Hugh’s ghost of a smile made me feel a little better.
‘Does he know about the baby? The father?’
‘No.’
‘What do you want to do?’
I’d been thinking about little other than this for the past ten days. ‘I think I need to keep it.’
‘You don’t need to do anything you don’t want to do.’
‘Two weeks ago I would’ve thought that, too.’
Hugh nodded. ‘You’re thinking about June, aren’t you? You wouldn’t be here if June hadn’t decided to have her baby.’
‘See? You can read my mind after all.’
‘But you don’t have to make the same decision just because of that. You’re not June.’
I snorted. ‘Well, I’m twelve years older than she was, and better educated, but I seem to have made exactly the same mistake.’
‘Oh, El,’ Hugh said, and he put his arm around me, and though that didn’t cure anything, it made me feel a whole lot better.
‘You’re not like her at all,’ he said.
‘Yes, that’s what I’ve always been told. ’I sniffed. ‘I bet she didn’t get a single stretch mark, and as soon as I start showing I’m going to be like a road map.’
He rubbed my back. I gazed into the park, at the statue of a striding lion on a stone pedestal. Reading legend said that the sculptor of that lion had found out, after the lion was erected, that a peculiarity of the lion’s pose meant that its left legs had been sculpted so much longer than its right legs that if the lion were real, it would topple over.
Apparently the sculptor, upon finding this out, had committed suicide.
I wondered what it would be like to have such a life-or-death stake in something you had created.
I didn’t think I’d kill myself if I found out that it was impossible to have sex with a dozen policemen at once.
I sat up straighter.
‘One thing, though,’ I said. ‘I’m not letting this kid be raised by anybody but me.’
‘Good for you.’
‘This kid is going to know who he or she is. It’s going to know I’m its mother from the beginning. And it’ll have to know who its father is, too.’
‘Right,’ said Hugh. ‘Right. When are you going to tell him?’
‘I don’t know. That’s the thing.’ I turned on the bench so I was facing away from Reading’s lion, symbol of colossal fuck-ups, and looking at Hugh. ‘I don’t know where he is. I need you to help me find him, Hugh.’
13
‘Estelle! How goes the book, darling?’
I don’t know why it was, but my agent, Bryce, invariably rang me when I was doing something not even remotely connected with writing. This time I was dripping from the shower, which I’d got out of when I’d heard my phone ring. He also always called me by my pen name, a habit I never quite had the heart to break him of.
‘Great,’ I said automatically. Uh huh. As if. I hadn’t touched my computer since the day I’d discovered that my sister was my mother and I was pregnant. Lucy Sharpe was still shaking the Chancellor’s hand, examining his features, and discovering to her surprise that she found him attractive.
‘How are you?’ I asked in a transparent attempt to stall for time, wrapping my towel closer around me.
‘Oh fine, darling, you know how it is; I’m having lunch with Rose O’Shea in a minute! Have you met her?’
‘No.’ I never met people in the publishing business because I never went to any of the London networking parties. Partly because I didn’t want to introduce myself to people who didn’t know my books - ‘Hello, my name is Eleanor Connor and I write filth’ - and partly because I didn’t want to disillusion the people who did know my books, by being so ordinary.
Bryce had become my agent quite at random. I’d opened the
Writers’ and Artists’ Yearbook
in the middle, swirled my finger around and pointed, and landed on his name. I sent him my first manuscript,
A Degree in Carnal Knowledge,
and when he’d asked me a week later to meet him in London, I went to my first and only publishing lunch.
I was impressed by Bryce straight away. Despite his incredibly camp manner, he was built like a rugby-playing Frankenstein monster. He always wore Gaultier and he always managed to look like a thug, even with a rose in his buttonhole. I figured he would confuse editors into paying me money for my writing, and the theory had worked reasonably well, so far.
‘So Estelle, tell me the truth now. How goes the book? Have you sorted out that reality problem?’
‘I don’t know. I mean, are you sure this book is a good idea in the first place? I’m not sure that anybody will believe that politicians are really sexy.’
‘You’re joking, darling; politicians are sexy as hell! Look at that Gordon Brown, so divinely rumpled!’
‘Uh . . . right.’
‘And the title - it will be flying off the shelves! So what’s your plan of action?’
‘Well, I sort of thought I’d completely change the heroine. Make her a little more’ -
boring
- ‘human. Tone down the dominatrix angle a bit, at the beginning, at least.’
‘I think you’re right, Estelle, in the first draft you did leap into the leather rather precipitously. Well, that sounds fabulous, I’ll leave you to it, any idea how long it will be? A couple of weeks?’
Now let’s see. I was working at the pub, growing a baby, and searching for its father.
‘Maybe a bit more than that.’
‘Fine, well, we were ahead of deadline anyway, let’s see how you get on. Must rush or I’ll be late for lunch! Toodle-pip, darling, happy writing!’
Toodle-pip. I towelled off my hair, wondering where Bryce got his ideas of reality from anyway.
I was just going back to the bathroom to retrieve my clothes when the phone rang again. I bit my lip, hoping it wasn’t Bryce deciding he needed a definite delivery date for the book, and picked it up.
