Familiar Rooms in Darkness (15 page)

‘Jesus, Bell… have you any idea what that might be like? Our brother could be an armed robber, a drug addict – the entire family might be a swarming nest of horrible people. Maybe you've got some rosy notion that it will all be wonderful and heart-warming, that–'

‘No! I haven't any more idea than you do what they'll be like! Of course I haven't.' She got up wearily and poured some coffee from the pot which Charlie had brewed. She instinctively reached to the shelf where she kept her cigarettes. She remembered, stopped, and sighed. ‘But I'd rather know, I'd rather find out, than wander around day after day, week after week, wondering who they are, what they're like. Wouldn't you?'

Charlie stared out of the window, saying nothing.

‘I mean, we have a brother. Not a half-brother, but a proper brother, like you are to me. Aren't you curious? Wouldn't you like to meet him? To meet our real mother and father, if you could?'

Charlie thought for a while, and at last he said quietly, ‘I don't think so. Not necessarily, no. It could start something we'll both regret for a long time.'

‘How can you say that? Surely it's the other way round?'

‘Bella, don't you realize who you are? You're a well-known actress. You don't know these people, or what they might be like. They might want to exploit you, us…'

‘Will you stop talking about them like that? They're our family!'

Charlie looked at Bella, his gaze unsteady. ‘Are they?'

Bella said nothing.

At last she shook her head. ‘Charlie, if I don't follow this up, I'll go out of my mind.'

‘But if you do follow it up – well, then, I haven't really got a choice, have I?'

‘Look, the chances are they haven't lived at that address for years. It'll probably come to nothing.' She watched as Charlie rose, slopped the dregs of his coffee into the sink, and poured himself a fresh cup. ‘I'm just as scared as you are.'

‘No doubt.' He sat down again. ‘I think I'm just being more realistic.'

‘Adam Downing offered to help.'

‘Oh, Adam Downing… right. The busybody who stirred up this whole mess.'

‘He had no idea. You can't blame him.'

‘Don't worry. I know none of it's his fault.' He sipped his coffee. ‘So how does he intend to help?'

‘Well, if you like, he'll go to the address, find out if they still live there…' Bella watched Charlie's face, could tell he was working through the advantages of this proposal. ‘That way,' went on Bella, ‘we only need to get involved if we want to. If–'

‘If what we find isn't too awful, you mean?'

Bella shrugged.

‘Put that way, it sounds very cowardly.'

‘Yes.'

‘It's not the way you'd want to do it, is it?'

‘No.'

‘But there's no halfway house here. If you find them, then, as I said, I'm left without any choice.' Bella said nothing. ‘Oh, God,' said Charlie, rubbing his hands wearily across his face. ‘You have to do what you want to do, Bell. Only don't expect things to turn out the way you want them, that's all.'

The next week, Charlie had an important criminal trial in Leeds, and Bella was busy rehearsing for the opening of
Funeral Games
. Bella suspected that Charlie was trying to deafen himself, to defy fate, to obliterate the enormous change in his life by pretending it hadn't happened. She had seen him do the same thing with less momentous issues in the past. She had no real notion of how he was coping, but she knew that this would be his way of trying to stop it affecting his life. If Bella did nothing, Charlie need do nothing.

In the meantime, Cecile was trying tentatively to build bridges. The strategy she adopted was similar to Charlie's, in that she made no reference to the adoption, asked no questions about what steps Bella and Charlie intended to take, but conveyed in every gesture and phone call a sense of apologetic hopefulness. It was very hard to resist. Bella sensed her mother's very real fear of estrangement, and pitied her. To create hostility seemed futile, given the problems which she and Charlie now faced.

Bella knew that, whatever truth she and Charlie were now in possession of, it was a mere fragment of the whole. She pondered Charlie's desire to leave things as they were, and instinctively felt that it would be ultimately
destructive to both of them not to find out more. When she found herself copying out the address in Deptford into her address book for fear of losing the piece of paper, even though she knew it off by heart, she knew she had to do something. She rang Charlie in chambers at the end of the week.

