Who Do You Think You Are?

I shook my head. ‘It’s over.’ I laughed, humourlessly. ‘Well, you can’t blame him, can you? Forgiveness would be rather a lot to ask after that, wouldn’t you say? Even from someone like Stephen.’

‘He’s a good guy then?’

I nodded. ‘Yeah, he’s a good guy. I should never have married him.’ I shook my head. It really was time to change the subject. Maybe I was trying to be upfront with Ed so that he knew that I wasn’t interested in any romantic funny business with him, but I was worried that I was in danger of coming across as one of those people who wallow constantly in self-pity as a way of mining compliments from the other person. ‘So anyway, we’ve established that neither of us wants to talk about my horrendous personal life. Now let’s try yours. Why didn’t you tell me you were Peter Milton’s brother?’

‘It’s Pete,’ he said, unsmiling. ‘Everyone called him Pete. The only ones who didn’t were Mum and Dad.’ ‘And they’re both gone now’, remained unspoken.

‘OK, then why didn’t you tell me you were Pete Milton’s brother?’

‘So you would take me seriously,’ he said. I rolled my eyes at him, even though I knew that if he had come to my desk with this query and told me it was about a member of his family I would have filed him with Dolly’s Who Do You Think You Are? nuts and hardly given him the time of day. ‘And also – ’ he spread his hands ‘ – I’m not ashamed of who I am, I’m not. Or where I come from. And I hate to admit it, but – I didn’t want you to know that I was from Oldfield, or that my family were miners, or that my brother was that guy who went missing among all sorts of dirty rumours.’ I opened my mouth to protest. ‘Remember,’ he said, gently mocking, ‘you are very London.’

I faked a frown. ‘I am not London, we’ve been through this. I grew up here too. I remember the strike, I remember what went on.’

‘Yes, sure, but – well, what did your mum and dad do?’

That past tense never failed to sting. I would never get used to it. ‘They were teachers. Then when they retired they bought a shop – do you know Apple Tree Books? The one with the café?’ He nodded. ‘That was theirs. But – ’ I could see him about to say something else ‘ – I know what you’re thinking, what does this middle class girl know about being from a pit community? And I don’t know anything really, you’re right. But I think I might understand a bit. Mum and Dad – Mum especially – they got really involved during the strike. They even went down to the picket lines a few times. And they were heavily into the welfare side of it. They used to bring food, cook food, donate clothes and stuff. Not in a Lady Bountiful kind of way, just – she cared, she wanted to help, she thought it was the right thing to do. Believe me, I couldn’t care less where you’re from.’

His eyes narrowed affectionately and the whole of the middle of my body felt warm once that smile hit his lips. ‘I can tell that now,’ he said, smiling, and my stomach heaved with something close to pleasure.

Chapter 5 Ed

Tash finished her glass of wine and went to the toilet while she waited for the next one, allowing me time to mull things over. It was going well, I decided. All this intimacy and soul baring, this sharing of our pasts, was, in my experience, a good sign on a second date. These were dates weren’t they? Were they?

Later I walked her to the taxi rank and when a taxi arrived and I ushered her into it I thought about kissing her goodnight – you know, properly, on the lips and everything – but it seemed I must have thought about it for too long because the next thing I knew, she was manoeuvring herself into her seat while giving me a hasty peck at the top of my cheek, near my ear, the way you might to an old school friend you’d run into by chance. And then she was gone before we could arrange to meet again.

Despite this, I was sure this time, with a confidence I never normally felt, that if I were to ask to see her again, she would say yes. I was glad I’d told her about Pete and Mum and Dad. Not that I’d planned it, not that I’d wanted to use them in that way, but I think it had been something – albeit something miserable – that we could hold in common, that put us both on the same team.

So I waited the obligatory couple of days then texted her to see if she wanted to go out again. I had wanted to go into the library and ask her in person – because I wanted to see her as soon as I could, to get another look at her, hear her voice again – but I held back. Texting would give out a stronger message, I decided, prove that this wasn’t only to do with work, that it could also be a purely social – purely romantic? – relationship.

