Twenty-Six
Mum and Dad leave at about 5pm, having established to their satisfaction that Sir John isn’t a sociopathic sugar daddy. Or, possibly, having decided that even if he is, a detached house in Hampstead more than makes up for it and that their only daughter is a worthy sacrifice. I can already picture how the discussion would go: Dad tutting worriedly and Mum saying sternly, “Well, Graham, it’s not like anyone else is claiming her from the shelf…”
Imaginary shudder-inducing conversations aside, I wave them off cheerfully and head inside to goad Sir John into helping with the washing up, which in his world involves transporting it to the kitchen to leave for Mrs Jenkins.
“Thank you for putting up with my parents,” I say, deciding to go one step further than the norm and actually wash the plates.
Sir John, shamed into helping, gingerly picks up a tea towel, regarding it with suspicion and tentatively starting to pat at the first soaked plate as if it might explode.
“Oh, they seemed like fine people. Very fine people. Very normal. Not what I was expecting at all.”
“Oh, thanks very much,” I reply grumpily. “By the way, unless you’re determined to remove the whole glaze, I think you can consider that plate dry.”
“Yes, fine people. Nice to see you all together,” Sir John mutters, much quieter than usual.
“Well, I do see them a fair bit anyway. They threaten to show up in London if I don’t go back every eight weeks or so.”
Sir John sighs. It’s a very different sound from his normal snort of impatience.
“Is everything alright, Sir John?”
Glancing across, I see that the next plate is also being firmly dried into oblivion. I rescue it from him, put it in the cupboard, and then pat his hand encouragingly.
When he answers, his voice is different from that of the usual bombast: “Oh. Seeing you together today. With your parents. It made me think of my daughter. She’s about your age, you know.”
I curse inwardly. I know for a fact she’s in her late forties, but I don’t want to interrupt him.
“I can’t think when we last sat down together as a family,” he says, eyes looking suspiciously leaky.
I feel slightly panicked. It’s like seeing a teacher on the verge of tears, but I find myself asking quietly, “Why, Sir John? Why don’t you speak?”
Suddenly feeling brave, I ask, “Is it because of the nanny?”
He pauses for an excruciatingly long time. Have I gone too far? Am I waving goodbye to my contract? My heart is slamming in my chest, expecting him to erupt with fury.
Instead, he just picks up the next plate and starts drying. “How do you know about the nanny?” he asks, his voice almost a whisper.
“I’ve been using the internet to flesh out your story a bit, and I found a story from the eighties. It mentioned you and your wife separating. And the nanny moving out. It didn’t take much to put two and two together.”
For a moment, Sir John’s face looks thunderous, but he takes a steadying breath. “Two and two don’t always make four,” he says sadly, clutching the plate to his chest.
I take it from him and put it away, deciding acting as normal as possible is the way forward. “I don’t understand. Am I wrong about the nanny?”
“It was… complicated. Laura, my wife, was an extraordinary woman. She came from a typical upper-class world of privilege.” He catches my slight eye twitch and adds. “Oh, I knew a lot of privilege too, although my father was a reverend, a younger brother, much poorer than hers. We were always ever so slightly cuckoos in the nest, my family. Anyway, despite the world she came from, Laura was always so different. So unexpected. She had a way of looking at people like she knew all their secrets, all their flaws, but never judged them. At the same time, she was inscrutable. You never knew for sure what she was thinking or what she would say next. I used to call her my mermaid. She was so ethereal.” His eyes crinkle up, and he smiles.
“Then Jenny started as our nanny. She was the daughter of some neighbours of my parents back in Sussex. And Laura was so different around her. She’d throw back her head and laugh. They’d both absolutely roar with laughter. Jenny would tease her; she’d say the most outrageous things to my perfect Laura. And Laura would giggle right back. They had a connection…and then they had more.”
