When I Met You

‘They’re here,’ Mum clucked, signalling to Martin to switch off the music before rushing to open the door, which he did before turning the TV back on.

I followed Mum and Martin into the hallway and while everybody noisily greeted each other, I hung back, feeling tired and grumpy. Eventually Hayley broke away and we walked back through to the lounge together.

She was looking particularly gorgeous today. Hayley’s hair is naturally white blonde and hangs in a perfect sheet down her back. She has fair skin, with a pinkish tone to it so she never looks pasty, just delicate, and her features are neat and even, giving way to a full mouth – possibly due to all the exercise it gets. Like me she has a flat stomach, longish legs and a small waist, but unlike me she also has big breasts. You know how there are different versions of Barbie? Surfing Barbie, caravan Barbie, disco Barbie etc. Well, she’s ‘wannabe footballer’s wife’ Barbie, only paler. Today she was wearing skinny jeans, Ugg boots and a leather jacket with a tight t-shirt underneath. She looked immaculate, but then she always does and puts hours into getting ready even if it’s just to pop to the shops.

‘All right,’ she said, her eyes flicking me up and down in a blatant attempt to check that what I was wearing was acceptable. I must have passed the test because she didn’t say anything.

‘All right,’ I replied. ‘How are you doing?’

‘Good,’ she said, popping a crisp in her mouth. ‘What have you been up to? Still washing people’s greasy heads at Roberto’s?’

‘Yeah. Jake was asking after you the other day,’ I said slyly.

Hayley glared at me, a warning sign not to say anything else. Jake is one of her past conquests. One of the many she left broken hearted, wondering what had just happened to him.

‘Saved up enough for South America yet?’ she said, swiftly changing the subject as her husband Gary came lumbering in.

‘Another couple of months I reckon.’

‘Cool,’ said Hayley and then she smiled, a genuinely warm smile, and that was when I knew she must be pregnant.

I smiled back at her broadly and raised my eyebrows questioningly. She immediately scowled back. ‘What? Don’t look at me like that. You look like a retard,’ she added charmingly.

She didn’t say this with quite as much conviction as she usually would though, and I was on the verge of asking her whether she had anything to tell me, but then Gary piped up.

‘All right sis,’ he said, in his weird voice. The tone of his voice is really strange. It’s slightly high pitched and seems to emanate from the back of his throat, or his nose possibly. He always sounds like he’s got a cold. I guess he’s what you’d describe as adenoidal.

He patted me on the arm and I shuddered. I find Gary pretty revolting if I’m honest. He goes to the gym every day and his honed body is so muscle-bound he can barely walk. His thighs are huge and his jeans, which tend to be pale blue Levi’s 501s, permanently look like they’re straining against them. He always wears the same kind of t-shirts too. White but embellished with glittery stuff, sequins, logos or jewels, which tend to plunge into a deep V neck, which gives what I bet he thinks is a tantalizing view of his pecs, but is in fact an off-putting glimpse of his muscular man boobs. He wears a lot of chunky, silver jewellery and his hair is styled into unimaginative spikes. He has tattoos on his biceps and Hayley thinks he’s gorgeous. I’m sure she’s not alone, but I think he’s horribly beefy and the thought of having sex with him leaves me repulsed.

Not of course that I would ever want to have sex with my sister’s husband, but you know what I mean. Just to be crystal clear, I’ve only even considered it in the first place because he’s such an overtly sexual person. Gary leaves a trail of pheromones and testosterone in his wake wherever he goes and is always pawing Hayley in public. Sometimes when doing so his breath quickens and, even in a room full of people, you can tell he’s a bit aroused and that he’d like to get Hayley on her own. I know … it’s foul. Also, he looks at other women, including me, a bit inappropriately sometimes. I know he doesn’t fancy me or anything but he definitely checks me out and I don’t like it.

‘Marianne,’ said Wendy, Hayley’s mother-in-law. Today she looked a bit like the Queen, only minus the pearls. Her hair was set and she was wearing a lilac skirt suit with a navy handbag. ‘How are you? Still no boyfriend?’

‘Er no,’ I replied, wondering why this was always her first line of enquiry but reluctant to tell her about Andy. Why should I?

‘Let me get you a drink,’ interrupted Martin, leading Wendy away by the elbow back towards the kitchen and giving me a little wink. I flashed him a grateful smile in return.

