fault on both sides, she could see that now, but even after all these years, her mother remained determined to punish him for leaving, and to punish her daughters in the process. What was the point in trying to move on from the past when her mother seemed bent on keeping it alive?

‘I tried contacting Frances, I thought she might help, but I had no address, and there was no number for her in the book.’

That much was true. Ellen remembered asking Frances why she wasn’t in the phone book, and Frances replying that she gave her number out to people she wanted to have it, and that was enough.

‘What about you?’ he said. ‘Do you live here now?’

‘Yes.’

‘Are you married? Do you have children?’

She ignored the first question. ‘I have a daughter,’ she said.

‘A granddaughter,’ he said softly, eyes glistening.

‘You have three grandchildren. Joan has two.’ She felt a kind of sadistic satisfaction saying it. She got to her feet as the Tube approached her station.

‘Will you keep in touch, Ellen? Will you take my number – or give me yours? Can I ring you sometime?’

She looked at the man who had meant the world to her. She looked at the yearning in his eyes.

The train stopped. The doors whooshed open.

‘No,’ she said. ‘I won’t keep in touch.’

Without waiting for a reply she stepped off the train and walked rapidly from the station. When she got home she heard Maggie and Juliet in the kitchen. She checked her watch and saw that there was still half an hour before she normally got back from work. She tiptoed upstairs and sank onto her bed and cried for the lost years, and all he’d missed.

After wishing to see him again for so long, she bitterly regretted the encounter. She should never have gone to Finchley. She wouldn’t tell anyone about bumping into him, not even Joan. What was the point? She had no intention of making contact with him again – and Joan, she was sure, wouldn’t want to meet him either if she knew what Ellen now knew.

All these years, their mother had known about the other woman. Little wonder she’d been bitter, even if, as he’d claimed, their relationship had already died. Not surprising she’d torn up his cheques, secreted away the letters to his daughters, denied him the chance to reconnect with them when he’d finally made contact with her. Wrong, but not surprising.

The half-sister, though. Iris. Should Joan be told about her? And how could Ellen tell her without revealing how she knew? Oh, it was complicated. It was too hard.

She would do nothing. For now at least, she would say nothing.