The Long Weekend (29 page)

He laughed, but it didn’t fool her.

‘I didn’t bring it because I thought it was valuable,’ she told him. ‘And I know who it is. It’s my mother. She was at the school. It must have been drawn not long before I was born.’

There wasn’t a flicker of reaction.

‘Really?’ he asked, and a note of hostility had crept into his tone.

‘Yes,’ said Laura, and she leant in towards him. ‘And I brought it because I think you might be my father.’

He gazed at her in absolute astonishment, the horror on his face almost comical. Then he gave a splutter, something between a laugh and a cough.

‘Oh, dear God. Oh, my dear girl.’ He sat back and ran his hands through what was left of his hair. ‘How on earth could I be your father? Wendy and I were already married when I was at St Benedict’s. I’d have been old enough to be . . . your
mother’s
father. Almost. Whatever made you think . . .?’

Laura snatched up the drawing and waved it at him.

‘She kept this. With all her important stuff. And the dates add up. She was about to do her A-levels when she got pregnant. You were her teacher. Why else would she keep it a secret who my father was? If it had just been some random boy, she’d have told me. But she must have wanted to cover it up . . . Of course she could never tell anyone. An affair with a teacher – that’s pretty scandalous.’

She realised she was ranting. She stopped. Tony nodded politely.

‘It certainly would be,’ he replied. ‘If it were the case.’

Laura looked down at the picture, her only scrap of evidence. She took a deep breath and carried on.

‘Look at this,’ she said. ‘It’s not just a sketchy life drawing done in a school studio. Look at her face. Look at the way it’s drawn. Whoever did this was in love with my mother. And she was in love with them. You can see that in her eyes.’

She was almost in tears, racked with the emotion. The effort of wanting her theory to be proved right.

‘Look,’ said Tony. ‘I understand how much you want to find out who your father is. It’s a very powerful instinct, to want to know who we are and where we come from. But I’m very sorry. I’m not your man.’ He spread his hands on the table in front of him, looking down at his long, tanned fingers. ‘I can tell you this with absolute certainty because . . .’ He looked up, squinting in the bright sun. ‘This isn’t easy. I don’t speak about it often. But . . . Wendy and I were never able to have children. We tried for years. We had all the tests. I’m totally infertile. So you see . . . it can’t be me. No matter how much you want it to be.’

‘Oh.’ The breath came out of Laura as if she’d been punched in the back.

‘Quite apart from the fact that I didn’t have a relationship with your mother. She was a pupil. It would have been a total abuse of my position.’

They sat in silence for a moment. The seagulls were still wheeling.

‘Come on,’ said Tony. ‘Let’s go inside and make a cup of tea.’

After Colin and Chelsey had finished their shopping spree, Chelsey had insisted she didn’t want an all-singing, all-dancing excursion. All she wanted to do was go to the beach. And so when they went back to the Townhouse to drop off their purchases, Colin asked the kitchen if they could pack up a picnic, which Fred and Loz duly did – chicken sandwiches and mini quiche lorraines and tubs of fruit salad and the rest of Luca’s blueberry friands – and together they set off with buckets and spades and fishing nets for Neptune’s Cove, a tiny crescent of golden sand at the mouth of the river, sheltered by cliffs on both sides.

Chelsey seemed quite content to just potter about, poking around in the tidal rock pools and splashing in the shallows. Such was her delight that Colin soon realised that she had rarely been given permission to behave like a child. He certainly couldn’t imagine Karen packing up a picnic and sitting on the beach all day with her. But he was more than happy to. He rented a couple of deckchairs for them to make their camp, and watched her as she explored, going over when she waved to him to come and see what she had found, making sure she had enough sun cream on, traipsing over to the ice cream van for a 99 each when it got too hot.

By the middle of the afternoon, freckles had started to come out on her nose and her skin was already beginning to turn gold. She looked, he thought, like a healthy, happy kid on holiday, not the pallid, downtrodden creature he had picked up the day before. She had lost that horrible air of solemnity she seemed to carry with her and seemed a little more carefree. How much that had to do with Karen not being around, he couldn’t be sure. But she had definitely come to life since her mother had left the scene. She was totally engrossed in gathering up shells, wiping the sand from them carefully and putting them in her bucket.

