Things I Want My Daughters to Know_ A Novel - Elizabeth Noble [54]
“You’re right.” Jennifer shook her head.
“Bloody hell. So we’re both in a mess.” She smiled wryly. “What would Mum say? D’you often ask yourself that, since she died? What would she say?”
“More than I did before she died. Stupid, huh? All that good free advice I could have had, and I never wanted it. Now that I do, I can’t have it.”
“Hmm. Speaking of Mum. Think I’ve got something to tell you about her that will explain some of where we get our ostrichlike attitude toward confrontation and communication.”
Jennifer sat forward. “What?” That didn’t sound like Mum.
“Amanda made me swear not to tell anybody.”
“Amanda?”
“Yes. I said I wouldn’t. But I think I have to tell you. D’you promise not to say anything?”
“Okay. Say anything about what?”
“You know the letters Mum left us?”
“Yes…”
“Amanda didn’t read hers. At first.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know—weird reasons—you know Amanda. Anyway, she carried it around with her for four months, waiting for the right time to read it. That was, apparently, in bed with a bloke she barely knew, but that’s beside the point….”
“At New Year’s?”
“Exactly.”
“And…what did it say? Did she show you?”
“Yeah—she showed me. She rang me, sounding all weird, like she was fighting to come across like normal, you know, and ending up sounding anything but. I was really worried. I thought…maybe this guy…well, I don’t know what I thought, but she didn’t sound right. She got me to meet her—this was on the second of January, I think.”
“You’re freaking me out now. What did the letter say?”
Lisa paused for a second. There was no easy way to say this. She remembered how shocked she had been when Amanda said it to her, but there was no other way.
“Amanda wasn’t Dad’s.”
“I don’t get it.” Jennifer looked gormless. “What do you mean?”
“I mean…” Lisa tried to sound patient. “Dad wasn’t Amanda’s father.”
“Biologically?”
“Or any other way, come to think of it.”
Jennifer picked up her fork again and jabbed at her cake, with obviously no intention of eating any.
“I don’t get it.”
“Mum had an affair. Dad clearly knew about it; at least, I suppose he must have. But no one else ever has. Not Amanda, not Mark, no one.”
“She wouldn’t do that.”
“I wouldn’t have believed it, either. But she did. Which bit don’t you think she’d have done?”
“Any of it. Had an affair. Had a baby. Not told anyone. Not even Mark. It just doesn’t seem possible—it’s not who she was, it’s not how she was….”
“But it obviously was.” Lisa understood Jennifer’s desire to make their mother out to be perfect. But she wasn’t. No one was.
“God—poor Amanda. How was she?”
“Pissed off, mainly.”
“Not upset?”
“That, too. But I got the feeling that mostly she was cross that Mum had waited to tell her.”
“It can’t be an easy thing to tell.”
“No, but if she’d known, if she’d known before Mum died, or before Dad died, for that matter, she could have asked them stuff about it, and now she can’t. She just gets to know what Mum chose to tell her, in the letter. It isn’t in the journal.”
“I suppose she was making it Amanda’s story to tell.” Jennifer shook her head, but she was remembering the bit about Dad hitting Mum, just once. Mum said she’d provoked him. That ought to do it. “What did she choose to tell her, exactly?”
“Well, not much. That she had an affair. That it wasn’t serious, or long-lasting. That she wasn’t in love with the guy.”
“Did she say who he was? Did he know she was pregnant?”
“She didn’t say who he was. She said that it was a sordid affair she wasn’t proud of, that she didn’t love the guy—he was some sort of family friend, I think.”
“God! It gets worse….”
“Or better. You wouldn’t want it to have been some decade-long great passion, would you?”
“I don’t know!” Jennifer sounded exasperated. “I want it to have been Dad’s baby, that’s what I want. She’s our mum. I don’t want her to have had an affair in the first place. How did she know it wasn’t his, anyway? They were still together, weren’t they, when she was pregnant?”
“Yes, but think about it…Amanda’s got Mum’s hair,