Chapter 28
Twenty-Eight
Child prodigy and Pre-Raphaelite wunderkind turned society portraitist. Discussion point: did Millais sell out his genius? Money versus artistic integrity.
(Taken from Calliope Thorne’s teaching notes.)
When Callie returned to the kitchen diner Frida was rolling her mug nervously around in her hands. ‘Are you okay, Mum?’ she asked, not quite meeting her eyes.
‘Not sure. Any more tea in the pot? I could do with one.’
Frida rose. ‘I’ll reheat yours in the micro.’
‘You’ll do nothing of the sort,’ Callie snapped out.
‘The least you owe me is a freshly made, hot cup of tea. With sugar.’ She crumpled onto the sofa, staring ahead at where Sunil had sat.
He hadn’t looked all that different. He’d had on expensive-looking chinos and an immaculately tailored jacket, but his hair was still thick and luxuriant and his face remarkably unlined for a man in his early forties.
Apart from the broader shoulders and the slight American vowels, he hadn’t changed.
Her fingers strayed to her hair, remembering how Sunil had brushed it off her face. She exclaimed in horror; her curls had frizzed in the rain. Looking down at her faded jeans and the scruffy T-shirt which bore the remains of a coffee she’d spilled at breakfast, she gave a dry laugh.
Frida placed the fresh mug on the Monet gardens coaster, turning the handle to face her mother. ‘Thought you’d be well pissed off,’ she said carefully.
‘I may well be once the shock’s worn off and when you’ve told me what’s been going on.’ Callie paused and added, inconsequentially, ‘I haven’t seen Sunil for over twenty years.’
‘He’s a good-looking bloke, isn’t he?’ Frida smiled slightly smugly. ‘My dad is a hottie.’ She flung herself onto the opposite sofa.
Callie sipped her tea and winced, both at the heat of the liquid and the comment. ‘Not sure that’s an entirely appropriate but, yes, he was handsome when young and that hasn’t changed.’
‘And I look like him, don’t I?’
‘You do.’ Callie hadn’t the energy to be angry with Frida, although she was sure her daughter had something to do with Sunil’s sudden appearance. Perhaps she really was in shock. She felt as if she was floating. It wasn’t totally unpleasant. ‘You have his eyes. And his height and build.’
‘It makes sense now. I make sense now.’ Frida’s nose wrinkled. ‘I don’t look like you at all. Always felt there was a piece of me missing, like a jigsaw.’
‘I could never understand why you didn’t ask about your father. You always accepted it was just we two.’
Frida shrugged. ‘Didn’t matter for a long time.
Lots of my friends don’t have dads on the scene, or have two mums, or like Scarlett, brought up by her grandparents.
We all had our own kind of normal. You accept what you grow up with, don’t you, as being what’s normal.
’ She screwed up her face, risking the familiar refrain.
‘And families come in all shapes and sizes, including the found sort.’
‘Don’t get smart, Frida. You’re nowhere near off the hook.’ Callie collapsed back against the sofa, suddenly exhausted, thinking about her own childhood. ‘But yes, you do accept whatever upbringing you have as normal.’
‘The only family I knew who would be considered typical by any boring standards,’ Frida continued, ‘were Donna and Graham.’
Callie gave her a penetrating look. Was this what had been behind her daughter’s difficult behaviour this summer?
The realisation that somewhere she had a father and the search for her roots?
A sudden squall of rain attacked the French windows.
The storm had arrived. Part of her worried about Johnny being out in it and guilt set in that she’d made it uncomfortable for him to be in the cottage.
Ridiculous. He’s a grown man. Has travelled the world.
He can look after himself. Concentrate on your daughter, there’s reason to feel guilt there too. ‘So what changed?’
‘Remember I mentioned Carol in the office?’
‘Yes.’
‘She’s dead cool, is Carol. I get on really well with her, even though she’s an oldie. Sorry, Mum. No offence.’