‘I think we have to do something about finding our real parents. I know you're not keen, but I can't go on like this. I can't stop thinking about it.'

To her surprise, Charlie said, ‘I know. There was a chap on the jury in Leeds, and he looked a bit like me, a few years older, and I kept thinking…' Charlie stopped. Bella heard him sigh at the other end of the phone. ‘To be honest, I wish it would all just go away. It's on my mind all the time. I've even thought about seeing an analyst.'

‘That's not the answer. Talk to me, talk to Cecile, talk to Claire–'

‘I haven't told her.'

‘Why not?'

‘I don't know. I'm not sure what I'd be telling her… That I'm not who she thinks I am? That she's marrying someone under false pretences?'

‘Oh, come on, Charlie. She's marrying you for who you are. Anyway, how can you not tell her something like this? She's meant to be the most important person in your life.'

‘Yes, but it's more complex than that. When you marry someone, their family is important… Who they are, where they come from. It's not easy, when suddenly every assumption you ever made about yourself is – is–'

‘All the more reason why we have to do something. I'm going to ask Adam Downing if he'll help. He said he would, and I don't want to do it on my own. I can understand if you don't want to. But one of us has to find out.'

Charlie sighed. ‘All right, all right. You know, Bell–' She could hear his voice break a little, ‘this past week has been the purest nightmare for me. I just don't know what's going on any more.'

‘Oh, God, I know. Charlie, you should have talked to me.'

She could hear the tears in his voice now. ‘You're much stronger than me. You seem to be coping…'

‘No, Charlie, I'm not. I'm not. I just know that it will help if we can find out more. I truly believe it will. I'll call Adam. And please – talk to Claire. Don't try to handle this on your own.'

‘No, OK.' He tried to steady his voice. ‘Call me soon.'

When he put the phone down, Charlie sat for a while with his head in his hands. Then he looked up and glanced at the papers on his desk. Everything seemed to be such a struggle at the moment. The last thing he wanted to do was work. A drink. He could use a drink, something to blot out this sense that he was losing himself. Over the past week he had had a recurring dream. He was in court, it was important, he was about to cross-examine a witness, or make a closing speech, and suddenly someone would stand up in the courtroom. He couldn't ever make out clearly who they were, but they would begin to denounce him, strip away his credentials, point him out as an impostor, not a lawyer at all, not Charlie Day… And in
the dream, with every mocking word uttered, he would feel himself slipping, as though away from his own self. It was horrible, jerking him awake with a sense of debilitation and panic. He knew it was to do with being told, after twenty-nine years, that he wasn't who he had thought he was. That was clear enough. But the dream seemed to have its own ghostly reality by day, filling his waking hours with a sense of personal inadequacy. In the loneliness of his Leeds hotel room he had got drunk night after night to deaden those feelings and make himself numb to the reality of his new isolation. It was easier than trying to address the situation. First thing after work, a few glasses with fellow barristers. Then more. As much as he could stand. He didn't care. He could handle it. It was the other thing, this new thing, that he couldn't handle.

Coming into the theatre for rehearsals one morning, Bella found Bruce lying in wait for her in the corridor.

‘Bella, sweet, I need to have a word.'

‘What?'

‘Come in here.' Bruce opened the door of an empty dressing room. He waited till she was inside, then he closed the door and leaned against it. ‘I've had the most marvellous idea.'

Bella surveyed the amazing emptiness of his handsome face, with its liquid eyes and sensuous mouth. The notion of Bruce having anything approaching an idea was so unlikely that she was curious to hear what it might be.

‘Well?'

‘It's this. You know I'm gay, don't you?'

Bella opened her mouth, then closed it. ‘No. Yes. That is… Well, I did wonder…'

He clapped his hands together and rolled his eyes, as though at some marvellous revelation. ‘That's it, you see. I'm so amazingly discreet. Can you believe it?' He crossed the little dressing room and put both hands on her shoulders, gazing at her intently. ‘Now, what I thought is this. You already have your adoring male public. I have my adoring female public.'

