‘And me.’
The familiar thought of him carrying away a second rejection, thinking he hadn’t measured up to her expectations, was too much for her. Finally, after weeks of unconsciously manning the barricades, she lost control and the pent-up tears flowed freely.
Marjory let her cry herself to a standstill.
‘You said I might never know Daniel properly, but I do, I really
do
. I want desperately to be part of his life. And I want him to know that I believe him about Emma … totally.’ She began to sob afresh. ‘But he won’t answer his phone and I don’t know how to get through to him.’
‘You know where he is,’ Marjory said. ‘Why don’t you go to him? Tell him what you’ve just told me.’
She looked at her friend blankly. ‘Go to him? Up in Edinburgh, you mean?’
Marjory nodded. ‘You say he’s not answering his phone, and you don’t know where he’s staying in London. But his play will be advertised. Surely you can find him there.’
She made it sound so simple. And as Annie began to think about it, she realised it
was
simple. Finding him, at least.
Annie slept that afternoon, a hot, damp, exhausted sleep riven with dreams of Baby Tom. She couldn’t find him; he was there in her arms one minute, then Daniel himself was holding him. She didn’t want him to hold him for some reason, but although she kept begging him to give the baby back, Daniel just walked away. She woke herself with her cry. Two people, the baby and the man – never reconciled in her mind. And she’d failed to adequately protect either of them as a good mother should.
They waited at the front door for the taxi that would take Annie to the station. She had stayed another day with Marjory, her tired brain floating between the past and the present as she mused on her mother’s life, and the problems in her own. It was with reluctance that she embraced her friend when the taxi drew into the gate.
‘Thank you … for everything, Aunt Best.’
The old lady seemed physically frail in her arms, but also tough and certain in the love she conveyed to Annie as she hugged her in return. Love that was as close to a mother’s love as Annie had ever experienced, and a benchmark for her relationship with her son. ‘No point in forgiving your mother, dear,’ Marjory was saying quietly as she released her friend, ‘unless you can forgive yourself.’
She returned to London with a sense of calm and determination. The central core of anxiety was fading. She still
had no energy, but she no longer felt on the edge of madness. As soon as she got home, she checked online for the details of Daniel’s play: tomorrow was the last night.
‘What do you hope to do up there?’ Richard asked, when he found her in the bedroom, packing afresh, barely an hour after she’d got back.
‘I need to find him, Richard. I need to tell him I believe him,’ she said.
‘But what if you go all that way and he won’t see you?’
‘He won’t be able to avoid me. His play is on, he has to be there.’
‘OK … well, it’s up to you.’ She noticed her husband didn’t put up any objection, on the back foot since his confession and not about to challenge her. ‘For what it’s worth, I hope you get a chance to talk to him.’
‘Thanks.’ He sounded sincere, and she knew that he was finally making an effort to support her over Daniel.
‘When you get back, Annie, can we try and start again? Put all this behind us?’ He looked and sounded wretched.
She gazed at him for a moment and, despite the hurt, her heart went out to him. She loved him, there had never been any doubt about that. ‘I hope we can.’
He smiled tentatively at her, perhaps afraid she might reject him, and held out his hand. She took it in her own and for a moment they stood quietly together, the fight gone out of both of them.
‘Good luck in Scotland,’ he said.
*
Edinburgh was cold, the wind from the east slicing down the wide avenues of grey neo-classical buildings and making it feel more like November than August. She had packed in the muggy warmth of London, and her thin knitted jacket was no match for the Scottish weather. She arrived in the city after two, and checked into a hotel north of Princes Street, which, at such late notice and at the height of the festival, had cost her an eye-watering sum. She didn’t care. Daniel’s play wasn’t on till nine, so she had the afternoon to kill. She tried his mobile again, and again got voicemail. She didn’t leave a message; she was frightened he might manage to evade her if he knew she was in town.
She wandered the streets, bought a dark green wool shawl to wrap over her jacket, had tea and a teacake in a small, crowded tearoom along the Royal Mile, got a ticket to the play. Everywhere was packed and loud with enthusiastic festival-goers, hanging out, drinking, making their way between venues, the atmosphere vibrant with laughter and expectation. She felt awkward and out of place. In other circumstances I’d have enjoyed this, she thought, but now I just want to get through this evening, see Daniel. The jollities set her teeth on edge. Every few minutes she looked at her watch, but time passed excruciatingly slowly, not least because there was no guarantee that she would find her son that night.