After the fumbled non-kiss on the cheek, I was becoming increasingly, uncomfortably aware of our lack of physical contact so far, other than an arm round her or a brief holding of hands during emotionally charged conversations. Before things progressed too far towards the cul-de-sac of Just Good Friends, I decided to make my intentions clear by suggesting a meal at one of Doncaster’s few fancy restaurants and by arranging it for a Saturday night. Saturday nights were about couples and exclusivity, they were a precious resource you only spent with someone you valued. ‘I really, really like you’, I wanted to say. ‘This is special treatment. I haven’t put this much thought into taking a woman out for several years – possibly ever.’ The idea was to stop short of saying, ‘Please like me too, I’m desperate’.

She said yes, to my intense relief – replied almost straight away, in fact – and I spent most of the week looking forward to Saturday with agitated excitement. I dithered for a while over what to wear – something of a pointless exercise as the only constituents of my current wardrobe that were suitable for Doncaster in early summer were two shirts, two light jumpers (one of which had a hole under the armpit, one of which had gone an odd purple colour in the wash), a pair of jeans and a pair of combat trousers that had been left in my flat in Dubai by a previous tenant, and which I had adopted when an old pair wore out. I got my hair cut. I had a proper wet shave. I bought condoms – I knew that I was tempting fate, but if and when my chance came, I wanted to be able to capitalise on it straight away.

I got to the restaurant early, just in case. Tash struck me as the sort of person who liked to be on time for things, and I didn’t want to risk keeping her waiting. I was right, kind of. She turned up at four minutes past eight; just late enough to prevent her looking unattractively keen, not late enough to be rude. She had, I decided, probably walked round the block a few times to make sure she wasn’t early.

The restaurant was perfect, all heavy linens and artful table centres and barely audible mood music. This, as I had hoped, was very obviously a place you brought someone you wanted to have sex with. Tash looked beautiful, tall and lovely in a black dress with a red scarf and red cardigan and red lipstick. It was, I realised, the first time I’d seen her wearing make-up. My heart thumped in anticipation as I realised that she was making an effort too. Hopefully this night would end the way we both seemed to want it to.

‘So how are things going in your search for the long lost brother?’ she asked me after the waiter had brought our bottle of Chianti.

I felt slightly deflated. I had wanted to try and find some alternative topic of conversation, some way of drawing her closer and finding out more about what was behind the scary spectacles and the teenage-goth pallor. ‘Not so bad, I suppose. I’ve been through all that stuff you gave me – which has been great, by the way – ’ She smiled and my heart jumped so much it made me cough ‘ – but not much new has come up since then. I’m going to try and talk to a few more people – you know, friends, neighbours – to see if I can throw any light on this Edgarsbridge stuff.’

She nodded. ‘So you think it’s true then? That he was working during the strike?’

I shrugged. ‘I think it’s the most likely explanation, don’t you? I’m going to assume it’s true until I can find evidence that indicates otherwise.’ I sounded, I was pleased to note, smooth and professional. It was true, I did think it was the most likely explanation. Unfortunately, if it were true, then it threw up a hundred million new questions, none of which I knew how to answer. Nor did it chime with the treasured ideal I had held all these years of my brother as a flawless, blameless hero.

‘So – ’ Her face was questioning. ‘How do you feel about that?’

‘About what?’

‘About, you know, him being a scab.’

I narrowed my eyes. It was an emotive choice of words. ‘I don’t know,’ I said truthfully. ‘But I do know that, if it was true, then he must have had a good reason. Pete would never have done that without a good reason.’

Tash frowned. ‘How good a reason can it have been? He was single, he had no kids, no mortgage, no rent even.’

‘He paid the rent,’ I protested. ‘He chipped in: him, Mum and Leanne, they all shared it. Me and Lisa were still at school. Anyway, what is this? I thought I was meant to be the journalist here. I’m used to being the one asking the uncomfortable questions.’ I tried a laugh and so did she but I think we both knew our hearts weren’t in it.

‘I know,’ she said, ‘I’m sorry. I’m not trying to be awkward. And yes, I didn’t know your brother at all. I just meant, you know, he didn’t have a family to support, he didn’t have many overheads. Some people, I suppose, you could just about understand them going back, but – ’ She became aware of the look on my face and she squeezed her eyes shut. ‘Look, Ed, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to say that your brother was, I don’t know, taking the easy way out, I just – ’

‘What did you mean,’ I said coldly, ‘when you said you could “just about” understand some people going back.’

She leaned back in her chair, away from me. Suddenly the quiet of the restaurant became oppressive and I wondered if the other diners were listening to our conversation. ‘Well,’ she said steadily, as though consciously regulating her tone, ‘I guess I meant that some things are wrong, and we all know they’re wrong, but people sometimes do them anyway, and sometimes there are understandable reasons for that.’

