Chapter 22
MARGE
Marge surveyed the scene, checking that every single detail was perfect. ‘In case you’re under any illusion, I would hate this,’ Marge shuddered. ‘If you ever decide to do anything like this for me, I’ll divorce you.’
Ian’s laugh caused her to immediately shush him.
Estelle would be here any second and Marge didn’t want anything to spoil the surprise that her daughter would have when she walked through the door and saw all her friends in the little Italian restaurant they’d been coming to for Sunday dinners for years now.
It was Estelle’s favourite place on earth, and the owner, Gino, had worked with Marge to make sure her girl’s twenty-first birthday would be perfect.
All Estelle’s favourite dishes, the colourful décor, the music, the big pile of gifts on the table, brought by twenty or so of her chums. Estelle’s best friend, Amber, had helped them with the guest list, and it included Estelle’s wide group of mates from college, which was just as well, because neither she nor Ian had much in the way of extended family.
Not that they minded in the least. Marge, Ian, Estelle: the three of them had always been enough.
They’d never had more children – not because they didn’t want to, because it just hadn’t happened.
Unexplained infertility had been the medical verdict.
For a while, they’d considered other options – adoption, IVF – but in the end, it was Ian who’d made the decision.
‘We’re just fine the way we are, Marge. If you want to try for more, or look at other options, I’ll be right with you, but I don’t need that – what we have, the three of us, is all I need to be happy.
’ That had ended the deliberations and quelled the angst for Marge, because the three of them were more than enough for her too.
Ian’s love and the utter joy of being Estelle’s mother were all she’d ever needed.
When Amber and Estelle came through the door, the whole restaurant erupted in cheers and the sound of hooters and streamers being popped, and Marge watched as Estelle threw her head back and laughed.
Their daughter had always been such a naturally happy child and if she were being honest – truly, brutally honest – Marge was a little jealous of that.
Estelle didn’t care if everything was organised perfectly.
The thought of a surprise didn’t fill her with horror.
She wasn’t always wrapped up in plans and details.
Her artistic, creative girl thought things through and was unfailingly organised, she made measured, mature decisions, but she was also happy to go with the flow, see how things worked out.
That definitely wasn’t in her genes. Marge needed to be one step ahead of everything, and as for Estelle’s biological father…
Marge was fairly sure he’d never had a carefree day in his life.
Marge could only think that Estelle’s calm, strong energy was learned behaviour that came from Ian, and she was grateful every day, for him and for their family.
The rest of the night passed in a joyous celebration of Estelle, full of laughter and dancing until Estelle spun over to them, threw her arms around her dad’s neck and kissed him on the cheek.
‘I’ve had the best time, Dad.’ She moved on to Marge.
Another kiss. ‘And, Mum – I can’t believe you organised all this and I didn’t even suspect a thing.
Actually, I can believe it. Thank you. I love you both so fricking much!
’ With that, she shimmied back over to rejoin Amber and the rest of her friends on the makeshift dance floor.
Another delightful attribute her daughter possessed – the ability to be free and open with her emotions in every situation. Marge and Ian’s love was just as strong, but it was quieter. Peaceful. Assured. Just the way they both liked it.
At the end of the night, Marge and Ian managed to resist Estelle’s requests to join her gang as they went on to a nightclub. ‘Come on, Mum, live a little,’ she teased them.
At which point Ian spun his daughter around, laughing. ‘You go enjoy yourself, darling. We’ll clear up here and see you tomorrow.’
Estelle went off into the night, as giddy as someone who had her whole wonderful life in front of her should be.
‘Were we ever like that?’ Marge asked Ian later, as they walked home. They’d decided against a taxi, because the October night was chilly but not too cold and they enjoyed the walk. They’d promised Gino they’d be back the next day to collect the gifts and what was left of the cake.
‘I don’t think so. I spent my twenty-first in a library studying for my finals. The only wild thing I’ve ever done is fall in love with you the minute I met you.’
‘Same! How did we not know that before now? Isn’t it a joy to be both boring and compatible?’ Their laughter made a dog walker further along the street turn around and smile. The truth was, she’d never been bored a day in their marriage. Happy, yes. Thankful too. But never bored.
They strolled a while longer in peaceful silence, content as always, just to be together. Words weren’t always needed. In fact, Marge cherished the quiet moments most. It was Ian who broke the peace first.
‘So you know what this means now, Marge, don’t you?’
Marge didn’t even have to ask what he was referring to, because she knew. But she listened, her mouth going dry, as he went on.
‘We said we’d tell her the truth when she was sixteen. Then eighteen. And then we said twenty-one. We can’t keep putting it off, Marge – she deserves to know.’
‘She does,’ Marge agreed, with a sad sigh.
Even as she said it, Marge knew that she still wasn’t ready.
It was the one thing that had sat in the corner of their happiness during their lives together, just waiting there, ready to come out.
The truth was they should have told Estelle about her biological father long ago, but somehow, the longer they left it, the more she found reasons not to.
If it were up to Marge, maybe she’d never tell her, and yes, she knew, deep in her heart, that came from a place of cowardice.
Or maybe shame that she’d slept with a married man.
Or perhaps she just couldn’t bear to leave even one shadow on her carefree, happy daughter’s heart.
But it had to be done because it was part of Estelle’s story.
She had half-siblings out there. Genetic connections she wasn’t aware of.
She deserved to be given the full information about her origins.
Even though her biological father had chosen to be absent from her life, she deserved the right to challenge that.
It was an impossible situation: tell her and tear apart the fabric of her life, or keep it from her and deprive her of the truth about who she was.
They’d struggled over this dilemma for ever, but their inherent sense of what was right had overruled their fears.
Telling Estelle was the right thing to do – Marge just didn’t know how to do it.
