Chapter 34
34
‘Fabian doesn’t mind you not spending Saturday with him?’ Mum asked once I’d decanted Boris back to the cottage and was strapping myself into the back seat of Jess’s van.
‘He’s got a load of stuff to do.’ I turned to Sorrel. ‘Joel’s stuff.’
‘I know, I know. I can’t believe he’s doing this for him. Honestly, Robyn, we’re so grateful.’
‘Oh, Sorrel, you’re far too young to be worrying about this. Too young to be involved in something as serious as this. Too young to be “we”.’ I air-quoted the words. ‘You should have your head free of it all, looking forward to your audition.’
‘Looking forward to it? I’m terrified! I’m only coming with you this morning to take my mind off it.’ She laughed. ‘And to see if my grandparents are as horrible as you and Jess have made out. I’m dying to see the cat-ridden monster in the dining room for myself.’
‘They’re NOT your grandparents,’ Mum snapped crossly. She was pale, nervous and irritable.
‘I don’t know why you’re putting yourself through this, Mum,’ I said, reaching forward to stroke her arm.
‘Because I don’t know WHO I AM.’ She almost shouted the last three words. ‘And now… well, now I need to know.’
‘OK, OK, we get that.’ I sat back, chastised, as Jess set off towards the M1 and Sheffield, but then leaned forwards to Mum once more. ‘So, you had a great time last night? Woah, Montmartre, for heaven’s sake? Paris? In a private jet, you little gadabout…’
‘Patronising!’ Mum tutted, and I realised she really was, very unusually for her, in a mood. ‘And it wasn’t exactly a jet, more a little tin can.’
‘Not good enough for you?’ The three of us all laughed. ‘Aiming for a proper jet next time, are you, Mum?’
‘It was lovely. Really lovely.’ Mum paused. ‘The loveliest evening I’ve ever had.’
‘Ever? Blimey!’ I exhaled.
‘He was lovely…’
‘Even though he’s the enemy?’ Jess gave Mum a quick glance, before concentrating on the road once more.
‘Exactly. That’s why I won’t be seeing him again.’
‘But does he want to, Mum?’ Sorrel leaned forwards. ‘You know, get it on with you?’
‘Get it on with me?’ Mum tutted again. ‘For heaven’s sake.’
‘Did you kiss him?’ Sorrel grinned.
‘For someone who’s been up to what you’ve apparently been up to with Joel Sinclair,’ Mum snapped, ‘that comes over as being particularly childish, if not downright condescending, Sorrel.’
The three of us sat back at that, well and truly told off.
After five minutes’ silence in the car, Mum relented. ‘I can’t see him again. You’re right, all of you, he is “the enemy”.’ More air-quoting of words from Mum. ‘Listen, particularly you, Jess – but, I suppose you as well, Robyn, seeing it concerns Fabian…’
‘What?’ All three of us spoke as one.
‘Kamran’s definitely knocking Hudson House down?’ I asked.
‘The sale can’t have gone through so quickly!’ Jess put in.
‘No.’ Mum paused. ‘He’s…’ she exhaled ‘…he’s turning Hudson House into a restaurant.’
‘What?’ I actually put up my hands.
‘Oh, marvellous!’ Jess snapped, narrowly missing a pigeon that had dared venture off the pavement into her path. ‘Fucking marvellous! Wonderful!’ She breathed deeply, hands clutching the steering wheel tightly. ‘Did you tell him that was our idea? Mine and Fabian’s?’
‘No, I wasn’t going to give any information like that away. I’m not stupid,’ Mum said. ‘So, another reason not to see him again,’ she added crossly.
‘Hey,’ Sorrel said, ‘just keep in with him, Mum, because you can then get him to take on Jess as Chief Chef.’
‘Head Chef,’ I murmured, ever the pedant.
‘I don’t want to work for the bloody Sattars,’ Jess hissed. ‘Especially once they’ve thrown out all the old dears from Hudson House. I want to work with someone – own our own place. I want to be with Fabian!’
‘Steady on,’ I murmured, half laughing. ‘I’ve only just wrestled him out of the clutches of Alexandra Brookfield.’
‘Do you fancy Fabian, Jess?’ Sorrel asked, laughing herself.
‘Oh, don’t be so effing stupid, Sorrel,’ Jess snapped crossly but, catching her eye in the rear-view mirror, I realised she was suffused with embarrassment. Well, this was interesting!
‘Excuse me, can we have less of the bad language?’ Mum said irritably. ‘Anyway,’ she went on, ‘Jess wouldn’t get a look-in, even if she was prepared to work for the Sattars in their restaurant.’
‘Oh?’ We all leaned forwards once more.
‘His nephew, Zain, presently working in Paris, is champing at the bit to come over and work at what would be the first Pan Asian fusion restaurant in Beddingfield.’
‘What’s that?’ Sorrel asked.
