Five

 

‘I’d say I’ve got news, but I’m fairly certain you know the truth about Nico.’ Seph stared at the rectangular block of granite inscribed with her uncle George’s name. She sat down, crossed her legs and rolled the sleeves of her T-shirt up to her shoulders before taking off her sunglasses with a sigh. ‘Thought so.’

There were times in her life that Seph wished she could turn the clock back to, so she could scrub them all out and stop them from happening. The night she’d sat with George and her parents in a swanky restaurant to be told he had cancer was one of them. She’d never forget the shock and cold fear that had cut right into her when he’d dropped his diagnosis into conversation as she’d tucked into her starter. Bowel cancer, advanced and terminal. The waiters had glided between the tables around them, taking care of diners who were enjoying a meal in one of London’s top restaurants while George had told her that chemo would only extend his life a little, at best.

‘I found out about him a couple of days ago,’ Seph said to the headstone. ‘He emailed me to say happy birthday and, by the way, I’m your real dad. How’s that for a present?’ She laughed bitterly. ‘Turns out everyone knew apart from me but nobody ever thought to tell me the truth, including you. And I’m so angry with you for not being here to talk to about it.’

She shook her head against her irrational emotions. The anger she felt towards George wasn’t because he’d undoubtedly taken part in the charade about her true parentage. It was because he wasn’t there for her to be angry with.

George had been more like a wise, fun older brother than a stuffy uncle, always on hand to deliver advice or listen when she felt overwhelmed. And then he’d got sick. He hadn’t even tried to fight the cancer that was attacking his body and stealing him away day by day, hour by hour, minute by minute.

He’d refused chemotherapy, as well as everything else that was suggested, from Traditional Chinese Medicine to special diets coming from the States. To this day, Seph often wondered what might have happened if he hadn’t given up. If he’d have fought it. Maybe he’d be here now, and they’d be sitting together, having a real conversation instead. Maybe he wouldn’t have withered away like a decaying leaf and left them all behind. By the time he died, he’d been unrecognisable. He’d become gaunt and skeletal, his eyes sunken into their sockets. The memory of him looking like that, being in so much pain and being snatched away so quickly, that was what made her angry.

Seph put the small potted cactus she’d brought with her right in front of his headstone. He’d been adamant that he didn’t want any flowers at his funeral or grave, and opted for cacti instead. They were his favourite plant - prickly on the outside and soft on the inside - just like he was. Along with opting for cacti over flowers, George had also demanded that Fleetwood Mac’s album, Rumours, be played during a visit, starting with “Dreams”. Seph scrolled through her phone until she found it and pressed play. It was typical of him, taking care of everything and everyone, even when he was dying. He’d sold his salon, allocating money to pay for his funeral. The rest, along with his savings, had been left to Seph, her mum and his partner, Ed. He’d even chosen his own headstone and pre-ordered the food to be served at the wake. He’d joked that he’d haunt them all if they served rubbery sandwiches. Instead, they’d nibbled on goat’s cheese tartlets and grilled tiger prawns.

Seph sat quietly for a while, listening to the music and imagining that he was sitting next to her. Her anger over his death wasn’t new. It always showed up when she came to visit, but it was inevitably followed by a sense of reluctant acceptance that was undoubtedly helped along by the music. She suspected it was why George had been so specific with his track listing.

‘It’s so messed up,’ she said eventually, shaking her head. ‘You know how Mum always goes on about being open and honest, and yet she’s gone and done this.’

Seph picked a blade of grass and twiddled it between her thumb and index finger. Since the initial shock about Nico had worn off, she was coming to realise that she was more hurt about being lied to than anything else.

‘It just doesn’t make any sense,’ she continued, splitting the blade of grass down the middle with a frown. ‘I mean, people walk away from their kids all the time, and they don’t all lie about it, do they?’ She looked up at the headstone, wishing as she had so many times before that he could talk back.

