21

~ Clean your microwave every so often by heating a bowl full of water with some lemon slices until it gets steamy inside. Leave to cool, then wipe away any residue with a cloth or kitchen roll.

B efore Mum could start her story, the front door opened, and Dad's voice floated in from the hall. He sounded positively jubilant.

‘Say hello – or should I say, say Hej hej ! to the man with the finest princess cake in the Midlands! Ta da!'

He appeared in the door holding aloft his green spaceship, which now had a wedge cut out like a gaping mouth. It really did contain a lot of cream, so much that the marzipan was barely sagging despite being structurally compromised. Or that might have been Dad's expert construction skills.

He read the room instantly.

‘What's happened?' he said, looking between our strained faces.

I spoke before Mum could. ‘Grandad's care home called, he's not expected to live much longer. If we want to say goodbye, we have to go now. He's asking for Mum.'

‘And I'm not going,' said Mum, in the same flat tone.

Dad put the cake down on the coffee table. He wasn't a domineering man, nor was he a pushover. He trod the path of moderate resistance, the sort of British man who would express triumph or disaster with the same ‘not bad, considering' attitude. But sometimes he took a stand.

‘We should go.' He said it as if he'd considered everything and reached a conclusion he was confident was the correct one. I supposed he'd had about thirty years to think about it.

‘But, I don't—' Mum was protesting but now Dad was here, something had changed in her. She was still tense, but her back had slumped, and she seemed less scared, more resigned to whatever horrible experience was ahead. I wasn't sure if that didn't unnerve me more.

‘We'll set off, Melanie.' Dad stood behind her, his hands on her shoulders. I remembered him doing it to me when I'd had a bad test, or been upset. It was comforting in a low-key ‘I know you think this is the end of the world but I'm here to reassure you it's not' way. ‘You can decide what you want to do when we've driving, but let's set off. We can always turn back. Robyn, phone your sister, tell her what's happening, and we can pick her up, if she wants to come.'

Would Cleo want to come?

I answered my own question. Of course she would. Regardless of how awful this journey might be, or how furious she was with us, for whatever reason she wasn't sharing, Cleo wouldn't want to be left out.

Ten minutes later we were waiting outside her house, where she was on the doorstep issuing Elliot with instructions about something or other. I could see Wes's face upstairs in his bedroom window. He looked excited, but that might have been because his dad had turned up for an unexpected sleepover. One window across, Alfie was peering from behind his curtains, thinking no one could see him. His face was creased with anxiety and my heart ached for him.

My heart ached for all three boys. First Elliot moving out, then Rhiannon's illness, now this. I tried to imagine telling a child their auntie was seriously ill, or that their dad was leaving, and my whole body recoiled. How did anyone do it?

Dad honked the horn and Cleo gestured at him, then turned back to Elliot for a final word.

I couldn't hear what she said, but Elliot suddenly wrapped her up in his arms and Cleo burrowed her head into his neck, and I thought, well maybe something good will come out of this. But then she turned away, her face thunderous again, and she was ramming herself and her huge expensive designer handbag into the back of the car with me.

I hadn't seen her since our showdown at Mum and Dad's, when she told me I was a compulsive liar who didn't deserve to be trusted. Since then, nothing. I'd texted a few times, hoping for a response, but she left my messages unread, which hurt.

‘Hello!' I tried a smile.

‘Hello,' she said, getting her phone out without meeting my eye.

We both slid down into our seats.

I hated being in the back of the car. I'd hated it when I was a child, and I hated it even more now. Even though Mum and Dad had had several cars since the ancient Volvo estate of our childhood (‘You can't argue with the safety record …'), Dad's tatty AA Road Map had been ceremoniously transferred between each one, despite every subsequent new car having a satnav. This ancient map was currently tucked into the seat pocket in front of me, along with the hand wipes Mum still kept in the back, just in case someone became eight years old again and needed to wipe their hands after an ice cream. They would still be there, I reckoned, when Wes was having his midlife crisis.

I turned to Cleo to point out the road map but she was staring daggers at her phone, texting importantly.

‘So where am I setting the satnav?' asked Dad.

Mum inspected her phone and silently typed in a postcode.

We watched as the satnav thought about it, then flashed up a route into west Wales.

‘That's not the way I'd have gone,' said Dad, predictable as clockwork.

‘Should we tell them we're on our way?' I asked.

No one reacted. Cleo had sent her text and was now checking her voice messages, frowning. Dad was fidgeting with the settings, to see if he couldn't come up with a better route than the car. Mum was staring dead ahead. I could see her reflection in the window and her expression was as eerily blank as a shop dummy.