‘Do I? Do we?'

‘Yes, yes, of course we do. Trust me. Now, what we
have to do is to utilize this play to build that up. Capitalize.'

‘I don't follow. Is this meant to be your brilliant idea? It's actually called publicity, Bruce. It's built into the job.'

‘No, no. You don't understand. What we do is – we start having a little fling. You and me. A thing. A relationship. We become an item.' He moved round the cramped space, elaborating on his theme with gestures. ‘We go here, we go there, we get photographed at clubs, parties, everything on the circuit. We become
the
thing in the gossip columns… I mean, we
are
both extraordinarily lovely human beings–'

‘You may be, Bruce. I know what I look like first thing in the morning.'

‘The point is, we become a real showbiz power couple.' He stopped, glanced at Bella. ‘You're not seeing anyone at the moment, are you?'

She shook her head. ‘No.'

‘Excellent. So that's what we do. It generates great publicity for the play, and for both of us. I mean, just
think
– when I come out eventually, it's going to be the most
outrageously
wonderful thing! I'll be all over the tabloids! Casting directors will be falling over themselves.' He gazed at her with shining, dumb eyes. ‘What do you think?'

She looked at Bruce thoughtfully. ‘I'm not entirely sure what the pay-off for me is meant to be. Still, it has possibilities.'

‘Of course it does! All we have to do is fake it. We do that all the time for a living.'

Bella considered for a few moments. ‘What about Jeremy and Frank? What are they going to think?'

‘What everyone else thinks. That we've fallen madly in love while working on the same play. Happens all the time.'

Bella considered the suggestion for a few moments. What about Adam Downing? After that night at her flat, that amazing kiss, she was pretty convinced he was hers for the taking. He hadn't been in touch since, admittedly, but it was only a week… If she and Bruce were to pull off this stunt, she'd have to put Adam on hold. Then again, maybe it would be no bad thing. Give Adam something to get jealous about. It was only going to be for a few weeks, then she'd get right back in there.

‘ All right. Why not?' Bella put out her hand, and Bruce shook it, beaming broadly.

‘Fantastic. Now, all we have to do is find some interesting places to be seen together.'

In the run-up to the opening of
Funeral Games
, Bella and Bruce began to turn themselves into the subject of speculation. Wherever they went they entwined themselves together, gazing at one another adoringly for the benefit of photographers. It paid off. They became a talked-about couple. To Bella's amazement, there seemed to be no subterranean current of rumour about Bruce's sexuality. Everyone believed them to be a golden item. On top of this, the PR machine for the play chugged manfully away. Bella appeared on the cover of
Time Out
, and there was a feature about her in the
Telegraph
Saturday supplement.

None of it passed Adam by. He read the articles and the gossip-column pieces, saw the photos of Bella and Bruce together. The first time, it gave him a
heart-stopping little pang, which he tried to pretend he didn't feel. It was a good thing that Bella seemed to have found someone. Maybe the relationship would give her the security she badly needed, help her make better sense of things. Bruce Redmond, according to Megan and her friends, was the hottest thing since Jude Law. He was a natural choice. Bruce and Bella could have been made for each other. Adam assured himself that he wasn't the slightest bit jealous. He was very happy for both of them.

On the day the play was due to open, Adam faxed Bella a good-luck message, hesitating for a ridiculously long time over how to sign it, and eventually just putting ‘best wishes, Adam'. He could easily have got press tickets for the first night, but something held him back. He would have liked to ring her, but as things stood, it probably wasn't a good idea. After he had sent the fax message he sat at his desk thinking, remembering the two times they had kissed. What had all that been about? Best not to dwell on it. He glanced out of the window and saw Megan's car pull up outside. He watched her get out of the car, ducking into the back seat for her belongings. She slammed the door and crossed the road, flicking her hair from one shoulder in that familiar way she had. Did he love her? Of course. Yes. It was deeper and more substantial than any ridiculous infatuation or mere physical attraction. That was all there had been between himself and Bella, and nothing more would ever come of it.