‘You weren’t expecting Matt? I don’t want to disappoint you.’
‘No, Pete,’ I told him crisply. ‘It’s gone a bit beyond disappointment.’ I opened the fridge, the phone held between shoulder and ear, and took out the wine. I thought that a little bit could do me no harm.
‘I’m just calling to say I’m sorry about what’s happened. I really am.’
‘Cheers for telling me what he was up to,’ I said as I poured myself a large glass, then tried to decant half of it back into the bottle. I stepped out of the front door and sat down at the outside table, shivering. ‘Thanks for making me look so stupid.’ My eyes filled with tears and I did everything I could to control my voice. I took a large gulp of wine. ‘You obviously knew all along and you didn’t say a word. You must have enjoyed it.’
‘It was hard not to tell you but it wasn’t up to me.’
‘Right. Your mate acts, well, like Matt – Hugh – has acted, like a wanker, and you’re the only one who knows – were you the only one?’ He grunted affirmatively. ‘And you decide it’s not up to you to warn me. Pete, that speaks volumes about your character, and no justification you may invent after the event is going to change that.’
He paused for a moment. I wondered where he was, whether he still lived in Brighton. ‘We have some history, don’t we, you and I?’ he said after a while. ‘I didn’t want either of you to think I had any agenda of my own going on. My best bet was to stand back and not get involved.’
‘It’s not really
history
, though, is it? You had a crush on me for a while because you thought it was cool that I was an orphan. You never actually knew me, you just projected stuff onto me. You made a dramatic gesture and got over it. That’s not frankly something that should have stopped you doing the decent thing.’ I stopped myself. Nothing I said now would change anything. I needed to do what was best for Alice, which was to extract information. ‘Is Matt going to contact us?’ I asked. ‘Call me naïve but I had a crazy idea that he might like to keep in touch with his daughter.’
‘He misses her. He doesn’t want to bother you.’
‘He’s too thoughtful. So kind of him not to bother her with a present or a card or a phone call on her birthday.’
‘Didn’t he?’
‘No.’
‘You’re right, that’s crap. He’s a wanker. He doesn’t want to bother Jo either so he’s only seeing Olly every other Saturday. I think he’s assuming that when you and Alice move back to Brighton he’ll be able to make some kind of arrangement then.’
I looked up at the bare branches of the cherry tree, silhouetted against the dark grey sky.
‘Jo kicked him out?’ I asked.
‘He jumped before he was pushed.’ Pete laughed briefly. ‘Jo wasn’t impressed with me either, actually, when she realised that I’d known. First she was outraged with Hugh on my behalf for having a thing with “Pete’s Emma”, as she kept calling you. She thought Hugh was lying when he told her I’d known all along. Then she realised that I really had. I don’t think she’s going to speak to me again.’
‘Pete, Matt always told me that he didn’t speak to his parents. He said he was estranged from them but he wouldn’t tell me what had happened. Looking back at it all now, I guess that’s a lie. He was stringing me along, wasn’t he, telling me he had no family because he couldn’t introduce me to them because they all loved his wife?’
Pete snorted. ‘I’m sure they would be extremely surprised, and indeed rather confused, to hear that they were estranged from Hughie. He’s the golden boy. There’s a lot of them. He’s got a younger sister as well as, well, his little brother. Emma, you’ve met his parents. You just never realised that was who they were.’
I put my glass down. ‘What? When?’
‘Just after university.’
‘I didn’t know Matt at university.’
‘I know you didn’t. But you knew his brother.’
‘Did I?’
‘Work with me here. I’m trying to tell you something. Do I have to spell it out? You knew me, back when I was Po. Obviously being Po is not something I ever shout about these days. Let’s not go back over all of that. But when I did that stupid thing, at your house, you met my parents at the hospital, didn’t you?’
I got up and stood by the gate. It was almost dark now. A green tractor passed, and I waved to Patrick. He didn’t see me standing in the dusky shade. ‘Your parents were really nice.’ I thought about it. ‘You had an older brother and you were annoyed about living in his shadow.’
‘That’s the one.’
‘You’re Matt’s brother?’
‘I generally call him Hugh.’
‘You’re Alice’s uncle.’
‘Yes.’
‘And Olly’s uncle.’
‘Indeed. Hence I get it in the neck from you and from Jo.’