‘So you’re comparing going to work to feed your family with something like robbing a bank, is that what you’re saying?’

She winced. ‘No, no, that isn’t what I’m saying, not at all. I just meant that – I don’t know what I meant.’ She fell silent a moment, swirling the black-red wine around her glass. Then, as I was about to speak, she said, ‘No, what I meant was, that they did a lot of harm, the people who went back, they undermined what everyone else was fighting for. And I think that, unless you had a good reason for it, then it’s pretty hard to justify.’

‘To justify? Justify to whom? To you? You and your middle-class, idealistic family? To Scargill and his gang of nutters? Look, my brother went out on strike for that whole year, and I saw firsthand how hard it was. No money, no prospect of another job, no future. But there were others on our estate and round the village, families where someone had gone back – they had to, they had kids, they had lives. They had to. And it was just as hard for them – other people in the village made sure it was. It was a whole generation ago and there’s people who still won’t speak to them, who spit on the pavement when they go past. I don’t know how you can say it was the easy option.’ I was aware that my voice was significantly louder than when I had started speaking. I wanted to make some conciliatory gesture, to show that I wasn’t angry really, that this was just a theoretical debate, that I’d still very much like to go home with her tonight, please, if she wouldn’t mind. But the trouble was, I was angry, and I know it must have shown in my face.

Tash shook her head, trying to be the conciliatory one. ‘Look,’ she said, her tone flat. ‘Maybe we shouldn’t talk about this any more. It’s like you said, it was a long time ago, but it’s still a topic probably best avoided in polite company. Why don’t you tell me more about Dubai? It’s somewhere I’ve never been.’

So I did. I told her about the footballers and champagne bars and mile-high, half-finished buildings, built by men from Bangladesh who slept twelve to a room and couldn’t afford proper shoes. I told her about shops full of gold, and sports cars being sold for half their true value because their owners had gone bankrupt and were having to go back to the UK, cap-in-hand. But the spell, if it had existed, was broken. She laughed at my jokes, and asked intelligent questions, and she acted for the rest of the evening as though our disagreement had not happened, but I think we both had a slightly sour taste in our mouths when we left the restaurant.

I offered to walk her home, still holding out a faint hope, but she dismissed the offer as though I hadn’t really meant it, and walked off in the opposite direction to me, with a wave over her shoulder and a ‘See you later’.

My mood was not improved by the walk into town past drunken schoolchildren and stinking kebab shops, nor by the half-hour wait for the bus back to Leanne’s. When I got in, Lisa was there, drinking tea and watching TV.

‘Where’s Leanne?’ I asked.

‘Outside,’ Lisa said, with a jerk of her head. ‘Having a fag.’

I really wanted to go up to bed and be alone, but I don’t get to see Lisa very often – largely because I make little effort to do so – and I felt as if I ought to at least pass the time of day with her now, so I sat down. It’s not that Lisa and I don’t get on but I’m just not close with her, not like I am with Leanne. Lisa and I are similar: slim, quiet, self-contained, sandy-haired and fair-skinned. We take after our dad. Leanne and Pete are short, dark and dominate every room and every conversation, whether they intend to or not, the same as Mum used to. Lisa and I tend to rely on Leanne to bring out the more relaxed, life-loving side of ourselves. When it’s just the two of us, the conversation is usually either awkwardly stilted, or it’s non-existent.

‘So, Leanne says you’re still going on about our Pete.’

I rolled my eyes. ‘I’m not “going on about” him. I’m doing some research. I’m trying to find him.’ Her tone hadn’t been overtly hostile, not like Leanne’s the other day, but I could tell she too was unconvinced that my whole project was a good idea.

‘I know,’ she said, looking me in the eye – something, I realised, she rarely did. ‘But why? What do you think you’re going to find out that nobody else has found out these last twenty year?’

I was silent a moment. ‘That’s what Leanne said, too. But I just want to try, you know?’

‘What, a last ditch effort?’

I shrugged. ‘Something like that.’ I rubbed my hands down my face, searching for a way to explain why I was doing what I was doing. ‘I mean, twenty years is a long time. People will have forgotten about it or at least stopped thinking about it as much. If I can do something to stir it up a bit, even if that just means writing a little piece for the Donny Free Press then it might help us find him. Don’t you think?’