‘Fusion cuisine,’ Mum replied knowledgably, obviously quoting Kamran, ‘is producing inventive and flavourful new fusions of what we tend to eat in the West by using traditional Asian-style ingredients, dishes and cooking methods.’
‘Great stuff,’ Jess growled.
‘Well, maybe you and Fabian could still do what you wanted to do, then?’ I said, knowing how disappointed Fabian was going to be when I told him the news. Hell, I hoped this wasn’t going to mean him heading back to London, his dreams in tatters. ‘You know, the pair of you take on the white house in the garden and?—’
‘Don’t be so bloody ridiculous,’ Jess snapped again. ‘The white house is part of the Hudson House estate. And you can’t open two restaurants within a few hundred yards of each other. Oh, I’m so fed up now!’
‘You’re speeding, Jess,’ Mum censured her. ‘I knew I shouldn’t have said anything about Kamran’s plans. Can you slow down? I feel really, really sick. I’m frightened,’ Mum went on. ‘Terrified of seeing them again after all these years.’
‘Shall we turn round, Mum?’ I soothed. ‘Go home for a nice cup of tea and one of Jess’s scones? Forget all this wondering who you are? We know who you are! You’re our lovely mum. And that’s all that matters.’
She turned to me in the back seat, her face pale. ‘No, it’s not, Robyn, it’s not all that matters. I need to know.’
* * *
‘Goodness me!’ The woman on the doorstep peered round the front door but said nothing more.
‘Is that her?’ Sorrel whispered as the pair of us stood behind Mum and Jess.
‘No!’ I mouthed back.
‘What do you want, Lisa?’ the woman asked.
‘I want to know,’ Mum said, staring in obvious confusion at the woman. ‘I want to know who I am. Who my birth mother is… Is it Wendy? Aunty Wendy?’
‘Aunty Wendy…?’ I whispered, nudging Sorrel, whose eyes were saucers.
‘Yes, well, we’d all like to know that, wouldn’t we?’ The woman opened the door to let us in. ‘I don’t know what you’re going to find out from her , Lisa. Goodness,’ she said again, ‘I’d have known you anywhere, you’ve not changed a bit. Still as beautiful as when you were a little girl. As beautiful as the day you left… the day you ran away.’ Aunty Wendy led the way back down the same hallway Jess and I had been in only days earlier.
‘You’ve visitors, Karen,’ Wendy said.
Karen Foley turned from where she was huddled in a chair, a blanket wrapped round her bony shoulders. ‘You again?’ she snapped as Jess walked in, followed by Sorrel and me. Then, her face white and unmoving, she simply stared as Mum came into the room last, ushered in by Aunty Wendy. I actually thought Mum was going to keel over and, always mindful of the seizures she’d suffered in the past, I held onto her arm.
‘You all right, Mum?’ I asked gently.
‘I’m fine,’ she whispered in a strangled voice before walking over to Karen and standing in front of her. ‘Hello, Mother. How are you?’
‘Well, well, well, look what the cat’s dragged in. What are you doing here?’
‘I thought it was about time we put our differences behind us.’ Mum smiled, only the slight tremor in her voice and her pale face belying her obvious anguish at being there. ‘Time we were friends, don’t you think? I know you met Jess and Robyn the other day, but I’d like you to meet Sorrel as well.’ Mum stepped backwards, taking Sorrel’s hand before bringing her towards Karen.
‘Hmm, another one, no doubt, who thinks a pretty face will take her places. Looks like you, Lisa.’
‘Mother – Mum – I’ve come here today to ask you – to beg of you – to tell me who I am. You must know more about who my birth parents are? Please? Let’s… you know… let’s put the bad times behind us and just tell me. I’ll go away then and not bother you again. Was my birth mother English? Or Indian? You never would tell me the truth, always changing your mind from one to the other, and I don’t understand why.’
‘Go away, Lisa. Go back home. I’m telling you nothing. Nothing. Show them out, Wendy. She’s making me feel ill.’
Wendy shrugged, turning to Mum, who was almost in tears. ‘I’m sorry, dear. You’re going to have to get yourself on that Who Do You Think You Are? programme. Come on, into the kitchen: I’ll not send you off without showing some manners.’
Jess, Mum and I followed her down the corridor and into the kitchen where I’d made tea just a few days earlier. Four cats sat outside the door to the dining room, behind which, I assumed, was still Adrian Foley.
‘Mr Foley in there?’ I asked.
‘Hmm, I try to come as often as I can – I moved back to Buxton when my husband died a couple of years ago – to check if my brother’s OK. He hates those cats and they always manage to get into his room somehow. I have an awful feeling she lets them go in deliberately. I’m at the stage of trying to get Adrian into a home, although Karen won’t hear of it. The situation’s awful.’
‘Oh, you’re his sister,’ I said. ‘I thought you were Karen’s sister.’
