“No Darryl, Elizabeth is from a relationship your grandfather had when he was in his late teens. Elizabeth’s mother had left her with him and disappeared, so he brought her up alone. I married him just after you were born; Elizabeth was nearly 18 then, and your father, Robert, had been killed in the Falklands in 1982, a few months after Elizabeth found out she was pregnant; he was still only a boy himself, only 19. I met your grandfather soon after that, and we decided to get married. Elizabeth couldn’t handle bringing up a child alone at such a young age, so we took you to bring you up as our son. Lena came along 10 months later, and we brought you up as brother and sister.”
“But you didn’t adopt me, yes?” I asked her, and she shook her head.
“And you’re not my grandmother?” I asked her, and she shook her head again.
“So you’re not my birth-mother, you’re not my adoptive mother, you’re not my grandmother, so really, you’re nothing to me, no relation at all, yes?” and I saw the hurt in her eyes again.
“No, Darryl, I’m still your mum, that hasn’t changed…”
I interrupted her. “No you’re not. You never made a move to make me yours, you just kept me around, like an umbrella you found on a bus, then suddenly, completely out of the blue, you choose to tell me. Both of you lied to me my whole life, you take away my family, you take away my little sister, you tell me I’m not even who I thought I was, and you expect me to be, what, happy that the truth’s finally out? I was happy! I was happy not knowing, did that ever occur to you? How could you rip my family away from me and shred my life, and not expect me to feel anything? Why didn’t you just shoot me and stuff me in a fucking dumpster?”
Dad stirred at that, but said nothing, and mum just looked stricken. Lena never took her eyes off me, her whimpering getting louder, until, with a high-pitched keening, she began crying, holding on to my arm in a death-grip, rocking as she sobbed, holding me tight. Mum tried to comfort her, and she shook her off, pushing her away and scrabbling for a handkerchief. I gave her mine, which only seemed to make her cry more.
I stood up, absolutely sure of only one thing; I had to get out of there, away from this nightmare, from these people who’d lied to me every single day of my life.
As I went to get my jacket and holdall, mum came out and put her hand on my arm.
“Daryl, don’t go, please, we need to talk!”
I grimaced, trying not to cry. “We’re done talking, mum, or should I call you ‘Gran’?” and she flinched.
“Please Darryl, come back in, talk to him, he needs to talk to you some more, at least hear him out, won’t you?”
I shook my head.
“There’s nothing more to say; you just destroyed my life, you took away my family, you took away Lena, so I think you’ve said it all! Now I have to go, this conversation is over!”
“Please Darryl, he has his reasons for telling you, won’t you at least give him a chance to tell you what they are?”
I took her hand off my arm.
“I don’t care what his reasons are. You people play-acted around me my whole life; you aren’t my mother, he’s not my father, Lena’s not my sister, nothing here is mine; it didn’t stop you taking it all away, though, did it? You took it all away, and now you want to talk! No, you can’t fix this, mum, or Granny, or whoever the hell you are. The only person round here who didn’t lie to me is Lena, and you had no problem lying to her too; I loved being her big brother, she was my little sister, and you took that away from both of us!”
“I hate you for what you’ve done to me, and what you’ve done to Lena; she didn’t deserve this. Our whole life has been some kind of weird theatrical production; no-one in it is who they say they are, not even me; I’m 25 and I don’t even know who the fuck I am. That’s what you did to me, so are you satisfied now?”
I picked up my holdall and took out my keys, taking the front door key off my key-ring and tossing it to her.
“I won’t need this anymore, because I swear to God I will never set foot in this house again!” I told her, her expression stricken as I turned to leave.
Lena came hurtling out to hug onto me, holding me desperately, then grabbing her coat and bag as well.
“I’m coming with you; I’m not staying here another second!” she gritted.
“Lena, what are you doing?” asked mum, and Lena whirled to face her.
“He may not be your son, but he IS my brother, and I’m going with him. Can’t you even see what you’ve done? How dare the two of you pull his whole world apart! You took away his whole identity, and then you try and act like it was necessary. Did you ever stop to think that this is exactly what might happen? He was right; he was happier not knowing. If you ever really thought of him as your son, you’d never have done this! He’s right to hate you; I hate you for what you did! You didn’t have to tell us, can’t you see it was cruel and unnecessary?”
