“Sorry,” she says, after a couple of moments. “I didn’t mean to diminish what they do to you.”
The traffic moves. “No, it’s... I know what you’re saying.” As always my mind’s muddled with conflicting feelings. “Anyway... thank you for today. Meeting someone’s family for the first time is kind of intense.”
“I made you meet mine. And I had a great day—your family is lovely.”
“You were a total hit with the kids. Sorry about Buddy.” He refused to be parted from Callie (not me) as we were leaving. We could still hear him screaming as we got into the car.
“Don’t be. He’s adorable. So are Amber and Bella. I’ve always loved kids. It was a real toss-up between going into child care or nature conservation when I left school.” She laughs. “Funny how I ended up doing neither in the end.”
“Doesn’t matter. You’re doing it now.”
“True.” She sighs happily. “So what was it you said you found earlier, in the loft?”
I feel the heat of stolen treasure in the pocket of my coat. “A book, in my mum’s hospital bag. With a phone number and an initial inside.”
“What’s the initial?”
“W.”
“Anyone you know?”
“Don’t think so. I looked up the area code—it’s Newquay. I’ve never been. None of us have, I don’t think.”
“Maybe she got it from a charity shop. Or borrowed it from a friend.”
“Yeah, maybe.”
I turn past the surgery. Glance at it quickly, as if to check that it’s still standing. We’re almost home.
“Do you think my dad’s curmudgeonly?” I say.
“That’s a good word.Curmudgeonly.”
I smile.
“No. I think he’s very straight-talking. But he looks at you with love in his eyes.”
Is that really what Callie sees? My own perspective is so distorted now. “That’s probably the dull glaze of disappointment,” I say. “How many times did he mention I’m no longer a vet?”
“It’s not disappointment. He just doesn’t understand.”
“Maybe. Pretty sure he wishes he had two of Doug, though.”
“How long have you felt like this?” She sounds crushed on my behalf.
“My entire life. It makes me think...”
“Go on,” she urges, after a beat. “What does it make you think?”
“That maybe it’s true. That I’m not really his son.”
45.
Callie
A couple of weeks into the new year, I go to Cambridge for a hen do. Alana’s an old colleague of mine from the paint-tin company, though she was one of those transient types with ambition, which explains how she’s now several corporate ladders away from where we started out.
A financial-services head hunter, she must have forgotten I no longer work at the factory, because twice she presses her business card into my palm and insists she can hook me up. The first time she did it I thought she meant drugs and was almost too nervous to unfold my hand.