The theatre, when she eventually got there, was small and claustrophobic. The chairs were of grey moulded
plastic, crammed onto a raised platform, the walls covered in dusty black drapes. Annie reckoned the space could seat around a hundred. She’d walked in the rain across to the Old Town, up the hill, carrying the umbrella the hotel had lent her, wishing she could see her son immediately. She was intensely curious about what his work would be like. As she waited for the play to begin, she searched the half-full theatre for him, sure he would be somewhere in the audience. But if he was there, she didn’t see him.
Called
The Sneeze
, the play was a farcical black comedy, based on a series of random events beginning with a sneeze. It was sharp and edgy and very funny. As soon as the prolonged and enthusiastic applause had died down, Annie hurried to the entrance, where a young girl dressed in black was sitting yawning behind the desk.
‘I’m looking for Daniel Gray.’
The girl didn’t respond for a moment, just stared blankly at Annie with large, tired eyes.
‘Daniel … yeah … he just left.’
She must have looked stricken, because the girl added, ‘But he’ll be at the Assembly Rooms, I reckon. He and Gillen go there most nights.’
The pavement was crowded, but the rain had stopped. Annie nearly missed her son. She’d almost forgotten how beautiful he was, even in the half-light, dressed in jeans and a crumpled blue shirt. He was leaning against the wall of the venue, huddled in an intense conversation with a tall, very thin man with a shaved head and thick dark
eyebrows that threatened to overwhelm his strong face. Both were smoking. I never knew he smoked, she thought, hesitating for a moment before going up to Daniel and tentatively touching his arm. He swung round.
‘Annie!’
She saw the surprise on his face, then a wariness descend.
‘I didn’t know you were up,’ he went on. ‘You should have said.’
‘Hi, I’m Annie Delancey.’ She reached out to shake his friend’s hand.
‘Sorry … this is Gillen Dare, my director.’ Daniel’s voice was jumpy, and his friend must have noticed because Gillen was looking at her curiously, his bright eyes boring into her, taking her all in.
‘The play was fantastic,’ Annie said, summoning up her social skills when all she wanted to do was talk in private to her son. But despite her anxiety, she had found herself quickly immersed in the witty, ridiculous farce. ‘Really funny. The audience seemed to love it,’ she added.
The two men beamed. ‘Yeah … better pace than the other two performances, and the house was much more responsive tonight,’ Gillen said. ‘Last night they were half asleep, but this lot got it. Hope the reviews – if it gets reviewed – reflect their enthusiasm.’ He looked at his friend, but Daniel said nothing, just stared off down the broad street.
At another time, Annie would have liked to talk more to Gillen about the play, but Daniel must have been feeling
as she was, because his silence was heavy and constraining. After a few moments, Gillen dropped his cigarette on the pavement and ground it with the toe of his black boot.
‘I’ll leave you to it,’ he said. ‘I have to go and talk to Calum about clearing out our stuff tomorrow … see you later?’ He bowed slightly to Annie. Daniel nodded briefly, and waved his hand at his friend as Gillen disappeared back into the building.
‘Why did you come?’ Daniel said, as soon as they were alone. She sensed a controlled anger in his words, and flinched.
‘Can we go somewhere?’ she asked.
Daniel looked away. ‘Umm …’
‘We could try my hotel. It’d be quiet.’
He nodded. ‘OK.’
The journey back was almost silent as they joined the noisy stream of people making their way down the Mound towards the lights and jostle of Princes Street. Behind them the castle was lit up and glowing gold as it perched like a fairy kingdom over the gardens below, the gothic spike of Scott’s Monument piercing the night sky to the right, the eerie strains of a bagpipe lament carried on the wind from somewhere in the Old Town. For a moment Annie was absorbed in the beauty of the panorama in front of her, wanting to share her pleasure with her tall son striding along beside her. But Daniel’s face looked shuttered and oblivious to his environment.
There were few people in the dimly lit hotel bar by the
time they got there and Annie and Daniel had a choice of armchairs. Daniel ordered a beer, she a glass of wine.