I opened the door and she walked through it, dumping her bag into the car boot along with mine, and climbed into the passenger seat. I pulled away from the kerb, and got as far as the end of the road before I had to stop, the tears were making my vision blurred. Lena held me while I cried for the past that was gone, and the family I’d lost, and the life that had all been a lie.
My mum was gone, my dad was gone, even my little sister was gone, taken away in a couple of sentences; but then, none of them had ever really existed, none of it had been true, nothing.
Eventually I calmed down enough to drive safely, and headed out of town, down through Clifton and through the centre of Bristol, heading for the M4 and London. All the way home, it drummed in my head. Mum and dad had been lying to me all my life, they’d been lying to Lena all her life, just told us a convenient lie and left it at that. They’d said no more about my real mother, who’d certainly never made an appearance in my entire life; was she dead, or had she never wanted me in the first place, and dumped me with… them because they were convenient and I was cramping her style?
My phone rang endlessly, one or other of… them (I couldn’t bring myself to call them mum and dad anymore; they weren’t, were they?) hanging on the line, hoping for me to pick up. I let it ring, until they switched to Lena’s phone. She just switched hers off and dumped it in the glove compartment along with mine.
We eventually got back to my place in Tooting Broadway, just around the corner from St George’s, about midnight, only stopping once at the Chieveley Services on the M4 for Lena to stretch her legs a little. I live in a 2 bedroom maisonette, the top floor of a medium-sized Edwardian house, what they used to call a gentleman’s residence back in the days of ‘la belle epoque’, but the second bedroom was set-up as an office/storage/work-out space for me, so I gave Lena my room and made up a bed for myself on the couch in the living room.
We changed out of our day clothes into something more suitable for sleeping; Lena into a long Tee-shirt, and me in a University College London rowing shirt and shorts, and made some coffee while we discussed what to do next.
“We can’t go back, can we?” said Lena morosely, and I nodded agreement, although I’d been thinking about why she’d come with me in the first place.
“You didn’t have to come, Sis, they’re still your parents,” I observed, and she grimaced back at me, eyes filling again.
“Fuck ’em! They should have been yours as well; they should have just kept quiet and just been your mum and dad and taken it to their graves, full stop, The End. You’re my brother, no matter what they said, and I’ll take my chances with you, thank you very much! Like I said, fuck ’em!”
I had to grin; Lena never swears, she always said swearing is the last resort of the verbally constipated, and now here she was, cursing her own parents!
As if on cue, my ‘phone started ringing again; one glance told me it was… them, again, as if they hadn’t got the message by now. Lena grinned nastily.
“Turn it off, let them sweat. Mine’s off, and it’s staying off. Tomorrow I’m getting a new number, let them try and get hold of me. You destroy your family, this is the price you pay. Bastards!”
I looked closely at her. She really was furious, I’d never seen her so angry before and it was a revelation; Lena was the calm one in the family, totally unflappable, with the kind of nerveless self-control that would let her face a charging rhino with a slightly raised eyebrow, and here she was, simmering and steaming, her legendary self-control finally cracked wide open.
“Hungry?” I asked her, and she shook her head.
“I’m going to bed, Darryl. You know, you don’t have to give me your bed, I’m quite happy to bunk out here, or we can share the bed, it’s got to be more comfy that that horrible couch!”
She was making sense. I was emotionally and physically drained, and that bed was looking attractive. Still…
Lena cocked an eyebrow at me and grinned. “If you’re worried about climbing into bed with me, I assure you, you’re safe; I find you completely resistible!”
I had to grin, and nodded assent, if the day ever came when I couldn’t split a bed with my little sister, it would be a bad day indeed.
We climbed in and killed the lights, and lay there, slowly drifting away; at least I was, until I became aware of Lena trembling and quivering. I turned and put the bedside light back on, and she was crying, sobbing silently. I didn’t ask stupid, inane questions; I knew why she was crying, I was only a sob and a sniffle from joining her, so I put my arm around her, and pulled her close, letting her sob into my chest while I stroked her hair, but not saying anything; what was there to say?