He couldn’t help feeling that at eleven, she was a bit old for shell-gathering. But then she didn’t seem to have had much of a childhood at all, so perhaps she was making up for lost time. Over the course of the day he’d managed to extricate as full a picture as he could of her life, and it seemed pretty grim.

Karen, it seemed, never helped her daughter with her homework or turned up to parents’ evening. Chelsey’s diet revolved around McDonald’s, Subway and Domino’s – she seemed proud that she knew how to phone for a pizza. And she seemed to spend a lot of time being dumped at other people’s houses. Colin was furious. Furious with Karen and furious with himself. He should have taken control years ago. He should have taken more interest; he should have made the money he gave her conditional on certain things. He should have monitored Chelsey’s school reports.

He should, in short, have been the father she so desperately needed. Was it too late? No, he thought. It was never too late. Chelsey still had a sweet nature and a desire to please. There was time to turn her life round. Get her a decent education and nurture her. Like Michelle and Ryan had been nurtured. He hadn’t missed a single parents’ evening for either of them, no matter how hard he had been working.

He pulled out his phone. He had twenty-four/seven access to both his accountant and his solicitor. He paid them enough to be able to call them whenever he liked. Not that he often called them out of hours – Colin didn’t operate like that – but he considered this an emergency. Martin Crane wouldn’t mind. He’d drawn up the contract for every deal Colin had ever done since he started in business. Every year without fail, Colin sent him a Christmas cake laced with Courvoisier from the bakery.

Martin answered on the second ring.

‘Colin,’ he said crisply, fully alert. ‘What can I do for you?’

‘I need help,’ Colin responded. ‘It’s probably not your line of work, but you should be able to find me the right man for the job. Or woman.’

‘Do you want to put me in the picture?’ Martin asked.

Colin hesitated. Then took the plunge. He’d spent enough time trying to sweep Chelsey under the carpet.

‘I’ve got an illegitimate daughter. Eleven years old. I’ve been paying a grand a month maintenance her whole life. Her mum’s done a bunk. Left me holding the baby, so to speak. And I want custody, as of . . . yesterday.’

‘Is your name on the birth certificate?’

‘I imagine so.’ Colin felt sure Karen wouldn’t have forgotten this trick in her quest to score money from him.

‘And you’re sure you are the father?’

Colin’s stomach lurched. This thought hadn’t occurred to him. But of course he couldn’t be sure. Karen could have been stringing along any number of fools like him. For all he knew, she was claiming maintenance from half a dozen hapless idiots.

He looked over at Chelsey. She was lying on her towel now, iPod earphones in, knees bent, her feet tapping in time to the music.

Of course she was his. Karen was manipulative and opportunistic, but not that evil. And probably not even that clever.

‘Positive,’ he said, because he had to believe it.

‘Okay. What you need is a shit-hot family lawyer. We’re probably looking at getting a parental responsibility order, which might mean going to court. Depending on whether the mother cooperates. Be prepared for it to get messy – these things are never straightforward.’

‘I’m ready for it.’ Colin felt calm. Resolute. ‘And by the way, Alison doesn’t know anything. Yet.’

He heard Martin give a huff, as if to say, ‘I don’t envy you, mate’.

‘I’m on it. It’s a bank holiday weekend, so it might be a while before I get anyone, but I’ll call you back as soon as,’ said Martin, and rang off.

Colin knew that by Tuesday he would have the best man or woman for the job at his disposal. He would just have to hope that Karen didn’t reappear on the scene before then, having had a change of heart. He wanted this to be a clean operation, and by staying away, Karen was giving him plenty of rope.

There was one more call he had to make. One he wasn’t looking forward to in the least. He pressed ‘Home’ on his mobile, and waited for his wife to answer.

‘Hello?’ Alison always answered the phone with a querying tone, as if she was puzzled as to why anyone would want to call.

‘Alison, love, it’s me,’ he said.

‘Oh, hello.’ She sounded pleased to hear him. ‘You’ve just caught me. I was on my way into town.’

‘Listen, I need you to get in the car. Drive down to the Townhouse by the Sea in Pennfleet.’

‘What’s happened?’ Her pleasure turned to alarm. ‘Are you okay?’

‘Yes. Yes, I’m fine. There’s just something I need to talk to you about.’

‘Can’t you come home?’