George had always given such great advice. She missed him and his words of wisdom now more than ever before. Despite her growing enthusiasm after coffee with Janice yesterday, Seph hadn’t stepped foot in her studio yet. Instead, she’d decided to take advantage of the sunshine and spent the rest of the day in the park with Ben. It wasn’t procrastination; it was process. He’d read while she’d lain with her head on his stomach, trying to get in tune with her innermost feelings - the ones beyond the anger and confusion - to see what was really there. It was how she normally dug her way through to the central theme that strung a common thread through a series, but she’d been blocked by unanswered questions about Nico.

‘I haven’t spoken to Mum since and I have no idea what to do about meeting him or even replying to him,’ she said. ‘It’s like a broken record in my head. It’s all I can think about.’

By rights, she should be walking around like a zombie from a lack of sleep. Last night, her body had been relaxed after being in the sun all the day, but her mind had raced. She’d recited Nico’s email over and over again in her head until finally dropping off at four in the morning only to wake three hours later.

Seph lay on her back and stared up at the sky, covered with a criss-cross of white streaks left behind from aeroplanes, until her eyes watered and burned. She blinked the moisture away and looked at the sky again. It was so bright and clear that it looked like a photograph and held something about it she could never replicate on canvas. The grass was soft on the back of her arms, and the earth felt warm and supporting beneath her. She stared at the never-ending expanse of pastel blue sky, taking comfort in the idea that her uncle was close by, in some kind of way.

A while later, she became aware of her skin tingling under the sun and looked at her watch. Her eyebrows rose at the time. It was after midday. Had she really been lying there for an hour and a half already? It only felt like five minutes. Seph sat up, looking around and blinking against the light. How could so much time have passed without her even noticing? Maybe she’d fallen asleep. It would hardly have been surprising, given how little of it she’d got last night.

Fleetwood Mac was still playing on a loop, and she slowly stretched her arms above her head. She dropped her hands into her lap and looked at George’s headstone for a while, staring at the tiny specks of white in the granite, glittering under the sun. At least he’d opted for burial over cremation. It meant there would always be a place where she could come to visit and feel like he was still somehow around. Like he was on the other end of a telephone instead of not being there at all. It wouldn’t be the same talking to an urn or thin air.

Seph smiled a little. ‘Thanks, George.’

She wasn’t an atheist, but she didn’t really believe in an afterlife either. All she knew was that, regardless of the science behind it, coming here to talk to him had helped, just like it always did. She felt different. A bit less heavy. She felt how she had yesterday after meeting with Janice, but this time, it felt stronger, more determined.

She closed a hand around the stag pendant hanging from her neck - her most treasured possession. George had given it to her a few days after telling her about his cancer, and she hadn’t taken it off since. Seph hauled herself up from the ground and put her hand on the cold headstone, feeling the strong firmness of it under her palm before leaving the cemetery.

 

*

 

A few hours later, she stood in the middle of her studio with her hands planted on her hips. She’d come home from the cemetery, galvanised with energy and took advantage of Ben being out to clean the warehouse from top to bottom. She’d cleaned skirting boards, windows, the tops of doors and the insides of cupboards, before finally turning her attention to the room at the very back - her studio.

Seph surveyed the room. It was the smallest in the warehouse, but it suited her just fine. It had its own sink below a window that looked out onto the park behind and, at this time of day, the light that shone in was just perfect. The tiny dust motes she’d unearthed slowly fell back to the ground, like glittering confetti. The freshly mopped wooden floor was covered with splotches of old paint, and the dark patches of moisture slowly receded, soaking into the wood as the air dried them away. She had new brushes and paints, and a clean studio. Maybe now, she’d start painting something coherent instead of churning out rubbish. As it stood, all she had was a mish-mashed collection of paintings that had nothing in common. There was no theme to tie them all together.

Seph looked at the last piece she’d finished. Something about the blending greys and mauves made the back of her neck tingle. They were colours she always associated with the way she’d felt in the year after George’s death. She looked out of the window and the park beyond. He didn’t need to be alive for her to know what he’d say right now. It was two days since she’d walked out of her parents’ house and they hadn’t spoken since. Seph knew that George would tell her to bridge the gap, if he could.