‘Why the hell didn’t you both tell me that before? Why was
that
a secret? God, you are one fuck of a twisted family.’
‘Because Hugh asked me not to. And as the little brother with the inferiority complex, I did as I was told.’
‘So you met me again in Brighton, and you introduced me to your married brother and stood back while he started an affair with me without telling me that he had a wife. At what point did he ask you not to mention that you were brothers?’
The outline of Greg appeared in the doorway. I drained my glass and held it out to him for a refill.
Pete sounded strained. ‘Well, straightaway, obviously. Do you remember?’ I did remember. I remembered that, after walking over to introduce himself, Matt had said he was visiting his friend Pete. Po had come over and we had said hello. I had not taken much notice of him. I never did.
‘I moved to Brighton because you were there,’ Pete said quickly. ‘I knew you were there because I phoned your aunt and uncle and said I was a university friend. They said you were living in Brighton. So I went there too. Sorry about that. I just wanted to be close to you. I used to walk around town at weekends and look out for you. I knew you’d be walking by the sea. I would walk by the sea as well. We used to bump into each other, didn’t we?’
‘Yes. And you would be all chatty and happy. You’d tell me about your girlfriend.’
‘Funny, isn’t it? I had an imaginary girlfriend and Hugh had the opposite. He had a secret wife. I had no women and he had two. So yes, you’re thinking I wasn’t over you after all, and you’d be right. I didn’t get over you for years.’ He was speaking briskly, his tone businesslike. ‘So one day Hugh was in town and I took him to the Boardwalk for a coffee because that’s just where you take people, isn’t it? And there you were. I remember saying to him, look, over there, that’s Emma. And he said,
the
Emma? Heartbreak Emma? So I said yes, and straightaway he said, “She looks nice. I’m going to say hello.” I felt sick because I knew what he was like.’
‘Which was?’
‘Persuasive. Immoral. Adulterous.’ I shivered. My Matt was persuasive, but it made me cringe to hear that he had been immoral and adulterous even before he met me. ‘So I said,
don’t
, and he laughed and said he was just having fun, and that I wasn’t to say he was my brother. He said he was going to use his middle name. And of course I went along with that, even though I hated it, because I’ve always done what Hugh said.’
‘Pete?’ The anger was bubbling inside me and I didn’t think I could stop it coming up.
‘Mmm?’
‘Pete, you are one sad, pathetic fuck. You know that. Are you over me now?’
‘Yep.’
‘Really?’
‘I’m living with my girlfriend. Jane. She’s really nice.’
‘But do you still have this twisted and just
weird
obsession with me? Do you?’
‘What do you mean? I’m living with Jane.’
‘So if I said, oh, Pete, but I need you to drop everything and come to France and comfort me, and maybe now that everything’s out in the open we can see if a relationship between you and me might work out after all. If I said that, you’d turn me down?’ He did not reply. ‘I thought not.’
‘Do you mean it?’
‘Of course I don’t mean it.’ I was shouting. ‘Pete, you
doormat
. You are the only person I know who’s made more of a mess of their life than I have. Pete,
you
ruined my life. It was you. You went all weird at me at uni, and if anything was going to put me off having anything to do with blokes, it was you.
You
made me think I’d never attract anyone except nutters. You followed me to Brighton. You introduced me to your vile brother, you sad tosser. You stood by and watched everything he did. You are the saddest, most masochistic, most pathetic loser I’ve ever met.’
The pause stretched out. I watched the clouds rushing across the sky. Above my head, the few remaining leaves of the cherry tree rustled ominously. It was about to rain. I opened the door to the hall, picked my way carefully across the exposed earth and sat on the stairs. I was not sure what else to say, so I waited for Pete to respond. After a while I started to think he had hung up on me.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said at last. ‘I’m really sorry. You’re completely right. I’ve screwed up. I have no life. I’m only with Jane because she took pity on me. I don’t love her. I don’t even find her attractive.’
‘I don’t care,’ I told him. ‘Really, I couldn’t care less.’
‘Right. I am sorry, though. I do love you, so I should have done what was best for you. I suppose I was a bit hurt that nothing I did was ever going to make you interested in me, but you went off with my brother without looking back.’
‘I wouldn’t have done if I’d known the facts.’
