I want to say more, but I have Kate in my head, telling me to lead with compassion.
I called them both when I got through security. Ginny was devastated for me in the way I needed, affirming my right to be furious and validating my feelings of betrayal. But it was Kate who knew exactly what I should do next.
“DNA is just DNA. Being a father is something else entirely,” Kate said. “You need to get to the heart of why they didn’t tell you. The rest, theis he really my fatherstuff, is all up to you. It’s really just an adjustment of fact. Nothing else changes.”
Mum rushes into the kitchen to retrieve iced lemon water and some scones with jam and cream and brings them out on a silver tray. I have not eaten in twenty-four hours and the sight of the clotted cream in the little silver bowl makes me want to retch.
“Do you want a tea or a coffee?” she asks, glancing at her watch.
“I can’t take the caffeine,” I say glumly.
“You must be exhausted. Leo said you got in late. You will stay tonight?” she asks.
“Yes.Maybe,” I say, shrugging.
Mum hovers for a bit and then heads inside. “I’ll make a pot,” she says, her voice all tight with nerves.How long must we string this out?I wonder. Better to rip the Band-Aid off.
I try to breathe; I focus on being compassionate.
Mum sits, finally, and there is a moment of quiet. I don’t want to ask again and so I wait. I can feel Mum looking at me, fidgeting. But I don’t offer any comfort. I need the information.
“We never meant to keep it from you,” she says finally, pouring a coffee for herself. I look at her and nod slowly, before turning and staring out at a lavender bush by the edge of the patio. Watching a bumblebee fly drunkenly between flowers. “Not for as long as we did.”
I glance at her, nodding. “Tell me everything, Mum. From the beginning.”
She nods.
“Well, as you know, I met Nicky when I worked in that little dress shop near Angel, and he used to walk past on his way to his job on Upper Street. He came into the dress shop every day for a week, pretending to be looking for things. Men’s socks one day. A pair of gym shoes the next. I mean, it was a women’s dress shop,” she says with half a chuckle, her voice unbearably strained, like an old rubber band about to snap. “Anyway, I was pregnant at the time but not showing. Obviously, I said no.”
“You were already pregnant? With me?” I say, as I pick at the scones in front of me.
Mum sighs, resting her chin on her hand, eyes joining mine briefly, before she sits back and smooths out her white blouse.
“He’d left me,” she says, frowning. “The man who...”
Her voice trails off. Myrealfather left her while she was pregnant. I’m not sure I’m ready to hear it. “Tell me about you and Dad,” I say quickly.
“Yes,” she says, nodding. “It was very early days. I didn’t tell Nicky I was pregnant; there didn’t seem any point. He was kind and flirty, but I just told him no and that I was dating someone and thank you but no thank you.But we liked each other. I liked him very much indeed. Anyway, he went back that year to work some more in Italy...”
“Back to Rocco,” I say. I’d known Dad had gone back and forth a few times over those early years. It had never occurred to me to really look at those timelines.
“That’s right,” she says. “And when he came back from his trip, he came into the shop to say hello, and there you were.”
“Okay,” I say, imagining his face when he saw Mum with a new baby.
“It didn’t take long for him to figure out there was no father in the picture. And bless him, he just kept pursuing me. And he wassosmitten with you.”
I bite my lower lip to keep it from wobbling.
“We dated for a few months, then he asked me to marry him. And part of that deal was that he would adopt you.”
“A condition?” I say, frowning.
“No. Not like that. For Nicky it was very clear. We would be a family, properly. You would be his. And I said yes to all of it. I loved him. I loved you.”
“Were you ever going to tell me?” I ask.
“We’d agreed to do it when you were older. Maybe around your sixteenth or eighteenth birthday, we thought,” she says, frowning. “But then the separation happened, and he begged me not to.”