‘None taken,’ Callie said mildly. ‘Not about that anyway.’
‘Last year she found out she was adopted.’
‘That must have been a shock, didn’t you say she’s in her sixties?’
‘Yup.’ Frida nodded vigorously. ‘Her mum died and she found all sorts of papers in the house when she cleared it. Turned her world upside down. She tracked down her biological dad and he’s still going strong, ninety-odd though, in a nursing home, but they’ve sort of discovered each other. It’s sweet.’
‘But, Frida, what’s that got to do with anything? You always knew you weren’t adopted. And I’ve always told you I couldn’t find him.’ It was the truth. Sort of.
‘Oh yes,’ Frida nodded blithely. ‘Out of all the scenarios I imagined that was never one of them. It was just something Carol said when she came back after meeting her biological dad for the first time. She said she made sense now in a way she’d never done before.
Apparently, her dad and her have the same nose, the same coloured eyes but it was more than that; they both loved books and reading; Carol’s always got her nose stuck in a book, she belongs to five book groups.
She said her adopted dad was lovely and she always felt loved by him, but he wasn’t like her in any way, and I don’t mean physical.
Like I said, a piece of the jigsaw was missing. ’
Frida lifted up her legs and sat cross legged on the same sofa her father had just vacated. Callie was struck by the resemblance. She had the same calm energy, the same long loose limbs. ‘So that got you questioning?’ she prompted.
‘Yeah. I imagined all sorts. That you’d had a lover who had tragically died maybe, or he was married and wouldn’t leave his wife, or there was some impenetrable barrier that couldn’t be overcome.’
‘That one was close to the truth,’ Callie said dryly.
Frida continued; she hadn’t heard her. ‘I even wondered, at one point, whether you’d been attacked, you know–’ she let the sentence trail, dropping her head, her hair falling over her face.
Callie looked at her horrified. ‘You thought you were the result of a rape? Oh, Frida, why didn’t you talk to me about all of this?’
Frida glanced up, her mouth working. ‘You were always so busy at work and stressed,’ she said emotionally. ‘I didn’t want to land you with all of my stuff when you had enough on your plate. I thought I could sort it on my own.’
‘Oh, darling girl. Come here.’ Callie slammed her mug down and opened her arms. Frida shot over the short distance.
Mother and daughter held one another, tears running freely.
‘I’m so sorry I wasn’t there for you,’ Callie sobbed.
‘I’m so sorry, Frida. I promise to never let work or money get between us again. ’
She stroked her daughter’s silky hair. ‘Just promise me in return that you’ll never keep secrets like this again.
We should always be able to talk to one another.
We always have in the past – or I thought we could.
’ The words were pouring out, the tears streaming.
‘I knew there was something wrong before you went off to Ibiza. I should have sat you down and talked to you then. Oh, darling, I’ve just been so knackered with work this year, it’s been grim.
I didn’t have any energy left over and that was so wrong.
But I can assure you, even though it didn’t work out between Sunil and me, and even though we were very young, we loved each other very much at the time and you’re the result of that love. Don’t ever, ever think otherwise.’
Frida snuggled into her mother, tears subsiding into hiccoughs.
There was silence for a while. ‘Don’t beat yourself up.
It’s cool. I poured all my conspiracies out in my creative writing classes.
Including the theory my dad was a multi-millionaire sheik who couldn’t own up to fathering a daughter as he’d be stripped of his status as a prince. ’
Callie reared back and looked down at her daughter. ‘What have you been reading?’
A giggle erupted. ‘The tutor wasn’t impressed either. Said he thought it was self-indulgent introspective twaddle.’ She let out an undignified snort.
‘Who is this man?’ Callie demanded, instantly on the defence.
Frida sat up, wiped her face with the sleeve of her cotton smock and laughed.
‘It doesn’t matter. Told me I was better at the fact-finding, non-fiction stuff, so he did me a favour really.
