‘So you don’t know the name of the father of your baby,’ she said, sipping at her skinny latte.
‘Well, I thought it was George, but that might be because I thought he looked like George Michael.’
‘And you know nothing about him.’
‘No.’
Sophie didn’t regard me as if I were the kind of ditzy bimbo you expect to forget to ask the name of the man who’s impregnated her. Instead she was nodding, taking my story in her stride, as if she heard things like this all the time. I liked her even more. I’d thought this would be the ultimate in humiliation, but actually it was sort of a relief to be talking about this to someone.
‘Forgive me for intruding,’ Sophie said, ‘but why do you want to find him? Do you want child support, for example, or is there a medical issue?’
‘No, it’s nothing like that.’ I looked at Sophie’s light brown hair, held back in a rubber band, and her hands, which were small and had fingernails bitten to the quick. I decided I could be honest with her and if she judged me, at least she wouldn’t let me know.
‘I recently discovered that the man who raised me wasn’t really my father. I have no idea who my real father is. I don’t want my child to feel like I do, as if they don’t know who they are.’
‘Some people would say that nobody really knows who they are,’ Sophie commented dryly.
‘True.’
‘Do you want me to find your father for you as well?’
That surprised me, and I had to take a drink of my decaff to consider. I thought about the way June had laughed when I’d asked who my father was, and the screwed-up teenage note to ‘Peter’ in her closet. Then I thought about Stanley’s bobbly warm cardigan.
‘No, thanks,’ I said. ‘Finding the one father will be enough.’
She shrugged. ‘All right. Well, you haven’t given me much to work with, quite frankly. If I were the type of agency who kept performance records, I wouldn’t take your case, because it would stand a good chance of messing up my one hundred per cent success rate at finding missing persons. Fortunately for you, I’m my own boss, and I don’t give a stuff about performance records.’
‘One hundred per cent is impressive,’ I said.
‘It is, if you didn’t know I’d only been hired to find four people in the past five years.’ A quick grin lit up her face, and then subsided. ‘It’s mostly infidelity work these days. In any case, there are some things we can try. First, I’ll do a bit more of an interview with you.’
It took most of another latte and decaff before Sophie stopped firing questions at me and looked, if not satisfied, then at least thoughtful.
‘What do you think?’ I asked.
‘You really don’t remember much, do you?’
‘I’m not a good drinker.’
‘Evidently. Well, I’ve got a lead or two, though I think they’re pretty slim. I’ll follow those up, and meanwhile I know an artist who does witness impressions, so we can have a likeness to show around.’
I nodded. Despite her admission that she didn’t handle many of these cases, she seemed to know her stuff. I wondered if my next novel should have a private investigator heroine.
‘That’s much better than the idea of holding an eighties lookalike contest,’ I said.
Her laugh, like her grin, was brief. ‘I don’t hold out much hope, quite frankly. After the baby’s born you can try where DNA testing leads you, if you want to spend a lot more money. But I’ll do my best. Is this urgent? I’ve got some other cases on at the moment and I’m a one-woman agency.’
I gestured to my belly. ‘I’ve got about nineteen weeks to go.’
‘There’s a little bit of time, then. One more thing: how are you going to feel when I find him?’
Again, I was surprised by her question, but not half as surprised as my first reaction to it:
If she finds George, Hugh will kill me because I’ve been to a private detective without him. He would love this sort of thing
.
Stupid.
‘I’ll feel very relieved,’ I said as convincingly as I could, but Sophie narrowed her eyes at me and I could tell I hadn’t done such a good job.
‘Hmm. All right then.’ She stood. ‘I’ll be in touch.’ She held out her hand and I shook it.
‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘What do I need to do?’
‘Not a lot. I’ll arrange for you to meet with the artist in the next couple of days, and then all you have to do is sit back and figure out how you’re going to break the news to the guy.’
29
Lucy huddled in the corner of the darkened office. Her ears strained to hear, over the hum and buzz of the Westminster traffic outside, the final click of the exit door The sound that would tell her that the Minister was gone, and she was safe.
She was safe, but the Chancellor wasn’t.
Her guts churned with fear.
How was she going to warn him about the Minister’s plan, when he wasn’t even talking to her?
I stretched my arms up high and wiggled my fingers. I’d been typing for hours, non-stop for the past week, and a bout of RSI could put a major dampner on my writing career.
Then again, so could not giving in this book on time.
The day was unseasonably warm for February and the windows were open, and all afternoon I’d been smelling the most amazing scent of chocolate coming from Hugh’s house. It was clear that he was making something incredible. It was just as clear that I wasn’t going to be offered any of it.
My stomach rumbled for the millionth time that day, and I got up and went downstairs to my kitchen. If I’d thought being pregnant made me hungry, that was nothing compared to being pregnant and smelling Hugh’s baking. I rifled through my cupboards in search of chocolate, but didn’t find any, which was hardly surprising, because I’d eaten the last bit of chocolate in the house the previous night. It had been a sachet of mint-flavoured hot-chocolate mix. It had been revolting. I’d eaten it all with a spoon, anyway.