Half an hour later and things weren’t going quite as badly as I’d thought they might. I’d noticed that Hayley had declined a glass of wine and was on the orange juice and it was all I could do not to start nudging people. The men were on beer and Mum and Wendy were tucking into a bottle of white. Still feeling wrecked from the night before I had a cup of tea and ate my body weight in crisps and vol-au-vents.

‘So anyway,’ Mum was saying, her face slightly flushed. The wine had gone straight to her head. ‘You said you had something to tell us Hayley and I don’t think I can take the suspense any more. So what is it? Are you going to be treading the boards you clever girl? Or have you landed some amazing modelling contract somewhere?’

‘No Mum,’ said Hayley, rolling her eyes ever so slightly but still smiling. ‘No, the reason Gary and I wanted you all here today … actually hang on a second, where’s Pete?’

‘Oh that bloody boy. Has he buggered off upstairs again? Go and get him would you Mar?’

Martin leapt up to do her bidding and we could hear him in the hall, hollering up the stairs at his son.

As Pete thudded back down the stairs Mum smiled politely at Wendy and Derek before saying, ‘S’cuse my French.’

‘Not at all,’ said Derek, a self-important, ruddy-faced man who I sometimes think fancies Mum. Like father like son with their creepy roving eyes.

Looking thoroughly underwhelmed – his default disposition in life – Pete re-entered the room, only this time he was dressed as a teddy boy, which is how he likes to dress when he goes out with his friends. Or rather, friend. He only has one friend, Josh, that any of us know of anyway.

‘Hello Pete,’ said Wendy, looking disdainfully at him as her eyes swept up and down the length of him, taking in his drainpipe jeans, creeper shoes, long coat jacket and quiff.

Pete grunted. He’s a man of few words.

‘Isn’t he handsome?’ said Mum, girlishly. ‘You can see where he gets his looks from though can’t you,’ she said before striking a pose that she obviously thought made her look like a model.

Martin laughed uproariously. ‘You certainly can, my love.’

I sighed. My family are so weird. From the outside looking in, they probably appear deeply ordinary, an average suburban family, but sometimes I honestly wonder whether I’m adopted. It would explain so very much. And yes, I know everyone goes through phases where they feel like their family isn’t on their wavelength, but I often have moments like this when I feel like mine are a completely different species.

‘So anyway,’ said Hayley, frowning in Mum’s direction. She was perched on Gary’s meaty thigh, looking dainty as anything, and turned back to look at him so tenderly that I think that was the precise second I knew for sure what their news was. I was instantly filled with happy emotion, plus that feeling again that this could be the making of her. Hayley needed someone to love who adored her back and not just because she was pretty.

‘We’re pregnant,’ she announced to the room, unable to conceal the news a second longer.

I knew it.

Wendy instantly leapt from her seat, clearly delighted. All her usual frostiness and affectation vanished as she let the good news infuse her with grandmotherly excitement. I too squealed and raced over to give Hayley a hug. Derek’s reaction was more unusual.

‘What do you mean we’re pregnant? You’re not pregnant are you son?’ he demanded to know, looking utterly thunderstruck in Gary’s direction.

Still, once he’d been reassured that this was a physical impossibility, he too was pleased as punch and there was much backslapping between himself, Gary and Martin. Even Pete managed to mumble something about how having a child had been the single most important thing Elvis had felt he’d done, which coming from him was practically a speech.

‘I’m going to be an aunty,’ I shrieked as I hugged Hayley again and, for the first time in years, I felt her usually tense shoulders relax a little as she hugged me back.

‘I’ll be asking you to babysit all the time,’ she said, her odd manner making this sound more like a threat than she probably meant it to.

‘Any time,’ I said as we pulled apart.

After that there was a sort of happy pause and briefly I wondered what we were all waiting for, and then I realised. We were waiting for Mum. So far she hadn’t said anything and her silence had become conspicuous.

We all ended up staring at her and, finally sensing that something was required of her, she clapped her hands together and widened the rather fixed grin she was wearing even further. ‘Well, well done both of you,’ she said eventually. ‘I’m really pleased. Though don’t think I’m going to let it call me Granny. I’m far too young to be a granny aren’t I Mar? So it’ll be Nana Alli all the way. And when are you due my darling?’