‘No.’ On this Colin was firm. ‘No. I’ll book us a table for dinner. Be here as soon as you can.’

‘Can’t you tell me over the phone?’

‘I need to see you. Face to face.’

‘Okay.’ She sounded perplexed and a little put out. ‘The Townhouse in Pennfleet? Isn’t that Cornwall? I thought you were in Bristol?’

‘No.’ His so-called conference did exist. He kept his alibi as watertight as he could. He’d even bought a three-day ticket. But he’d never darkened the door of the exhibition.

There was silence while Alison digested this information.

‘Right.’ She didn’t sound too thrilled. ‘Well, if you’re not going to enlighten me, I’ll be as quick as I can, I suppose.’

Laura sat inside at the breakfast bar while Tony made her a cup of tea.

She felt utterly mortified by her outburst. Her instinct was to run away and never come back, but Tony had been so calm and non-judgemental. A lot of people would have sent her away with a flea in her ear, she thought, but he seemed to take it in his stride, as if he was used to unhinged young women hurling accusations at him.

It was such a shame, she thought, that he wasn’t her father. The house he and Wendy shared had such a calm and inviting feel to it. It was somewhere she would have loved to take refuge every now and again – long, sunny weekends by the sea to break up the monotony of working in London. Her job was such a treadmill, increasingly pressurised, and although of course she could book weekends away, it involved too much effort and forward planning. But knowing she could slip down to Pennfleet for a much-deserved rest any time she liked would have been perfect . . .

She and Dan. She felt sure Tony would like Dan.

She told herself to stop fantasising. It wasn’t going to happen. She was going to have to go back to the drawing board. Tony might not be her father, she mused, but he had been her mother’s teacher, all those years ago. He might be able to provide her with a clue.

‘There you go, Emma.’ He put a large mug of tea in front of her, and reached for the biscuit tin.

‘Actually,’ Laura admitted sheepishly, ‘my name’s not Emma. I gave you a false name. Emma Stubbs is my best friend. My name’s Laura Starling.’ She leant forward with urgency. ‘My mother was Marina. Marina Starling. Are you sure you don’t remember her?’

Tony screwed up his face. ‘I’ve got a vague recollection . . . it’s an unusual name. But you have to make allowances.’ He gave a self-deprecating grin. ‘I am getting old, after all. Sometime I can’t even remember what I had for breakfast this morning.’

‘But you did do this drawing of her,’ Laura persisted. ‘It must have been you – it’s got your signature on it.’

He shrugged.

‘She probably did some modelling. Things were different in those days. And if we had a life-drawing class, of course I would draw the model as well. To show the students how it should be done.’ Another self-deprecating grin. ‘In theory.’

Laura looked down at the picture.

‘I wonder why she kept it, then?’

Tony shrugged. ‘Girls of that age love to keep things, don’t they? They’re magpies.’

‘Maybe she had a crush on you?’ Laura’s eyes were wide with the possible scandal.

‘I doubt it. I had a bit more hair in those days, but I wasn’t exactly a heart-throb.’ He pushed the tin of shortbread over to her. ‘There you go. I always find a bit of sugar helps after an emotional outburst.’

‘Oh God. I’m so sorry. You must think I’m a complete lunatic.’ Laura laughed despite herself.

‘Hey. No problem.’ Tony took a sip of his tea. ‘I’m rather flattered I was the chief suspect. It makes me feel more interesting than I really am.’

‘And you don’t remember anything about her class? It must have been your A-level class. You don’t remember anything about who she hung out with? Anyone who might be able to give me a clue . . .?’ Laura couldn’t resist pressing him for more information.

Tony shook his head. ‘It was a big school. I was only there a couple of terms. I didn’t really get to know who was in and who was out.’

Disappointed, and feeling no further on with her investigation, Laura drank her tea as quickly as she could.

‘Shall we go and finish your painting?’ Tony asked her as she put down her cup.

‘I think it’s better if I just go,’ she said.

‘Are you sure? You were doing so well.’

Laura hesitated.

‘Come on. No hard feelings,’ Tony tried to persuade her. ‘I don’t want you to waste your money. And Wendy will think it strange if you disappear.’

‘No. I’m going to go back to the hotel. My boyfriend will be back soon. We haven’t been away like this before. I want to make the most of the upgrade . . .’