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The Many Colours of Us: The perfect heart-warming debut about love and family
Rachel Burton
‘A gloriously romantic tale of family secrets’ – Rachael Lucas‘This wonderfully warm debut is full of heart – I defy you not to devour it in a day!’ – Ali HarrisFall in love with Rachel Burton’s stunning debut novel, perfect for fans of Lisa Jewell, Adele Parks and Sheila O’FlanaganCan finding yourself allow you to follow your heart?Julia Simmonds had never been bothered about not knowing who her father was. Having temperamental supermodel, Philadelphia Simmonds, as a mother was more than enough. Until she finds out that she’s the secret love-child of the late, great artist Bruce Baldwin, and her life changes forever.Uncovering the secrets of a man she never knew, Julia discovers that Bruce had written her one letter, every year until her eighteenth birthday, urging his daughter to learn from his mistakes.As Julia begins to uncover her past she also begins to unravel her future. With gorgeous lawyer Edwin Jones for company Julia may not only discover her roots but she may just fall in love…What reviewers are saying about THE MANY COLOURS OF US‘The Many Colours of Us is a fantastic debut and I absolutely adored it.’ – Diane Jeffrey, author of THOSE WHO LIE‘An engaging and heartwarming debut from a bright new talent.’ – Sarah Painter‘Gorgeous, touching story, wonderful heroine, and I'm totally smitten with the hero.’ – Cressida McLaughlin, bestselling author of The Canal Boat Cafe‘A truly unputdownable read’ – Jenny Ashcroft



What if your life was built on lies?
Julia Simmonds had never been bothered about not knowing who her father was. Having temperamental supermodel, Philadelphia Simmonds, as a mother was more than enough. Until she discovers she’s the secret love-child of the late, great artist Bruce Baldwin, and her life changes forever.
Uncovering the secrets of a man she never knew, Julia discovers that Bruce had written her one letter, every year until her eighteenth birthday, urging his daughter to learn from his mistakes.
Julia begins to dig deeper into the mysterious past of her parents, opening up a history she’d never have imagined, but as she discovers the truth she needs to decide if she is willing to forgive and forget…
The Many Colours of Us
Rachel Burton



Copyright (#ulink_13e17fef-fff5-5478-b567-2628e768e67d)


An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
First published in Great Britain by HQ in 2017
Copyright © Rachel Burton 2017
Rachel Burton asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
E-book Edition © April 2017 ISBN: 9780008243920
Version: 2018-03-14
RACHEL BURTON
Rachel Burton has been making up stories since she first learned to talk, prodigiously early. In 2013 she finally started making one up that was worth writing down.
She has a BA in Classics and an MA in English and has never really known what to do when she grew up. She has worked as a waitress, a legal secretary, a yoga teacher and a paralegal. She never quite made it to law school.
She grew up in Cambridge and London but now lives in Leeds with her boyfriend and three cats. The main loves of her life are The Beatles and very tall romantic heroes.
Visit Rachel at rachelburtonwriter.com (http://www.rachelburtonwriter.com)

Contents
Cover (#uc02e3d6a-b75a-5c64-96f1-adf61b32a036)
Blurb (#u8316e1d4-15b0-513f-a43b-05570fdcf9eb)
Title Page (#ubc0396f6-2188-5b07-b08a-65d2f02725dd)
Copyright (#ulink_07c1c6d2-0133-5a70-b74d-2f208d7990f0)
Author Bio (#u4102dbcd-0fd0-5c39-b21a-42f9ef0c3f2a)
Author’s Note (#ulink_6862ccc9-b397-56c5-aa32-0477a2a5ae5e)
Acknowledgements (#ulink_695cdf86-da7f-5281-a7e5-e0ff1acea932)
Dedication (#u50e24684-cb43-5885-99ee-4872ebd5ef54)
Chapter 1 (#ulink_006e3a0d-d549-545a-abe3-23bcf84115cc)
Chapter 2 (#ulink_3bcdcf24-ac2b-5e4c-b466-ce3c33785b35)
Chapter 3 (#ulink_02ac295a-950c-5ad2-9469-b1de74b1d0eb)
Chapter 4 (#ulink_145e207f-7866-5450-ba46-0434a137f55e)
Chapter 5 (#ulink_2cdf8b65-aa67-5a86-8be3-e648edce963d)
Chapter 6 (#ulink_ae9c095e-0d60-5b2a-a2ec-b558df35fe49)
Chapter 7 (#ulink_2bd4d534-f29e-5392-861d-f5c714a359e0)
Chapter 8 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 9 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 10 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 11 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 12 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 13 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 14 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 15 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 16 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 17 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 18 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 19 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 20 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 21 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 22 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 23 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 24 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 25 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 26 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 27 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 28 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 29 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 30 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 31 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 32 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 33 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 34 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 35 (#litres_trial_promo)
Edwin and Julia’s Playlist (#litres_trial_promo)
Excerpt (#litres_trial_promo)
Endpages (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
AUTHOR’S NOTE (#ulink_5162cfd0-b57d-59a9-9b25-39a3f885304c)
The house in Campden Hill Road, W8 is based on a real house which, during the 1980s and 1990s was owned by friends of my parents. During my teenage years that was the house from which I first learned Philadelphia Simmonds’ art of retail therapy, where I first heard Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon, where I first read Bleak House. In a way Julia was born in that house. I’m glad she finally came out to play.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS (#ulink_20882a47-b2bd-5082-a7c8-e26ef76263f0)
Firstly, a big thank you to everyone at HQ for picking my book out of the slush pile and making a childhood dream come true on a train between Bristol and Bridgwater one cold November afternoon. Particular thanks to my editors, Victoria and Hannah, for being able to understand what’s going on in my brain better than me.
To Cesca Major, who read a very early draft of The Many Colours of Us and encouraged me to go on and to “make the solicitor hotter”. I hope Edwin lives up to your expectations!
To Jo Murray-Dry, without her encouragement and relentless nagging this book would probably still be sitting on my hard drive, lonely and unread.
To Andy Cowan for explaining, in words of one syllable so even I could understand, the purpose and structure of a synopsis.
To Hayley Webster for long chats about Bert the Chimney Sweep.
To Ian Mountford for coming up with Creamadelica – probably best not to know where that came from but most welcome!
To Caroline, Rachel and Gillian – the probate team at Birketts LLP in Cambridge. It was a joy to work with you for six months and thank you for answering all my weird probate questions without actually knowing they were going in a book. Any mistakes are entirely of my own making. The probate process, especially in an estate the size of Bruce Baldwin’s is desperately slow and I have sped it up considerably to maintain the pace of the narrative.
To everyone on Twitter who has ever offered me words of encouragement when I thought I would never get to type “The End”. There are way too many of you to mention but you know who you are.
To my mum and dad, who always taught me you can do anything you want if you just work hard enough. My mum died the day after I finally typed “The End” and never got to read the final version, but without her encouragement I’d never had written the beginning.
And last, but certainly not least, to my beloved Drew. Thank you for feeding me, cleaning the house and looking after the cats while I lived in an imaginary world all summer. And thank you for answering me seriously every time I asked the question; ‘What would Edwin Jones do?’
To Mum, Liz, Nana – shine on crazy diamonds
6th June 2001
My dearest daughter,
And so, you are eighteen.
I wish I could see you and tell you how proud I am of you. I wish I could tell you how excited I was when I heard that you’d been offered a place at Cambridge. I wish I could be with you when you open your A Level results. I wish I could see the look on your face when you get the grades I know you deserve.
I saw you the other day, my beautiful girl, walking down Kensington High Street laughing with a friend. Tall and tanned, dark hair tumbling down your back. You looked so carefree, so happy, as though nothing could touch you. You looked exactly like your mother used to, when I first met her.
Sometimes, though, when the light catches you in a certain way, you have a look of me about you, as though a wisp of the young man I used to be lives on within you, looking out for you.
I want to remind you, now you are all grown up, that your mother has always loved you too. Life hasn’t been kind to her; or rather the life she chose hasn’t been as kind to her as she’d hoped. She had to give up a lot when she had you, and everything she did, she did because she was trying to do the right thing by you. I hope one day, when you hear the truth, you will be able to forgive her. Forgive us both.
This will be the last letter I write to you. I hope she will let you read this one. I hope she will let you ask questions and hear the story you need to hear. The story of you. And if she doesn’t I hope that one day you will get curious, wonder where you came from and come and find me.
Until that time, I wish you nothing but happiness in everything you do. Study hard but play hard too. Life is short and you never know what tomorrow might bring.
Despite everything I have always loved you and always will.
Happy Birthday, Princess.
Your Father
To: j_simmonds83@gmail.com
From: ecj@jonescartwright.co.uk
Sent: Thur, 06 Jun 2013 at 18.32
Subject: Re: Inheritance – Private & Confidential
Dear Ms Simmonds
Thank you for your email of yesterday’s date.
It is important that we meet as soon as possible to discuss the matter of your recent inheritance further and I suggest a meeting at 2.30 p.m. on Monday 10th June 2013 at my offices as detailed below.
Please ask for me at reception.
I look forward to meeting you.
Regards
Edwin Jones
Partner
Jones & Cartwright Solicitors, 55 Park Lane, London
Chapter 1 (#ulink_16c2aa78-2de2-53d0-8832-a7690bb79af9)
‘I’m Julia Simmonds,’ I say, as I walk up to the reception desk at Jones & Cartwright Solicitors. ‘I’ve got an appointment with Edwin Jones.’
‘Take a seat,’ the woman behind the desk replies. She has steel-grey hair and a stern expression and peers at me over half-moon glasses. ‘Mr Jones will be down shortly.’
I perch on the edge of a big brown leather sofa. It’s so old and worn out it looks as though it will swallow me up if I sit on it properly. I’m sweating already and I can feel my hair curling around my temples. The weather forecast said that today will be the hottest June day since records began. There is no air-conditioning in Jones & Cartwright. I fiddle with the strap of my bag and stare at the floor.
