‘Oh, it’s the time, all right. I’m not waiting another eighteen years for further updates, Mum.’ Eliza perched on the table, folding her arms with a glare. ‘This ends tonight. You need to tell me now. Right now.’
Lara’s knees seemed soft and unreliable, as if she might sag to the floor any second. ‘I don’t know where he is, I’m afraid,’ she said. An old film began playing in her head: starring her, running full pelt and tear-stained into Grand Central Station, before coming to a halt outside the Oyster Bar, her hands flying up to clutch her face in dismay. ‘It was over before I knew it,’ she said, her voice thick with regret even after so many years.
‘What? So it was a one-night stand? After the times you’ve nagged me about being careful and respecting myself . . . God, Mum!’ Eliza slammed a fist down on the table, causing the salt and pepper pots to rattle nervously against one another. Then she exhaled loudly and asked in a quieter voice, ‘So who was he?’
Lara bowed her head, trying to gather the pieces of herself back together. ‘His name was – is, presumably – Ben. Ben McManus,’ she replied eventually. It was like reciting an incantation, saying his name aloud after so long, and she almost expected him to materialise at the table on her command, like a storybook demon, complete with sulphurous smoke. ‘And he was from Cambridge originally, although when I met him, he’d been living in Glasgow, then London,’ she went on, pausing as a further wave of memories slapped against her. Him leaning over the table in that Greenwich Village bar, his handsome face animated under the too bright lights as they swapped life stories. The wide grey eyes that his daughter had inherited. ‘Just to complicate things, I met him in New York,’ she added.
Eliza raised an eyebrow, briefly forgetting her fury. ‘What – so I was conceived in New York?’ she asked, interest piqued.
‘Yeah. You were conceived in New York,’ Lara replied tonelessly.
Hunched over her phone, Eliza’s fingers flew in a rapid burst of typing, then she held it up to show Lara the screen. ‘Which of these is him, then? Any of them?’
Lara went over to see, feeling a mix of reluctance and intrigue. She had vowed never to look for him again, not to let him back into her life after what had happened. Whenever he had crossed her mind and she’d been tempted to look him up online, she had refused herself that knowledge. What was the point? It was sure to only rub salt in the wound. And yet now here she was, gaping at the sea of men’s faces on her daughter’s phone, arranged in a grid, like a bingo card or a digital police line-up.
‘Well?’ prompted Eliza, unable to wait any longer. ‘So which Ben McManus do you think is my dad?’
Chapter Three
Kirsten Jensen was sitting at a packed, rowdy dinner table, having a moment of introspection. When you had as big and as noisy an extended family as she did (three sisters-in-law, would you believe, who came with an entire luggage carousel of accompanying baggage), being able to sit there amidst the crowd, smiling and apparently engaging with them while secretly chewing over matters of deep personal interest, was an extremely useful acquired skill. She was, by now, an expert.
Charlotte, whose birthday it was, held court at the head of the table, still red in the face after cooking and serving two massive moussakas, glassy-eyed from wine, recounting a story about accidentally putting on a stranger’s bra after swimming that day, while everyone laughed along. Kirsten too, even though privately she was often horrified at Charlotte’s shambolic approach to life. That said, despite finding her husband’s sisters all pretty aggravating in their own ways (the dramas! The crises! The phone calls at all hours breathlessly recounting the latest saga!), she couldn’t deny there was something impressive about Charlotte’s apparently undampenable optimism. Look at her now, pantomiming her surprise at trying to squeeze into a bra three cup sizes too small followed by the awkwardness of being confronted by the woman whose bra it actually was. And yet this was Charlotte, who’d lost her dad as a teenager, been jilted at the altar by Alec Dunstable (the family still boycotted his butcher’s shop, almost fifteen years later), had had her house repossessed five years ago when her current idiot husband (she knew how to pick ’em) ran up massive gambling debts . . . Life kept throwing stuff at Charlotte and she kept gamely scrambling back on her feet, undaunted. Cheeks flushed, eyes shining, laughing uproariously as she reached the punchline of her bra anecdote.
It made Kirsten wonder why she couldn’t tap into her own vein of contentment with such apparent ease. After all, compared to what Charlotte had been through, she had it made. Both her parents were still alive, she had a satisfying midwifery career and solid marriage, she lived in a nice house and had friends, hobbies and lovely holidays every year. You’d think all the ingredients would be there for life to be, if not a literal palm-tree-fringed paradise, then at least a cheering, stress-free existence. So why didn’t it feel that way?
She’d been in the DIY superstore that afternoon when this thought occurred to her. In truth, it had been lurking close by for some time now, as each day ended with the usual perfunctory kisses in bed, after which she’d lie awake in the darkness with the uncomfortable nudging of the same old questions in her head. Is this it? Is this enough? Now, standing in front of shelves of overpriced, neutral-toned paint, the mood seemed to settle with a new heaviness on her shoulders as if her location was the very epicentre of her ennui, made real. God, just look at you. Choosing between magnolia and vanilla, like it actually matters which bland nothingy shade you paint the downstairs loo. Like that’s all your world has shrunk down to. Who cares?
Her frustration over the limited colour palette must have shown on her face – maybe she had even groaned aloud – because a man nearby turned towards her. ‘All beige, really, aren’t they?’ he’d said, raising an eyebrow. ‘Beige with fancy names. Might as well call them “Boring Bastard” and be done with it, if you ask me.’
Kirsten wasn’t usually one for striking up conversation with complete strangers in public places but she found herself laughing, because it was as if he’d read her mind. The man had a Geordie accent and looked a bit younger than her with scruffy brown hair and a trendy little beard. He’d spent longer on that crappy beard than the rest of him, she thought in amusement, taking in the knackered jeans and black sweatshirt. ‘From one “Boring Bastard” to another,’ she agreed, reaching out to pick up one of the tins. ‘Goose Egg’ it was called, which meant nothing to her. What was so special about a goose egg anyway, that you’d want its shade on your wall? She’d grown up in Milton Keynes; she was pretty sure she’d never even seen a goose egg before.
‘Do you know, when I was a kid,’ he went on, ‘I always thought I’d paint my house red. Or striped. Or, you know, something really bright and interesting. Something fun! Why is it that when we reach adulthood, we all start choosing these dreary non-colours instead?’