‘Hello?’
‘Ellie, how are you?’
It was Sheila. She’d been ringing every couple of days since the June-is-my-mother revelation, wanting to talk about it. However, since I had very little desire to talk about that subject or the other major subject taking up most of my brain, I usually cut the conversations short.
‘I’m fine,’ I said. ‘Like normal.’ Or as normal as I could be.
I didn’t know how she’d react to the news that I was expecting. It was possible she’d take it in her stride; after all, her daughter had given her the same news twenty-six years ago, so it couldn’t be too much of a shock when her granddaughter did the same.
It was also possible that she’d be disappointed. That was what I was dreading. All my life she’d wanted nothing but for me to be different from June (only now did I fully understand why), and this news could be like a kick in the teeth.
Besides, she’d kept a major secret from me all my life. I could do the same right back.
‘I’ve just got out of the shower and I’m all wet,’ I added.
‘Well, I thought I would ring you and tell you about the new vicar; you knew that Mr Swallow was retiring? The new one is called Richard and he’s ever so nice. Lost his wife about ten years ago. As you can imagine, all the ladies in the parish council are watching him closely.’
‘Uh huh. Listen, M—’ I stopped myself before calling her ‘Mum’. ‘I’m dripping all over the carpet here and it’s freezing.’
‘Oh. All right, then. Have you heard from June?’
‘No. Still no idea where she went. I’m not missing her much, to tell the truth.’
‘I don’t imagine you are, Ellie, but don’t be too angry, sweetheart. Oh, and there was another reason I rang; I wanted to know if you were going to come home next weekend for the harvest festival? It’s going to be quite something this year, Richard has rallied everyone round and—’
‘I don’t think so. Anyway, I’m shivering now, so I’m going to go. Love you, bye.’
Don’t be too angry
. That was easy for Sheila to say. She’d had years to be angry with June. And she hadn’t heard my bombshell yet.
‘You don’t remember anybody talking to me at all?’
Jerry scratched his bristly head. ‘Which night was this?’
‘Saturday the eighteenth of September.’
‘Was that the night you got shitfaced behind the bar?’
I felt myself flushing, but I ignored it. I was going to have to own up to a lot more than drinking on the job, eventually. ‘Yes.’
‘I remember you helping out with Norman.’
I glanced at Horny/Angry, who sat further down the bar nursing his third pint of the evening. ‘It wasn’t Norman.’
‘What did he look like?’ Hugh asked. The three of us were sitting at one end of the bar; Paul and Philip were watching football on the telly and Martha and Maud were at their regular table. There were only regulars in the Mouse and Duck tonight, so far.
‘You didn’t see him either?’ I asked Hugh.
I thought back. I’d tried to remember more of that evening, but it was still a blur. I did recall the blonde, though. ‘No, you left with that Henrietta woman before he turned up, didn’t you?’
‘I walked Harriet home, yes,’ Hugh said firmly.
‘What did the bloke look like?’ Jerry repeated Hugh’s question.
‘He was about medium height, not that tall, medium build, dark hair and eyes. He had a goatee.’
Jerry narrowed his eyes as if he were concentrating. ‘Long hair? Tattoos?’
‘No, short hair. No tattoos.’ None that I could remember, anyway. For all I knew, he had his full name, address and National Insurance number tattooed on his arse, but as I had no recollection of it, it wasn’t helping me any.
Jerry was shaking his head. ‘I don’t think so.’
‘He was wearing a blue button-down shirt and a suit; it looked like it could be designer gear. He—’ I hesitated, but anything that could jog Jerry’s memory would help me. ‘He looked a bit like George Michael.’
Hugh let out an incredulous laugh.
‘You are joking.’
I shook my head.
Jerry frowned. ‘That guy out of Wham!? Didn’t he have blond hair, like in a quiff?’
‘I meant later George Michael.’
He deepened his frown. ‘I can only picture him with blond hair.’
I got up, walked over to the jukebox, and selected the George Michael’s greatest hits CD. ‘Like this,’ I said. Hugh and Jerry came over and peered at the tiny reproduction of the album cover inside the machine.
‘You find that attractive?’ Hugh asked me. I shot him a look.
Jerry shrugged. ‘I don’t remember anybody looking like that. Then again, I don’t tend to notice blokes.’
‘What music are you putting on over there?’ Maud called across the room at us.
‘We’re looking at George Michael, Maud,’ Hugh called back.
‘Oooh! I love a bit of George Michael,’ Maud squealed. She began wiggling her shoulders in a way that might be considered seductive by an octogenarian. ‘I want your sex,’ she sang in her quavery voice.
‘I wouldn’t kick George Michael out of bed for eating biscuits,’ Martha agreed.
‘Ooh no.’
‘They say he doesn’t like ladies, though.’
‘Ooh, what a waste.’
Hugh nudged me. ‘Looks like you might have some competition there, El.’
‘Shut up, Hugh.’
‘Is it true what Martha says, that he doesn’t like ladies?’ Hugh persisted.