Two black Prada shoes appear in front of my eyes. You don’t grow up in the same house as Philadelphia Simmonds without being able to recognise Prada when you see it. They are attached to two long pinstriped legs. Very long pinstriped legs. Someone who I can only presume to be Edwin Jones is smiling at me, his shirtsleeves rolled up past the elbows, his tie loosely knotted. He’s a lot younger than I imagined. And a lot more handsome.
‘Miss Simmonds,’ he says. I nod, unable to find my voice. He looks hot. In more ways than one.
‘Would you like to follow me?’
I stand up and realise how tall he is – a good five or six inches taller than me. I could have worn heels, I think, pointlessly. At 5’10” I rarely get the chance to wear heels without feeling slightly ridiculous. I follow him up a wide spiral staircase and along a wood-panelled corridor. He holds open the door to his office. His name is emblazoned on it in gold plate.
‘Take a seat, Miss Simmonds,’ he says as we walk in.
‘Julia, please,’ I say, finally finding my voice.
‘Julia,’ he repeats. He turns on a pedestal fan and opens his window a little wider. ‘Thank you for coming down from Cambridge to meet with me. I’m sorry if it’s inconvenienced you at all but this is a little…um…sensitive and I felt it should be done face to face.’
It’s unbelievably hot in here and I can feel the stray hairs at the nape of my neck getting damp. The walls are wood panelled like the corridor, making the room dark, and I can’t decide if that helps or hinders with the heat.
‘That’s OK.’ I smile, trying very hard not to show that it has inconvenienced me. ‘It’s less than an hour on the train.’
We both sit down on leather armchairs either side of a low coffee table, rather than at his overwhelming leather-topped desk. This whole room reminds me of a scene from a Dickens novel. It’s tremendously old-fashioned and nothing like the sleek chrome and glass air-conditioned office I work in.
He pours me a glass of iced water out of a jug on the table and asks if I want any tea or coffee. I shake my head. I just want to get on with things now.
He picks up a folder of papers and looks at me. He really is quite beautiful. It’s so hot in here that I feel a bit odd, a little light-headed. I can’t quite catch my breath. I take a big gulp of water and I remind myself I’m here to inherit some horrible artefact and then I’ll never see these offices or Edwin Jones again.
‘You look exactly like your mother,’ he says, still looking at me. ‘I hope you don’t mind me saying that.’
I shrug. ‘No, everybody comments on it.’
‘I’ve known her a long time,’ he goes on, ‘since I was a child actually. My father was her lawyer originally but he retired a few years ago. Her numerous papers have been handed to me.’ He pauses again. I wonder why Mum didn’t say anything if he’s known her for years as he claims. This is all very odd.
Just as I think I’m going to have to fill the silence with something inane he begins to speak.
‘The truth is, Miss Simmonds…um…Julia, I don’t really know where to start with this. I asked Philadelphia to tell you herself but she insisted I do it.’
‘Typical,’ I say.
‘Does the name Bruce Baldwin mean anything to you?’
I stare at him, slightly taken aback. ‘Up until last week I’d never heard of him,’ I say, ‘but over the last few days I’ve heard his name several times. He died earlier in the year I’m told.’
He pauses again. I watch him take a breath. He looks as though he is about to apologise for something but stops himself.
‘Bruce Baldwin was your father.’
*
When I first received an email from Edwin Jones telling me I was the benefactor of an inheritance, I imagined the worst. My mother’s friends have been dropping like flies recently, the hedonistic 70s finally catching up with them, and they do like to remember ‘little Julia’ in their wills. The worst inheritance so far has been an elephant’s foot umbrella stand that turned out to have been made from an actual elephant’s foot. My housemate, Pen, made me sell it on eBay. It wasn’t worth as much as we’d hoped.
I had phoned my mother about it, of course. She always seems mildly surprised when I call.
‘How are you?’ I asked.
‘Oh, fine, dear,’ she replied. She always says this, whether she’s fine or not.
‘Look, Mum, I was thinking of coming down to London to see you next week. Monday afternoon maybe?’ I was testing the waters. I was never sure if she liked having me around or not.
‘The big smoke calling you back already?’ she asked. She knows I can never stay away for very long.
‘Well a solicitor called actually,’ I replied. ‘Does the name Edwin Jones mean anything to you? Or a firm called Jones & Cartwright?’
My mother was suddenly uncharacteristically quiet.
‘Mum?’
‘Um…it may ring a bell,’ she finally admitted.
‘Well this Edwin Jones says I’ve inherited something and I just wanted to check…’
‘Edwin is Cedric’s son,’ Mum interrupted in a vague, spaced-out kind of way. ‘And Bruce died of course.’
‘Bruce who?’
‘Bruce Baldwin.’ After a long pause, in which I waited for her to elaborate she said, ‘I must go now, darling. I suppose I’ll see you on Monday. You have a key?’
‘Yes, Mum, but listen…’
‘Well, let yourself in.’
‘Mum?’ But she’d already gone.
So Edwin Jones telling me he’s known her since he was a child just didn’t add up.
I had asked Pen if the name Bruce Baldwin meant anything to her.
‘As in Bruce Baldwin the world-renowned artist?’ she replied.
‘I guess. I’ve never heard of him.’
‘Really, Julia, you can be such a philistine sometimes. He died a few months ago; his obituary was in the Times.’
‘Did you read it?’
‘I did actually. It’s quite a poor-boy-made-good story. He was born into a Yorkshire mining family, managed to get into grammar school where the art teacher discovered his talent and off he went to St Martin’s, although I suspect it was all a lot more difficult and arduous than I’ve just made it sound! Apparently, he spent years in and out of rehab before he was finally recognised in the art world. I should think the obituary is still online if you want it. Why anyway?’
‘Mum,’ I replied. ‘When I asked her about Edwin Jones and the inheritance she started going on about Edwin’s father and Bruce Baldwin. I can’t really see how it’s all connected.’
‘Well you know your mother, Julia, nothing if not vague. You’ll find out on Monday anyway.’
*
So here we are on Monday and Edwin Jones is looking at me across the table. Neither of us has spoken for several minutes.
He breaks the silence first. ‘Julia, are you OK? Can I get you anything?’
I shake my head. Edwin looks vaguely uncomfortable. He is still holding the folder of papers. I wonder what they say.
‘I never knew who my father was,’ I begin, although I suspect he knows this already. ‘My mother always claimed she had forgotten, which was rubbish of course but if you know my mother you know that sometimes it’s impossible to get anything out of her.’
Edwin smiles. That smile tells me he knows my mother well.
‘I think you probably need to tell me everything you know,’ I say.
He sighs, putting the folder down on the coffee table and leaning back in his chair, staring at the ceiling for a moment. Whatever he has to tell me, he really doesn’t want it to be his job. Finally, he looks at me, placing his hands on his knees. I realise I can’t look at him so I focus on his hands as he begins to tell me what can only be described as the story of me.
‘My father, Cedric Jones, dealt with your mother’s legal affairs when she arrived from New York in 1973,’ he tells me. ‘This firm worked closely with your mother’s agency so she wasn’t the only model on the books. It’s hard to believe that this stuffy old place was quite hip and bohemian in its time.’ He looks around at the endless wood panels, as though he would rather be anywhere else than here. He’s not the only one.
‘Here’s what I know,’ he says, as I keep looking at his hands. They are lovely hands, well looked after, big, slightly tanned. ‘Philadelphia Simmonds and Bruce Baldwin had an on-off relationship throughout the 70s and early 80s. You were born towards the end of that relationship and for whatever reason, shortly afterwards they went their separate ways. I know that your mother never told you about Mr Baldwin but I can tell you that they were certainly in contact throughout your life, although I don’t believe your father saw you very often.’
He pauses. His hands are going in and out of focus and I feel very hot again. I look up and use every ounce of energy to concentrate. I have a thousand questions but don’t have the energy to ask any of them.
‘As you may know, after you were born your mother lost some of her lucrative contracts…’
‘All of them apparently,’ I interrupt. ‘And don’t I know it.’
‘Yes, well…’ Edwin looks down at his own hands. Thank goodness they’re there or what would we have to focus on during these awkward moments. ‘In a nutshell, she ran out of money sometime in the early 90s. She remortgaged her house several times but by 1993 she was in serious financial difficulty. It was around that time that Mr Baldwin, your father, bought the house off her.’
I’m paying attention now. My mother hadn’t owned the house since I was ten? My father owned it? And she never thought to tell me? Because, of course, she’d ‘forgotten’ who my father was.
‘From that point on my father became Mr Baldwin’s lawyer too. Mr Baldwin set up his will not long after buying the house. In it he has left everything to you.’
‘Everything?’ I ask, not sure what everything entails.
‘A trust has been put to one side for your mother but otherwise, yes, everything. The house in Campden Hill Road, Bruce’s flat in Notting Hill, his studio in East London and, of course, his entire estate. Basically,’ he concludes, bringing the palms of his hands together, ‘you’re a very rich woman.’
I stand up and Edwin looks up at me. His eyes are very blue.
‘I think I need to go now,’ I say. I feel as though the wood panelling is going to close in on me if I don’t get out soon.
He stands up quickly, opening the door and ushering me through.
‘I completely understand this must come as a huge shock to you,’ he says as he leads me back down to reception. ‘There is still a lot we need to go through but perhaps you should go home and talk to your mother. We can meet tomorrow or later in the week if you prefer?’
‘Um…later in the week maybe,’ I reply.
‘Muriel will fix an appointment,’ he says, turning to the grey-haired woman at the reception desk. ‘How am I fixed for Friday?’ he asks her.
She books an appointment and Edwin Jones turns back to me, shakes my hand.
‘Until Friday,’ he says.
Chapter 2 (#ulink_f72456e6-f35c-570a-be97-eaa27426164a)
‘Mum, it’s me,’ I call as I let myself into my mother’s house on Campden Hill Road. Actually no. It’s my house now. I shake my head, unable to take it in.
No reply.
‘Mum,’ I shout up the stairs. Still nothing. I check the rooms of the ground floor and head down into the basement kitchen.
