Perfectly Ordinary People(119)

‘I think you mentioned this once before. This is the last time you ever dropped in unexpectedly, right? Mum said something about it once.’

Dad nodded.

‘So what happened?’

He fidgeted in his seat. Visibly, the memory still made him feel uncomfortable. ‘It was nothing really specific, more an atmosphere.’

‘OK . . .’

‘We bumped into Dad in the stairwell. Your grandad was coming down, and he made this big, strange fuss about coming back upstairs and then knocking on their door to tell them we were visiting, but that we were going up to his for a cuppa first . . . It was all a bit false. A bit theatrical, if you know what I mean. It made no sense.’

‘He warned them through the front door, you mean? He warned them you were coming?’

‘Yes, looking back, I suppose that’s what it was. And so we went to his and had a drink, and then when we finally got to theirs, you could tell they were all flustered. That’s it, really. There was never anything concrete. Just a strange feeling.’

‘But you suspected.’

‘I think I must have. I felt awkward about it anyway. I mean, she was supposed to be Mum’s cousin, remember. In those days, two women . . . that would have been enough to make most people feel uncomfortable. But on top of everything else, Ethel was her cousin, so that was two taboos for the price of one, really. At any rate, that’s what I believed.’

‘Because that’s what they’d told you.’

‘Exactly.’

‘So you stopped calling round.’

‘Yeah. I just kind of didn’t want to anymore. And I always felt a bit strange about Ethel after that. It seemed liked she’d . . . I don’t know . . . seduced her, I suppose. And taken her away from Dad. He seemed like he didn’t even have the balls to care, too, and that really annoyed me. We know better now, of course, but that was how it seemed.’

‘And to top it all Ethel stole her away to Brighton . . .’

‘Yes. I suppose that’s how I felt. I tried not to analyse it too much, because, like I say, I was never very comfortable with it. I mean, now we know Ethel wasn’t her cousin at all. So it’s not so bad. Not bad at all, I suppose. But . . . it’s hard to put into words. I never thought that clearly about all of this. But something about the two of them always made me feel a bit funny.’

‘And Mum? What did she think?’

‘She never really said anything specific. She said something like, “That was strange.”’

‘Strange?’

‘Yes, as we were leaving, she said, “Well, that was strange.” And one time, I think she said there was something dodgy about the two of them.’

‘Sounds like Mum.’

‘Yes. But anyway, enough of that. I don’t want to be . . . I mean, I’m not being homophobic or whatever you call it – at least I’m trying not to be – but it still makes me feel a bit queasy, if I’m honest.’

‘Sure,’ I said. ‘That’s OK. That’s probably normal too. Because it doesn’t fit with what they told you the whole time you were growing up, does it?’

‘No. That’s what the shrink said.’

‘He was good was he, the shrink?’

‘She,’ Dad said. Then he nodded and shrugged at the same time as he reached for the menu. ‘Yes, I think so. And now I’m hungry.’

‘OK,’ I said, forcing a laugh. ‘So what are we ordering, Monsieur Frenchman?’



The next morning we met for breakfast in the hotel restaurant before checking out and dragging our cases around the corner to Hertz, where a sexy Frenchman handed us the keys to a Clio.

Dad offered to drive and I was happy to let him do so. He seemed at ease negotiating the roads out of Bordeaux, and when I commented on this he reminded me of the many holidays when he’d driven us around Spain, so we chatted about our memories of those trips for a while.

Most of the journey was motorway and the landscape was flat and dull. I don’t know quite what I was expecting – perhaps just something that looked more foreign – but I was left feeling a bit disappointed.

Dad seemed to be feeling it too because, as he accelerated away from one of the toll booths, he said, ‘I hate motorways. I hate the way everywhere ends up looking the same. This could be anywhere, really, couldn’t it?’

I glanced past him at the industrial estate we were passing – a collection of ugly, corrugated-iron hangars that appeared to have been dumped in a field.

‘Almost true,’ I said. ‘Only in England all those lorries would say Eddie Stobart rather than . . . rather than however the hell you’re supposed to pronounce that.’

Dad turned, glanced out of his side window and laughed. He made a valiant attempt at pronouncing Kuehne+Nagel, which was written on all the parked lorries, and then added that he didn’t think it was a French name anyway.

Though Igor had invited us to stay at his house in the village of Mios, Dad had insisted we reserve a hotel in neighbouring Lanton instead. Personally, I would have preferred to stay at Igor’s – or at least, I suspected I would – I didn’t know him that well, after all. But as I guessed that the idea of staying in his father’s home with his father’s partner was just too emotionally fraught, I agreed without a fight.