That’s when I began thinking about what sort of writing I could do as a career.
Can’t make money writing fiction unless you’re Sarah J. Maas,’ she added stoutly.
‘There’s my girl,’ Callie said, not having a clue who Sarah J. Maas was.
‘And, Mum,’ Frida concentrated very hard on pleating the hem of her shirt.
‘I’m so sorry about all those things I said.
You know, about you prioritising money and squashing my dreams. I couldn’t have had a better mum, and I know all you did, all the hours you worked, were for me. I know that. Of course I know that.’
She shoved at her fringe, irritably. ‘It was just that I’d had loads of emails from Sunil by then.
Told me he was in Dorset on holiday, told me he thought I might be his daughter and wanted to finally meet.
I was panicking big time. Decided to cut short the Ibiza trip and come here.
Meet him. Everything was coming at me all at once and I was freaking majorly.
‘Then you had a go at me about uni and journalism. Suppose I wasn’t angry at you, just at me for not getting my shit together as usual.
’ She looked down, biting her lip. ‘I meant to come clean about everything but there never seemed the right moment and then we had that awful row and everything got on top of me I suppose. I was angry and, God, was I confused so I took it all out on you.’
Callie took her daughter’s hands, tears spilling again. ‘I can’t believe you’ve had all this to deal with on your own.’
‘Well, Leah is a good listener. I know you’re not that much of a fan and she can be a right flake if there’s even a hint of a man on the scene, but she was really good at talking me through stuff.
And, even though the holiday in Ibiza,’ Frida hesitated, ‘wasn’t brilliant, I was glad I did it.
I tried something. It didn’t work out and I probably won’t ever do that kind of thing again, it’s just not me, at least I had the courage to try it.
’ She took a deep breath. ‘I never seemed to have any confidence, and I could never work out why. Always felt there was something missing. I mean, I did okay at school–’
‘You did great at school!’ Callie interrupted.
‘I did okay,’ Frida corrected, shrugging. ‘I’ve got a load of friends, a nice home.’ She smiled. ‘And the best mum in the world. But I always stopped myself doing stuff. Never felt I could actually succeed, you know?’
Callie had never heard Frida talk so much. Perhaps she’d never allowed her daughter the time? ‘Is that why you dropped out of your degree?’
‘Suppose.’ Frida pulled a face. ‘There were other things going on. I was all right at school as long as I worked hard, they thought I was doing okay. Learning stuff, passing exams and all that crap never came easy though, I had to really sweat it. I got to uni and there I was in amongst hundreds of others. They were all so clever, all better at passing exams. It was a bit of a sorry slap in the face. I sort of lost myself for a bit.’
‘Oh, Frida,’ Callie said, horrified again and shaking her daughter’s hands gently.
She’d been wrong thinking she and Frida talked about everything.
They’d discussed nothing. Or at least she hadn’t listened.
‘Why didn’t you say something? It’s a well-known adjustment going on to university and suddenly finding yourself amongst equals and superiors. ’
‘I had loads of discussions with my well-being tutor, she was really good.’ Frida pulled a face.
‘But think it was the course that finally did it. I just wasn’t enjoying it.
Thought, if I got out into the world and earned some dosh it would help things at home.
Maybe you could drop a few hours.’ She grimaced.
‘I just didn’t realise how difficult it would be to find a job that would take me without any life skills and pay me what I thought I was worth.
I’ve had a few jobs, haven’t I?’ She laughed again.
‘But I’ve done a lot of growing up since I started at Price’s. ’
Callie regarded her daughter with a mixture of sadness and pride. ‘You’ve grown up so much and I haven’t noticed. We always used to be able to discuss anything, didn’t we? How did that change?’
‘I dunno, Mum.’ Frida eyed her mother covertly. ‘I suspect you haven’t been totally honest with me about some stuff too.’
Ouch.
‘Maybe. But that’s for a discussion. Another time. Tell me, how did Sunil find you?’