The Unknown Bridesmaid (30 page)

‘Been a long time, Julia,’ she said, ‘a very long time.’

‘I know,’ Julia said, ‘I’m sorry.’

‘You didn’t come to the funeral,’ Iris said, ‘you didn’t pay your respects.’

‘No,’ said Julia. ‘I should have done, I know.’

‘Why not?’ Iris said. ‘Why cut us off like that? Not a word from you all this time. What did we do wrong?’

‘Nothing,’ Julia said. ‘I am the one who’s done wrong, and I’m ashamed.’

‘Well then,’ Iris said, ‘we’ll forget it, and start again, shall we?’

‘Not yet,’ Julia said. ‘I wrote you a letter. Elsa read it when you couldn’t read, but she didn’t tell you. It was about the past, all the mean things I did, and—’

‘Oh,’ Iris said, ‘the past is past, why rake it up?’

‘I have to,’ Julia said, ‘it won’t let me go.’

‘Well then,’ Iris said, ‘get it over with and then we can get on.’

It wasn’t as difficult as she had imagined it would be and Iris’s response wasn’t as emotional as she had thought it would be. She didn’t, in fact, seem distressed at all, only puzzled that Julia was, as she put it, ‘making a meal’ of describing her past faults. The tipping of baby Reggie’s pram she brushed aside. ‘Nonsense,’ she said, ‘you’ve got it all wrong. He didn’t die of a blow to the head at all. Why did you think that? Little Miss Big Ears, that was you, always listening to grown-ups and getting everything wrong. It was a respiratory failure that killed him. You can see the coroner’s report if you like. I’ve got it somewhere. All that torturing of yourself, Julia, that’s you all over. You’ve never grown out of it, all drama when there was none there.’

All the other things got the same dismissive treatment from Iris except for the matter of the letters to Carlo. ‘Now, that,’ Iris said, ‘was naughty, that caused a lot of trouble. The girl – can’t remember her name – denied ever sending them but Carlo sacked her all the same. He didn’t believe her. Elsa guessed it was you, though. You’d have to ask her how she knew, but she did. Her dad didn’t believe her either. He thought she was just making trouble for you. She was jealous of you, Julia. You knew that, I’m sure. She resented you being taken into our family, that was it. And you were mean to her, just as you’ve said. But none of all that really upsets me. It’s how you behaved later, once you’d left our house. That hurt, Julia. Cutting yourself off, not keeping any contact, that hurt. And you being what you are, it didn’t make sense. You should have seen it would hurt, when you’d been with us all those years, part of our family, and then never a word. How could you be any kind of psychologist, or whatever it is you are, and do that to us? That’s what I want to know. The rest doesn’t matter.’

Sitting listening with her head bowed, unable to meet Iris’s
eyes, Julia found herself in one part of her brain noting her cousin’s unexpected strength and being surprised by it. She’d never suspected that Iris had it within her to be so frank and direct: Iris, who was always so mild-mannered, eager to please, forever shying away from confrontation or unpleasantness. And she was right. Julia knew she was right. How could she not have known Iris would be hurt and bewildered at the way she had cut herself off? But, of course, she had known Iris would be hurt. She’d known this perfectly well. It was obvious. What was worse was that, knowing this, she had allowed herself to ignore it. She’d just wanted out of that family at all costs. Understanding what she was doing hadn’t meant she was going to change.

‘Well, Julia, what are we going to do about all this, eh?’ Iris was saying. ‘A storm in a teacup, all water under the bridge, and here we are, sitting across from each other again. You think I’ve a lot to forgive you for. Well, it’s forgiven. Now tell me about yourself. What’s happened to you all these years? Oh, not the career, I know about that, roughly, but the rest, what about your personal life, Julia? Are you happy single? Did you never meet anyone else after your divorce? Am I prying? But family can ask, can’t they? Tell me about yourself, Julia. I’ve a lot to catch up on.’

Julia left Iris’s house two hours later, exhausted. Iris’s appetite for trivia was extraordinary. She’d wanted every detail of a ‘personal’ life that hadn’t much detail in it. All Julia could do was broad sweeps and that didn’t satisfy Iris. She tried to talk about her work, and about being a magistrate, but Iris wasn’t interested. It was no good saying that her work
was
her. Iris wouldn’t have it. She insisted that there must be what she called ‘affairs of the heart’. ‘You’re not made of stone, Julia,’ she said, ‘you’re flesh and blood, you have feelings. They must have come to the fore sometimes. Now tell me, I’m broad-minded.’

