Chapter 37 Jack #2
“I’d almost forgotten,” I say when the song finishes, “how it is when you sing.”
“How is it?”
“Put it this way, I can’t listen to ‘Black Velvet’ without getting painfully aroused.”
She chuckles, bats her eyelids. “I’m afraid you’re not the only person with that problem after seeing me do karaoke.”
“Yeah, I remember Hannah said you started a riot once. I can believe it.”
“I haven’t sung it for a long time,” she says. “She made me swear not to anymore. Maybe I could give you a private performance…”
My eyes shift over to her and she’s grinning, full of mischief. “Only if you want me to crash the car,” I say, flatly.
“Some other time,” she murmurs, looking out the window, but I can see the edge of her mouth curving up.
I take a few deep, settling breaths as she joins in with Julie on “The Lusty Month of May.” She’s wearing a soft, yellow dress the color of primroses, and the skirt flares out, stopping just below her knees.
I try very hard not to be distracted by her bare legs, as she stretches them out in the seat well.
“So is it just your parents who’ll be there today?” she asks as we’re battling our way around the M25.
“And Lee,” I reply.
“Tell me a bit about them.” Cynthie leans back in her seat, stretches her arms over her head.
“You probably know most of the broad-strokes stuff about my parents. They live for the drama, on and off the stage. My dad is almost twenty years older than my mum, and they met when they were filming a production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream .”
“They’re both very talented,” Cynthie says. “I never saw either of them live, but I had a DVD of the two of them in a production of Macbeth that gave me actual nightmares.”
“Oh, they’re incredible actors,” I snort. “Not that those particular roles were such a stretch for them…”
“So keep an eye out for your mum’s obsessive hand washing then?”
“I wouldn’t put it past her to murder a rival for a part she wanted and call it show business, let’s put it that way.”
“Noted.” Cynthie smiles faintly.
“When they met, they were both married to other people.” I nip around the side of a lorry, let the car build up some speed.
“They left their spouses and shacked up together. Within a month or two my mum was pregnant with me. They pushed through their respective divorces and got married, then when I was two, they split up for the first time.”
“The first time? How many times have they split up?”
I wrinkle my forehead, thinking about it. “Three? No.” I snap my fingers, “Four. I was forgetting the brief liaison with the Russian countess.”
“Wow.” She sounds dazed.
“It’s certainly been a journey,” I say drily.
“They actually divorced after the first time, then they got back together, remarried, and had Lee. Anyway,” I continue, “they’ve both had incredible careers.
Mum won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar about ten years ago; Dad has one too, but his is honorary and it pisses him off, so don’t mention it.
” I smirk. “Mum’s still working, though not as much, and Dad is supposedly retired.
I heard they’re trying to talk him into filming Lear . ”
“But Lee never considered going into the family business?”
I grin. “No, definitely not. She took a pretty different path. Very academic.”
“Are the two of you close?”
I consider the question as I take the turn off the motorway.
“I mean, I love her, but I wouldn’t say we’re very close, no,” I say finally.
“She’s six years younger than me, which is a big age gap when you’re kids, isn’t it?
And I went away to boarding school when I was twelve and she was six.
Then I went straight from school to RADA, so we didn’t spend a huge amount of time together.
Plus…” I hesitate. “She’s not the easiest person to get to know. ”
“What does that mean?”
“Just that she’s quiet, a bit self-contained. You’ll see.”
“It must have been hard for her when you went off to school,” Cynthie says quietly.
“Well, she had Gran,” I reply, defensive because it’s a thought that I might have had myself once or twice.
“Ah yes, your granny who buys you handkerchiefs.”
My mouth pulls up again. “My mum’s mother. Thanks to the actual shit show that was our parents’ marriage, Gran basically raised us. Lee lives with her now, as her sort of unofficial carer—not that Gran would let you get away with calling her that.”
“Will she be at lunch too?” Cynthie sounds hopeful.
I laugh. “I doubt it, she has the busiest social life of anyone you’ve ever met. Also, she can’t stand my dad, so to be honest it’d just add one more agent of chaos into the mix if she did turn up.” I glance at her. “You can’t say I didn’t warn you.”
“I’m not scared,” Cynthie says with what I can’t help but feel is misplaced confidence.
“You say that now—”
“Please.” Cynthie tosses her head. “You think you’re the only one with a dysfunctional family?” She raises her eyebrows. “Need I remind you, I’m basically my mother’s secret love child?”
“I wasn’t sure if you remembered telling me all of that,” I admit. “Have you been in touch with her since?”
“No.” Cynthie sighs. “I suppose you have to give her credit for not coming out of the woodwork when I got famous.”
“I’m not sure I’d give her credit for anything, actually,” I say sharply, accidentally briefly turning on the windshield wipers instead of signaling.
“Fair enough,” Cynthie replies, and however offhand she sounds, I know she’s been hurt, and badly. “At least we can take solace in the fact that she has to watch me achieve her dreams from a distance. That’s some sweet revenge, right?”
“She never got to know you, Cyn. That’s her loss.”
Cynthie’s throat bobs. “I don’t know about that—my dad had plenty of opportunities, and he didn’t take them either.”
“Are you in touch with him?” I ask, worried I already know the answer.
“He died a couple of years ago,” Cynthie says quietly. “Car accident.”
“Bloody hell,” I exhale.
“I know.” Cynthie nods. “We hadn’t seen each other for ages, three years maybe?” She squints thoughtfully out the window. “Anyway, I had the house cleared out, and they found this scrapbook, full of clippings all about me.”
She fiddles with her seat belt. “And the worst thing was I had no idea what to make of it. Was he proud of me? Had he been all along? Had he collected it all out of a sense of duty? Mild interest? Had someone else given it to him? If I was performing it—I mean, if I was acting the part of Cynthie Taylor finding that book—then the music would swell and I’d play it tearful, a moment of connection, of forgiveness, but in real life it wasn’t like that.
I had the book and it didn’t mean anything at all.
Anyway.” She gives a wan smile. “That’s my sad sob story, so at least you have a family to have dramatic relationships with. I’m on my own.”
“Come on, Cynthie,” I say sternly, “don’t give me that bullshit.” She looks up, startled, as we wind through the streets of Kensington.
“You know better than anyone that there’s more than one way to make a family.
You, Hannah, Liam and Patty and Arjun and Priya, you’re the tightest unit; you all love each other unconditionally.
Every single one of them threatened me with grievous bodily harm if I so much as hurt your feelings…
and that includes Priya. She was the scariest of the lot. ”
“She inherited her mother’s thirst for violence.” Cynthie laughs, a slightly watery sound.
“She’s a force of nature,” I agree. “And your fridge is covered in her art. You’re not alone. Not even close.”
She looks at me for a long moment. “You’re right,” she says finally. “I have the family I chose and I wouldn’t trade them for anything. They’re the most important thing to me. Most people miss that. Not you though. You pay attention.”
I pull into my parents’ drive, the gate opening to let us through.
“I pay attention to you,” I say.