The note sits in the middle of the kitchen island. The island that is used for nothing other than making and drinking coffee or gin and tonic, depending on the time of day. I have never seen my mother cook.
Darling girl, had to pop to Manhattan for a few days. Enjoy yourself and see you another time, Love Mom xxx
Forty years in England and she still insists on spelling like an American. And who the hell ‘pops’ to Manhattan. It doesn’t take a genius to work out that she’s avoiding me now Edwin has told me everything he knows.
My relationship with my mother has been fractious for years, mainly due to her refusal to tell me who my father is. But despite this, every few months the umbilical pull back to West London is too strong to resist. I have long since lost count of the number of times I’ve made the journey from Cambridge to Kensington; train to Kings Cross, the fast one if I can get my times right and then the Circle line going west and south, looping through Baker Street and Bayswater, stations I’ve travelled through for half of my life but never got out at, until my stop, High Street Kensington.
There are probably quicker ways, but I love the Circle line. It was the first tube I ever remember travelling on and the first I ever travelled on alone. It’s as much my home as the streets of Kensington above and there’s something about its circuitous nature that appeals to me. There is no end of the line here, just a sensation of going around and around until you find what you are looking for. I’m probably the only person in London who has warm feelings about the Circle line. Most people find it as useful as a chocolate teapot.
I’ve never had a proper conversation with my mother about her life before I was born. When I was little, her past had been something that seemed glamorous and mysterious, that I was too young to understand. All her old headshots and magazine covers were kept in pink filing boxes at the bottom of the wardrobe in the smallest bedroom at the top of the house that my mother ostentatiously refers to as her office. As a child, I used to go through these boxes in secret, looking in awe at pictures of my mother advertising make-up, modelling on the catwalk, arriving at parties. I never heard any stories about those times, even when I pushed and pushed to be told. My mother just smiled sadly and changed the subject.
These days, of course, it only takes a simple internet search to realise how famous Philadelphia Simmonds was and how quickly she had fallen from grace. In the early 80s nobody was interested in a model with a child. If there wasn’t a husband, then there wasn’t a six-page magazine spread either.
My mother went from being one of the most famous faces on the planet to has-been in one fell swoop and all by the time she was my age.
No amount of internet searching or scouring old newspapers and library records has ever given anything away about who my father was. God knows I’ve searched enough over the years.
My earliest memory is from 1986, my third birthday. It’s summer, twilight, but still warm. I’m wearing a sundress with red dots and I’m barefoot. We are in the garden and there are dozens of people everywhere, inside and out. Philadelphia Simmonds’s parties were legendary, perhaps less so in the 80s than they had been in the 70s but infamous nonetheless.
The air is thick with smoke and laughter and music, so much wonderful music. There is a song playing that I really love and I ask for it to be played again and again while a man with long dark hair and a beard that tickles my cheek spins me round and round. Whenever I think about it I can still smell the faint aroma of spice and turps that surrounded him. He tells me the song is called Penny Lane and I tell him I like the bit about the fire engine best.
And then the memory disappears. I can’t work out what happened to the man with the beard or who he was. Whenever I’ve asked my mother about it she claims she doesn’t know what I’m talking about.
Part of me has always liked to daydream that the Penny Lane guy was my dad and that he had to go away on some secret mission, or something equally romantic. Suddenly today I’m wondering if he was, in fact, my father. If that guy with the long hair and beard was Bruce Baldwin circa 1986. I know absolutely nothing about Bruce Baldwin – I didn’t even recognise the name when my mother first mentioned him, but as Pen said, I’m an absolute philistine when it comes to art. I know that picture of the melting clocks was by Salvador Dalí, but that really is the limit of my knowledge.
If the guy from my third birthday is Bruce Baldwin I’m sure Google Images could let me know quickly. But right now I don’t want to find out, because if that isn’t him then the only thing I’ve held on to from childhood will be a lie.
The practical side of motherhood did not always come easily to Philadelphia Simmonds. While she was always there for kisses, cuddles and games, it was often her long-suffering personal assistant Johnny who was there for the big moments in my life. It was Johnny who bought my first school uniform, who took me to school on my first day, who was there when I opened my GCSE and A Level results. It was Johnny who met me off the train at Kings Cross when I came back from my interview at Cambridge University. He stood on the platform in his little pebble glasses and his perfectly pressed handmade suit bearing a huge bunch of flowers and a big grin. He was the nearest thing I had to a father, even if he did get paid to do it.
So, as I sit down at the kitchen island, my mother’s note in front of me, and pull my phone out of my handbag, it’s Johnny I ring first.
He picks up on the second ring.
‘Hello, sweet girl, I was expecting your call. How are you?’
‘Did you know?’ I ask, even though he must have done.
Johnny pauses for long enough for me to realise he knows exactly what’s going on and is now trying to work out where his loyalties lie. ‘You’ve been to see Edwin then,’ he says. It doesn’t sound like a question.
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ I demand.
‘I think you already know the answer to that.’
I don’t know what to say and I really don’t want to take my anger out on Johnny, who was just doing his job.
‘Julia,’ he says, interrupting my thoughts.
‘How long have you known?’ I ask.
‘I’ve always known. I couldn’t tell you; I promised your mother I wouldn’t tell you.’
‘And she left it to her lawyer to tell me?’
‘Well, to be honest, I wasn’t happy about that. I begged her not to go to New York. I begged her to tell you herself.’
I know as well as anyone that if my mother has her mind set on something wild horses aren’t going to change it.
‘Do you want me to come over?’ he asks.
I sigh. ‘No. I think I need a bit of time alone to get my head around all this. And apparently there’s a lot of legal stuff to go through.’
‘You take all the time you need,’ he replies. ‘You know where I am if you need me.’ He always has been way too understanding with both me and Mum.
‘And, Johnny,’ I say before he hangs up, ‘tell Mum to come home.’
I sit in the kitchen with my phone in my hand – wondering what to do with myself to avoid thinking about what I found out this morning – when it suddenly starts ringing. Alec’s name flashes up on the screen.
‘Hey, you,’ I answer.
‘Julia, where are you?’ Alec, my boyfriend of the last decade is an academic at Cambridge University and muddles through life in a sort of hurried bemusement. He clearly wasn’t listening last night when I told him where I’d be today.
‘In London – I told you. I had to see that solicitor.’
‘But your phone has been off all morning. I need to talk to you. When are you coming home?’
I hadn’t really thought that far ahead. I’d been expecting Mum to be here and had taken a few days off work to see her. I’m sure I told Alec this yesterday, but after ten years together he still doesn’t listen.
‘I don’t…’ I begin, but Alec butts in as usual.
‘Look I’m free tomorrow evening. Have dinner with me, will you?’
I pause, thinking. Now my mother is across the Atlantic, I don’t have to be anywhere in particular until my next meeting at Jones & Cartwright at the end of the week. I may as well go back to Cambridge. Back home.
‘Julia,’ he says impatiently.
‘Yes, sorry! Tomorrow’s fine. Shall I meet you at the college?’
‘Yes, about eight. See you then.’ And he rings off.
It isn’t until he’s gone that I realise he didn’t even ask me what the solicitor wanted.
6th June 1986
My dearest daughter,
Today I held you in my arms for the first time since the day you were born three years ago. You didn’t know who I was and something tells me it will be a long time before you do, but it was a joy to be with you on your special day.
I don’t know much about children – I haven’t ever had the chance to learn – and I don’t know how much you will remember about today, but I will carry it with me for the rest of my life.
Today marks sixty days of sobriety for me, which is the longest stretch in a long, long time. I think that’s why your mother let me see you. I’m staying clean this time, my darling girl, just for you and the hope that if I do, I will get to see you more and more.
There were so many people at the party that I’m sure you won’t remember me. All your mother’s friends were there. I can’t keep up any more with who lives at the house and who doesn’t. I only had eyes for you anyway.
Do you remember dancing with me? Perhaps you do, perhaps you don’t. You said my beard tickled. We danced to Penny Lane by the Beatles; you asked for it to be played three times. You loved the bit about the fire engine.
You fell asleep before the sun set, exhausted from the excitement, the presents, the music and too much sugar. Somebody, probably Johnny, carried you to bed and the party went on late into the night. It may have gone on until dawn for all I know. Once you were no longer there I wasn’t interested in the temptations of a Campden Hill Road party, not like I used to be.
I tried to talk to Delph. I tried to ask her to let me see you. I asked if I could take you out sometime, just to the park or something. I said I would never tell you who I was but she was adamant. There was nothing I could do.
But I will always love you.
Happy Birthday, Princess.
I hope we will see each other again soon.
Your Father
Chapter 3 (#ulink_68734293-13f5-5f6b-acdd-7972a1221c76)
‘You couldn’t make it up!’ Graeme exclaims in astonishment, as he reaches over for another cupcake. I’m sitting opposite him and Pen, my two best friends, trying to tell them about Edwin Jones’s news.
‘And it’s a damn sight better than that elephant’s foot,’ Pen interjects.
Pen and I have been friends for years. We live together in Cambridge and Graeme often comes along for the ride. We all used to work in this café together. I was still a student at the time and am several years younger than both of them. I met Pen the summer before my final year at university. I hadn’t wanted to go back to London that summer; I couldn’t face three months living with my mother, and Pen was looking to rent out the spare bedroom of the house she’d recently inherited from her grandmother.
The café was always looking for new waiting staff, even clumsy hopeless ones like me, so the job came with the room. After I graduated I moved into Pen’s house and the waitressing job full-time. I don’t think she realises how grateful I am to her. She helped me find some independence when I needed it most.
Pen and Graeme run the place these days, whereas I have moved on to the headier heights of paralegal work at one of the big law firms in the centre of Cambridge. I’ve worked my way up from office junior over the last eight years. After university I’d been intending to go to law school and working at the office was supposed to give me some experience. I hadn’t intended to stay there for eight years.
When I worked here the café was one of those ‘Olde Worlde’ tearooms that historic cities love so much. You know the type: scones and cream and white lacy aprons. It had been there for as long as anyone could remember. Just after I left the owner died and the café was bought out by an American, who turned it into a 1950s’ diner, complete with neon signage, old-fashioned jukeboxes, and huge milkshakes.