‘Well,’ said Hayley, ‘Strictly speaking I shouldn’t really have told you yet because I’m only eleven weeks so I haven’t had my scan yet, but all being well it’s going to be a November baby, so he or she will be here for Christmas.’

‘Oh,’ came the collective soppy gasp from all of us, apart from Mum who looked vaguely distracted. By this point her luke-warm reaction was starting to annoy me. Apart from anything else I could see Hayley was starting to get wound up by it. I didn’t blame her.

‘Oh, well that’s great,’ she said, looking faintly doubtful. ‘But just thinking aloud then Hayls, you’ll be all right for the first lot of auditions but we might have to work out what to do about the live shows, all being well and you get through of course.’

‘Mum!’ exclaimed Hayley. She looked genuinely shocked. ‘Are you actually thinking about Sing for Britain? Tell me that’s not the first thing that’s entered your head? I know it’s a shame I can’t do it now, but I promise you I’m much, much happier that this is happening.’

I don’t usually feel sorry for Hayley but at that moment I really did. My sister had my future niece or nephew in her belly, Mum’s first grandchild, but all she could think about was her own pipe dream.

‘Course it isn’t love,’ she added hastily. ‘But someone’s got to think about these things don’t they? I mean Beyoncé didn’t just sit back and let her pregnancy ruin everything, did she?’

Hayley looked dumbfounded, but for a second I thought she was going to let Mum’s insanity go, mainly because she usually likes to appear terribly demure around Wendy and Derek. However, perhaps it was all the hormones or something because in the next moment she let rip.

‘Ruin everything? Is that what you really think? That my baby would be ruining things? Ruining what anyway? I’m thirty-three for Christ’s sake and totally sick of going to crap auditions, which I never get. And besides, there’s always next year anyway. This year, however, we’re having a baby Mum. A baby that has taken us two years to make, so which stupidly, I thought you might be pleased about. Especially given I don’t have a fucking career to worry about because I’m not frigging Beyoncé.’

‘Hayley,’ boomed Derek. His ruddy face had taken on a purple hue, so horrified was he by such a display of emotion in public, especially from a female. Little did he know that when not in their presence Hayley likes to swear like a sailor.

‘I’m not sure you should be addressing your mother like that, young lady.’

‘Sorry,’ muttered my sister, instantly horrified to have lost control in front of the in-laws.

Mum looked mildly rebuked but typically wasn’t wise enough to know when to keep her mouth shut. ‘Don’t be silly Hayls,’ she insisted. ‘Having a baby doesn’t have to mean giving up your dreams this year. You don’t want to leave these things too late.’

‘Maybe you should leave it love,’ suggested Martin quietly, which was the most I think he’d ever stood up to her in all the years they’d been together.

‘All right Mar,’ replied Mum stonily, unused to anything that even remotely resembled criticism from him. I noticed she had a creeping patch of redness developing on her chest.

‘Well, we’re all delighted for you Hayley anyway,’ interrupted Wendy, and for once I was firmly on her side. ‘I for one cannot wait to be a granny. It’s unbelievably exciting and I can’t believe you’ve kept it secret this long Gary. Ooh, imagine a little Gary running around at Christmas.’

We all tried, but it was hard. For starters the baby would only just have been born so it being able to run around was unlikely, wasn’t it? Secondly, the thought of a muscular, dwarf baby version of Gary was disturbing. I hoped whoever was in there looked like Hayley.

Later, when they finally all left, it was a relief. Pete skulked out the front door, seconds after their departure. I planned on escaping too, albeit only to my bedroom, but needed a word with Mum first.

‘What did you have to go on about Sing for Britain for?’ I said.

‘Don’t you lecture me,’ she snapped.

‘I’m not lecturing, I’m just saying.’

‘Well don’t. Honestly, I don’t know where I’ve gone wrong with the pair of you. You living at home, single, wasting your life away and now Hayley, throwing away her chance of success.’

I recoiled, stung by her words. ‘That’s out of order,’ I said. ‘And believe you me, being here isn’t ideal for me either.’

‘Er, that’s enough. I’ve had enough shittiness today off Martin, Wendy and Hayley thank you very much,’ said Mum stroppily, hands on hips.

‘I’m sorry if I came on a bit strong love,’ said Martin.

