Chapter 9
NINE
WREN
‘Hello, pet. To what do I owe the pleasure of this call?’
Wren could hear the smile in her dad’s voice down the phone.
‘Oh, just checking in,’ she said, tapping her foot. She was sitting on the stairs, wearing an emerald-green dress she’d resurrected from the depths of her wardrobe. At the bottom of the stairs sat a pair of heels and her handbag, ready for the Community Kitchen party that night. ‘And, I wanted to ask you something. Did you ever volunteer at the Community Kitchen? I’ve been there quite a bit for work, and Edie, the lady who runs it, thinks she might have met you. She remembered someone with a daughter called Serenity anyway.’
There was silence from the other end of the phone. It lasted long enough for Wren to take the phone away from her ear to check the screen and see if they were still connected.
‘Dad?’
‘I’m here. Um, you know I think I might have met her. Edie you say?’ He went quiet again. ‘Uh-huh. That’s it. I met her at a function. Back in the nineties.’
‘A function? That sounds fancy. What kind of function?’ Her dad had worked at the lighthouse visitors’ centre for as long as she could remember. He’d hardly been in the line of work for hobnobbing.
‘Might have been a wedding actually. Something in a hotel. Hang on a sec…’ There was a clatter of commotion, muffled sounds of a phone being fumbled. ‘I’ve got to go, pet. John’s got into the bread bin. There’s crusts everywhere.’ And he rang off.
Wren looked at the black screen of her phone for a while. Was he being evasive, or was it just his usual forgetfulness and scattiness? He’d had to think for a while before coming up with an answer, but Wren supposed that he may have just been plumbing the depths of his memory. She decided to redouble her efforts and ask Edie later if a wedding rang any bells.
She was snapped from her thoughts by the front door opening. Alex came in, the atmosphere immediately awkward. She’d stayed at Libby’s the night of that text, not even bothering to reply to it. He’d sent a slew of messages that night and the next morning, veering from placatory to apologetic to self-righteous.
Then, when she’d eventually come home, he’d broken down in a surprisingly repentant manner. He explained that he’d been thrown by the flowers she’d received; it had sparked a flash of jealousy that came from his deep fear of, one day, losing her. He had looked so devastated that she’d agreed to try and forget about it and move on. But since then, they’d skirted around each other. Alex acted like he was walking on thin ice, and Wren felt like the blast of chill that had frozen it. She had still not thawed.
‘You look nice,’ he said. ‘I thought you said it was a work thing.’
‘It is,’ she said, dabbing on some lipstick in the hallway mirror at the same time as poking her feet into her shoes. ‘But it’s a formal do, so I need to look the part.’ She patted her up-do, a chignon with loose strands at the front that had taken a surprising amount of time to do considering how effortless it looked.
Alex watched her in silence for a bit.
‘So what time will you be back?’ he asked, and she could hear the effort of lightness in his tone.
She bristled. He was doing it again. Suspecting her, even though he thought he was covering it. Still trying to be on his best behaviour, but the distrust was seeping through. She took a steadying breath before replying. ‘I don’t know. I might only be a couple of hours. Unless there are lots of people to talk to.’
‘Okay,’ he said stiffly. ‘I’ll see you when you get back then.’ He kissed her on the cheek and went into the kitchen.
On the hallway table was the brochure and paperwork for their Italian holiday. They were due to go next week. She flicked the brochure open to the well-thumbed page featuring the hotel they’d booked. Her throat felt hot and thick as she looked at the squat, whitewashed building, drenched in sun and bougainvillea. What kind of holiday would it be now? She tried to imagine relaxing on the sun terrace, drinking wine with Alex, and even though the vision was bathed in Mediterranean sun, in her mind they were sitting in shadows.
The Kitchen was buzzing with a party atmosphere when she arrived. There was an eclectic mix of guests, with local dignitaries and friends of the Kitchen mingling happily with the homeless diners. Edie was standing in the midst of the throng, holding court with some guests and wearing a lovely navy dress that sparkled under the lights.
The place was decorated with streamers, bunting, and balloons sporting the number forty, and several tables had been pushed together to house a huge buffet. Wren’s stomach rumbled, reminding her she hadn’t eaten any dinner, but she needed to get some work done before she could relax and join the party.
She greeted Edie and Cath and some of the other volunteers she’d already spoken to and left a gift-wrapped present for Edie alongside some others that had been brought along. It was an old photograph of the Kitchen from the Echo archives, which she’d had framed. She then dived into the crowd, striking up conversations with anyone she could find who didn’t have a mouth full of vol-au-vents or sausage roll.
She spent a productive hour mingling and collecting quotes and stories from the guests, until there was the tinkling sound of a knife against a champagne flute. The room quietened down and turned expectantly to a small, raised platform. Wren wondered if Edie was about to make a speech, but instead a well-built man, who looked to be in his fifties, stepped up, hands clasped in front of his broad chest. Next to the platform stood a woman of a similar age, who appeared to be his wife and had her arm around a waifish girl of about eighteen with thin mousey-brown hair and a pale complexion. They both looked up at him, waiting for him to speak. The man cleared his throat.
‘Hello, everyone,’ he started, a little hesitant. He raised his voice as he spoke again. ‘I’d like to say a few words, if I may. I know everyone here has a special place for the Community Kitchen in their hearts – that’s why we’re here after all.’
There was a smattering of applause.
‘My family, like many others here, and countless more who couldn’t be here tonight, has a lot to thank the Kitchen for. It’s hard to believe that just two years ago, we were being torn apart. And it’s thanks to this place, to the staff and most of all to Edie Macmillan that we made it through.’ He smiled at his family, and his daughter’s eyes welled up as her mother rubbed her arm soothingly.
