He read the name again – Gerald Montrose.
‘You knew I’d find out eventually,’ Harley said to his mum, who’d slumped opposite him at the kitchen table. ‘Couldn’t you have just have them put “unknown” in the father column?’
He could see that she was hurt by this – he’d basically called her a slag – but he couldn’t understand why she’d put this man’s name on the birth certificate when he obviously wanted nothing to do with her, or her son.
‘It wasn’t like that,’ his mum was saying. ‘I knew who your dad was, there wasn’t anybody else in my life…’
‘But?’
‘But there was somebody else in his.’
Harley watched as his mum dabbed at her eyes with a screwed-up tissue. He felt no sympathy. He felt nothing but rage. ‘So, you had an affair with a married man?’
She looked up at him, her grey eyes pleading for understanding, snot and tears mingling on her face, making her make-up run. ‘It wasn’t like that. You make it sound so dirty. I didn’t know he was married. When I found out, I stopped seeing him. But, by then, I was pregnant with you. I met your dad a couple of months later and we ended up getting married.’
‘So, Dad – Tony – knows he’s not my father?’
‘He’s a good man. He’s always known. I’d never have lied to him.’
‘But you lied to me. Both of you. And to my real dad. He doesn’t know about me, does he?’
Harley’s mum shook her head.
‘Does he still live round here?’
‘I think so.’
He’d already taken his phone out of his pocket and launched the browser. A quick search told him everything that he needed to know – Gerald Montrose was a property developer and self-made millionaire; his real dad was worth a fortune. And Harley felt like he deserved his share.
Montrose Holdings was based on an industrial estate on the outskirts of Maryport in a new, two-storey building. If it was meant to impress potential clients, Harley thought, it certainly looked the part. Constructed of blue-painted steel and darkened glass, it stood out from the Portakabins and 1980s prefabs like an artefact from another, more developed, civilisation. Harley could picture himself working there, turning up in the mornings in his brand-new BMW and ordering people around for a couple of hours before a long lunch with an important client and then a meeting with the boss, his dad.
Harley scanned the building from his vantage point atop the wall that surrounded the estate, hoping to catch a glimpse of Gerald Montrose. He’d only had a couple of days to adjust to his mum’s revelation and there was no way that he could think of the man as ‘Dad’. He had the same difficulty when he tried ‘Gerald’ – the name sounded like something out of one of the plays he’d been forced to study for GCSE, set in the early twentieth century. A few online references suggested that Montrose was usually known as ‘Gerry’, but this felt much too informal and familiar; somehow it felt worse than thinking about him as ‘Dad’.
Harley hadn’t seen anybody enter or leave the space-age building, but there was a new Mercedes parked at the front which suggested that somebody important was inside. He wanted to wait until much later, surely the man would have to leave the office at some point, but he’d promised his friend Jibreel that they’d work through their physics assignments together. Not that there’d be much work – ‘working on their assignment’ was code for smoking weed and talking shit for a few hours. He’d begun to feel a bit guilty about this when he’d started year thirteen but, since his mum’s confession, he didn’t care about his marks or his final grades. He’d get a job with Montrose and that would be him set for life.
Stalking the man didn’t seem like the best way to start their relationship, though, so Harley reluctantly headed to Jibreel’s house, trying to decide on a different approach. He’d thought about posing as a client, but he didn’t think an eighteen-year-old would really be in the market for a new house in the Lakes, so he opted for something much simpler. Work experience.
‘Could I speak to Gerald Montrose?’ Harley asked, the next day, his hand trembling as he held the phone.
The woman at the other end sounded amused as she said, ‘May I ask what this is about?’
‘I… er… I want to do work experience with the company.’
‘Okay. I’ll put you through to HR–’
‘No!’ Harley realised that he was panicking. ‘I really need to speak to Mr Montrose.’
‘I’m afraid that won’t be possible.’
The woman was stonewalling him. Harley considered putting the phone down but stopped himself just in time. His own life had been blown apart by what his mother had told him so why should he protect this man that had got another woman pregnant when he was already married?
‘I need to talk to Mr Montrose about a personal matter.’
‘I thought you said–’
‘Please tell him that Lois Cartwright’s son would like to speak to him. It’s about my eighteenth birthday.’
Silence at the other end of the phone but the line hadn’t gone dead. Harley waited and he heard the ringing tone again – the woman had put him through to somebody else.
‘Who is this?’ A man’s voice at the other end of the phone barked the question, clearly used to getting answers.
‘My name’s Harley Morton. I’m Lois’s son and I think you’re my dad.’ The words tumbled out so quickly that Harley wasn’t sure that he was making sense.
‘Bullshit!’
This time the line was dead.
‘You do know who this man is?’ Jibreel asked when Harley finally gave in
