‘Well, I couldn’t miss your birthday again,’ he says, before glancing at me. ‘I knew I wouldn’t be forgiven.’
After supper Grandad lights a fire and we settle back in the sitting room, Isla in her pyjamas, promising to go to bed in a minute. Since it’s Grandad’s birthday I let her stay up later than usual, especially as she’s helping Grandad set up the iPad that Lucas gave him. ‘My new toy,’ he calls it. I watch Lucas take out one of our old family albums from the bookshelf.
I look over his shoulder at the newspaper cutting with the faded picture of Mum and Dad, dated 1979, the year I was born. In the photo, I’m perched on my mother’s lap, chubby-cheeked and smiling, my father is standing behind us in a shirt and tie, looking proud. Dad looks so like Lucas, with his light-brown hair, broad shoulders and lean figure. I remember Grandad telling us how much our father used to exercise; he was paranoid about keeping fit and had loved cycling and running. ‘Unlike me,’ Grandad had laughed. Lucas is sitting on the floor in dungarees with his head resting against Mum’s knee. Mum is wearing a black polo-neck dress and knee-high boots. The headline reads:
TREACHEROUS ROAD CONDITIONS ROB TWO YOUNG CHILDREN OF THEIR PARENTS…
A young couple were tragically killed in a car crash on New Year’s Day. Dr Michael Wild and his wife, Eleanor, were travelling back from Gloucestershire to London, when their car hit black ice… they leave behind their four-year-old boy, Lucas, and their baby girl, January…
I sit down next to Lucas, his expression giving little away.
‘They suffered no pain,’ Granny had told me when I was five, Lucas eight. Lucas was shuffling from one foot to the other, head down. ‘People die all the time, January,’ he said darkly.
‘Lucas.’ Grandad touched his arm, tried to steady him on his feet.
‘Where are they now?’ I asked, confused. Where had my parents gone? Were they in the sky? Sitting in the clouds?
‘Well…’ Granny had looked at Grandad.
‘When people die they go to heaven,’ Grandad said. ‘Heaven is a good place, where your mum and dad are happy and at peace.’
I remember Granny trying to comfort Lucas, but he’d pushed her away saying, ‘I hate heaven!’ He snatched my toy rabbit from my hands and tossed it across the room. I rushed into Granny’s arms, scared. Grandad went after my brother and I overheard him saying, ‘Come here Lucas,pleasecome here.’ I heard Lucas crying, Grandad saying, ‘It’s all right, it’s all right.’
I wipe a tear from my eye, before we carry on looking at the photograph albums filled with black-and-white pictures of my grandparents when they were younger, with Mum as a baby and Mum growing up. I feel sad when I look at these albums, but I need to see them from time to time, especially on my mother’s birthday. It’s important never to forget their faces. I see my mother in me. I have the same high cheekbones, thick chestnut-coloured hair, full lips and freckles scattered over my nose. My father has my green eyes, tinged with grey. He was more serious in his expression, like Lucas, but when he did smile the world smiled back at him.
We come across a telegram to my mother, Eleanor Barry, tourist passenger, Southampton Docks, sent from Granny with the message, ‘Come back soon, Mummy’.
‘Ah, she went to New York,’ says Grandad, looking at a picture of Mum and Dad huddled closely together on a park bench, Mum’s long hair blowing in the wind. Grandad peers at Isla over the top of his glasses. ‘You know the story of how your parents met, don’t you?’
‘Tell me again,’ she says.
I have heard this story many times too, but love it no less. Grandad recalls how my mother had returned from a ski resort in Stowe, Vermont, where she’d been working as a waitress. She had hated being back in England so much that she’d taken the first flight out of the country again, to America. An old school friend was living in New York, so she was able to stay with their family. ‘Ellie was working for some fashion company. Her boss was a tiny woman who tottered about on heels, her bangles jangling as she walked. Ellie told us that she never had anything to do, except type the odd boring letter. Anyway, one day she decided to skive and took herself off to Soho.’
‘What’s Soho?’ Isla asks.
‘It’s a fun part of the city,’ Lucas tells her, ‘with art galleries and coffee bars.’
‘Anyway, she was sitting in a cafe reading, when who should come in but her boss, Miss Jangle Bangles.’
Isla giggles at the name. Even Lucas smiles.
‘Ellie grabbed the man sitting next to her.’ Grandad grabs my arm. ‘And she buried her head behind his newspaper muttering, “Get me out of here.”’
We all laugh now, more at Grandad’s acting skills.
He goes on to explain how my father had wrapped his coat round her shoulders and, keeping her head down, they had shuffled towards the door. Outside, my mother had burst into relieved laughter, before noticing with great joy how handsome he was. They spent the rest of the morning together. She discovered his name was Michael. He was training to be a doctor, and the reason he’d been in the cafe alone was that he’d been taking some time off from shopping with his lawyer girlfriend. ‘Well, that was the end of their relationship, I’m afraid. When Michael flew back home he tracked Ellie down and that was that. They were madly, deeply in love.’
‘Will you get married, Uncle Lucas?’ Isla asks him.
‘Crikey. Not any time soon.’
‘Why not? I can be your bridesmaid!’
‘Long way off,’ Lucas says, clearly wanting to nip this conversation right in the bud. Intimacy and commitment are alien to him. I don’t think Lucas has ever been in love. He’s had a few flings, the odd six-month relationship, but I’ve never sensed anyone has come close to stealing even a small piece of his heart. They’d have to be prepared to do a lot of digging to find it. It makes me think of Dan too. Was I in love with him? I thought it was real at the time. I don’t regret meeting him; how can I when he gave me Isla? Falling in love hurts and you can pay for it. My father didn’t, of course, realise back then that his decision to marry my mother would cost him his parents. How cruel of my other set of grandparents to disown him, thinking my mother too flighty, too bohemian for him, in contrast to the lawyer girlfriend with better career prospects. All that time they wasted; they never woke up to their foolishness until it was too late.
I look at the album again and stop when I see a picture of my mother holding Lucas. He’s wrapped in a pale-blue blanket. ‘Our baby boy’, Mum had written underneath.
I catch Lucas touching the photograph briefly.