Cambridge is divided into people who love it and people who think it’s the worst thing to have happened to the city in 800 years. There was so much correspondence about it in the local paper when it first opened that the editor had to call an end to any more letters on the subject. I’m mostly glad I don’t have to work here any more; I’m far too tall for the vintage uniforms.
Creamadelica, as it’s now called, has become one of the busiest cafés in town over the last few years and the three of us are squeezed into one of the hot-pink, faux-leather booths during a lull in service.
‘All my life I’ve wondered who my father was and now it turns out he’s dead and everyone has heard of him but me.’
‘Had you really never heard of Bruce Baldwin?’ Graeme asks.
I shake my head. Somehow this famous Turner-prize-winning artist has passed me by. I wonder how this has happened. It seems Bruce Baldwin was famous enough that even people who weren’t that into art have heard of him, like that guy who pickled a cow when I was a kid. Sometimes I feel as though so much has passed me by.
I realise Graeme is waxing lyrical about my father. Turns out he’s something of an art buff.
‘He held one final exhibition last autumn. He knew he was dying by then I suppose, so he had this big installation at the Tate Modern. Do you really not remember me talking about it, Julia?’
I shake my head again. Graeme talks a lot about a lot of different things. It’s mostly impossible to keep up with him. I notice Pen is staring out of the window; she finds it hard to keep up with him too.
‘I went along because rumour had it that it was his last exhibition. God, it was just wonderful. He left all his work to the Tate, right?’
I realise he’s asking me a question. ‘Everything that isn’t privately owned, yes,’ I reply, trying to remember what Edwin had told me. ‘It’s all in my name now, which is rather mind-boggling, but it lives at the Tate.’
Graeme nods and carries on and I realise that he’s quite passionate about Bruce Baldwin’s work. Pen and I exchange a glance. Who knew?
‘He’d created these huge, larger than life abstract paintings of kids on their own. Not lost or anything, just ignored or lonely. It was incredibly haunting. He called it…’ He stops mid-flow, which is very unlike him.
‘What?’ I say, realising they are both looking at me and my untouched cupcake.
His voice is quieter now, less animated. ‘It was called Lost Daughters.’
I feel like the air has been knocked out of me. I can hear Pen and Graeme talking but it’s as though they are under water. I haven’t had any time to think about any of this. When I’d got back to Cambridge at lunchtime I’d hardly had time to unpack my bag before meeting up with Pen and Graeme at the café.
I keep feeling waves of grief and anger and confusion, most of them directed at my mother, some of them at Johnny. And every now and then there’s another feeling, like the very beginnings of butterflies, whenever I let my mind drift back to Edwin Jones.
‘Julia,’ Pen is trying to get my attention. ‘I’ve got to get back to work. Are you going to be OK?’
‘Yes…’ I force a smile ‘…of course. I should get going myself I guess. I’m meant to be having dinner with Alec tonight.’
Pen smiles at me vaguely. I have a feeling she’s not really listening.
As I get up to leave Graeme squeezes my hand. ‘You know where we are if you need us?’
I nod.
‘And, Julia?’
‘Yes.’
‘Can I eat your cupcake?’
*
Alec is a lecturer in economics and in the middle of writing a very important book. It’s thought he’ll get professorship next academic year and be the youngest professor the Faculty of Economics has ever had. He’s something of a genius in European macroeconomics, lectures all over the world and is constantly busy.
While Alec is away at college dinners, giving lectures, flying off to other universities all over the world and Pen and Graeme are busy at the café, I am often left to my own devices. I go to yoga twice a week, even though I’ve still got to convince myself I love it, I joined a book group, even though no-one was ever interested in reading the books I suggested.
It’s unusual, then, for Alec and me to see each other during the week. If I’m honest, we’ve been seeing less and less of each other over the last few years. While other people my age are getting married, buying houses and having babies, my life seems to have come to a bit of a standstill and my relationship seems to be going backwards.
I know that’s my fault. I know that Alec wanted to get a house together years ago, but I always had an excuse. He said we didn’t have to get married, but I was scared. Just like I was too scared to go to law school. I’ve been feeling for a while I need to make changes and now I’ve turned thirty it’s time I implemented them.
And then like a punch in the gut I remember. The change has happened. It happened yesterday morning in a wood-panelled office in Mayfair. I found out who my father was. I found out that I am, to all intents and purposes, a millionaire.
I take a few breaths, trying to ward off the impending panic. This is what I’ve been waiting for all these years and I have no idea what to do with it.
Although that hideous office job can go for a start.
Alec has this habit of appearing suddenly from nowhere and after ten years he still surprises me. Tonight, as I wait for him outside Trinity College, he’s there suddenly, interrupting my thoughts.
‘Let’s go to the Pickerel,’ he says, nodding towards the pub we’ve been going to since we were students. I’m surprised, as he usually wants to eat somewhere fancier than the pub. He holds my hand as we walk down Bridge Street but doesn’t really say anything. I know this mood. Something’s happened but he doesn’t know how to tell me what it is.
He buys me a glass of Malbec and himself a pint and we find a table. It’s busy in here and hot. It’s been another scorching day.
‘I’ve been offered a new position,’ he says, without preamble, without looking at me.
I knew it.
‘I’m really pleased for you,’ I say, reaching out for his hand and realising that I really am. He’s waited years for this.
He looks away from me, ever so slightly.
‘It’s in America. Harvard. I can’t not take this, Julia. It’s the chance of a lifetime.’
‘Of course you can’t not take it. Harvard! That’s amazing.’ I wasn’t expecting this. I’m trying very hard to be excited and not to sulk because he never told me he was even thinking about Harvard.
He takes another swig of his pint and finally meets my eye.
I suddenly realise what this means.
He puts his pint down and sighs. He takes both my hands in his.
‘Julia.’ He says my name quietly, tenderly. ‘There’s no easy way to say this but I think it’s time we went our separate ways.’
I stare at him. I can feel tears burning the backs of my eyes and I don’t know why. I can’t pretend I wasn’t expecting this eventually.
‘Julia, we’ve been dancing around each other for a decade now. We don’t even live together. I have no idea where you want this to go but we can’t stand still for ever. You can’t stand still for ever.’
‘You know why though,’ I say quietly, blinking to stop the tears coming. ‘You know why I don’t want to get married.’
‘And I always said we didn’t have to,’ he says. ‘But you will never talk about the future. You won’t move in with me and you won’t even consider the idea of a family.’ I can hear resentment in his voice as he forces himself to stop.
I shake my head. Look away from him. I want to tell him that things aren’t standing still any more. I want to tell him who my father is but the words won’t come.
‘Julia, you are one of the most incredible people I’ve ever met. And although you might not believe this, I do love you. Part of me probably always will, but I’m setting you free. Go, find out what it is you do want, because I don’t for a moment believe it’s me.’
I still don’t say anything.
‘What happened to us?’ he asks quietly.
I stand up suddenly, pulling my hands away from his.
‘Julia, what are you doing?’ he asks, staring at me.
‘I’m going home,’ I say. ‘Why make this harder than it already is?’
‘Julia, please sit down. Let’s have a meal together, for old time’s sake at least.’
I can’t. I can’t sit here opposite him pretending to have a nice evening and knowing that everything has changed. I open my mouth to say something. I should tell Alec about Edwin, about Bruce Baldwin, but I still seem incapable of forming a sentence.
‘I can’t…’ I hear myself saying.
‘Julia?’
In my hurry to get out of the pub I knock the table. Alec’s pint glass and my red wine tip over, spilling into his lap. For a moment I think I should stay and help.
‘I can’t,’ I say quietly to myself again. I turn around and walk out of the pub. Leave him covered in beer and wine. Alec is fairly well known in Cambridge; plenty of people will help him.
Chapter 4 (#ulink_490190c5-9ab3-5001-be33-6d4be41e31fe)
I’m up early the next morning, long before Pen stirs. I pull on my running gear and creep out without waking her. I lock the door behind me and start a few half-hearted stretches.
It’s another uncharacteristically warm June morning; I love mornings like this, before anyone else is about, when the sky is still hazy from the night before. I watch the cows munching the grass on Midsummer Common and pretend to myself that this is the reason that I stay here, in the smallest room in Pen’s tiny run-down house, because the Common is so beautiful, and because I can see the River Cam from my bedroom window.
This morning the sun glints off the roofs of the houseboats. It was on one of those houseboats, the one with the blue roof, on an equally balmy and unseasonably warm June day, that I first met Alec. I’d just moved into Pen’s house for the summer and I dragged her along to a party that I’d heard was happening down by the river.
It was typical of Pen, being Cambridge born and bred, that despite it being a university party she knew nearly everyone there and it was she who first introduced me to Alec. He was sitting on that blue roof, rolling a spliff, his glasses sliding down his nose, his hair in his eyes. After very informal introductions, Pen drifted off into the twilight. Alec Chisholm was in the final year of his PhD at Trinity and I fell in love with him pretty much at first sight.
He’d swept me off my feet that night. I thought I was one of the lucky ones, someone who’d met the love of their lives at university and would never have to worry about all that dating nonsense. That didn’t work out quite as planned.
Alec had been my biggest cheerleader in the beginning. I hadn’t fitted in at Cambridge at all. Everyone loved the fact I was Philadelphia Simmonds’s illegitimate daughter but I didn’t really bond with anyone until I met Alec. But being with him meant that I was accepted into circles I hadn’t been before, making my final year at Cambridge a lot easier than the first two.
Over the years though, the bond that held us together has ebbed away. We went from being inseparable to a vague weekend companionship and it happened so slowly that neither of us had really acknowledged it until last night. Alec asked what happened to us. I hadn’t answered because last night I didn’t know. But this morning I do. I hadn’t been able to be the person Alec needed me to be. I tried, but there’s only so long we can pretend to be somebody we’re not.
Different people own that houseboat these days but that blue roof will always remind me of Alec. Maybe seeing it every day once he’s gone away will give me the impetus to leave Cambridge once and for all. Right now I don’t feel much impetus to do anything at all.