The woman who had a plan for everything, had no plan for this.
They stopped at the pedestrian crossing, pressed the button, waited for the green man to tell them to go.
‘We’ll tell her tomorrow,’ Ian said, softly, as they began to cross the road. ‘I’m dreading it as much as you, and God knows, I wish it were different, but…’
The lights were all that Marge remembered after that. No screams. No crash. No sickening sound of the man she adored being hit by a car that had jumped the lights and come around the corner to carry away the love of her life.
Just the lights.
The blinding lights.
‘Mum, are you okay?’ Estelle’s voice. Marge squeezed her eyes together, then opened them and squinted as her pupils reacted to the lights above her bed again. ‘You gasped in your sleep, as if something was wrong.’
Marge saw the concerned face of her daughter, and immediately tried to make her feel better. ‘I’m fine, darling, I promise. Just a dream.’
Only it wasn’t. Marge had replayed that night in her mind a million times and the ending was always the same. Ian was taken from them. And after that, she could never bring herself to tell their daughter the truth, because how could she break her heart all over again?
Estelle sat back down in her chair and pulled the blanket she’d left there over her knees again. ‘It was lovely to meet Bernadette. She wasn’t what I expected at all. From everything you told me about Dr Manson, I expected her to be more… I don’t know… stuck-up?’
Marge felt her cheeks rise in a grin. ‘No. Definitely not stuck-up. I’d like you to know her better, Estelle. I should have introduced you long before now.’
‘That’s okay, Mum. Plenty of time.’
The way she said it jarred with Marge, but she didn’t correct her. Once upon a time, she’d thought there was plenty of time for everything in life too. The night she’d lost Ian had proved to her that there wasn’t. And now…
‘Anyway, she must have tired you out because you fell asleep before she was out the door.’ Estelle’s words were full of warmth and chattiness, as if that was just another normal moment on a normal day. ‘And I didn’t get to tell you who I met downstairs… Amber was there.’
Marge’s eyes widened, the lights no longer bothering her.
‘Amber? In the hospital?’ Marge couldn’t quite work this out. ‘Is she sick? Are the boys okay?’
‘Yes, they’re fine. She said she came into the Emergency Department with a friend who’d had a fall but it’s all okay.’
‘Did you speak to her?’ Marge felt her hopes rising.
Amber had been someone important to her too, and she’d been so upset when the girls had fallen out.
Many times over the last year, she’d thought about calling Amber, telling her about the cancer, hoping it would bring her back to mend things with Estelle so that one good thing could come of this bastard disease, but she’d never been sure enough that it was the right thing to do.
She’d never been one to meddle, and she hadn’t wanted to risk making things worse.
Instead, she’d chosen to keep quiet. It was a familiar theme in her life.
Still, she missed the boys and she worried for Estelle. Her boyfriend, Craig, was a sweet man, but Amber had been her closest friend, like a sister, and Marge wasn’t sure her daughter would ever come to terms with losing that relationship from her life.
She listened as Estelle replayed the conversation, sadness in every word.
‘I couldn’t lie to her, Mum, but perhaps I should have. Maybe that would have been the best thing to do, but you know I really did think I was doing the right thing, and I couldn’t promise I’d do anything different if it happened again.’
Marge felt partly responsible for Estelle’s decision back then too, because the truth was, she’d been party to her daughter’s actions.
When Estelle had found out about Ewan’s affair, she’d come straight to Marge’s house, burst in, harassed and upset.
Marge had got the fright of her life, seeing her like that, and sat her down, plied her with tea as she told her the story.
‘I heard Ewan and Craig arguing in the kitchen. They didn’t know I was home. Ewan’s been seeing one of their clients, Mum. An affair.’
Marge had felt her blood run cold. Poor Amber. ‘And Craig was telling him to end it? Is that why they were arguing?’
‘No. Ewan was telling him it was already over, and Craig was saying it had better be because he’d risked the reputation of the company as well as his marriage and his family. Urgh, it was a whole big mess of a fight.’
‘And what did you say to Ewan?’
‘Nothing. I left before they even knew I was there. I know I should have gone in and punched him in the face. That’s what Amber would have done.’
She probably wasn’t wrong, but… ‘We don’t all handle things the same way,’ Marge had consoled her.
‘That might have made it worse.’ Was she trying to make Estelle feel better or herself, because that’s how she would have handled it?
She would have turned a blind eye. Walked away.
Ignored it. Just as she had with Kenneth Manson all those years.
Just as she had with her promise to Ian that they’d tell Estelle the truth. Walk away. Say nothing.
‘What do you think I should do, Mum? I made Craig tell me the whole story afterwards and he says I need to stay out of it. But how can I?’
‘If it were the other way round, would you want Amber to tell you?’
She’d thought about that. ‘Yes. But it’s different. There are kids… What if me telling Amber wrecks their family? How could I live with that?’
‘Then I think you have to trust yourself. Sometimes saying nothing is the right thing to do.’
Now, seeing Estelle wrestle with her decision all this time later, Marge wondered again if she’d been thinking about herself when she’d said that.
Had she skewed Estelle’s decision to salve her own conscience?
It was a tough one. She completely understood Amber being upset at Estelle, but at the same time, she empathised with her daughter’s actions because she’d have done the same – she’d have avoided the confrontation and hoped it would all work out in the end.
But then, hadn’t she already realised that wasn’t the best way to handle secrets?
‘Did I say the wrong thing, Mum? What do you think?’
Marge thought about that for a moment, as she felt herself drifting off again.
‘I think it’s never too late to fix a mistake, darling.’
The lights above her dimmed again.
It’s never too late to fix a mistake. Is it, Ian? And, darling, I’m about to fix mine.