It all slotted into place during my meeting with Diana, and I just couldn’t wait any longer. Time isn’t on my side, after all.
He brings me a mug of tea laced with brandy, and a glass of the neat stuff for himself. Uncertainly, he sits in the armchair opposite me.
I sip the tea. Let the room fall silent, so my next sentence can get the airtime it needs. “I think... I think you might be my father.”
A full moon of a stare, lambent with a lifetime’s wondering. Then, eventually, “You’re right. I am.”
I feel my pulse quicken. My blood’s rushing with sentiment.
He clears his throat. “You said on the phone... you found my number last Christmas.”
There follows a pause, long enough for me to wonder if I’ve made a mistake in coming here. Clearly he’s expecting me to say something. But what?Is he annoyed I’ve left it so long? What does he think—that I should have jumped in my car and floored it all the way along the M4 on Boxing Day?
“Yeah. So... why was it written in that book? The one Mum was reading in hospital.” (I’d mentioned it only briefly on the phone, figuring I’d prefer to hear the details face-to-face.)
Warren shakes his head, like he’s trying to nudge his thoughts into order. “I went to visit her, Joel. Just before she died.”
“Why?”
“I wanted to see her, one last time. She told me about you that day. I thought she might want to pass my number on.”
“You didn’t already know about me?”
Another headshake.
“What were you—an affair?”
“No, we were together just before she met... well, Tom.”
Tom.So Warren knew my dad once, too. “Did you love her?”
“Yes, I did. Very much.”
“So why—”
“Fancy getting some fresh air? Blowing the cobwebs away?”
•••
“How did you know Mum was ill? You’re not in touch with my... Tom, are you?”
“Nope. Heard through a friend of a friend.”
There’s a fresh onshore breeze tonight, straight in off the Atlantic. A few surfers are braving the lines of white water, but most people are sticking to solid ground. Walking dogs, strolling along the headland. The September sky is saturated pastel, purple and pink like sentimental notepaper.
“So what were you doing when you met Mum?”
“I was about to go off round the world in my camper-van,” Warren says. “I’m a surfer, you see. Or was.”
A globe-trotter. So we’re different in that way at least. “What do you do now?”
He makes the same face I do when people ask me about work. “Teach kids to surf, earn pocket change from photos here and there. I was trying to bring out my own line of boards, but...” He looks away from me, out to sea. “Money dried up.”
We emerge from the beach and pick up the incline toward the headland, past the Victorian hotel on the clifftop. It’s grand and palatial, epically romantic.
Romance. The idea seems almost obscure to me now. Like a beloved patch of landscape viewed through a misty window.
“So why’d you break up?”