Except run.
*
Six sweaty miles later and I’m back at the house. Pen is up, sitting in the living room, lost in a world of her own.
‘Penny for them,’ I say.
‘Hmmm?’ She hadn’t realised I was there.
‘Are you OK?’ I ask, realising she had been unusually quiet yesterday as well.
‘Yes, yes, I’m fine.’ She shakes herself, jumping up from the window seat. ‘Tea?’
I nod, slumping down onto the sofa.
She looks at me and I burst into tears.
Pen makes tea as I try to tell her about last night while sniffing and wiping my eyes.
‘Did you tell him about Monday?’ she asks.
‘What happened on Monday?’
‘The lawyer. Bruce Baldwin. The inflated bank balance.’ Pen spells it out, rather incredulous that I seem to have forgotten.
‘Oh. No, I didn’t really get a chance.’
‘Probably for the best,’ she says sensibly. ‘And he’s right, you know.’
‘What?’
‘Look, Julia, I don’t mean to be a bitch or anything…’ (this means she is about to be a bitch) ‘…but Blind Freddie could have seen this one coming.’
Blind Freddie often makes an appearance when Pen is in a certain frame of mind. Once he steps on to the stage there is no point arguing. He is almost always inevitably right.
‘How long have you and Alec been together?’
‘Ten years.’
‘And have either of you ever talked about the future, living together, getting married, having babies? The things normal couples do?’
‘Pen, you know why…’
‘I know why you think you can’t do any of those things and you know that I think that’s rubbish.’
‘Please, Pen, not this again. Not now.’
‘He’s not the guy for you, Julia, and you’ve wasted more than enough time on him already. The universe has given you two clear signs that it’s time to start again: Edwin Jones and Harvard University.’ She counts the supposed signs off on her fingers. ‘It’s time to move on.’
‘Move on where though?’
‘Well you can start by quitting that job you hate so much,’ she says mirroring my thoughts from the previous evening. ‘And you could maybe consider moving back to London, into one of these houses you’ve inherited perhaps!’ She grins at me. ‘There’s a whole world out there, outside of Cambridge,’ she says.
‘And what about you?’ I ask.
‘Don’t worry about me,’ she says. ‘I’ll be fine.’
‘But…’
She looks at me and pulls me into a hug.
‘It’ll be OK. You’re young, pretty and phenomenally rich. What can possibly go wrong?’
Chapter 5 (#ulink_9264bea3-7267-56f2-8053-05b28d0c19cc)
Friday morning finds me back in London. I stand in front of my mother’s full-length mirror and take a good look at myself. There’s no denying it, I’m looking more and more like her every single day. I tie my hair back in a loose chignon and smooth down my dress, a beautiful one-off, even if I do say so myself, seeing as it came from the sewing machine of me.
I may not have followed my mother into the world of fashion, but she did instil in me an understanding of good grooming, of being well dressed for every occasion, of wearing what suits you and always looking your best. I learned early on that to really find clothes that suited me and that made me happy I had to create them myself.
At first it would be charity shop finds or cheap clothes from Hyper Hyper that I would take in or take up or adjust or customise in some way to make them more unique, and then slowly I branched out into following sewing patterns and making my clothes that way.
Finally, a few years ago, I got the confidence to start creating my own patterns as well and I’d say that running gear aside, most of my wardrobe is handmade. In a strange way my mother approves even though she pretends not to.
Today I’ve teamed my chosen dress with a favourite pair of heels that I rarely get a chance to wear. Now I know Edwin Jones is at least 6’4” I know I can get away with the shoes. Alec hates the fact they make me taller than him. Alec hated the fact, I should say. He doesn’t have to worry about that any more. The dress is one I made a couple of years ago from some turquoise and yellow shot silk I found at Cambridge market. Five minutes after I leave the house I realise the heels may have been a mistake. It’s even hotter than it was on Monday and it’s not even 9 a.m.
When I arrive at Jones & Cartwright, I’m told Edwin is running late. I flick through a rather dull legal magazine for over half an hour before two familiar shoes step into my line of vision. I realise I am sitting in the same seat as Monday.
He smiles at me and that vague feeling of butterflies in my stomach starts up. He has one of those smiles that lights up his whole face. He leads the way up to his office, where it is still as hot as the centre of the sun, and he begins to go through my inheritance: the house, the flat, the studio, the paintings.
He tells me I need to think about what I want to do with the house. Do I want my mother to keep living there or would I prefer to sell it? I need to think about what sort of arrangements I need to make about the paintings, how I would need to clear and sort out my father’s flat, how much inheritance tax I will need to pay (an eye-popping amount), how much money I can draw down out of the estate before the probate goes through (an even more eye-popping amount).
After a while his voice begins to turn into white noise, like the voices of the adults in those Peanuts cartoons. I start to look around the room. The wood panelling is impressive when you take the time to look at it, and the view of Hyde Park from the window is lovely. The inhabitant of the office isn’t bad either.
‘Are you hungry?’ he asks suddenly, pushing all the papers he’s been going through to one side. I realise I’m staring at him.
‘Starving,’ I reply with a little too much enthusiasm. Edwin seems more relaxed than he did on Monday and I’m hoping he is about to suggest getting out of this awful hot room and finding somewhere to eat.
‘Let me take you to lunch,’ he says.
‘Are you sure? I…’
‘Of course I’m sure! I just need to make a call. Can you wait for me in reception?’
He appears five minutes later with his jacket over his shoulder and his briefcase under his arm.
‘Do you like Thai?’ he asks, as we walk out into the sunshine.
I nod and we walk down Park Lane and turn right onto South Street, passing Harrods Estates.
‘I love this place,’ I say pointing at the display window. ‘I often stand here and marvel at the sort of people who can afford places like that.’
‘And now you’re one of them,’ he interrupts as though reading my mind.
I bite my lip, still unable to believe it.
We walk on in comfortable silence towards a small Thai restaurant. All the staff know him in the restaurant and fawn over him as he comes in, taking his jacket and finding him the best table they can. I stand there and wait to be seated, thinking about how much my shoes hurt. I slip them off as soon as I sit down.
He orders himself a beer and looks at me. I desperately want a double vodka but need to keep my wits about me.
‘Orangina?’ I ask, feeling about five years old.
‘That’s a beautiful dress,’ Edwin says. I think it’s the first time anyone’s commented on my clothes without an addendum about inheriting my mother’s sense of style.
‘Thank you, I made it myself.’
I don’t know why I said that. I hardly ever tell anyone about my clothes – I feel embarrassed talking about it. I’ve always tried to be inconspicuous because of Mum. Goodness knows why I’ve suddenly decided to blurt it out in front of her lawyer.
‘Wow,’ he says. ‘Impressive. Do you make clothes for a living?’
‘No. I’m a paralegal.’
He pulls a face.
‘How do you know I don’t love my job?’
‘Because somebody like you isn’t destined to sit behind a desk for the rest of her life. Not when you can make clothes as gorgeous as that.’
‘What do you mean, someone like me?’ I ask, smiling to show I’m joking.
‘Someone with skill and artistic flair.’ He pauses. ‘Like father like daughter.’
I feel the colour rise in my cheeks. I’m not ready to talk about that.
‘And what about you? What made you become a solicitor?’ I ask, changing the subject.
‘Parental pressure. Dad wanted another Jones to run the firm after he retired. Curse of being the eldest.’
‘What would you rather be doing?’
Before he has a chance to answer the drinks arrive. He refuses a glass and raises his bottle in my direction.
I order a very boring vegetarian Pad Thai while he orders something far more exotic and unpronounceable. We make small talk; he seems to already know I went to Cambridge and it turns out he read English too, at Oxford.
‘Not reading law was probably the most rebellious thing I’ve ever done,’ he says. ‘When I first got to Oxford I had no intention of becoming a lawyer…’
He pauses.
‘What happened?’ I ask.
‘Oh things change, don’t they?’
‘I was happy waiting tables,’ I say. ‘I never had any grand ambitions but my boyfriend encouraged me to aim higher. Not that paralegal is aiming much higher, unless you count the fact I don’t have to work weekends any more!’
‘And what does this boyfriend do?’
‘Oh he broke up with me on Tuesday. He’s taking a job in America.’ It slips out before I’ve realised what I’ve said. Edwin is staring at me and I want the ground to swallow me up. Well done, Julia; way to make yourself look like even more of a loser. I’d get up and walk out now but I can’t seem to locate one of my shoes.
He clears his throat. ‘I’m sorry,’ he says, ‘it’s not any of my business.’
‘It’s fine,’ I reply, but he seems flustered, as though he’s crossed the line between family lawyer and family friend and I’m not at all sure which he is yet.
As we finish up our food he suggests we go. He asks for the bill and as he pays I disappear to the ladies’. My feet are killing me but I think I manage to walk out of the restaurant without looking like I’m hobbling. He’s waiting for me outside, talking into his phone. When he sees me he raises his eyebrows and ends the call.
‘Let’s go over to Hyde Park,’ he says. ‘I have something I need to talk to you about and, if you don’t mind, I’d rather do it away from the office.’
‘Of course I don’t mind,’ I say, secretly intrigued.
We find a bench in a relatively quiet, shady spot. As I go to sit down he squints into the sun as he looks towards the café.
‘Do you fancy an ice cream?’ he asks. The question is oddly incongruous with the professional demeanour he is trying to maintain.
As I wait for him, I take my shoes off again and wiggle my toes in the grass. After a few minutes, he comes back and sits down next to me with two huge ice creams and hands one to me. I know he has something to tell me and part of me wants him to get on with it, but I also want to prolong this moment. It’s been a long time since I got to sit in the sun doing nothing with a beautiful man. Alec didn’t like to do nothing, and his had beauty faded in dusty Cambridge seminar rooms.
‘You don’t remember me, do you?’ he says suddenly.
‘What?’ I look blankly at him, but he’s looking away from me. I’m sure that before Monday I’d never met this man before. I’d remember surely?
‘I was wondering how long it would take you to remember me, but you clearly can’t.’
