My curiosity was piqued, and I held out my hand for the camera.
“Don’t worry, Nia, I won’t sling it across the room! I just got caught unawares…”
Nia looked thoughtfully at me, then nodded and snapped the camera back on. She flicked through the pictures until she came to the one she wanted, and held it up for me to see. I gasped out loud; the man in the picture was Mark! A few years older, green eyes, like mine, not grey (and now a half-memory prodded at me for an instant, something about Mark, with green eyes…), but still my Lost Boy, so similar I could see how people could mistake Mark for him. I marvelled at his features, his expression, so like Mark’s, his hair a shade darker, perhaps, but this man was family, close family, and now I knew that for sure. The next picture was of his wife, ‘Lena’, Nia called her; she was truly beautiful, with long, straight, bright chestnut hair, vivid blue eyes perhaps a shade more violet than Nia’s, a sweet, generous mouth, and a lovely smile; she looked like Cassadee Pope, on the cover of her ‘Frame by Frame’ CD in dada Morrison’s collection. Whatever my cousin was like, he had exquisite taste, that was for sure…
“She’s gorgeous…” I murmured, and Nia nodded.
“Yes she is, but she’s a nice girl, very nice indeed. She and Darryl are a friendly, happy couple. You could do worse than meet them. Which reminds me…”
She rummaged in her purse and pulled out a picture.
“Look at this; this is their baby, Maureen; they call her ‘Mo-Mo’.”
I looked and almost gasped out loud again; she was almost the double of my little Nia! Same grin, same dimples, same bright emerald eyes, same hair. The two of them could pass for sisters any day of the week. I glanced up at Nia and she was grinning.
“They’re good people, Hun, they’re all good people; your aunt only wanted to know you and Mark were okay, that’s all; she thinks she abandoned the two of you when you were toddlers, and she’s been blaming herself and looking for you ever since; she may look like your mother, but she’s nothing like her, I promise!”
I flicked back to the picture of Darryl.
“He works in Clifton, doesn’t he?” I asked, and Nia nodded.
“He works at the hospital there, near Mark’s office, which is why people were confusing them.”
I cocked an eye at her.
“What does he do at the hospital? Is he some kind of manager or something?”
Nia grinned again.
“Hardly, Jules; he’s a heart surgeon…”
*
DARRYL:
Summer was waning, the school holidays were almost over, and the trees in the garden were decidedly more golden than green when I finally got the call I’d been hoping for all summer long. Lena had taken the children to Lizzie’s place for a week, to spend the last of the summer heat at the seaside. I’d had to pass; being junior Consultant still meant I was low man on the tree, and Member of the Royal College of Surgeons or not, I still had to take-up the slack in the Cardiovascular Surgical Unit, which meant no Summer holiday for me.
To be fair, Portishead, where Lizzie lived, was only a short drive down the M5 motorway from Bristol, not exactly the other side of the world. Still, it meant David and Mo-Mo got fussed-over inordinately by Lizzie, Allie, and Marcus, my little brother, who put up with the inconvenience of having the kids there if it meant he could gaze adoringly at Lena, his first crush.
I have to admit, Lena was worth the gazing; well into her first trimester, she absolutely glowed; some women exude an almost tangible desirability when they’re pregnant; Lena was one of them. Not a day went by that I didn’t pause several times to just take her in; her calm radiance, her serenity, her almost overwhelming, unconscious sensuality, all of them beat against me; like a man knows where the sun is even with his eyes closed, so I always knew where Lena was, her presence filling and warming me every time I laid eyes on her.
The doctor in me knew it was because of the pheromones she was giving off, my limbic system reacting to her the way it should to my chosen mate, but the man in me just wanted her every day, in every way; she was the sum total and utter zenith of female desirability to me, and I couldn’t get enough of her.
Periodically, she would glance up and see me gazing longingly at her, and she would smile that gentle, secret, enigmatic smile of hers and go back to what she was doing, knowing that later, when we were alone together, we would make love as though there were no tomorrow, fierce, heated lovemaking, our bodies burning in the furnace of our passions, then gentle, languid kisses and caresses, renewing nightly the bond that made us one.
So our summer progressed; every day, Lena seemed more and more beautiful, and every day she blossomed further as impending motherhood once more took her over. With the changes that imposed on our immediate family, my lost family seemed more remote with every passing day, as I continued to hear nothing from them. Lena calmed me when it agitated me, but as time progressed and I still heard nothing, it started to become less and less important to me. I had other priorities now; my own children to tend, and a new baby on the way, so with all this, Julie and Mark were the furthest things from my mind when I finally heard from her again.
I was alone at home, the night before Lena was due back; mum was working the night shift at the Renal Unit, so I was fending for myself, waiting on a takeaway dinner to nuke in the microwave, when the phone rang. Thinking it was Lena, I rushed to answer it, only to hear a voice I’d almost forgotten about.
“Darryl? Hello, it’s Julie, Julie Jameson. How are you?”
I was momentarily wrong-footed, but managed to recover quite well, I thought.
“Julie, it’s nice to hear from you again. We’re all fine, how have you been?”
She sounded a little hesitant, but kept going.
“We’re fine, Darryl, all of us, thank you for asking. I guess you know why I’m calling; Mark and me, well, we had a long talk, and we had a think about some things, and… and we’d like to come and see you, if you don’t mind?”
Of course I didn’t mind, I didn’t mind at all! At last, I was going to meet my long-lost cousins…
We talked a little while longer, arranging a date and time, then she had to go. I went to bed a happy man; Lena and the kids would be home in the morning, and Julie and Mark would be here in a few days; at last, my family was falling back into place.