I checked to see whether he was joking. He wasn’t. ‘But Mum,’ I said frustratedly. ‘She’s pregnant. It’s amazing and you should be so excited about it. This is all she’s ever wanted.’

‘And I am happy for her,’ she insisted, not looking it at all. ‘It’s just I want Hayley to have something to fall back on in life. She’s such a talent and it seems criminal that that should go to waste.’ Her bottom lip wobbled slightly.

I gave up. Frankly I was too bloody hung-over. I felt like total shit by now so I went to my room where I got into bed and promptly fell asleep, despite the fact it was only five-thirty in the afternoon. And despite the fact the wind was howling and an almighty storm was brewing outside.

CHAPTER FIVE

FIVE HOURS LATER

When I woke up, groggy from my unscheduled nap, I could never have imagined what lay ahead. Yet here I am, standing outside, in the middle of a huge thunderstorm, trying to compute that my dad is back. My dad is back? It can’t be true. Apart from anything else, if he’s my dad, why is he gripping on to me so hard? It’s too surreal. Just at that point, he finally removes his gloved hand from my mouth at which point, because I don’t fully believe anything he’s telling me, rather unimaginatively, I scream my head off again.

‘Fuck’s sake Marianne,’ the man claiming to be my long-lost father yells, though another crash of thunder ensures I can only just about hear what he’s saying. ‘Stop that flaming screaming will ya? It’s me, your dad. I’m not going to hurt you.’

At this point he lets go of me and spins me around to face him and there, in the blustering gale and rain, I get the first glimpse of him in twenty-seven years.

Immediately I know it’s definitely him. Without any photos – Mum has systematically destroyed all the ones that ever existed of him, even going so far as to cut him out of any group shots – it’s been impossible to preserve much memory of what he looked like, given that I haven’t seen him for so long. And yet I must have retained a handful of residual images, because something deep in the recesses of my mind makes a match with this tall, slightly menacing looking hard man who’s standing before me, dressed top to toe in black, rain pouring down his face. He’s got dark brown, almost black hair, that’s very short at the sides, slicked back on top and receding at the brow. He has green eyes, like me, sharp cheekbones, a nose that looks like it’s been in a few fights in its time and a crooked mouth. It’s my dad, and now that he’s standing before me, bathed in a shaft of harsh, overhead, patio lighting I realise I can’t have forgotten him like I always thought I had, because he looks so familiar. The same, only older, every line on his face visual evidence of the time he’s chosen not to spend with us.

I’m pretty sure at this point that he means me no physical harm but I’m still astonished by what’s happening and wary of what his next move might be. I also can’t stop staring. Probably because, when you’ve wondered about somebody all your life, when finally faced with them in the flesh you need to drink in every detail of them. It’s him and I can’t believe it.

I must be having some out-of-body experience because when someone yells, ‘What the hell are you doing here?’ it takes a few seconds to register that it was me who said it, and that I’m crying. Really crying. In fact, I’m positively sobbing my heart out, probably due to a mixture of shock, anger and fear. Not that I can feel the tears. By this stage it’s raining so hard the two of us couldn’t be any more wet through if we jumped in a lake.

‘Let’s go inside. You’ll catch your death standing out here,’ he orders, his rough Essex accent a voice from a previous lifetime.

‘Not sure Mum would be so keen on that idea,’ I manage to stammer. I’ve never been as cold as I am right now. I’m numb.

‘Get in,’ he insists gruffly.

In the end it’s pointless to resist and, besides, what am I going to do? Send him back into the ether, possibly never to see him again? I have far too many questions to let that happen so I nod and go to slide the door across with numb fingers.

Once we’re both inside he pulls the door shut, which immediately dulls the sound of the driving rain. We both stand there, staring at one another, dripping wet, making a huge puddle on the carpet. All I can think is what now? I have no clue how to proceed, or what to say or do in this strange situation. My head’s swirling, my teeth are chattering. To be fair, I think I’m in shock.

‘Why don’t you get some towels or summink?’ says the man who has had the audacity to announce himself as my dad. Like he has the right.

On autopilot I do as I’m told. I go upstairs, strip my wet clothes off, dry myself and stick on a tracksuit and my slippers, all the while trying to digest the fact that downstairs is my missing parent. It’s a lot to take in and as I make my way back downstairs again I’m half-expecting him to have disappeared.

However, there’s nothing about tonight that correlates with any of my expectations.