‘Goodness me, no.’ She gave me a hard stare before going to fill the kettle. ‘Sit down, dear,’ she instructed Mum, giving her a pat on the shoulder. ‘Come on, fill me in on your life now. You’ve three lovely girls – where’s the little one? Oh… lavatory, right… Lisa, dear, it’s not your fault. Karen always was a very, very strange woman. Bad enough before the pair of them went off to Canada…’
‘I never knew they lived in Canada!’ Mum said, staring. ‘When?’
‘Oh, before you were born, dear. They were teaching out there. Some mission school – Pentecostal, I think it was – in the back of beyond. Your Uncle Philip and I had gone to live in Australia, so we weren’t actually around at the time. I always found Karen a strange fish – too religious for my liking – never understood what Adrian saw in her. Although, to be fair, Adrian was always a bit strange as well. Your Uncle Philip couldn’t abide the pair of them. We had little contact – I first saw you when you were about ten and had moved up here to Sheffield, when your Uncle Philip and I came back from Oz for several months to see to my parents…’
‘Wendy,’ I finally managed to get a word in, my pulse racing with excitement, ‘could you tell us when Karen and Adrian actually went out to Canada?’
‘Well, I don’t really know, dear. We’d become estranged – Karen didn’t get on with me or my parents. She wanted Adrian to have nothing to do with his family. Very, very, possessive of him, she was. We emigrated to Australia, as I said, and we came back fleetingly just before both my parents died – cancer, the pair of them – young, in their sixties. We’d heard Adrian and Karen had adopted a baby while they were living in Surrey, but we didn’t get to meet you, Lisa, until Adrian got the headship of St Mark’s and moved back up here to Sheffield while we were in the UK looking after my parents. To be honest, dear, I’m only here now because Adrian’s the only family I have left in the UK. More than likely, I’ll be heading back to Australia very soon to be with my boys. I just don’t like leaving him here, in that dining room, with her … and those cats…’
‘Where’s Sorrel?’ Jess suddenly asked. ‘Has she gone back to the car?’
Leaving Mum catching up with Wendy, Jess and I headed back down the hall to find her. I hoped she hadn’t gone to take a look at Adrian Foley for herself. The sitting-room door was open and we could hear Sorrel talking to Karen. Jess was about to go in, but I put a finger to my lips and my ear to the door. Sorrel was sitting on the arm of the chair, her back towards us, so I couldn’t hear everything that was being said.
‘…obviously very early on…’ Sorrel was saying.
‘…and fifteen…?’
‘…sixteen next month…’
‘…typical of Lisa not to bring up her daughters properly… fifteen… and pregnant… goodness me… that was God punishing you for…’
‘…I don’t believe in a vengeful God… never had babies of your own? Why adopt…?’
‘…my Adam… he died too…’
‘…so sorry, Karen… mine was just a few weeks… and that was awful… why…?’
‘…I don’t know… he came early… God took him back…’
‘What are you doing ?’ Mum was behind us and Karen, hearing her voice, immediately clammed up.
Sorrel walked over to the open door where the three of us were standing, trying to listen. ‘I was just getting somewhere,’ she mouthed, shaking her head. ‘I’ll tell you in the car.’
I went into the room, knelt down by Karen and took her hand. ‘Would you tell me just one thing, Karen?’
Karen Foley looked up and I could see utter desolation in her small blue eyes as she held my own.
‘Karen, was Mum – Lisa – actually born in Canada?’
She said nothing, but the look of fear that passed over her face was enough.
‘I think she was, wasn’t she?’ I asked gently.
Still nothing, but no denial.
‘And I think you’ve known all along who her birth mother is.’
‘She was a trollop,’ Karen eventually said. ‘Wealthy, from a good family, but threw it all away, tomcatting around when she got the itch in her pants with one of her father’s workers. She’d had a public-school education , a finishing school in Switzerland , for heaven’s sake.’ Spittle formed at the corners of her mouth, tiny flecks landing on my arm as she spat Switzerland . ‘And then she slept with a man before she was married. A… a foreigner as well. She didn’t deserve to have her baby live when my little boy died.’ Karen’s voice broke but she still didn’t cry. ‘Her grandmother told me everything. Distraught, the poor woman was. Couldn’t wait to get the girl’s baby adopted with a good, God-fearing family and get the girl back to England and brush it all under the carpet. And we did that, Mr Foley and I. We took that… that bastard child on, brought her up, did everything for her. Made sure she kept on the straight and narrow. And look how that turned out.’
‘Mum, you mean? Lisa?’
‘Of course, Lisa! Who else would I be talking about? I tried to beat the devil out of her… You said she’d got some illness now? Well, that’s the devil. You need to watch that little sister of yours; she needs exorcising too…’ Karen broke off as the front door banged, glaring at me. ‘You got what you came for,’ she growled. ‘Leave me alone now and don’t any of you come back.’