‘I’m sorry but no,’ I say, a little alarmed now.
‘We met a few times when we were kids.’
‘We did?’
‘Yeah, my mum and dad used to go to your mum’s parties back in the 70s before either of us were born. When your mum started them up again to honour your birthday every year, Dad used to drag me and my brother along. Do you remember how they’d put all us kids in a room together and hope we’d behave? You hated it! You hated having your house invaded by children. I think you preferred being with the adults!’
This rings a vague sort of bell but like so many things that happened in my childhood, events seem to melt into each other and I’ve put them all in a box at the back of my brain that I hardly ever look in. Like the box with my mother’s old headshots.
It feels strange to think Edwin knew me as a child and I have absolutely no recollection of him. I suddenly feel a little vulnerable and exposed and pull my dress down over my knees.
‘How old are you?’ I ask.
‘Thirty-five, so I’m a few years older than you. I guess my memories of that time are a bit clearer.’
He looks a bit crestfallen that I don’t remember, or take any delight in his memories.
‘I’m sorry,’ I say.
‘Oh, please don’t apologise. It’s just that those parties meant the world to me when I was a kid. My mum died when I was two, just after my brother was born, and as soon as we were old enough we were sent off to boarding school. I don’t think Dad knew what else to do. I don’t think he knew how to cope. One of the reasons I went into law was simply so we’d have something to talk about.’
‘I’m so sorry.’
‘Stop apologising!’ He smiles. ‘Those parties usually fell in the half-term holidays and were always a highlight in a rather dreary childhood. I didn’t mean to make you feel uncomfortable.’
I don’t want to admit to him that I can remember some things about those parties very well and I’m still not ready to think about a certain man and a certain Beatles song. I decide it’s time to change the subject.
‘You said you had something to tell me,’ I say, finishing up my ice cream and searching in my bag for a tissue.
‘Yes. There is still a lot of paperwork to go through and sign. It’s all going to be very boring I’m afraid. It seemed more appropriate to tell you about this away from the office. It’s not strictly to do with your inheritance.’
He opens his briefcase and pauses, looking at me as though he’s trying to decide what he needs to do. After a moment, he takes out a sheaf of letters, all written on old-fashioned thick blue writing paper. The writing is big and loopy and written in that Peacock Blue ink that used to be so popular at school. Every letter is unopened and is addressed to me and every letter has ‘return to sender’ and a Notting Hill address scrawled across it in a very familiar hand.
‘A few weeks before your father died he asked me to go and see him. He was in hospital by then but he was still his old self in many ways. A terror to the nurses in general, always sneaking cigarettes despite the cancer and the oxygen.’
It occurs to me that I may well be sitting next to the only person who really knew my father in his later life. I need to ask questions, lots of them, but I just don’t know what to ask.
‘He gave me those letters and said that after he died I was to give them to you, so you’d know he hadn’t forgotten you.’
I look at the letters again. This means my father knew where I was all my life. And that my mother kept him away from me. I could have known my dad if it hadn’t been for her.
‘Every year on your birthday he wrote to you, from the day you were born until you were eighteen.’
‘And these are those letters?’ I ask. I’m feeling light-headed as I hold the letters in my hands. As I hold something my father had touched, had written. ‘Are they all here?’
‘Unfortunately not,’ Edwin replies. ‘At some point over the years some have been mislaid. Bruce didn’t seem to know where. He was quite distressed about some being missing, but they might turn up yet.’
‘You said he stopped writing when I was eighteen,’ I say, still staring at the letters in my hand. I realise I have an overwhelming urge to sniff them but that’s probably something I should do in private. ‘Why?’
‘I think he hoped you’d come looking for him yourself then.’
‘How could I look for someone my mother claimed to have forgotten? It could have been anyone in London according to her!’ I snap.
He holds up his hands. ‘I’m sorry; I didn’t mean that to sound so accusatory. It is what it is. But he wanted you to have the letters.’
I shake my head, looking at the letters in my hand. A single tear drops onto the envelope on the top of the pile, smudging the ink.
‘Come on,’ he says, noticing my distress. ‘Let’s get you home.’
‘But isn’t there still paperwork to do? Don’t we need to…’
‘No, there’s no hurry, Julia,’ he says. ‘Are you in London next week?’
‘Yes, I’m not going anywhere.’
‘We can do all of that next week then. For now, let me get you a cab.’
I clutch my letters and stagger after him in my uncomfortable shoes. All I want to do is change them for running shoes and run as fast and as hard as I can.
*
In times of trouble or intense emotional anxiety I only have one place to turn. Running. As soon as I get back to Campden Hill Road I grab my running things from my suitcase and hit the pavements of Kensington in the early evening sunshine.
Running was something Alec had introduced me to. He ran miles and miles a week. He was always competing in half-marathons that he expected me to get up at the crack of dawn to accompany him to. He was always trying to beat himself. He once even ran the Paris Marathon, but at least I got a weekend in the City of Light for that one.
One Sunday morning about five years ago I decided to go with him.
‘OK,’ he said, ‘but you’ll have to keep up.’
He could be a patronising bastard. But he could also be sweet and tender and funny and he made me feel secure for years for probably the first time in my life. I don’t have to defend him any more though.
That day he was a patronising bastard and of course I kept up. I’m only an inch shorter than him and I didn’t eat the endless rich college dinners and guzzle the gallons of wine that he claimed he had to for his career. I kept up with ease, much to his astonishment, and when I got home that Sunday morning after six miles up the River Cam I felt as though the whole world had slowed down, even the gremlins in my head had shut up. I could be right there in the present moment.
I never ran races or timed myself and I never ran with Alec, or indeed anyone else, again, but I did try to run five or six miles a few times a week and it had become a touchstone in my life, a sense of familiarity rooting me in a world I felt increasingly inclined to escape from.
I set off on the route I always run when I’m here – up the High Street towards Knightsbridge and then into Kensington Palace Gardens, past the residence of the late Princess Di and back into Hyde Park. I can never pass Kensington Palace without remembering the August after my fourteenth birthday, standing outside with Johnny, both of us crying over the dead princess who we always thought of as a neighbour, adding our bunch of pink roses to the hundreds upon hundreds of bouquets and messages from the nameless strangers who loved her.
I run around the outside of Hyde Park towards Park Lane and then back towards Knightsbridge. I don’t think about anything except the sound of my feet on the ground. I don’t stop until I’m back on Kensington High Street and find myself outside the computer shop that stands where Kensington Market used to be. My mother gets upset just thinking about the fact they knocked down the market for this. I don’t think she even comes up this end of the High Street any more on principle.
Johnny is waiting for me when I get back to Campden Hill Road. He’s sitting on one of the immaculate white sofas, trussed up in one of his bespoke suits even on a hot day like this. In his lap he has a shoebox. He doesn’t meet my eye. I don’t know if I’m ready to talk to him yet. How could he have kept all this from me all these years?
I barely acknowledge him as I walk straight upstairs. ‘I need a shower,’ I say.
6th June 1993
My dearest daughter,
Now you are ten! My baby girl already a decade old.
We haven’t met again since your third birthday; we haven’t danced under the stars, or listened to the Beatles together since then. But every time I hear Penny Lane I think of you, every time I see the stars in the sky, I think of you. Oh, who am I kidding! I think of my daughter every day.
Other than not getting to see you, the last few years have been good to me. I’m still clean as a whistle, other than the ‘cancer sticks’ as your Uncle Frank likes to call my nicotine habit. Being sober has made me so much more productive in my work. For the first time in my life, I’m making money from my paintings and my last two exhibitions have been very lucrative. My agent loves me, as you can imagine!
I decided to use some of this money to help you and your mother out. Maybe by the time you read these letters, which sit in a box in a drawer by my bed, you’ll already know this, but your mother isn’t very good with money. She earned a lot back in the 70s. She was beautiful and she worked hard for it, but when the work dried up and she was no longer getting modelling contracts she carried on living as though she was.
I found out recently that she’d been remortgaging the Campden Hill Road house for years. To the point where it looked like she would have to sell it. So I have bought the house! Just like that! I can hardly believe I’m able to do such a thing. Frank says I’m getting ideas above my station. He says it in a thick Yorkshire accent like our father’s so I know he’s joking.
One day I hope I can tell you about our father, about my family, well your family as well of course. I’d like to take you up to Yorkshire and show you where I came from.
Anyway, back to the house. I bought it and put it in trust for you. Your mother gets to live there as long as she likes, but she can’t sell it or move you on without my permission and when I’ve gone it’s all yours.
Maybe your mother will let me see you from time to time, maybe she won’t. I know she is still angry with me and can’t bear to see me. Please always know that the problem is between me and your mother, not between me and you.
I always hear about what you’ve been up to through Frank who still sees you and your mother from time to time. You’re growing tall I hear, just like your mum. I’m so proud of you, sweetheart.
Happy Birthday, Princess.
I love you.
Your Father
Chapter 6 (#ulink_4540c0e7-e8e2-5a94-8ceb-77cccffe6a02)
When I come back downstairs Johnny is still on the sofa, the shoebox on the seat next to him, as though he’s not yet ready for me to sit too close. He’s made sandwiches, tiny triangles of white bread and smoked salmon, thin slivers of cucumber and a pot of Earl Grey. Johnny is so very English it’s like being with someone from another era. I suspect this is what Mum has always liked about him.
I feel calmer after my shower; my brain feels more ordered as though it’s ready to ask the right questions and take in the information. I put a couple of sandwiches on a plate and sit down opposite Johnny while he pours two cups of tea, adding a slice of lemon to each one.
Only then does he finally meet my eyes.
‘I’m sorry,’ he says.
I have no idea if I’m ready to forgive anyone. I’m glad Johnny’s here though. It gives me someone to be angry with instead of Edwin Jones, who, after all, is only doing his job. But then in many ways so is Johnny.
‘What’s in the shoebox?’ I ask.
‘Photographs. I thought you might like to see some.’
‘Of my father?’
‘Amongst other things, yes.’
He hands me the shoebox. It’s heavy and I wonder how many photos are here and how Johnny ended up being in possession of them. He doesn’t say anything so I take the lid off and look inside.