Now, as I proceed with caution into the lounge, to my surprise, I find my father has gone into the kitchen and is stirring a pan of milk on the hob. He’s peeled off his soaking wet, leather coat and has dried his face off with a tea towel. I can tell because it’s sitting impertinently on the side, screwed up and discarded, a bit like we have been. He’s taken off his trainers and is in his socks. White sports socks. Now that the initial shock is wearing off, lots of rather more violent emotions start to encroach on my dumb state and the oddly domestic sight of him stirring a pan of milk suddenly enrages me. How dare he do something so ordinary in such an extreme situation? How dare he help himself to our milk, from our fridge? There isn’t anything normal about him coming back like this, so doing something as domestic as making hot beverages shows a blatant lack of respect for the drama he’s inflicting upon me. I feel insulted on Mum’s behalf. Thinking of her only increases the magnitude of what’s happening.

‘See you’ve made yourself at home then,’ I say frostily.

‘Get that down your neck,’ he says, before pouring the hot milk into two mugs and handing one to me. The mug he’s using is Martin’s favourite. Mum gave it to him on Valentine’s Day. It says Hot Stuff on it.

Staring into my own mug I notice my hand is shaking like a leaf. Hot chocolate. How twee. ‘What the hell do you think you were doing?’ I say coldly. ‘Why were you creeping round the house like that? I could have had a heart attack. I thought you were a burglar. Have you got a problem with doorbells or something?’

‘I didn’t mean to scare you. I went round the back ‘cos I wanted to see you on your own, so I waited till your mum and her fella had gone out. Then, I did try the bell as it goes, but there was no answer, so I came round the back again.’

‘But you grabbed me.’

‘’Cos when I reached out you screamed like a banshee.’

As I open my mouth to protest he says, as gently as his gruff voice will permit, ‘Drink your drink.’

Chilled to the bone, slowly I take a sip, only to find that it’s the perfect drink for the situation, hot, sweet and good for my strange state. I let the warm liquid defrost me from the inside but then, not wanting to pussyfoot around any longer, ask in a small voice I hardly recognise, the question I’ve wanted answering since I was a child, ‘Why did you leave us?’

And Ray, that’s his name, and I’m certainly not about to start calling him Dad, turns to me and says, ‘You know, I’ve dreamed of this day, Marianne.’

‘Whatever,’ I retort, hot rage boiling underneath the surface. This man has caused me so much pain my entire life simply by choosing to not be there, so hearing anything he has to say was always going to be hard. Such triteness is inexcusable though. Nothing he can say to me now will ever excuse his absence. As for turning up here unannounced, it’s unacceptable, inappropriate and above all, not bloody fair.

‘What’s your mum told you?’ he says, leaning back against the breakfast bar.

‘Just the basics,’ I fume. ‘That you were a pilot and that you pissed off to Australia because you couldn’t handle family life. Made for a lovely bedtime story I can tell you.’

Ray just stands there staring sadly into his cocoa. Then, to my absolute annoyance, a grin slowly spreads across his big brutish mug and he chuckles. He throws back his massive ugly head and actually laughs.

‘What?’ I say, and at this point I’m beyond seething.

‘Sorry,’ he says. ‘It’s just I can’t believe she said I was a pilot.’

The world tips on its axis and I become keenly aware of the fact that I can’t take much more tonight. She said he was a pilot.

‘Well, what’s so funny about that?’

‘I was never a pilot,’ he says, his face grave once more. ‘Marianne, I don’t know how to tell you this, so I’m just going to come out and say it. I was in prison.’

I don’t believe this is happening. I put my mug down on the side and go to take a seat at the dining table, the one nearest the radiator. Needing time to fully absorb what he’s just said I use warming my hands as a delaying tactic. My head’s spinning and it’s also occurred to me that Mum could be back at any time. I glance back at Ray to see whether he’s joking but he looks deadly serious.

‘Prison?’ I manage eventually, not sure I want to hear anything else he’s got to say. Not convinced I don’t want him to just leave, so I can pretend that none of this ever happened. So that life can continue as … well … not quite normal, but as good as.

‘Yeah. I’m not proud of it, but at least I’ve served my time, though I can honestly say that living with the regret of what I did and what I put you, your sister and your mother through hasn’t been easy. You look so like her by the way. Not the colouring, but around the eyes and that.’