‘You asked me why I came up here,’ Annie began, when the drinks were settled on the low glass table between them. ‘You didn’t answer my messages, that’s why.’ She tried, unsuccessfully, not to sound hurt. She wanted to add, ‘even when I told you my mother had died,’ but she refrained. She hadn’t come all this way to blame him.
Daniel looked straight at her. ‘Look, we met each other, we had a go at making it work. And if it had been just us, it might have been OK … perhaps. But it wasn’t. I don’t blame your family, you all did the best you could, but I don’t see any point in pursuing it, with Emma’s accusation always standing between us.’
She felt he had rehearsed this speech many times. And it was clear that he was trying to control his own hurt and anger, and failing just as she had.
‘I’m so glad I met you, Annie. It was incredibly important to me, and I’ll always be grateful to you for that.’
‘Are you saying you don’t want any contact with me any more?’ Her voice was sharp, she couldn’t help it.
Daniel sighed. ‘I don’t see the point.’
‘So you’re just going to give up at the first hurdle?’ She didn’t mean to sound so upset, but why should she hide her distress? Why should he think that she wasn’t affected by his rejection?’
‘I didn’t say that,’ Daniel replied, taking a long gulp of beer.
‘You did. You said you didn’t see the point in continuing our relationship.’
‘Annie, your son’s girlfriend – who is also your daughter’s best friend and flatmate, and someone the family’ve known for decades – accused me of sexual harassment. Whatever you actually believe, you have to take someone’s side, and that, for all practical purposes, will have to be Emma’s.’
‘Not if she’s lying. I don’t believe her. Never have, never will.’
Daniel raised his eyebrows at her. ‘So if I told you now that it was true, that I did come on to her in a drunken frenzy, what would you say?’
She didn’t hesitate. ‘I’d say you were lying.’
Daniel looked taken aback, then his face slumped. ‘God, Annie.’
‘Look, I can’t
make
you believe me, Daniel. Of course you’re right that we have a problem with Emma. I haven’t seen her since it happened, and don’t particularly want to. And yes, she’s Ed’s girlfriend.’ She paused. ‘But that’s a separate issue. It doesn’t alter the fact that I know you didn’t do anything to her.’
For what seemed like a long moment, Daniel stared at the floor. When he raised his head, she saw a new determination in his eyes.
‘Annie … there’s something I want to tell you.’
She waited while he fiddled nervously with the label on his beer bottle, hoping he wasn’t going to suddenly confess. He looked so serious.
‘I should have told you sooner, and I would have done, but then this thing happened, and, well, that changed everything. Anyway … the thing is, I’m gay.’
She stared at him in astonishment. ‘Gay? My God … why didn’t you say something when Emma accused you? You could have sorted the whole thing out in a second.’
He shrugged. ‘I did try, in the park. Then Ed rang. I don’t know … perhaps I wanted you to believe that I could never have done that to Emma, gay or straight …’ He gave her a rueful smile.
She said nothing, tired of repeating her assurances on that score.
‘And would it have made any difference?’ he went on. ‘As I hadn’t said anything before that, the others – certainly Ed – might have thought I was just making it up, trying to wriggle out of the situation. And anyway, just because a person is gay doesn’t mean that they still couldn’t have a moment of madness with the opposite sex. It would never happen with me, but it does happen.’
‘Have you always known you’re gay?’
‘As long as I remember any sexual feelings at all …’
He was looking at her anxiously, seeing how she was taking it.
‘Did you think I’d disapprove? Is that why you didn’t tell me?’
He shrugged. ‘Dad’s a total homophobe. He didn’t say much before Mum died, because she was always fine with it. But afterwards, well, it got quite nasty. He’d go on about
“bad blood” … shit like that. That’s why we barely see each other now. And finding you, I suppose I didn’t want to rock the boat, risk you thinking less of me in any way.’
‘Oh, Daniel. It makes no difference to me at all. I’m glad I know.’ And I’m glad I persuaded him that I believe him about Emma before he told me, she thought.
The barman came over and asked if they wanted anything else. ‘No, we’re fine.’ Her wine was disgusting – tinny and warm – but she didn’t want to waste valuable time complaining.