Lying on top is a photo of a face I recognise immediately. It’s him, the Penny Lane guy. I take the photo out and examine it. Nothing is written on the back and there’s no indication of who it is or when it was taken.
‘Who’s this?’ I ask, turning the photo around so Johnny can identify it, although I already know what he’s going to say.
‘That’s Bruce, your father.’
So it was him all along.
‘Do you remember the night that was taken?’ Johnny asks. He doesn’t wait for me to reply. ‘I think it was your third birthday. After you were born Philadelphia only threw parties on your birthday. Oh, but back in the 70s she threw them all the time and everyone would come.’ He smiles, drifting off into his memories.
I look at the photo again. If this was taken on my third birthday then it must have been the night he danced with me and if there’s photographic evidence then, despite what she claimed, my mother must be able to remember. But then my mother claims to have forgotten a lot of things that she blatantly hasn’t.
‘I remember,’ I say, nudging him out of the reverie he seems to have slipped into. ‘It’s one of the clearest memories of my childhood, despite Mum trying to pretend it didn’t happen.’
‘He danced with you that night,’ Johnny says, ‘and with your mother. I honestly thought they were going to get back together, but something happened and he left. We didn’t see him again for years.’
‘What happened?’ I ask.
‘I’m not sure. I took you up to bed and by the time I came back down Bruce was on his way out. I think he’d asked if he could see you, if he could take you out or something. But your mother said no. There was an argument, which everybody pretended not to hear.’
‘Did everyone know?’ I ask. ‘Did all of your friends know he was my father?’
He shakes his head. ‘Not at all. Your parents kept it very close. Those who did know, or who’d guessed, knew better than to say anything.’
‘Why was it always such a big secret? Why did she always say she couldn’t remember who I danced with? Why did she always say she couldn’t remember who my father even was?’
‘She couldn’t bear for you to see him if she couldn’t. She was so in love with him. She always was. But he was an addict. For years and years his love of booze always came first and after he got sober, which was around the time of your third birthday, he didn’t want your mother any more; he just wanted you. I think keeping him away from you was her way of punishing him for not loving her like she loved him.’
My head is reeling. I can’t take it all in. I know my mother is self-absorbed but this is ridiculous.
‘So how did he end up buying this house?’ I ask.
‘Ah yes, well. Do you remember Frank?’
‘Uncle Frank?’
Johnny nods. Uncle Frank was another guy who was always hanging around Mum. I think he lived here for a little while. I remember him coming and going and always giving me a pound coin or two when I was little. He was a painter I think.
‘Frank was Bruce’s younger brother. He lived constantly in Bruce’s shadow. They both went to St Martin’s but Frank was never going to be as good as Bruce. He ended up earning a living as a portrait painter. But for some reason your mother always kept him close and I suppose news of you got back to Bruce that way. That’s how Bruce ended up finding out about your mother’s money problems.’
‘Did Mum know it was Bruce who bailed her out?’ I ask. I feel as though I’m asking questions about a soap opera that I’ve lost track of.
‘She knew; she just preferred to pretend it wasn’t happening.’
I look at the box of photos in my lap. I don’t even know where to begin with them. I put the lid back on them and put them on the table. I keep hold of the one of Bruce. The one of my dad. I drain my teacup and watch as Johnny refills it. I pop a tiny sandwich in my mouth and chew slowly as I think about my next question.
‘If you knew all of this why did you never say anything? Why did you always keep my mother’s secrets and always do exactly as she said?’
He paused for a moment picking at a thread on his cuff, before looking straight at me.
‘Because I was in love with her,’ he said.
Johnny has been working for my mother since she first came to England and I have known him my entire life. At no point did I ever think there was anything between them other than employer and employee; maybe friends at a push. This latest revelation is more than I can believe. If I’m honest, I’d always thought Johnny was gay.
‘You have to be kidding me,’ I say, rather uncharitably. Forgive me if I don’t find my mother very loveable right now.
‘I’ve been in love with her as long as I’ve known her. There’s never been anyone else. Didn’t you wonder why I never had relationships?’
‘I just thought you were married to your job,’ I lie.
‘You thought I was gay, didn’t you? Yes, lots of people do.’
‘Does Mum know?’ I sound more incredulous than I should. I’m probably not handling this very well, but it’s a lot to take in to be fair.
‘She didn’t realise for a long time. She was always in love with Bruce or throwing herself into relationships with unsuitable men to prove to herself she was over Bruce. She knows now though. He pauses, smiles slightly. ‘I keep my flat but mostly I’m here.’
‘Do you…? Are you…?
‘Quite frankly, Julia, that’s none of your business.’
I suppose it isn’t.
He starts to clear up the tea things.
‘I’m sorry,’ I say. And I am. I would hate to upset Johnny. Him being in love with my mother for all these years puts a whole new perspective on his relationship with me. He did it for love, not money. By the sound of things, there hasn’t been much money to pay him with over the years.
‘It’s OK,’ he says. ‘You’ve had quite a week and it’s all a lot to take in. I’ll give you some peace and quiet.’
I pick up the box of photos and hand it to him.
‘No you keep them; look through them if you like. I’ll only be downstairs if you have any questions. I’m not going to desert you; at least not until I’ve got your mother back from New York.’
‘Good luck with that.’
As he gets to the door he looks back over his shoulder. ‘How’s Alec?’ he asks.
Despite my best efforts I can feel myself starting to cry again.
Johnny puts the tea tray back down on the table and comes to sit next to me. He doesn’t ask any questions, he just offers me the pristine pressed white handkerchief from his pocket and waits until I’ve pulled myself together.
‘We broke up,’ I say. ‘He’s moving to America to take up a post at Harvard. I’m not invited.’
‘Oh, Julia.’
Slowly, in between sobs, I tell him about seeing Alec earlier in the week. About how I’ve come to realise that it hadn’t been working for years. About a more recent realisation that I’d only been with Alec for stability rather than love.
‘The tears aren’t for him exactly,’ I say. ‘They’re for the ten years of my life I wasted on him.’
‘The first week of your thirties has certainly been eventful so far,’ Johnny says, stroking my hair. ‘But think of it this way, with this inheritance you get a chance to start all over again, to live the life you’ve always wanted.’
‘That’s what Pen said,’ I say. ‘The problem is I’ve no idea what I want.’
*
Johnny is in the kitchen making tea when I get up the next morning. He puts a mug in front of me as I sit down on one of the stools and sits opposite me with his own mug.
‘How are you?’ he asks.
‘Oh fine,’ I say, my autopilot response to anyone who asks at the moment. I’m turning into my mother.
‘This is me you’re talking to,’ he says. ‘How are you?’
I pause. How am I? I haven’t really thought about it. I haven’t let myself, in much the same way as I haven’t let myself read the letters sitting in my handbag, or even think about what I’m going to do with this house.
‘I don’t know,’ I say. Because I really don’t.
‘I spoke to your mother last night after you’d gone to bed,’ he says as he breaks eye contact. He seems embarrassed although I don’t know if it is for himself or on her behalf.
‘And?’
‘She’s inconsolable.’
‘She’s inconsolable,’ I say. ‘What about me? What about the fact she lied to me for thirty years, about everything? Not only did she know damn well who my father was but she spoke to him, regularly. He owned the goddam house for Christ’s sake.’
‘Julia, I know you’re upset…’ Johnny tries to interrupt.
‘And then there’s the letters.’
‘Letters?’
He doesn’t know what I’m talking about. Well, well mother dearest didn’t tell him everything after all.
‘The letters my father wrote to me every year on my birthday for eighteen years. The letters that my mother sent back to him unopened every year.’
Johnny stares at me.
‘I had no idea,’ he says eventually.
‘Welcome to the club.’
‘Do you have these letters? How do you know about them?’
‘Edwin Jones gave them to me yesterday. It was off the record and not really part of the estate. Apparently Bruce called Edwin to the hospital a few days before he died to make sure I got them. I haven’t read them,’ I add predicting his next question. ‘I honestly don’t know if I want to.’
‘But you must,’ Johnny says with sudden force. ‘These will fill in all the holes I’m sure, like missing jigsaw pieces.’
I look at him rather astonished. He shakes his head, apologising under his breath.
Of course, my father is Johnny’s greatest rival in love. It’s natural he would want to know all the gory details about the man and I suspect he thinks those details are in these letters. Well even if they are he won’t be hearing them from me.
‘Anyway,’ I say, changing the subject. ‘Mum.’
He sighs. ‘Yes. She thinks you’re going to evict her and sell the house.’
‘Of course I’m not going to evict her. I bloody should though, just to teach her a lesson. I’m so angry with her, Johnny.’
‘Will you talk to her?’ he asks.
‘I can’t promise I won’t get angry.’
‘I think she’s expecting that. Just reassure her you aren’t about to evict her. She might come home then.’
‘Oh for God’s sake, can she not just come home and we’ll sort it out when she’s here?’ I am so sick of my mother acting like a spoilt child all the time, and everyone pandering to her as though her behaviour is perfectly acceptable. I’m sick of so many things and I feel as though I’m on my very last nerve with all of it. I’m scared that if I speak to her, thirty years of resentment will come flying out and I won’t have any control over it.
‘Julia, she’s hurting too. I know she did wrong, that she should have been honest with you years ago, but the love of her life has died and, try as I might, I’m no replacement.’ He smiles sadly and I suddenly feel immensely sorry for him and the huge secrets he has had to bear all for the love of a woman who will always hold him as second best. What a mess it all is.
‘I’ll talk to her,’ I agree. ‘But only because you asked me to.’
‘Thank you, Julia.’
‘Do you have a number?’
‘She’s on Skype these days.’
‘Skype!’ My mother has an inherent fear of all things technological. Her excuse for not cooking is the oven is too convoluted for her to understand. She has an old Nokia mobile phone that’s at least a decade old and dictates all her emails to Johnny.
‘So we can keep in touch when one of us is away,’ Johnny says. I don’t want any further details about that, thank you very much.