She took her phone from her pocket. She’d ignored their calls and texts because even though she knew she had every right to be angry, she hadn’t wanted to say anything mean. Now that she’d had a bit of space, she knew that if she wanted answers, there was only one way to get them. And no matter how angry she was, the last thing she wanted was for her parents to worry because of her silence. She’d already made them do enough of that.

She pressed ‘dial’ and held the phone to her ear.

‘Seph,’ Laurel answered after only two rings, her voice full of relief.

‘Hi, Mum.’

‘We’ve been so worried. You haven’t been answering our calls or messages and I thought…’ Her voice tailed away, and she took a loud breath in. ‘Well, it doesn’t matter.’

Seph knew what her parents had thought. They’d probably wondered if she was going to go over the edge and have another panic attack.

She sighed, leaning against the wall. ‘I’m fine. Confused and angry, but fine.’

‘I can only imagine. I’m so sorry, Seph.’ Laurel swallowed loudly on the other end.

‘Sorry that you lied or that I found out like I did?’

‘Both. I know all of this has come as a shock but I need you to know that I am sorry. We both are,’ Laurel said, and Seph gripped the phone in her hand. ‘We’re really, really sorry.’

‘I’m angry with you,’ she replied honestly, her voice breaking a little. ‘So angry.’

‘I know, and I’m sorry. And I’ll keep on saying it until you know I mean it.’

Silence fell between them and Seph stared at her easel, ready and waiting for a new square of stretched canvas to be slotted into it. It seemed to hint at the possibility of a new start, with a clean slate. Could it really be that easy to do with her parents too?

‘This is so messed up,’ she said, letting her shoulders and her guard drop.

‘Talk to me,’ Laurel replied. ‘What are you thinking? Have you decided what to do, about meeting him?’

‘Not yet. It still feels a bit too abstract.’

‘You know you don’t have to do anything, don’t you? Not right away. You can take your time and think about it for a while.’

‘Why? So you can try to talk me out of it?’

‘Because you need to figure out what you want. It’s a decision only you can make and you shouldn’t rush it.’

‘It was a decision you’d always made for me until now.’

‘And if I could do things again I’d do them differently, but I can’t.’ Laurel sighed heavily. ‘Seph, I know you’re angry and hurt and confused. You have every right to be, but you’re still my daughter. I love you and I only want what’s best for you. We both do. We always have. Be angry at me, if that’s how you feel but I’m begging you, don’t be angry with Tony. He’s loved you like any dad would love a daughter. Maybe even more. This is hurting him, too.’

‘It’s not that easy, Mum. You two have known about this since day one. You can’t drop a bombshell like that and expect me to just carry on as normal. I don’t even know where I come from anymore.’

A few seconds of silence passed on the line. It sounded dramatic to say it out loud, but it was true. She’d found herself questioning things she’d written into her history as facts, recalling childhood memories and going through them with fierce precision to check if they were real. The loss of her sense of self wasn’t total, but it was a loss nonetheless.

‘I know you don’t know how to deal with this, Seph, and neither do we. But we should try to get through it together. We might be dysfunctional right now, but we’re a family.’

Dysfunctional was the right word for it. Her mum sounded just like Tony. He’d always been the voice of reason between them when they’d argued years ago during a wild patch in Seph’s teens. He’d always said that family was family, no matter what, and he’d said it knowing that he wasn’t related to Seph by blood.

‘You know we’ll support you whatever you decide to do, don’t you? About meeting him, I mean.’

‘What happens if we meet and hit it off? What happens if he wants to be a part of my life?’

‘Well, then we’ll have to deal with it.’

Seph slid down the wall to sit on the floor and rested her elbows on her bent knees. ‘Was it really that bad, whatever happened with you two? You said he’d ruin my life.’

‘Did I?’ Laurel replied innocently.

She let her mum’s question go unanswered. They both knew she had.

‘What was he like? I feel like I need to know more about him before I can decide what to do.’

‘Well,’ Laurel began, and exhaled loudly. ‘He was… charming, I suppose. And handsome. He was unlike anyone I’d ever met before, or since.’

