Chapter 33
Have I always known Theo is Noah’s father?
I don’t know. Possibly. Very probably. Over the years I’ve asked myself again and again why I’ve never told Noah the possibility of Theo Mandeville being his birth father.
Embarrassment at telling a child, then a teenager that I’d slept with two men at the same time?
Worry that Noah would judge me and I’d lose him?
Fear that he might take it upon himself to head north out of curiosity and confront Theo and his family?
And as he grew older and I saw how much he and Michael adored each other, there seemed no reason to upset the apple cart; to open a can of worms. And certainly, I continued to hate the idea that my son might carry Hugh Mandeville’s genes in his body.
By not confronting the truth of Noah’s paternity, I was able to bury my head in the sand, ignore the past and get on with my and my son’s future.
What I do know is that two days later, as soon as Noah has slammed out of the house and Theo, white-faced, has left for King’s Cross and the train back north, I need to ring Michael.
‘Any chance you can come round?’ I ask. ‘It’s important.’
‘Is your mum there? You know she terrifies me.’
‘You know she loves you,’ I say, smiling in spite of what I have to tell him.
‘OK then, the reality of your new post has suddenly hit you?’ He laughs. ‘You need a hand to hold? Need someone to tell you that you can do it, despite what the papers say?’
‘What the papers say?’ For a split second I feel indignation and then remember why I’m calling him. ‘Do me a favour? Just call round?’
‘OK. I’ve to drop Maisie off at some do in Tooting. Do you think a do in Tooting is a suitable venue for a sixteen-year-old girl?’ For a second, I think he’s serious then, in typical Michael style, realise he’s joking.
‘Maisie’s as tough as you are,’ I say. ‘And if it’s after school, what’s she likely to get up to?’
‘Don’t be na?ve, Anna,’ he retorts. ‘Right, I’ll see you in an hour or so.’
‘What’s up?’ Michael asks as I let him in and he sees my face. ‘What? Is it Noah?’
‘Sort of.’
‘Oh, God, what? He’s not got some girl pregnant? Not decided he’s had enough of Oxford and is off to find himself in Outer Mongolia? Is he here?’
‘He’s just stormed off.’
‘Noah has?’ Michael pulls a face. ‘Not like him. What’s up?’
‘Michael, he and Theo Mandeville have just done a paternity test.’
‘OK?’ That’s all he says for a while, just looks at me with a hard stare. ‘And?’ he eventually asks.
‘Theo is Noah’s biological father.’
If I’m expecting anger, censure, recrimination, a slamming out of the same door my son has just exited, I’m to be disappointed.
‘Of course he is,’ Michael says, going to sit down. ‘As you say, biologically anyway. I think I’ve always known. I mean, he doesn’t look a great deal like me, does he?’
‘But he doesn’t look a great deal like Theo either. He’s more like me – looks very much like my dad. But Michael, you’re Noah’s real dad.’
‘I know I am. And I always will be. One sluggish sperm missing a target doesn’t mean I’m not my son’s father.
’ Michael puts his arms round me. ‘Look, if, as I’d insisted when Noah was born, we’d done that paternity test, and it had proved I had no connection to Noah, then I’d have disappeared out of your life and had nothing to do with you – or with him.
This way, I have a son whom I very much love and who I believe loves me back. ’
‘Oh, he does, he does,’ I almost shout. ‘You’re his dad, Michael.’
‘And, if it had turned out at the time I was his biological dad, and you and I had stayed together, got married, we’d probably have driven each other mad.
We’d have been arguing politics until bedtime.
’ He pauses. ‘And probably even in bed! And’ – he grins at me, his Scouse accent out in force – ‘if we had married, then I wouldna married Tania and I wouldn’t have me geerls… ’
‘Spoken like a true bloody politician,’ I say.
‘Let me be clear…’ he starts in pompous politician-speak, laughing as he does so. Then he sees my face. ‘Oh? Hell! Has he taken it really badly?’
‘Well, yes, of course he has. Michael, it’s been a shock to him…’ I trail off. ‘But there’s more.’
‘More?’ Michael says, sounding like that beadle bloke in Oliver Twist.
‘Oh, Michael. You couldn’t make this up. Immi, Theo’s daughter, is at Oxford with Noah.’
‘But you knew that, Anna.’ Michael frowns. ‘When Noah went up to Oxford last year, you knew that. Even said how strange it would be if they met.’
‘They’ve got together. Michael, they’re seeing each other. This is the reason Theo has been here, demanding a paternity test.’
‘Shit!’ For once, Michael is speechless. He sits down. ‘I need a coffee.’
‘What we need,’ I say, reaching for the cafetière and the coffee, ‘is for us both to be here for Noah. For our son.’