‘Who, though? Whose memory are you trying to jog? Everyone who ever met him?’

‘Well, yeah. Why not? I mean even you and Leanne, I know you both still think about him all the time, same as I do, but people bury things, put them away, choose not to look at them. We all do it. And, you know, by us talking about it, even just this here, tonight, maybe that’ll make one of us think twice about something that happened back then, maybe some pieces will fall into place that never have before.’

Lisa was still looking me in the eye, and the coolness of her stare unnerved me. I couldn’t tell if she was angry or sad, or simply uninterested. ‘Maybe,’ she said quietly. ‘Maybe you’re right.’

Leanne came into the room through the back kitchen, trailing chilly evening air and stale cigarette smoke. ‘Good night?’ she asked me, barely suppressing a wink.

Lisa grinned, the coolness of our conversation instantly thawed by Leanne’s presence, both of them sensing yet another opportunity to gang up on me. ‘Yeah, hot date wasn’t it?’

I pursed my lips. I wasn’t ready for this. ‘No, we’re just – ’

‘What?’ Leanne interrupted. ‘Don’t tell me the sexy librarian was too buttoned up to put out, even after three dates. You’re losing your touch, bro.’

‘It’s not that,’ I protested. ‘I just don’t want to sit around here discussing it with you two like some bad episode of Loose Women.’

Lisa laughed, though whether with me or at me, I wasn’t sure.

‘Where are you going?’ Leanne barked at me as I stood up.

‘To bed.’

‘Wait, I want to ask you something first.’ She was either insensible to my mood, or it was something really important.

I sighed. ‘What?’

Leanne glanced sideways at Lisa, who gave a subtle nod. ‘Are you doing anything tomorrow night?’

‘No.’ I squinted quizzically at the pair of them. ‘I’m never doing anything.’

‘I thought you might be out with that library woman again.’

‘Her name’s Tash. And no, I’m not out with her tomorrow.’ The way things went tonight, I wouldn’t be going out with her ever again.

‘So, do you want to come out with me?’

For a moment, I was too shocked to speak. I was the dorky younger brother. I had longed to be invited along to places by Pete or Leanne – even by Lisa – when they were all well-dressed, sophisticated teenagers and I was a pathetic swotty bookworm who couldn’t even ride a bike, but the invitations had never materialised. Here one was being proffered on a plate, and I was naturally wary. It had to be a trap.

‘Where?’ My suspicion was well-founded. I could not recall a night out with Leanne that had not involved biker pubs, hairy rock bands, maximum strength cider and someone making me look at their new tattoo.

‘Round the town, just with me and a few of the girls. You said yourself, you’re always stuck in the house, you should get out more.’

I narrowed my eyes. ‘Are you trying to – ’

‘Look,’ she cut in, holding up a hand, ‘I’m not trying to set you up with anyone, it’s just there’s this girl I know from work, Helen. She manages one of the care homes, she’s single and I reckon she’d be your type.’

‘My type?’ I tried to keep my face neutral but must have failed.

‘Don’t worry,’ Leanne said mockingly, ‘she’s nothing like me.’ I opened my mouth to speak. ‘Or like any of my other mates either. She’s nice. Honestly, I think you’d like her.’ She looked to Lisa for backup.

‘She is,’ Lisa said, nodding earnestly. ‘I’ve met her. She’s dead normal. Honest.’

‘And how do you know I’m even looking for a girlfriend?’

‘Why wouldn’t you be?’ Leanne snorted. ‘You just said, nothing’s happening with this librarian woman and you told me she’s not even divorced yet. Anyway, when was the last time you had a girlfriend? You can’t tell me you’re not getting a bit desperate.’

‘I had a girlfriend in Dubai,’ I protested, which was true after a fashion. I’d had an ongoing understanding with Jen, one of the other journalists on my magazine that whenever we were drunk, bored or horny – or, more usually, all three – we would meet up on some pretext then, pretending we had never intended such an unseemly outcome, have a quick and uncomplicated shag. I had liked Jen, in a slightly awe-struck way. She had seemed impossibly posh to me – albeit posh in what politicians would call a middle-class way. She was like someone from a university prospectus or a youth TV presenter, all unkempt hair and board shorts and oversized hoodies, spending her whole life looking perfect, as if she had just got out of bed, only she smelled sweet and clean, and she was always wearing eye make-up. She was by far the best-looking woman I had ever been involved with, but she was nearly ten years younger than me and more interested in wallowing in the boozy ex-pat lifestyle than in any kind of serious relationship. We had slept together the night before we both returned to England and exchanged email addresses out of a sense of duty, but neither of us had initiated contact in the months since.