Seph’s eyebrows hitched up a little at what sounded like an unexpected compliment. ‘That doesn’t sound bad.’

‘I was seventeen when we met. I was bored and I felt boring. Nico was the complete opposite. He blew into my life like a hurricane. I used to compare him to Tom Cruise in Top Gun. He was like a real life version of Maverick.’

Seph leaned her head back against the wall, drinking in the nostalgia seeping into her mum’s tone.

‘He was spontaneous,’ Laurel continued. ‘Quite unpredictable, really and always looking for adventure. I think he had an intense fear of boredom. We could be sat in front of the TV on a Friday night one minute and the next, he’d have packed us a bag to drive to Paris for the weekend.’

‘Really? That’s so sweet.’ Seph smiled at the thought.

She’d always thought that kind of spontaneity was romantic. Unfortunately for her, Ben was the worst planner in the world and she was unlikely to find herself being whisked away anywhere unless she planned it herself.

Laurel dropped a short, unimpressed laugh. ‘It would’ve been if he’d have remembered his passport. We drove all the way to Dover for the ferry only to have to come home again. I never got to see Paris until I met Tony.’

‘Oh,’ Seph said.

Her mum sighed. ‘That was the thing with Nico. He’d decide to do things on a whim and promise the earth, and you couldn’t help but believe in him because he had such a way of making things seem easy. He made anything seem possible, like he knew the simplest way to do things and everyone else just made things too complicated. And then he’d try these things and mess them up, and become someone else. He’d become, quite literally, hell on earth to live with. He was difficult, mean and utterly hopeless. Nothing mattered to him then. Nothing.’

The nostalgia that had crept into her mum’s voice had quickly given way to hurt and undisguised bitterness.

‘But, maybe that just was his bipolar,’ Seph said, trying to offer an explanation as if her mum were a newly heartbroken friend.

‘Maybe, from a medical point of view,’ Laurel replied. ‘But from my point of view, emotionally, it was just him. It was his personality. And my experience was that for all the times he could be exciting, enigmatic and fun, he was also careless, irrational and untrustworthy, bipolar or not.’

Seph had done a little research online and it all seemed to fit in with what she’d read. It made sense that his spontaneity and overzealousness could have been down to mania and his hopelessness explained by depression. But how much of it was him and his personality instead of a mental illness? Everyone was prone to those ups and downs, weren’t they? She certainly was. She only had to look at the last few weeks, frustrated with work, stressed with a rising credit card debt and a depleting bank account, and having panic attacks in the middle of a busy shopping village. But that was life, wasn’t it?

‘Maybe things have changed now,’ Seph said. ‘Maybe he’s on lithium or something and doing better. It doesn’t have to be such a big deal. Things are different than they were back then.’

‘I’m telling you this because you asked,’ Laurel said. ‘If you’re going to meet him then you should know what you might be getting into.’

‘I know.’

‘And it’s important that you take care of yourself right now. This is all really stressful and new, and…’

‘Mum, its fine,’ Seph interrupted.

‘It’s just that I read online that it’s supposed to be hereditary.’

‘I know.’

‘The bipolar, I mean.’

‘I know, Mum. I read up about it too, and I promise you I’m fine. I got an extension for submitting the series and I’m in my studio right now. Ben’s home, I’m happy. There’s no stress.’

It was only a tiny lie. Of course there was stress but, again, that was life. Besides, her mum wasn’t being entirely accurate. Bipolar disorder wasn’t inherently hereditary. Seph had read that there was only a ten per cent chance of it being passed down, even less if most people on both sides of the family were at least reasonably mentally healthy.

‘Okay,’ Laurel said, clearly a little more relieved. ‘But I meant what I said earlier, you don’t have to decide anything yet about meeting him. There’s no need to rush.’

Seph nodded, but it wasn’t as easy as that. Nico wouldn’t just go away by ignoring him. Even if she never replied to his email, the guilt of knowing that he was out there, waiting and hoping for a response would play on her mind. She’d have to make a decision sooner or later, and it would have to come down to whether she wanted to find out what he was really like for herself, or whether her mum’s word was enough.