‘April Fool’s Day,’ said Yvonne and gave a little laugh. ‘You couldn’t make it up.’
‘I shall make a note in my diary and I’ll take you to Betty’s in York for afternoon tea, if you’ll let me,’ said Maurice. ‘There will be cake coming out of your ears by the time we’ve finished.’
‘What a treat,’ said Laurie. She didn’t ask Yvonne if she’d ever been to Betty’s before because she could guess what the answer would be.
‘Really?’ said Yvonne. ‘You would?’
‘We should go before, give it a trial run, in case you don’t like it, then we could pick somewhere else instead.’ Maurice smiled at her and Yvonne beamed back at him in such a way that it was as if it was the first time she had properly smiled. Laurie felt overcome with a blast of emotion. Some people had seen such little kindness in life, it was pitiful.
She wished she had gone to the party with Pete, wished politeness hadn’t stood in her way and to hell with it being too soon to meet his family. If anything, they both knew that you shouldn’t sit around and wait, but take what was on offer when it was offered. She wondered if he would ring her that night on the pretext of telling her all about it. She had felt like a bottle of shaken champagne since Sunday, and that she was taking sure steps forward into something special and sweet and new, a landscape devoid of unanswerable questions and uncertainty. It was as if a giant hand had reached down and scooped her out of a dark pit at a speed that barely allowed her to catch her breath.
She couldn’t wait to see him again.
Chapter 39
From behind Pete, Lucy seemed to fly forwards out of nowhere. A Lucy he didn’t know.
‘You fucking bitch,’ she said, throwing herself at Cora, both hands locking into the older woman’s hair. Cora began to shriek, slapping defensively, before Pete had a chance to dive forwards and drag the possessed Lucy away. Cora was staggering, her usually perfect lacquered iron-grey hair sticking out at angles like a befuddled scarecrow’s, a scratch already rising on her cheek; Griff now striding towards them with a purpose that Pete didn’t even want to guess at. Pete pushed Lucy at him, jammed himself between the warring factions.
‘Look after your wife,’ Pete yelled at his brother, his world a fast-growing blur of madness. Nigel came hurrying in, following his son.
‘She told him,’ said Lucy, face pushed into Griff’s chest.
‘What’s going on here?’ asked Nigel.
‘Ask your poisonous bastard girlfriend,’ boomed Griff, arms wrapped tight around a near-hysterical Lucy.
‘That was assault,’ said Cora, palm flat on her face. ‘Nigel, ring the police.’
‘Oh dear God, Cora, what have you done?’ said Nigel, his voice weighted with distress.
‘What have I done? Have you seen what—’
‘Cora, shut up, just bloody shut up.’ The words rang loud. Pete had never once heard his father shout at his mother, never mind swear. It was almost as if he hadn’t spoken but was channelling someone else, someone much more angry than he could ever be.
‘Dad, we’re going home,’ said Griff.
‘I’ll tell everyone to go home,’ said Nigel, sobered instantly.
‘No, you mustn’t,’ insisted Griff. ‘You carry on, this is your big day and you don’t want all this to be the residing memory of it. You must promise us that. Please. We’ll talk tomorrow.’
‘You’ve spoiled everything,’ Cora spat at him.
Griff advanced, finger extended hard like a weapon. ‘No, you have.’ Nigel and Pete shifted positions to keep him apart from Cora, for his sake, not hers. ‘Don’t worry,’ said Griff to them both. ‘I’m not going to touch her. I wouldn’t soil my hands.’
‘Griff.’ Lucy’s tone was pleading, lost. He returned quickly to her, held out his hand to Pete.
‘Pete, come with us,’ he said.
‘Son—’
‘Dad, we’ll talk tomorrow. I want to get Pete and Lucy away from here.’
‘Dad, go and be with your guests like Griff says,’ Pete insisted in a softer tenor. ‘I’ll ring you tomorrow.’ He pushed back Nigel’s protestations, turned his attention to his brother.
‘Give me the keys, I’ll drive,’ he said. He had no idea what was happening but Griff was in no fit state to be in charge of a car.
Pete walked silently out behind his brother.
*
Not a word was said on the journey to Griff and Lucy’s house. They sat in the back, holding each other, bound together by something awful. Pete felt as spaced as if his one glass of champagne had been spiked. His gut was twisted. He tried to concentrate on driving and not what Cora had said to him about not being able to have children. A cheap, bitter shot from a woman who couldn’t take her drink? A perfectly aimed one, even if it was a lie, because the bullet had hit his head and screwed with it.
Pete parked, took the key from Lucy’s hand, opened their house door. No one offered to put on the kettle when they filed into the kitchen, sat down on the chairs at the table there, emotionally beaten. Griff and Lucy looked like soft toys who’d had the stuffing pulled from them and then been pounded by a heavyweight boxer. Pete had never seen Griff like this, not even at their mother’s funeral and he’d been battered by grief then.
‘What’s going on?’ prompted Pete.
‘We didn’t know how to tell you,’ said Griff. ‘I was going to leave it until after Dad’s birthday.’
‘Tell me what?’ said Pete. He was scared now. One of them was ill. His head prickled with anxiety at the words about to damage him.
Griff pinched the top of his nose hard, he left fingernail marks when he withdrew his hand.
‘We went for test results. We can’t have kids,’ he said eventually.
A breath of relief. ‘Dad told me,’ said Pete. ‘But he said that they might be able to operate and—’
Griff cut him off. ‘Yes they can – on Lucy. But that won’t help us because I’ve totally outdone her in the infertility stakes. I can’t have kids. Not ever.’
‘Is that what they said?’
‘Oh yes.’
Pete swallowed. ‘Are they sure?’
‘I have something wrong with my Y chromosome, I can’t remember the terminology for it. A deletion on it, a germline mutation I think they said. It’s been present from birth. They’ve done extensive tests, they’re quite certain of what’s wrong. At first they thought I had a very low sperm count and I was building up to the deep joy of telling you that you might need to get checked out for that in future in case you had hopes of one day having a family the size of the Waltons, then this bomb landed. And . . . oh fuck . . .’ he paused, took in a long ragged breath ‘. . . because we’re identical twins, you have it too.’
‘Well how can that be right?’ said Pete with a hard laugh of incredulity, ‘we know it isn’t. Tara was preg—’
‘You can’t have kids, Pete. It’s impossible. They’re one hundred per cent sure of that.’ Griff’s voice was full of pain both for himself and equally for the brother he loved.