I looked at the little dot on the map, and the white line tracing our path to it. Not as far as I thought it would be. Grandad had been within a few hours' drive all this time?

I used the back of Mum's seat to pull myself forward. ‘Why is he there? Why west Wales?'

She shrugged. ‘It was recommended as being good for dementia care.'

Had Grandad had dementia? She'd never mentioned that. ‘But it's miles away from where he lived. And it's not that near us.'

She shrugged again and I realised she'd done it on purpose, isolated him as far away as possible. A cold feeling shivered over me.

‘Right then,' said Dad, and we set off.

A few times I racked my brains for a conversation starter. We couldn't drive the entire way way in silence. Surely we needed to have a conversation before we got there? Shouldn't Mum give us some background? Prepare us for what we might be about to see? In a way, a car was ideal for an uncomfortable conversation, given that it was impossible for anyone to look anyone else in the eye.

Every so often, I saw Dad glance at Mum, watching for the sign that she wanted to stop or turn back. None came.

Cleo. I glanced sideways at her. She remained focused on her phone.

The tension was making me feel sick. But being in the back seat was making me feel sick too.

I fought the terrible urge to ask if we were nearly there yet.

We drove on in silence, our family unit moving slowly along the satnav's route. I checked my own phone, hoping Mitch might text, or even Jim. A few times I tried to catch Cleo's eye, but she deliberately didn't acknowledge my attempts to communicate.

And then, after forty minutes, Mum's mobile phone rang.

We all took a simultaneous in-breath.

It rang twice, three times, and I was on the point of leaning over and grabbing it out of her hands when she answered it. She didn't put the caller on speaker.

‘Hello? Yes, it is.'

Cleo and I craned our ears. This time I caught Cleo's eye, and she looked impatient.

‘Yes, we are, probably about an hour away.'

There was a long pause. Medical detail, probably.

‘I see.'

Another long pause.

‘I see.'

Mum wasn't giving away much in her answers. This was excruciating.

‘Well, thank you for your efforts, Gwen. I appreciate it. Yes, I will pass on your condolences to the family.'

Condolences. So that was it. I sank back into my seat, deflated. He was gone. We were too late. Whatever my grandfather was like, whatever he had become, I wouldn't know. Ever. A link to the past, snipped. Stories, images, memories, floating out of my reach into the ether, unknown.

Cleo opened her mouth to speak, then sank back in her seat too.

We both waited for Dad to say something to break the tension filling the car; that was his job. I stared out of the window at the passing cars. The feeling reminded me of that moment just after the final climactic mega-firework explodes, leaving fading plumes of smoke and echoes in the air, and someone has to be the first to break the spell with a brisk, ‘Shall we make a move then?'

It was Mum who spoke first.

‘Paul,' she said, in a tone I couldn't place. ‘Could you pull off at these services, please?'

‘Can't you wait until the next one, Mum?' Cleo piped up from the back. ‘This is a Burger King and there's a McDonald's in another …'

‘At these services, please, Paul.'

Dad obediently indicated into the left lane and drove us around to the car park area, where we sat for one unbearable minute, waiting for Mum to reveal whatever it was that was so bad we wouldn't be able to love her again.

Finally, she spoke. ‘There's something I need to tell you. About me. About our family.'

‘Here?' I glanced over at Cleo. I wanted to be able to see Mum's face. I didn't want to hear whatever this life-changing mystery was while staring at an old copy of the AA Guide to Great Britain and Ireland .

‘Well, I need something to eat first,' said Dad. ‘There's a Greggs. Who wants a sausage roll?'

I flicked my eyes towards Cleo. Dad had always used holidays as an excuse to treat himself to a Greggs sausage roll, a food item Mum wouldn't allow in the house. I wanted to laugh (it was nerves), and I wanted Cleo to show she remembered too, that she shared this past with us.

She grunted, shoved her phone in her bag, and got out of the car.

We trailed into the services, bought coffee and sausage rolls, and went to sit at a table by the window, well away from anyone else. It was past midnight now, so we had plenty of choice.

Mum didn't touch her coffee. She sat for a while, then reached down for her handbag, taking out some photographs which she put on the table in front of her, like a fortune teller. I hadn't seen them before.

‘My dad, your grandfather, Gordon Davies, was a town councillor, in charge of finances,' she began, as if she was telling us a bedtime story. ‘He was a popular man, he was on the church council for years and years, president of the golf club, Britain in Bloom organiser – but he wasn't a nice man.'

