What could ever be more important than kissing your kid better when she grazed a knee? Jago wondered. The memory of his own mother kissing his four-year-old elbow after he’d fallen from his bike sprang, unbidden, to his mind. How she’d smiled as she’d said, ‘All better.’ Told him how brave he was…
He shut it out.
‘Chillingly selfish,’ he said, ‘but at least it was an honest response. At least they didn’t pretend.’
‘Pretence would have required an effort.’ She lifted her head to look up at him. ‘Is that what your parents did, Jago? Pretend?’
Her question caught him on the raw. He didn’t talk about his family. He’d walled up that part of his life. Shut it away. Until the scent of rosemary had stirred a memory of a boy and his bicycle…
Lies, lies, lies…
‘Jago?’
She said his name so softly, but even that was a lie. Not his real name. They were alone together, locked in a dark and broken world, reliant upon one another for their very survival and she had a right to his name.
‘Nick,’ he said.
‘Nick…’
It was so long since anyone had called him that. The soft sound of her voice saying his name ripped at something inside him and he heard himself say, ‘I was in my final year at uni when I was door-stepped by a journalist.’
She took the hand that he’d hooked around her waist to keep her close and the words, coiled up inside him, began to unravel…
He could see the man now. The first to reach his door. He hadn’t introduced himself, not wanting to put him on his guard. He’d just said his name. ‘Nick?’ And when he’d said, ‘Yes…’ he’d just pitched in with, ‘What’s your reaction to the rumour…’
‘My father was a politician,’ he said. ‘A member of the Government. A journalist knocked on my door one day and asked me if I knew my father had been having a long-term affair with a woman in his London office. One of his researchers. That I had a fourteen-year-old half-sister…’
He caught himself. He didn’t talk about them, ever.
‘Oh, Nick…’ She said his name again, softly, echoing his pain. He shouldn’t have told her. No one else had used it in fifteen years and to hear it spoken that way caught at feelings he’d buried so deep that he’d forgotten how much they hurt. How betrayed he’d felt. How lost.
‘That was when I discovered that all that “happy families” stuff was no more than window-dressing.’
She didn’t say she was sorry, just moved a little closer in the dark. It was enough.
‘It must have been a big story at the time,’ she said after a while, ‘but I don’t recall the name.’
‘It was fifteen years ago. No doubt you were still at school.’
‘I suppose, even so-’
‘A juicy political scandal is hard to miss.’
It hadn’t just been the papers. His father had been the poster boy for the perfect marriage, a solid family life. It had brought out the whole media wolf pack and the television satirists had had a field day.
‘You’re right, of course. The fact is that I don’t use his name any more. Neither of us do. My father was dignified, my mother stood by him and, in the fullness of time, he was rewarded for a lifetime of commitment to his country, his party, with a life peerage. Or maybe the title was my mother’s reward for all those years of keeping up appearances, playing the perfect constituency wife. Not making a fuss. But then why would she?’
It was obvious that she’d always known about the affair, the child, but she had enjoyed her life too much to give it up. Had chosen to look the other way and live with it.
‘She was the one who spent weekends at the Prime Minister’s home in the country,’ He said. ‘Went on the foreign tours. Enjoyed all the perks of his position. Got the title.’
‘What did they say to you?’
He shook his head. ‘I went home, expecting to find my mother in bits, my father ashamed, packing.’ It had taken the police presence to get him through the television crews and the press pack blocking the lane, but inside the house it was as if nothing had changed. ‘It was just another day in politics and they assumed I’d come down to put on a united family front. Go out with them for the photo call. My mother was furious with me for refusing to play the game. She said I owed my father total loyalty. That the country needed him.’
He could still see the two of them going out to face the cameras together, the smiling arm-in-arm pose by the garden gate with the dogs that had made the front page of all the newspapers the next day. Could still smell the rosemary as the photographers had jostled for close-ups, hoping to catch the pain and embarrassment behind the composed smiles. As if…
‘What I hated most, couldn’t forgive,’ He said, ‘was the way the other woman was treated like a pariah. Frozen out. She had to give up her job, go into hiding, take out an injunction against the press to protect her daughter. Start over somewhere new.’
‘You don’t blame her at all? She wasn’t exactly innocent, Nick, and someone must have leaked the information to the press. Maybe she hoped to force your father’s hand.’
‘If she did she was a fool,’ he said dismissively.
‘She didn’t go for the kiss-and-tell? Even then?’
‘No. Everyone behaved impeccably. Kept their mouths shut and my father was back in government before the year was over.’
‘She loved him, then.’
‘I imagine so. She was a fool twice over.’
‘I suppose.’ Miranda’s shivering little sigh betrayed her. Was that how she saw herself? A fool?
‘If it wasn’t for herself, maybe it was for her daughter.’
She swallowed nervously, as if aware of treading on dangerous ground.
‘Perhaps she wanted some of what you had,’ she said when he didn’t respond. ‘To be publicly acknowledged by her father. In her place…’
‘In her place, what?’ he demanded when she faltered.
‘It’s what I would have done,’ she admitted.
‘Poking a stick into a wasps’ nest,’ he said, realising that she was probably right. ‘Poor kid.’
‘She’s a woman, Jago. About my age. Your sister. And you’re wrong about your parents losing nothing,’ she said before he could tell her that he didn’t have a sister. That she was nothing to him. ‘They lost you.’
‘The people I thought were my parents didn’t exist. Their entire life was a charade.’
‘Truly? All of it? Even when they came to your school open day?’
‘They did what was expected of them, Miranda,’ he said, refusing to give them credit for anything. ‘It was just another photo op. Like going to church when they were in the constituency. Pure hypocrisy. It didn’t mean anything.’
She sucked in her breath as if about to say something, then thought better of it. ‘You changed your name? Afterwards?’
‘I use my grandfather’s name. Part of it, anyway. He emigrated from eastern Europe. Nothing as grand as Russian royalty, you understand, just a young man trying to escape poverty. They put him off the boat at the first port they came to and told him he was in America. We have a lot in common.’
‘Don’t you think-’
‘No,’ he said abruptly. ‘I don’t.’ It was the last thing he wanted to think about. ‘What about you? Do you see your parents these days? Did they manage to find time for their granddaughter’s christening?’
She shook her head, then, realising that he couldn’t see, said, ‘They died in an accident years ago. When Ivo was just out of university and I was in sixth form taking my A levels.’
Jago found himself in the unusual situation of not having a clue what to say.
To offer sympathy for the loss of parents who had never been there for her would have been as hypocritical as anything his parents had ever done. Saying what was expected. Hollow words. Yet he knew there would still be an emptiness. A space that nothing could ever fill…
‘How did you cope?’ he asked finally.
Manda caught a yawn. She ached everywhere, her hands were sore, her mouth gluey. The only comfort was the heat of Jago’s shoulder beneath her head. His arm keeping her close. His low husky voice drowning out the