‘Yes, well,’ said Leanne, ‘maybe you did.’ She clearly wasn’t sure she believed me. ‘But you obviously don’t any more. So come with me, see if you like Helen. What have you got to lose? Worst that’ll happen is you’ll have a night out in Donny.’

‘Yeah,’ I muttered. ‘Well, that’s bad enough, isn’t it?’

Leanne tutted. ‘You’re like an old man. It’s better than sitting here, isn’t it? Watching bloody Question Time or whatever it is you insist on putting on.’

Lisa nodded. ‘She’s right, Ed. You may as well live a little.’

I sighed. ‘All right. OK. Why not?’ They exchanged a triumphant glance. ‘Can I go to bed now?’

Chapter 6 Tash

I didn’t contact Ed the week after the date, but I thought about him a lot, growing ever more dejected as I did so. For one mad moment when I had first walked in and sat down, as I took in the restaurant, and the wine, and the candles, all of it pointing to only one thing, I had had that thought again, the same as I had had when I said goodbye to him after the first time we went out. I thought, God, you know, I could. I could go home with him, or bring him home with me. I could have good old-fashioned bouncy, fun sex with a man who wasn’t Tim or Stephen and none of this other awful shit that ruined my life would have to matter any more. My heart had beat harder and there had been a tremor in my fingers and I had been really, really glad I’d put lipstick on. And it was just such a come-down, such a pathetic waste of heavy sexual tension and posh cloth napkins that we had ended up pompously bickering like a couple of undergraduate tutorial partners.

After an obligatory few days of sulking and self-loathing, I became seized by an almost frantic desire to, I don’t know, improve somehow. Improve the situation or improve myself, but improve something. It was the feeling you get after a lost weekend of booze and curries and unnecessary taxis; the urge to clean up, start afresh, and never let things descend to such a state again.

I hadn’t yet sorted out anything of Mum and Dad’s, other than basic tidying and hiding of stuff I found too upsetting to have on permanent view, but the following weekend I began to feel that perhaps I might be capable of it, that, in fact, I had probably reached a point where I needed to do it.

My parents had moved into the house as newly-weds forty years ago and, as far as I could see, had never thrown anything out since. Every one of the house’s eight rooms had cupboards whose contents I had lived my whole life in ignorance of. I hadn’t a clue where to start with tackling this mountain of possessions but I got up on the Saturday morning a week after our date, determined that start I would.

I knew I only had the morning to go at it as Geri had arranged to pick me up after lunch and take me to the park to help her spend an afternoon trying to exhaust her kids, so I began early. I’d been up since five anyway.

I decided to begin with the room that we had always called the dining room, despite it being more of a study. The family did all their eating at the large kitchen table. The dining room was lined with bookshelves from waist-level and above, with wooden built-in cupboards rising to meet them from floor level. I ignored the books. They were at once too easy and too difficult to deal with at a time when I was feeling so purposeful. I concentrated on the cupboards, starting with the one next to the French windows and working round them methodically.

The first cupboard was filled with a whole lot of nothing very much: comically dated 1970s crockery and tableware, half-empty boxes of Christmas crackers, a huge packet of paper doilies that I couldn’t imagine my mum ever having any use for. Still I found myself floundering in the face of so much of it. I emptied the contents of the cupboard onto the floor, then sat and looked at it for about twenty minutes. What was I expected to do now? What would they have wanted me to do with all this stuff? Keep it as a memento? Sell it? Take it to the charity shop? Take it to the tip? This particular pile held little sentimental value for me – indeed, I had no recollection of ever seeing most of it before – but still I did not feel I could just chuck it out. Some of it might be saleable in a kitsch, retro kind of way. Was I supposed to put it on eBay myself and donate the profits to Mum and Dad’s charity of choice – several had received generous bequests in their will – or should I take it down to a charity shop and let them sell it, even if it was for a charity that might not have been top of their list? Unable to make a decision, I divided the stuff into two piles: bin and sell. I put the ‘sell’ stuff back in the cupboard and moved on to the drawer above it.