‘Not nice, how?' I asked.

‘He was a controlling bastard.' Her words were sharp, snipped off. ‘Everything revolved around him and what people thought of him. What people thought of us. He wouldn't let my mother go back to teaching after we were born, he wanted her to do volunteering instead, projects that he could get into the local paper, with him next to her, taking the credit, of course. Our house had to be spotlessly clean. Kirsty and I had to be top of the class. We weren't allowed to wear make-up or have boyfriends. It would make him look bad. One summer he decided I'd got too fat, so he made Mum weigh me in the sitting room every Sunday night until he decided I was the right weight.' She looked pained. ‘I've always had a sweet tooth, so that was miserable.'

‘Bloody hell,' I muttered.

Dad muttered something else under his breath.

‘It was fine when we were younger, we just went along with it. I thought everyone's dad made them read their school reports out loud. But I started pushing back when I was about fifteen, and he didn't like that. I wanted to go to art school to do a Design degree. Dad thought I should do Law. I mean, it was ridiculous – he told me he'd spoken to one of his golf club cronies who had a law firm and he'd already arranged work experience for me in the holidays. I'd never shown any interest in law, but Dad decided it was appropriate, so that's what would happen.' Her lip curled. ‘And I'd never have worked for his friend. He was well-known for feeling up the waitresses at the golf club. They called him Handsy Harry. I kneed him in the balls when he tried it with me. Dad was furious. With me. That tells you everything.'

I couldn't take my eyes off Mum. Her face was the same but her energy, her voice was different; I could only compare it to the times I'd seen the best actresses go on set and, in the turn of a head, transform into another human being.

‘Anyway …' Mum pushed a hand through her brown curls. ‘I had a great art teacher who could see what was going on, and she encouraged me to apply wherever I wanted. I filled in one UCCA form with the universities Dad approved of – UCL, Durham, St Andrews – and another with the places I wanted to go. Most of them as far away as possible. And I posted the art school one and tore up the other.' She managed a smile. ‘Rebellious, eh?'

‘Brave,' mumbled Dad and squeezed her hand.

‘I got a place at Goldsmiths.' Mum finally pushed a photograph across the table to me and Cleo. ‘This is me in Freshers Week.'

If she hadn't told me, I'd have assumed it was Cleo. The same candyfloss cloud of peroxide hair, dramatic eyebrows, but with ripped 501s, black DMs, a leotard that skimmed her skinny white shoulders, and a bold handprinted scarf wound around her hips. She – Mum – was toting a bottle of Newcastle Brown and eyeing the camera with a hungry gaze, as if she couldn't decide whether to eat the photographer or save him for later. Confidence shone off her like a lighthouse beaming in the darkened club. Confidence and the sheer elation of being herself, in that moment, in that place.

I was sure it was a he behind the camera, by the way. No question.

‘That's you ?' asked Cleo. It was the first time she'd spoken since we arrived.

‘Yes!'

‘Wow.' Cleo studied the photograph. I don't think we'd ever seen a photograph of Mum without one of us in it. ‘What did Grandpa say when he saw your hair like that?'

‘He went ballistic. Not that he could do anything 400 miles away though.'

‘How did he know?'

‘Kirsty must have shown him this. I sent it to her.'

‘It looks like you were having a good time,' I said, with deliberate understatement.

‘Oh, I was.' Mum nodded emphatically. ‘I mean, I was in New Cross in the late eighties, I went to gigs, I went to the Hippodrome, I stayed out all night doing my fair share of …'

‘OK, Mum, we get the picture,' I said. This was a lot to take in about a woman who still took her library books back on time, even though the librarians weren't issuing fines anymore. I shot a glance at Dad, who seemed surprisingly unruffled by these bombshells. I dreaded to think what revelations were coming up about him. I couldn't cope with discovering Dad had been Mum's dealer or that they met in the back of a police car or something.

‘I was happy ,' said Mum, and the simple emphasis broke my heart. ‘I was really, really happy , for the first time in my life. The only thing that made me sad was that I couldn't share it with Kirsty – I missed her, but Dad was never on her case the way he was with me. She was a straight-A student, academic, she actually wanted to study Law. Dad paid for her to have golf lessons so she could follow in his footsteps at the golf club. He set up a junior girls' competition so she could win it. And she did, twice.'

Suddenly Cleo slapped the table and our heads swivelled in her direction.

‘Look, Mum, can we cut to the chase?' she demanded. ‘I know what you're going to tell us.'

