Seven Days of Us(14)

Hi Pekin,

Missing you already! How was the rest of your journey? Hope you got back OK, and it’s good to be home. Wasn’t quite planning for you to meet my mother like that . . . Pretty certain she didn’t twig about us, luckily. It’s really strange to be here (though I did have the best shower of my life—hot AND cold running water! That you can drink!). I think I’m in some kind of reverse culture shock. I’d got used to the chaos I guess, and now Norfolk seems too quiet. Having said that, the house here is pretty chaotic, too, but in a very British way. It’s all a bit Miss Havisham . . . my mother can’t bring herself to change anything because this is where she grew up. No point texting or calling, by the way, my phone doesn’t get signal. So it’s e-mails only, for now. Normal for Norfolk . . .

Nothing to report so far, got home and then it was straight into family lunch. Do your folks get it in any way? Mine don’t . . . Or not so far. My mother is fussing over me constantly, but can’t bear to really hear about anything. And my sister is just completely wrapped up in her little universe. She doesn’t mean any harm, but I still want to shake her. My dad and I don’t really talk, like I said. As far as he’s concerned, a new sushi bar is headline news.

Anyway. It feels wrong to be so far away from you! I’m not telling anyone about us, by the way—promise you’ll wait till the week is up, too? Write soon, I have a feeling this is going to be a long, long seven days . . .


Kisses and more,

O x





Andrew


THE SMOKING ROOM, WEYFIELD HALL, 4:50 P.M.

? ? ?

Lunch had been interminable, thought Andrew, back at the smoking room desk. He’d pretended he was going to fetch the tree to get Emma off his back. He would do it later. He felt a twinge of guilt over the way he’d dismissed bloggers. Especially since Olivia’s blog had in fact been rather well written. What was it that stopped him just saying so, straightforwardly, the way Emma could? And why did reading it bother him so much? It wasn’t that he couldn’t stomach blood and guts. He’d seen as bad and worse in Beirut for years.

He opened his draft to Jesse, and his mind set off on a habitual loop. He was curious to meet his son, of course. And if he cut him off now he would doubtless lose the chance. Besides, it was the decent thing to do. It must have taken courage, on Jesse’s part, to write at all. And Leila’s pathetic letter, with its “dying wishes,” was tugging at his conscience. But how would Emma react to Jesse? He could hardly expect the man’s birthdate to remain secret. Emma would count back nine months and realize, instantly, that Andrew had been unfaithful. The trouble was, she had so little tolerance for withheld information—for lying, as she saw it. And how would his daughters view this bastard son, fathered while Andrew was technically with their mother? Olivia already seemed to be looking for excuses to avoid him. And Phoebe, who worshipped him, would be so disappointed she’d probably cut him out, too. He couldn’t bear that. You did hear of it happening. Men in their sixties, living alone because of some idiotic misdemeanor. The thing to do was to be firm and absolutely transparent. The wine at lunch had given him conviction. He started a new message and tapped out:

Dear Jesse,

Thank you for your e-mail. While it would be a pleasure to meet you, I must ask you to accept that this is sadly impossible for me. I do not take this decision light—

The door clicked behind him. He shoved Leila’s letter under a pile of books and minimized the e-mail. But the photo he’d been looking at was still open on his screen. It was a young man with dark curls, in black tie, captioned Jesse Robinson, Help for Syria Fund-raiser. Something told Andrew that this, out of the many Jesse Robinsons that Google Images offered up, was his son. He closed it, quickly.

“Who’s that?” said Phoebe, coming in. “He looked hot.”

Andrew’s stomach recoiled. “Uh, an actor I’ve got to interview.”

“Who? Let’s see?”

“Now, now, you’re a married woman—almost,” said Andrew.

She looked at him and laughed. “Daddy!”

“I e-mailed La Beard for you, by the way, but I doubt we’ll hear back until New Year.”

She sat on the arm of his chair. He’d have preferred her not to—it was an expensive, ergonomic throne bought on Wigmore Street, at odds with the Hartley bureau and ancient sofa. Emma always looked pained by it, even though she rarely came into the smoking room. Still, she had the last say on any new object in her childhood domain.

“OK,” sighed Phoebe. “It’ll have to be next year now anyway. When everyone will be doing Dry January.” She sat, picking at a run in her tights, the rock on her ring finger all wrong with her chipped, turquoise nails. “We could’ve had it tonight if we weren’t stuck here,” she added.

She sounded faintly accusing, although what she wanted Andrew to do about their quarantine he couldn’t think. But that was the way with Phoebe. He always seemed to be conceding to her, or promising to meet some outlandish request. Ever since she’d been tiny, he’d wanted to make her happy—the way she made him happy. She had that effect on everybody, except, perhaps, for Olivia.

“Bloody nuisance this quarantine, eh?” he said, giving her narrow back a perfunctory rub. “What about Claridge’s? I know the Maybourne Group pretty well.”