When Callie returned to the kitchen diner Frida was rolling her mug nervously around in her hands. ‘Are you okay, Mum?’ she asked, not quite meeting her eyes.
‘Not sure. Any more tea in the pot? I could do with one.’
Frida rose. ‘I’ll reheat yours in the micro.’
‘You’ll do nothing of the sort,’ Callie snapped out. ‘The least you owe me is a freshly made, hot cup of tea. With sugar.’ She crumpled onto the sofa, staring ahead at where Sunil had sat. He hadn’t looked all that different. He’d had on expensive-looking chinos and an immaculately tailored jacket, but his hair was still thick and luxuriant and his face remarkably unlined for a man in his early forties. Apart from the broader shoulders and the slight American vowels, he hadn’t changed.
Her fingers strayed to her hair, remembering how Sunil had brushed it off her face. She exclaimed in horror; her curls had frizzed in the rain. Looking down at her faded jeans and the scruffy T-shirt which bore the remains of a coffee she’d spilled at breakfast, she gave a dry laugh.
Frida placed the fresh mug on the Monet gardens coaster, turning the handle to face her mother. ‘Thought you’d be well pissed off,’ she said carefully.
‘I may well be once the shock’s worn off and when you’ve told me what’s been going on.’ Callie paused and added, inconsequentially, ‘I haven’t seen Sunil for over twenty years.’
‘He’s a good-looking bloke, isn’t he?’ Frida smiled slightly smugly. ‘My dad is a hottie.’ She flung herself onto the opposite sofa.
Callie sipped her tea and winced, both at the heat of the liquid and the comment. ‘Not sure that’s an entirely appropriate but, yes, he was handsome when young and that hasn’t changed.’
‘And I look like him, don’t I?’
‘You do.’ Callie hadn’t the energy to be angry with Frida, although she was sure her daughter had something to do with Sunil’s sudden appearance. Perhaps she really was in shock. She felt as if she was floating. It wasn’t totally unpleasant. ‘You have his eyes. And his height and build.’
‘It makes sense now.Imake sense now.’ Frida’s nose wrinkled. ‘I don’t look like you at all. Always felt there was a piece of me missing, like a jigsaw.’
‘I could never understand why you didn’t ask about your father. You always accepted it was just we two.’
Frida shrugged. ‘Didn’t matter for a long time. Lots of my friends don’t have dads on the scene, or have two mums, or like Scarlett, brought up by her grandparents. We all had our own kind of normal. You accept what you grow up with, don’t you, as being what’s normal.’ She screwed up her face, riskingthe familiar refrain. ‘And families come in all shapes and sizes, including the found sort.’
‘Don’t get smart, Frida. You’re nowhere near off the hook.’ Callie collapsed back against the sofa, suddenly exhausted, thinking about her own childhood. ‘But yes, you do accept whatever upbringing you have as normal.’
‘The only family I knew who would be considered typical by any boring standards,’ Frida continued, ‘were Donna and Graham.’
Callie gave her a penetrating look. Was this what had been behind her daughter’s difficult behaviour this summer? The realisation that somewhere she had a father and the search for her roots? A sudden squall of rain attacked the French windows. The storm had arrived. Part of her worried about Johnny being out in it and guilt set in that she’d made it uncomfortable for him to be in the cottage.Ridiculous. He’s a grown man. Has travelled the world. He can look after himself. Concentrate on your daughter, there’s reason to feel guilt there too.‘So what changed?’
‘Remember I mentioned Carol in the office?’
‘Yes.’
‘She’s dead cool, is Carol. I get on really well with her, even though she’s an oldie. Sorry, Mum. No offence.’
‘None taken,’ Callie said mildly. ‘Not about that anyway.’
‘Last year she found out she was adopted.’
‘That must have been a shock, didn’t you say she’s in her sixties?’
‘Yup.’ Frida nodded vigorously. ‘Her mum died and she found all sorts of papers in the house when she cleared it. Turned her world upside down. She tracked down her biological dad and he’s still going strong, ninety-odd though, in a nursing home, but they’ve sort of discovered each other. It’s sweet.’
‘But, Frida, what’s that got to do with anything? You always knew you weren’t adopted. And I’ve always told you I couldn’t find him.’ It was the truth. Sort of.
‘Oh yes,’ Frida nodded blithely. ‘Out of all the scenarios I imagined that was never one of them. It was just something Carol said when she came back after meeting her biological dad for the first time. She said she made sense now in a way she’d never done before. Apparently, her dad and her have the same nose, the same coloured eyes but it was more than that; they both loved books and reading; Carol’s always got her nose stuck in a book, she belongs to five book groups. She said her adopted dad was lovely and she always felt loved by him, but he wasn’t like her in any way, and I don’t mean physical. Like I said, a piece of the jigsaw was missing.’
Frida lifted up her legs and sat cross legged on the same sofa her father had just vacated. Callie was struck by the resemblance. She had the same calm energy, the same long loose limbs. ‘So that got you questioning?’ she prompted.
‘Yeah. I imagined all sorts. That you’d had a lover who had tragically died maybe, or he was married and wouldn’t leave his wife, or there was some impenetrable barrier that couldn’t be overcome.’
‘That one was close to the truth,’ Callie said dryly.
Frida continued; she hadn’t heard her. ‘I even wondered, at one point, whether you’d been attacked, you know–’ she let the sentence trail, dropping her head, her hair falling over her face.