I am stunned, “But… I thought you and Jenny…”
“So did everyone else. It’s the oldest cliché. The husband and the nanny. When Laura told me, I threw Jenny out. I was heartbroken. But I thought we could work through it. But Laura didn’t seem to know what she wanted. We sent our daughter to my parents while we tried to work out what to do… and then Laura decided. It was twelve hours of arguing, but she finally made up her mind. She packed her bag and set off in her car to Jenny’s. It was midnight, pouring with rain, and she was upset. Anyway, you can imagine the rest.”
“That’s when she crashed?” I ask, horrified and sad.
“Two policemen turned up on my doorstep.”
“But I still don’t understand about your daughter not speaking to you…”
“The muckrakers waste no time in Westminster,” Sir John says bitterly. “Never underestimate the parliamentary gossip networks. They already knew Laura and I were having problems. The fact that I was taking time off and that we had sent our daughter away… all of that had made the rounds. Word got out that we were separating. Then throw in that our nanny had been fired, and everyone came up with the same equation you did.”
I blush with embarrassment. “And that’s what your daughter heard, too?”
“Later, when she was older, yes. More precisely, she heard the version that my heartbroken wife had packed her bags and fled the house from my temper when her car… when the crash…”
“Oh, Sir John, that’s horrible. But why didn’t you tell her the truth? You don’t even have a temper!”
“Grief is a funny thing. It can make us thrash around desperately searching for answers and cling to the first narrative we come across. Even if we know deep down that it doesn’t feel right. But I couldn’t tell her the truth. All Ophelia had left of her mother were her memories. And the eighties were not kind for… that kind of relationship. I wasn’t going to put Ophelia through that. I swore to her that I loved her mother and there was nothing between Jenny and me. But of course, the clues always led elsewhere. Ophelia went off to board at school, and eventually, she started spending more and more of her holidays at friends’ houses. We’d have an awkward reunion every six months or so, but that became less and less frequent. Now we have a telephone call once in a blue moon, you know, Christmas, birthdays, Father’s Day and the like, and that’s about it.”
“And that’s why you stood down as a minister?”
“In any political career, you make enemies. This was exactly the ammunition they needed. My campaign motto, to make it even more ironic, had been ‘family first’. My colleagues made it clear to me that the options were to step down quietly and they’d do their best to quash the rumour mill, which they managed after one or two shots across the bows from tabloids, or my enemies would have every assumed detail splashed across the papers. I couldn’t risk that, for me or Ophelia.”
Sir John looks old and frail, hunched in his chair. He glares at me fiercely, “None of this is for that damn book. This is confidential – between us.”
“Of course, I won’t use it for the book. But why not tell Ophelia now? Times have changed, and she’s an adult; she’d understand.”
“Too much time has passed. It’s far too late.”
“Of course, it’s not. How can you say that?”
“You’d like me to mention this the next time she phones? By the way darling, your mother… your mother…” he swallows.
“Could you not ask to meet her? Tell her face-to-face?”
Sir John has had enough, “Sleeping dogs, old bean. Sleeping dogs. That’s enough for now.”
He starts to rise.
“Sir John,” I grab his arm. “This is a terrible price to pay to keep a misunderstanding going. Do you really not want to take the chance?”
“I’m too old. I can’t have this conversation now; it’s all too painful.”
I flail around for a solution, “A letter, then? You could put it all in a letter. Give her time to read and digest the truth. You can’t wave goodbye to the relationship when you’ve done nothing wrong. It’s crazy.”
He pauses, “What kind of letter would that even be? It would be impossible to write.”
“Of course, it wouldn’t. I could help you. There’s nothing you can’t put in a letter,” I add, thinking guiltily of the truth I need to disclose to Ryan.
He snaps, “I’ll think about it. That’s enough now. I’m tired.”
He strides out of the kitchen but pauses at the door.
”Thank you regardless, Alex. Your parents are lucky to have you,” he says gruffly before quickly disappearing upstairs. I stare after him. I feel terrible for jumping to the same conclusions as everyone else. I feel even worse that his lying has been to protect the people he loves, while mine has only ever been in my selfish interests. I study the peeling wallpaper for some time after he leaves, wondering how on earth I could have fallen so far.