‘Addiction is a terrible disease. No family thinks it’s going to affect them, especially one like ours. Nice house, nice car, holiday once a year in Majorca. Your kid goes to a good school, you work five days a week. You would never imagine that you’d find yourself owing everything to a “soup kitchen”. But here we are. Together again.’
The daughter’s mouth was a thin line, but it twitched upwards at the edges, a little sparkle beginning to appear in her dewy eyes. Wren’s heart throbbed.
He raised a glass, which Wren could now see was filled with orange juice. ‘I want to thank everyone here from the bottom of my heart. Two years ago, I was an alcoholic, having drank away our home and our lives. I left behind my beautiful wife and daughter, living with family, while I scratched around looking for my next drink. I disappeared, and for that I will always be sorry. But Edie didn’t rest until I’d sorted myself out and been reunited with my ever-forgiving family. Because that’s what the Kitchen is all about. It’s a family itself, and the people here believe that you deserve to be with people who love you.’
His voice wavered and he paused for a second, composing himself.
‘To my lovely wife, Kendra. Thank you for taking me back. And my daughter, Katherine… Sorry, Katie . She’ll kill me for using the full name.’
The crowd chuckled, and Katie narrowed her eyes playfully.
‘Thank you, Katie, for forgiving me. I’ll never let you down again. And thank you to Edie and all the staff here. You gave me back my life. To the Community Kitchen.’ He raised his glass to thunderous applause.
Wren joined in, but a thought tugged at her. Katie . The man had corrected himself after calling his daughter by her full name. Just like her dad would. He never called her Serenity, only Wren, and had done her whole life. If he’d met Edie years ago, he would never have said he had a daughter called Serenity. She stood there, a smile fixed on her face, clapping her hands, as her stomach twisted. Her dad had told her on the phone that he’d been the one who’d told Edie her name. But now she realised that made no sense.
Wren found herself back at the photo wall, sipping a glass of elderflower cordial and scrutinising the faces in the pictures even more intensely. The sinking feeling of knowing her dad might have hidden something from her had boiled itself down until it had condensed into rabid curiosity again. But nobody in the pictures looked even vaguely familiar – there was nobody who looked like her mother, father, or anyone else she knew.
She had no extended family to ask either.
What could be the reason for being so evasive? Had something happened that involved Edie, since the mention of her name had seemed to throw her dad for a loop? Or had something gone on at the Kitchen that he didn’t want dredged up. An affair? It didn’t make sense.
‘That’s me,’ came a voice as an arm reached past her, pressing a finger against the photograph of Edie’s grandsons. She turned to see a man smiling at her.
‘Which one?’ she asked. ‘The Buzz Lightyear fan, or the miniature fashion model?’
The man stood back and gestured to himself with both hands, up and down his frame. He was wearing a very snug-fitting suit without socks, loafers and a conspicuously absent shirt. ‘I think this speaks for itself. I’m Travis, the miniature fashionista. The Buzz Lightyear fan will be along in a bit. Anyway, I know who you are. Our nanna has mentioned her journalist friend more than once. I think she’s hoping you might hit it off with my brother.’
‘Oh,’ said Wren, blinking. ‘Um, well, that’s lovely. But I’ve got a boyfriend…’ She almost added the word unfortunately .
‘So I hear…’ he said with a little smile.
If there was ever a subject that needed changing, this was it. ‘So! I was thinking of hitting the buffet. I’m starving.’
‘Me too,’ he said, trotting along beside her. He then started to talk about his online shopping business, and if he hadn’t been so charming, she might have been annoyed at his attempts to hijack his nanna’s event to get coverage of his own business. But then, an impeccably dressed woman came over and sidelined Travis for a chat.
There was the usual selection of finger foods: quiche, sandwiches, stuff in pastry. Wren absent-mindedly gathered some bits onto a paper plate, thinking with surprising satisfaction how Alex would be appalled at the calorie content. She added another sandwich, almost out of spite. But when she looked at it, she saw that it contained prawns. Wren bit her lip. She didn’t mind prawns but couldn’t stand them smothered in that pink Marie Rose sauce, so after a brief hesitation, she put it back. She felt a bit grubby doing it, but it was marginally better than wasting food in an establishment like this. Then she realised she’d put it back on a plate of chicken sandwiches by mistake, but as she reached to pick it up again and move it, the Mayor of Newcastle looked over disapprovingly. She smiled, diverted her hand to pick up an unwanted chicken sandwich and crammed it into her mouth as she wandered back into the crowd.
Some broccoli quiche and one small slice of corned beef pie later, she found that she’d exhausted any new people to talk to in the room, or at least anyone who hadn’t had one too many glasses of Prosecco. She saw Edie from a distance and considered going to talk to her, but she was deep in conversation with Cath and Travis, so she hung back. It was nearly nine o’clock now, so she decided to call it a night and think about how to approach the subject of her mam on another day.
She dropped her paper plate into a bin, walked outside and searched her bag for her car keys. It was starting to get dark and the street lights were dim, so she strained to see, rifling through old receipts and lipsticks.
There was a noise through the darkness, a shuffling of feet. Somebody was out there, in the shadows. Wren saw movement and realised that it was just beyond her car. Her throat went dry. It could be nobody, she thought, to calm herself down. Just someone getting something out of their car. But being alone in the dark, in an otherwise deserted car park, made her skin tingle.
She approached the car, keeping one hand in her bag, wrapped around a small canister within. She and Libby had attended a self-defence class last year, and they’d been flogging something called ‘personal defence spray’ – intended to look like pepper spray but instead it covered the assailant with a horrible odour and an invisible UV dye. She’d never had cause to use it, until now.
As she reached the car, a man emerged from the shadows. Blind panic bloomed in her chest, and she raised the spray and let loose.