‘So I kept the facts from you. I suppose I was waiting for it all to go wrong in the hope that I might feel better then. I wanted you to hate Hugh more than you hated me, and I wanted you to regret ever talking to him.’
‘At which point I would turn to you for comfort?’
‘In my dreams.’
‘So why are you ringing me?’
‘I don’t know. To see if we can cut my brother out of this loop, I think. My folks haven’t heard any of it yet but they will. They’re upset that Hugh and Jo split up. They’re good people even if they did spawn two psychos. I know that if they knew about Alice, they’d want to be in her life. So I’m asking you if I can tell them, and if I do, whether I could bring them to see you so they can meet their granddaughter. We’ll stay in a hotel,’ he added quickly. ‘You won’t have to see me on my own. Or they could come without me if you prefer. I just thought it might be easier if I was there to introduce you.’
I could barely answer. I was tired and upset, and I wanted to go to bed.
‘OK,’ I told him without enthusiasm.
Alice was going to acquire some more grandparents. She already had Christa and Geoff. In a strange way, my mother was in our lives again, too. When I had put her picture up beside my bed, Alice had pounced on it.
‘Who’s that?’ she had said.
‘It’s Granny Sarah,’ I’d told her. ‘My mummy. She’s dead.’
I had spent so much time terrified of the day Alice found out about death. In fact, she had accepted it quite equably.
Hugh sat on a stool by the bar and nursed his vodka and tonic while he watched the room. Christmas parties had always been good to him. He had enjoyed the chance to be out with colleagues, to get properly drunk, and to forget about the logistics of his life. Now his life had no logistics. He reminded himself that this was good, that he was free, now, to do exactly what he wanted.
The party was in a bar near the office. The room was already crowded, and it was hot and smoky. He took off his jacket and hung it awkwardly over the back of his stool. Then he loosened his tie. He scanned the dance floor. There were plenty of people here whom he had never seen before. He tried to dredge up some interest in talking to any of them.
After a while, he knocked back his drink, bought another one, and stepped down from his stool. Nobody had come to talk to him, so he was going to have to find someone to speak to. He was going to have to be proactive. He had no idea how many of his colleagues knew about his private life. Some of them did, so that probably meant all of them.
He took his tie off altogether. It was a purple tie, shiny, that Jo had got for him. He had always liked it. Now, he slid it into his pocket and ran his fingers through his hair. He headed straight for a girl he had noticed. She was little. A bit too little for him, really. She could only be five feet tall, if that. Her build was minuscule. What drew him to her was the waist-length blonde hair that she threw around with a toss of her head as she danced. She had huge blue eyes. As he got closer, he noted that, although she was small, she had breasts. She turned and smiled at him.
‘Hello!’ she said, in a little girl’s voice.
‘Hi,’ he told her, feeling gruff and manly in comparison. ‘I’m Hugh.’
‘Hello, Hugh!’ she almost squealed. ‘I’m Sandy!’
He felt himself beginning to relax. Something told him that Sandy wouldn’t be interested in settling him down and having his child.
‘My real name’s Alexandra,’ she confided, after he bought her a drink. ‘My family used to call me Alex but when I was about twelve I decided that Sandy was more me!’ She looked at him expectantly.
‘It suits you,’ he told her. He laughed and she joined in, uncertainly. ‘So, Sandy,’ he continued. ‘Do you work at Johnsons?’
She nodded. ‘Mmmm-hmmm! I certainly do! I know you do because I’ve seen you. That sounds silly, doesn’t it? Sorry. I’ve just noticed you about, that’s all.’
‘No,’ he said, leading her to a quiet corner. ‘It doesn’t sound silly at all.’
He was making all the right moves, saying all the right things. He wondered if he had to go through with this, now that he had started it. He wondered whether she could tell that his heart wasn’t in it, that he would rather be anywhere but here.
Jo took a deep breath and walked into the bar. She looked around. Every second of this was excruciating. The bar was packed with groups of people. They were laughing in her face, parading their stupid happiness.
She had not known what to wear this evening. She had settled on a black dress which almost reached her knees, with a plain black coat and medium heels. Now she felt frumpy. All the other women were in teeny tops, and they all had their thighs on show, whatever the state of them. But she could hardly have turned up on a blind date looking like that. It would have implied all sorts of things that weren’t true.