‘Do you?' Mum raised an eyebrow.

‘ Yes . I've known for a while now.'

I stared at them both, bewildered. I had no idea what they were talking about. How could these two people, as familiar to me as my own hands, have had some secret knowledge that I didn't even know that I didn't know?

‘What?' I demanded.

Cleo looked at me with pity written across her face, then turned back to Mum. ‘Dad's not my dad, is he?'

‘What?' I repeated, foolishly.

‘He's not my dad.' She shook her head at our slowness. ‘I found my original birth certificate a couple of years ago. It had Mum's name on it, but there was a gap where the father's name was supposed to go.'

No one spoke.

Oh my god, I thought, staring across the table at their downcast eyes. Mum and Dad. Did that mean it was true?

‘And it made sense,' Cleo went on. ‘I don't look anything like Dad, do I? Makes even more sense now, after what you've just said. You got pregnant when you were at art college, your dad went ballistic and cut you off from the family, which is why we never saw them.' She lifted her chin, sharp like Mum's, the point of her perfect heart-shaped face. ‘Is that it? Was it a one-night stand? Did you even know who my real father was?'

Mum flinched and I threw myself into the silence to defend her.

‘What are you talking about? I've seen your birth certificate.' They were in Mum's admin file; I remember poring over them when Mum sent off our passports for our first trip abroad, such official evidence of me . ‘And Dad's name is on it. I swear it is. Are you sure you didn't imagine it?'

Cleo had always been tidying something or other when we were kids. She loved going into drawers, pulling out boxes and peering into cupboards. I'd sometimes joined her, more for the treasure-hunting fun of unearthing ‘unwanted' lipsticks or maybe even a family photo, but if this was true, Cleo's constant tidying took on a different feel. Was she looking for something the whole time?

‘He's on the new one,' she agreed, then looked at Mum. ‘But it's an amended copy, isn't it?'

Dad looked at Mum, who was staring into her coffee cup.

‘No offence, Dad,' said Cleo. ‘But I'm not stupid. I'm nearly forty, it's about time we discussed this. For the boys' sake, if not mine. There are medical implications.'

‘When did you find it?' he asked.

I stared between the two of them. What? He wasn't going to deny it?

‘Two years ago. I needed Wes's birth certificate to renew his passport and I thought it might have got into your admin files by mistake.'

Oh. So that was why she'd been so weird on that holiday to Mauritius. Then it clicked. Cleo wasn't angry with poor Elliot, or me, or any of the other unfortunate souls who'd got the sharp end of her tongue these past few years. It was Mum . The one person she'd never yell at. Which meant she'd yelled at us instead.

I stared at her. Why hadn't she said anything? And how could Mum have lied about something so important?

I tried to think what I would have done, and my brain shut down, instantly. When were you meant to reveal something like that? The truth would have taken a sledgehammer to our family. Of course it was easier to shove it under the carpet and carry on. Even if there was now an awful lump in the carpet. I would have done the same.

Mum didn't speak. Her eyes were closed and I thought she might be crying. Dad's arm was round her now, the other holding her hand tight. The concern on his kind face made me want to cry too.

‘Mum?' I reached across the table and took her hand. ‘Mum, are you OK?'

I heard Cleo make a dismissive noise, and it sparked anger in me. She'd had a lot longer to get used to this than I had. Wasn't she thinking about how Dad might feel right now?

‘Shut up, Cleo. It's not always just about you.'

‘It is about me,' she retorted. ‘That's the whole—'

‘Stop it!' Mum's head lifted, and she looked at the pair of us, her eyes red. ‘Stop it.'

In the ensuing silence, the small voice in my head whispered, what about me?

I tried to ignore it. I was the spitting image of Dad. I had Mum's personality. And yet …

I heard myself speak. ‘Is Dad not my dad either?'

The question hung between us on the table. The next word could change our family forever.

Dad broke the silence. It was a Dad job, after all, shouldering the burden of family conflict. Like lighting fireworks and dealing with rats.

‘Just tell them the truth, Melanie,' he said. ‘There's never going to be a right time.'

‘But …' Her eyes pleaded with him, and he took her hand again.

‘If you can't, my darling, I will. This is the right time.'

I'd never heard Dad call Mum darling before. Now he was half a stranger too, a man who loved his wife with a special tenderness that they'd kept private, their own relationship hidden beneath their parenthood.

‘All right,' said Mum. She paused and took a deep breath. ‘So that's only half of the story. This is what happened …'

And then everyone's world fell apart.