Noah doesn’t reappear until the evening and, when he does come home, he goes straight up to his room. When I make my way up there, knocking softly on his door with a, ‘Can I come in?’ he tells me to go away. But I don’t. I push open the door and find him lying on his bed, eyes closed.
‘Talk to me, Noah,’ I say. ‘Dad’s been round…’
‘Which dad? I appear to have two, or had you forgotten?’
‘…Dad’s been round.’ I emphasise the handle. ‘He stayed, hoping you’d come back.’
‘I’ve seen him. I went round to Dad and Tania’s. I wanted to see him and the girls.’
‘I get that.’ Any possessiveness I may have felt in the early days, when Michael and Tania first got together when Noah was about three, and he became as much a part of their family as he was mine, has long since gone.
We’ve spent Christmases and even holidays together.
All very grown up and modern. I like Tania enormously – she’s much better for Michael than I ever was – and the girls, Maisie and Lucinda, are a dream team.
‘Will Theo be home yet?’ Noah asks finally. ‘As soon as Immi knows, I need to talk to her.’
‘I know,’ I say, feeling my son’s obvious pain. I look at my watch. ‘Should be about now, I reckon. I did ask him to ring me as soon as he’d told Immi the truth.’
‘What? He’s only going to tell Immi? What about the rest of them?
Doesn’t his wife deserve to know? His sons – my brothers?
They need to know, Mum.’ Noah is getting angry and he turns to glare in my direction.
‘Will he tell his family the truth? Tell them all that he’s got another son it had slipped his mind about? ’
‘Noah, over the years, I’ve been able to convince Theo that you were Dad’s biological son. As far as he was concerned, you were Michael’s.’
‘Very convenient!’ He glares at me again, reaches for his vape and puffs away on it, despite knowing I hate his vaping. ‘But did you know? Did you know Dad wasn’t my dad?’
I shake my head, know I have to be honest with him, when honesty has not been to the fore on the matter of his paternity before.
‘And how’s Theo going to tell them? Organise a board meeting? Immi says he holds regular board meetings for those involved in running the estate. I mean, do his sons even live there? Are they still in the area?’
‘Miles has a cottage on the estate apparently. But Angus – the eldest – is a vet in Scotland. I got the impression he was down for a few days to see Immi home from uni. Whether he’ll have gone back by now, or whether he’s staying on for Christmas, I just don’t know.’
‘Well, between the pair of you – the three of you, really: you, Dad and Theo Mandeville – you’ve ruined it all for me!’
Mum has been in bed hours, and Noah is watching a film on his laptop while simultaneously plugged into music and getting down to his holiday course reading.
When I tell him to have a break from it for a few days he simply scowls and tells me there’s nothing else left in his life to do now.
I’ve stayed up, waiting for Theo to call, and am in the kitchen when he rings around eleven.
He broke the news first to Honor, who has apparently taken not only the moral high ground but also to drink, shutting herself in the snug with an expensive bottle of Merlot from Hugh’s depleting wine cellar, occasionally coming out to shout that she will refuse to speak to the damned press when they’re hammering at the door asking for a statement on Sir Theodore Mandeville’s infidelity and love child with that whore.
Theo had then told Immi. ‘She’s beside herself,’ Theo says, almost in tears himself. ‘Just cries and cries and can’t speak.’
‘She’s young,’ I venture.
‘How old were you and I when we met?’ Theo asks gently.
‘Point taken,’ I say. ‘Poor, poor Immi.’
‘And then,’ Theo continues, ‘I rang Miles and asked him to come round. Angus, luckily, is here with us at the moment. He’s got a three-day course in London – Diagnostic Imaging and Training on Advanced Abdominal Ultrasound, or some such thing – and leaves for London tomorrow before heading back to Edinburgh. He’s not spending Christmas with us.’
‘And how did they take it? The boys, I mean?’ I ask, while Noah is now at my side, listening to every word.
‘They’re grown men, Anna, not boys. Miles, true to form, seemed to think it was all one big joke.
Good job, he says, he brought the matter up over dinner the other night.
Or who knows what might have happened? Already happened, one can only assume.
Now, that’s something the papers would have a field day with, he keeps saying.
He’s right, Anna, we need to keep this to ourselves as much as possible. ’
I nod, and Noah snorts in my ear in disgust.
‘Maybe I shouldn’t have told the boys.’ Theo now sighs down the phone. ‘But I’ve Immi sobbing in her room, saying she’s not going back to Oxford.’
‘Oh, no, she must,’ I plead.
‘Well, I’m not going back,’ Noah yells so that Theo, two hundred and fifty miles up the motorway, can hear, before slamming out of the room once more.