Others had no such qualms.
A temporary café had been installed in one of the barns and after exploring the gardens, we headed there for afternoon tea. Theo and his brother were inside, helping to serve tea and cakes as part of an initiative to raise money for charity. Neither looked happy to be there.
Acton towered over Theo at the time and still does, a strawberry blond beefcake of a young man who, at the age of eighteen, was the spitting image of his father. Theo’s supermodel-tall mother also has fair hair, which was partly why Theo fascinated me when Becky first pointed him out to me in Harrogate the year before. With his slightly pointy features and dark satiny hair, he looked like he didn’t belong in this family of blond giants. He was the Dark Prince among them, a fragile, beautiful boy.
So, despite the grim set of Theo’s face, I felt a small thrill at being close to him.
And then he spoke.
‘What is that smell?’ he asked his brother distastefully in a high, reedy voice.
The whole family was born and bred in Yorkshire, but they didn’t sound it. At twelve, Theo’s warm Northern accent had already been knocked out of him at boarding school.
‘Oh, dear God, they reek!’ Acton scathingly agreed.
‘What is it?’ their mother asked plummily from nearby, scuttling over as my oblivious parents reached the counter.
Sylvie’s face contorted into ugly disgust.
‘Oh no,’ she said, waving her finger at us. ‘Oh no, no, no, no, no. You’ll put people off their food.’
‘Have you no decency?’ my dad asked in a low voice, his face brightening with rage and indignation.
‘Sit outside if you have to, but not in here,’ she snapped, and I remember catching Theo’s eye and wanting to disappear through the floor.
* * *
So yeah, I remember Theo Whittington. But I’m not sure he remembers me.
Chapter 3 Now
‘Hello, George,’ Mum says with affection, joining our gathering at the wake. Her voice sounds subdued, but there’s no surprise to be found in her greeting.
As George bends down to give her a hug, it dawns on me that this is not the first time in fifteen years that they have seen each other. Nor is it the first time George and Jamie have crossed paths. I was too shaken a moment ago to realise.
‘Thank you for coming,’ Mum murmurs.
‘Of course,’ George replies, his hand dwarfing her shoulder as he gives it a tender squeeze.
Of course?
Of course?
At what point did it become a certainty that ‘George Thompson: Missing’ would attend my father’s funeral?
‘I’m sorry about Ivan,’ George says as Jamie ducks away to speak to a friend.
‘He was so happy to see you again.’ Mum’s voice wavers, but she forces a smile onto her face and swoops down to pick up Emilie. ‘Have you met my granddaughter?’
‘I have,’ George replies, and I feel him glance my way, but I can’t bring myself to look at him.
‘And Leah? You remember Leah, I’m sure.’ Mum indicates me.
If she knew what had transpired between us, she wouldn’t doubt it for a second.
‘Can I have apple juice?’ Emilie interrupts, her small hand gently patting her grandmother’s cheek to ensure her full attention.
‘Yes, let’s go find you some,’ she says, heading off to the bar.
Nervous energy pulsates through me. We’re alone.
George speaks before I can ask a question that has preyed on my mind for so many years.
‘I’m sorry about your dad.’
I nod.
‘And Theo,’ he adds.
‘What are you doing here?’ I sound unintentionally prickly.
He lifts his shoulders. ‘I came to see your parents a few weeks ago. Remembered how much I liked it, so decided to stay.’
‘You stayed?’ I ask with disbelief, now staring at him openly.
‘At least, for the time being.’ He shrugs again. ‘I work at a pub in Ripon. I’m renting one of their upstairs rooms.’
‘You’re in Ripon?’ My voice has jumped an octave. I realise I’m repeating everything he’s saying to me, but what the actual fuck? George, who walked out of my life without a backwards glance, leaving me utterly devastated, is now calmly telling me that he lives in a town less than twenty minutes away from my parents and he didn’t think to get in touch?
‘I was going to write to you.’
‘Were you now.’ My voice is laden with sarcasm.
He looks taken aback at the abrupt change in my tone, in my demeanour. I am too. Gone is the self-consciousness of strangers. Fifteen years has dissolved into thin air and I’m talking to him how I used to.
‘I guess we have some catching up to do,’ he says uneasily.
‘You think?’
His eyes snap to mine and the look in his dark-brown depths quells my anger: there’s remorse, guilt and sadness in his expression. These emotions transfer to me in the same way that they used to, filling me up from the inside out.
My body always responded to George’s pain in a way that it didn’t with my other foster siblings. With them, I had a protective barrier, a distance that I tried to maintain for my own self-preservation. But with George, there was none of that. When he hurt, I hurt too.
I can feel his pain now and it wrecks me. We’re still linked to each other.
The realisation scares the living hell out of me.
‘Did you find her?’ I ask in the smallest of voices.
He shakes his head, his eyes full of regret.
So it was all for nothing?
I do the only thing I can do, which is walk away. But I’m being torn in two.
Chapter 4 Then
My parents give George a few days to settle in before mentioning the tree-planting ceremony.
‘You’ll have to have a think about what tree you’d like, George,’ Dad says casually over dinner on Friday night.
There are eight of us around the dining room table: Mum, Dad, Jamie, Preston, Ashlee, Nia, George and me.
Joanne is having a self-enforced Time Out in her room. Her social worker paid her a visit at school today and she’s still raging about it. There aren’t many teenagers who enjoy being made to feel different in front of their classmates.
George stares at Dad blankly.
‘You haven’t heard about the tree planting ceremony?’ Dad asks with surprise. He’s acting. He knows Mum won’t have spoken to George about it yet and it’s unlikely any of us will have mentioned it – we’ve hardly seen him leave the study. He’s sleeping on the sofa in there until Preston goes.
‘Everyone who comes to live in this house has one,’ Dad says grandly, bigging it up.
‘Basically, you have to dig a hole and bung a tree in it,’ Preston interrupts.
Preston is fourteen, and is, like Joanne, a bona fide teenager. He’s short for his age with bleached curly blond hair. I suspect he has foetal alcohol syndrome – I’ve learned to recognise the signs in children whose mothers drank during pregnancy. They can have a certain look about them: a smaller-than-average-sized head, distinctive facial features, like small eyes, a thin upper lip and a smooth area between their nose and mouth. They can also suffer from behavioural problems and learning difficulties, all of which is true in Preston’s case.