At the appointed hour I log on to my Skype account and my mother’s face looms into view on the computer screen.
‘Hello, dear,’ she bellows. Her accent has become a lot more New York since we last spoke.
‘Mother, you don’t have to press your face against the screen or yell at me. Just sit back and talk normally.’
She does as she’s told for the first time in living memory. I can’t really tell from the rather fuzzy image but could it be possible that she’s looking contrite?
‘So now you know all my dirty secrets,’ she says resignedly.
‘Yes. Why did you never tell me?’
‘You wouldn’t have understood.’
‘Mum, listen, it’s not about whether I would have understood or not. Bruce was my father and you knew who he was and where he was. I had a right to know my father.’
She sighs and blinks. Is she crying?
‘I’m sorry.’ She sniffs. She’s crying. I hate myself for thinking in the back of my mind that they are crocodile tears, simply for effect.
I take a deep breath. I am not going to get into a Skype argument with my mother.
‘Look, Mum,’ I say, deciding to keep this short and sweet, ‘why don’t you just come home. We can talk about all of this properly then.’
‘What are you going to do about the house?’
‘I don’t know. But I’m not going to evict you. Johnny told me you were inconsolable about it.’
‘Johnny exaggerates.’
‘Yes, well I know all about you two as well,’ I say. ‘But that’s something for another time.’ I notice she has the decency to blush.
‘Just come home,’ I repeat. ‘We’ll sort everything out, I promise.’
‘Will you get Johnny to book me a flight?’
‘If you’re lucky, I might even book it myself.’
6th June 1987
My dearest daughter,
Happy fourth birthday, my darling. It’s been a year since I saw you and what a year it has been.
Seeing you this time last year has kick-started me into working harder, into ‘living up to my potential’ as my tutors at St Martin’s used to put it. I’ve been sober for one year and sixty days. I’ve been to meetings every day for the last 425 days.
And with my sobriety has come a new-found love of my work. I’ve known for years that the drink has been destroying my love of art, but I hadn’t realised how much it had destroyed my productivity. The last year has been spent in a fever of activity at my studio in Whitechapel. One day I hope to show you the studio, the place where I painted the work for my first major exhibition.
Yes, that’s right! Tonight, on your fourth birthday in lieu of the Campden Hill Road party, I will be exhibiting my work for the first time. The paintings are already at the gallery and I’m sitting here in an almost empty studio feeling rather nervous I must admit. I expect this is the artist’s equivalent of stage fright. I hope your mother isn’t too angry that some of her guests will be late to the party, as I know they are coming to the exhibition!
Dad is coming down from Yorkshire to see the exhibition as well. This is a man who, to my knowledge, hasn’t left Yorkshire since Mum died! Frank and I are astonished, delighted and nervous in equal measures. In an hour or so Frank will pick me up and then we’ll be off to Kings Cross to meet Dad.
I wonder if you’ll ever meet your grandfather? I do hope so. He’s quite a character under that gruff exterior, although it’s taken me a long time to figure that out. Frank and I will be sure to tell him all about you.
Happy Birthday, Princess. Wish me luck!
Your Father
Chapter 7 (#ulink_054aa0fa-9361-5728-b7a0-907f03856048)
‘Bella!’ Marco di Palma yells at me from halfway down the street. Luckily, I’m heading his way, but if I wasn’t I’d feel obliged to stop in for a coffee at least. Marco has an incredible ability of getting passers-by into his restaurant no matter what. I guess that’s why it’s always so busy.
Marco owns the Italian place at the bottom of our road. This restaurant has been here for as long as I can remember. Johnny used to bring me here when I was a child. Mum never came with us; Italian food is bad for the figure apparently. She tried to drum this into me for years but I’ve always ignored it without detrimental effect.
Marco’s is such a big part of my life that I can’t smell garlic cooking or freshly ground coffee without being transported to this little place on the corner of our road, with its gingham tablecloths and candles in wine bottles. All the money in the world wouldn’t make me choose a fancy restaurant over this.
Marco di Palma greets me with the same white-toothed grin he has greeted me with since I was a child. In over twenty years he has hardly changed at all, except for a little grey hair at his temples. He runs his restaurant with the same passion and enthusiasm.
‘Bella Julia!’ he exclaims again as I approach, grabbing my face and planting three over the top kisses on my cheeks. ‘And where is your beautiful mama tonight? And Signor Johnny? Will they be joining you?’
‘Not tonight,’ I reply, marvelling at Marco’s endless optimism that one day the Philadelphia Simmonds will eat in his restaurant. ‘Mum’s in New York.’
‘Your favourite table then?’ he asks pointing me in the direction of the table I always sit at in the summer on the patio.
‘Could I have somewhere a little more private tonight, Marco? I’m meeting someone.’
‘Is Dr Alec visiting us tonight?’ he exclaims to the entire restaurant. ‘We always love to see Dr Alec!’
Marco makes this pronouncement as though he and Alec are the greatest of friends when in fact, on the few occasions I’d brought Alec here, he had been nothing but disparaging of the whole experience. Alec will always put fancy restaurants above little Italian places with gingham tablecloths and candles in wine bottles. To herald Alec’s potential arrival with such reverence is almost as optimistic as thinking my mother will ever eat here.
I break the news quickly, like tearing off a Band-Aid. ‘Alec and I have split up I’m afraid.’ I pause for the dramatic effect I know Marco loves. ‘Alec is moving to America without me.’
‘Ah the bastard!’ Marco screeches, making all the tables in the restaurant jump a little. ‘If I ever see him…’ He shakes his fist at me rather alarmingly. Then suddenly his face changes as though he is trying to work something out. ‘So, who are you dining with tonight, Bella?’ he asks with a wink. ‘A new man?’
‘My mother’s lawyer,’ I say firmly. I don’t want Marco getting any ideas or bringing roses and champagne over for no reason. He is known for getting carried away. Another reason why his restaurant is always full.
Marco winks at me again and tells me he understands, when clearly he doesn’t understand at all. But then neither do I so I just tell him that Edwin and I do have some legal stuff to go through and need some peace and quiet.
Marco finds me a corner table with benches on either side, flourishing his tea towel. ‘Is everything all right, Bella?’ he asks in a serious tone I have never heard him adopt before.
‘Yes,’ I lie brightly, astounded at how easily I lie about how fine I am these days. ‘Why?’
‘Well, meeting lawyers, no man, your mama in New York?’ He throws his hands up into the air.
‘Everything’s fine,’ I tell him. ‘We’re just going through some financial stuff that Mum has handed over to me.’ Not quite a lie I suppose.
He seems satisfied by this and taps his nose at me before wandering back out into the street, flicking a tea towel in his wake.
Edwin texted me over the weekend. He wanted to know if I was OK, worried about how upset I’d been when he gave me the letters. I assured him it was just a shock and he asked me if he could take me for dinner. It seemed a little out of character, but if someone as handsome as Edwin Jones wants to take me out for dinner, who am I to argue?
Pen and I analysed this in detail on the phone.
‘You’re a fast mover,’ she said, when I told her about the dinner invitation. ‘Is it allowed?’
‘Is what allowed?’
‘Dating your lawyer?’ she asked, clearly delighted at the prospect.
‘He’s not my lawyer, he’s my mother’s lawyer. And we’re not dating.’
‘Like hell you’re not. Sounds like a date to me.’
I heard her tapping something into her iPad.
‘Oh, very nice,’ she said.
‘What is?’
‘Edwin Jones, of course. I’ve just googled him.’
‘Of course you have.’
‘How tall is he?’ she asked. She’s only 5’1”. Graeme calls us Little and Large, but she knows I have a bit of a complex about dating men who are shorter than me.
‘About six four,’ I replied, trying to sound nonchalant despite the butterflies in my stomach.
‘Then he’s clearly perfect for you. You know what they say, the best way of getting over someone is getting…’
‘Yes, thank you, Pen,’ I said firmly. ‘It’s not a date.’ I wasn’t sure whether I was trying to convince Pen or the butterflies.
‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I just…’ She trailed off with a sigh.
‘What’s up?’ I asked.
‘Oh, nothing really. I’m just bored I think. You’ve left, Alec’s leaving and now Graeme’s going to be leaving too.’
‘What? Graeme’s leaving?’
‘He’s finally found the café of his dreams,’ Pen replied. For as long as either of us has known him Graeme has wanted to run a coffee shop. It was an idea he came up with when he was travelling in Australia. He wanted to run a place that roasted and ground its own coffee beans, a place that sold organic cake and homemade sourdough bread. It sounded delicious but in all these years he’s never found a premises that he could afford the rent on. Not in Cambridge anyway.
‘Wow,’ I said, trying to take it in. ‘Where?’ We’d always imagined this café would be in Cambridge, despite the astronomic rents. The thought of it, and Graeme, not being there is almost as alien as the thought of Alec not being at Trinity College any more.
‘York,’ she replied. ‘A friend of his told him about this old greasy spoon that was up for sale. It needs refurbishing, but it’s going for a song and he just about managed to borrow enough money to buy it. And now he’s moving away.’
‘When?’
‘End of the summer I think.’
‘Oh, Pen, I’m so sorry. I know how close the two of you are.’
She didn’t say anything.
‘But you know, I’m not leaving.’
‘Yes you are,’ she replied firmly. ‘The universe is giving you an opportunity to turn your life around, and you know nothing can change the universe’s mind.’
I sighed audibly.
‘Now,’ she said, changing the subject. ‘What are you going to wear for your date with Edwin Jones?’
*
So here I am in Marco’s waiting for Edwin. I’m not sure what prompted his invitation for dinner. I think he felt responsible for the latest curveball life had thrown at me in the form of the letters. Anyway, I wanted the low-down about what was going to happen in another meeting with tax lawyers tomorrow. I managed to convince him to come to Marco’s even though he sounded almost as snobbish about it as Alec.
He arrives not long after me, still wearing his suit trousers, white shirtsleeves rolled up, top buttons undone. He looks hot and slightly dishevelled, smelling a little too strongly of expensive aftershave, and has clearly come straight from work. He smiles as he bends down to kiss my cheek.

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