Lamely, Julia dragged up a couple of affairs she had had but said nothing about her failed marriage. When Iris asked her point-blank if she had ever thought about having children she lied and said no, never.

The girl was called Precious. She was aged eleven, and in foster care. The carers, however, were relatives, an ‘aunt’ and an ‘uncle’. But they were both unknown to Precious when she arrived in this country from Ethiopia. How exactly she had arrived was unclear. The aunt and uncle maintained that she had simply arrived on their doorstep one September morning the year before carrying a bag and a piece of paper with their address and telephone number on it. There was no passport in her possession so whoever had brought her into the country had either kept it or had somehow smuggled her in without one. Precious had been with these relatives (though their exact relationship to her was another thing shrouded in mystery) for almost a year. She spoke no English, beyond please and thank you, when she arrived but was now fluent and doing well at school. But she was said to be a liar and a cheat and was causing more and more trouble in the family. No one could understand her behaviour. The aunt and uncle were bewildered and upset. They had taken Precious in, though they had three children of their own plus an elderly cousin living with them. They had treated her with love and kindness and had been as generous as their circumstances permitted. But, said the aunt, she appeared to hate them. She was becoming thoroughly nasty and the family was now afraid of her. If Julia couldn’t do something they were considering passing her on to another set of relatives, if they could be persuaded to have her.

She was a strikingly beautiful girl but she bristled with hostility. Self-possessed and seemingly confident, a confidence bordering on arrogance, she sat before Julia straight-backed, head held high, everything about her a challenge. Julia didn’t
say anything for a long time, but Precious was not in the least perturbed by her silence. She seemed to enjoy it, holding Julia’s gaze steadily, as though daring her to blink. There would be no point in questioning her about where she had come from and how her journey had been made. All that would have been gone into many times and Julia didn’t think she would get a better result than had already been obtained. Precious, she was sure, expected to be asked why she behaved as she did, why was she repaying her aunt and uncle for their kindness by being so unpleasant and making herself objectionable. So Julia wouldn’t ask why.

Instead, she said, ‘You’re doing so well at school, Precious. What subject to you like best?’

‘Maths,’ Precious said.

‘Do you want to study maths later, maybe at university?’

‘No,’ Precious said. ‘I want to be a lawyer. I will be a lawyer, like my father.’

Julia looked at the notes. There was no mention of a father who was a lawyer. No mention of either a father or a mother. And a father who was a lawyer didn’t fit with the story of Precious turning up, apparently alone. Surely such an educated and therefore presumably reasonably affluent man would not just have dispatched a daughter in such a way? Or had Precious been told by him to stay silent about how she entered the country? In which case, what was the motive?

Julia cleared her throat and said, ‘That’s interesting, a father who is a lawyer. Do you know what kind of law he specialises in?’

‘He doesn’t,’ Precious said, ‘he is in prison. Before that, he helped people.’

‘Do you want to do the same, to help people?’

‘No,’ said Precious.

‘So what sort of lawyer do you want to be?’

‘Crime,’ Precious said. ‘Murder.’

‘Defending people accused of murder?’ Julia asked.

‘No,’ Precious said, ‘prosecuting them. Then they’ll hang or get beheaded.’

‘Not in this country,’ Julia said, ‘we don’t have the death penalty. We have life imprisonment.’

Precious curled her lip. ‘That, then,’ she said.

‘It will mean a lot of studying,’ Julia said, ‘a lot of support from your family.’

‘They are not my family,’ Precious said. ‘I’m just staying with them because I have to.’

‘But,’ said Julia, ‘they don’t have to let you go on staying with them, and if you can’t get on with them better than you are doing at the moment, and you have to move on, it will mean changing schools, making it harder to study, and you might not like where you’re moved to either. So, Precious, that’s a lot to think about. Maybe you should decide to make the best of it. It won’t be forever. You aren’t being ill-treated. You are doing the ill-treating.’

Precious stood up. ‘You don’t know what it’s like,’ she said, ‘I’m not ill-treating anyone. It’s silly saying that. They don’t like me, they don’t want me, and I don’t like them and I don’t want to be with them. They want me to thank them all the time. They keep telling me how grateful I should be. I’m not grateful. I don’t see why I should be.’

‘Lots of reasons,’ Julia said. ‘Sit down, and I’ll run through them, then maybe we can come to some compromise. I’m here to help you, Precious.’

Again and again, all year, she had been reminded of the dangerous road only just not taken, the tempting road that all the children she saw reminded her of, and which she went on trying to bar them from. Help, at the vital moment, that was what was needed. Help that she had lacked.