I found a bag of prunes and was deciding I was desperate enough to dig in when the phone rang.
‘Hello?’ I answered, my mouth half full of prunes, hoping it was Hugh offering to come over with some cake, but knowing it wasn’t.
‘Estelle!’ It was Bryce. ‘How’s the book going, darling?’
I shoved another prune in my mouth. ‘Um.’
‘Because I’ve had four people from your publishers ringing me in the past two days asking when it will be finished.’
‘It’ll be finished on time.’
If I can figure out how the hell it will end.
‘Good! You know what publishers are like, they need time for copy-edits and typesetting, et cetera et cetera; they’re saying they’re going to miss bound-copy date, so you’ll have it done, right?’
‘It’s nearly done,’ I lied. ‘I’m just polishing it up so that it’ll be perfect.’
‘Good girl. What are you eating?’
‘Black forest gateau.’
‘You lucky thing, you get to eat whatever you want because you’re pregnant. I’m on this diet, it’s driving me mad. Celery and cottage cheese, and that’s it.’
I looked at my rapidly expanding stomach, and tried to picture Bryce with a stick of celery in his ham-like hand.
‘Oops, I must go, Estelle, I’m late for a meeting, but you will get this book in on time, right?’
‘Of course.’ He rang off and I ate five prunes at once.
Prunes weren’t going to do it for me. I needed proper calories if I was going to finish this book on time. I grabbed my keys from the table and went out towards the neighbourhood shop.
Going in to that shop was always a bit confusing because the owner appeared to have a split personality. Sometimes she would be friendly and chatty, talking about the weather and local news while you paid for your bread and milk; at other times I’d greet her and refer to our last conversation about Reading’s one-way system or whatever, and she’d look at me as if she’d never seen me in her life. I’d adopted the strategy of saying a cautious yet bright ‘hello’ when I went in, and gauging her mood before saying anything else.
I’ll have to ask Hugh what he does
, I thought, and then I remembered and I felt sick. This kind of thing kept happening.
The minute I walked in I spotted him.
He had his back to me, surveying the papers and magazines, but I knew Hugh when I saw him. I froze in indecision as to whether I should ignore him, or turn around and walk right back out again.
But I wanted chocolate. It was bad enough that Hugh was taunting me by baking a cake; he wasn’t going to stop me from buying my own sweets, too.
I rushed to the chocolate display, grabbed two bars of Dairy Milk, and threw them on the counter, digging in my pocket for change so I could pay for them fast and get out of the shop before Hugh saw me.
‘Hello, Eleanor, how are you today?’
Just my luck that the owner was in one of her chatty moods, when I needed her to be sullen. I looked up from counting my money, intending to answer as quietly and briefly as good manners would permit, but I stopped in the middle of whispering ‘Hello’.
There were two of her behind the counter. One smiling, one scowling and rearranging the cigarettes on the shelf.
‘You’re twins!’ I cried out before I could stop myself, and then it was too late to be discreet because I could feel Hugh at my elbow.
The friendly twin was grinning and nodding. ‘You didn’t know?’ she asked, taking the money I was holding out to her.
‘No, but I wondered why—’
The other twin turned to Hugh and took his money, and I noticed for the first time that she had short hair, while the happy twin had long hair.
‘Oh,’ I said, and felt very foolish.
Hugh tucked his newspaper underneath his arm. My choice was either to walk out with him and suffer the awkwardness or stay here and explain how silly I’d been to think for all this time that two shopkeepers were one person.
I went out with Hugh. And then, of course, we were going in the same direction, so we had to walk together.
I have never known a silence so loud. Hugh’s newspaper crackled under his arm and my chocolate wrappers crinkled in my hand.
I’ll wait for him to say something
, I thought.
After all, he’s the one who’s been producing blondes
.
He didn’t say anything. We rounded the corner to our houses.
I heard the jingle as he got his keys out of his pocket.
From this direction, his house was first. Like mine, it had a postage-stamp garden in front and a short walkway to the front door. If he turned in and went into his house without saying a word to me I was going to explode.
He seemed to pause, or maybe that was wishful thinking on my part. Then he turned in and put his foot on to his walkway.
‘This is stupid,’ I cried.
He did pause this time. For a moment I thought he was going to continue right on up to his door, but then he slowly turned around to face me.
He still didn’t say anything, but he looked at me.
‘We can’t go on like this,’ I said.
He raised his eyebrows in agreement, but still didn’t speak.
‘You’re going to make me say it, aren’t you?’
He waited.
‘I really miss you.’
He nodded, but that was all.
‘I’m still attracted to you and I’m sorry I picked a fight with you and kicked you out of my bed.’
Finally, he smiled.