Things I Want My Daughters to Know_ A Novel - Elizabeth Noble [55]
Lisa watched Jennifer considering what she said. She knew her sister would struggle with this. She had her own reasons for understanding what Mum had done.
“I suppose you’re right. I just never thought about it before.”
“Why would you have?”
“Quite.” Jennifer looked, Lisa realized, very shocked. More shocked than Amanda had, almost.
“And the truth is, she didn’t know know. It wasn’t Dynasty—no one was demanding a DNA test or anything. She just figured. I guess she knew more about the timing…of stuff….”
Jennifer wrinkled her nose with distaste, as though this were detail and information she didn’t want to think about. Her mind went back through the story. “What about the guy? The real father?”
“Like I said, she doesn’t name him. She said Amanda didn’t need to know. Said he knew she was pregnant, and that he and his family moved away soon afterward.”
Jennifer gazed out of the window, thinking, for a minute or two. Lisa finished her cake and coffee, contemplating another cup, but the queue had grown longer and snaked around the corner, out of sight.
“The Heywoods.” Jennifer said it quietly, almost to herself.
“What?”
“The Heywoods. We were always hanging around with them, remember. Heather Heywood was in my class at school. They lived down the road.”
“Don’t remember.”
“Yes, you do. Come on. The Heywoods.” She said this as though mere repetition of their name should make Lisa remember. “They had rabbits, when we really, really wanted them. With that big run, in their back garden.”
Lisa had a vague recollection, then, of Heather Heywood, with her fat brown pigtails and her fat brown bunnies. She wasn’t sure yet why it was relevant.
Jennifer was warming to her theory. “We used to see the Heywoods a lot. Mum and Dad were in Round Table and Ladies Circle with their mum and dad. You remember…and the Heywoods moved away before Amanda was born. I remember it especially because Heather took one of my Sindy dolls, even though Mum said I’d probably just lost it and wouldn’t let me ring them up and ask for it back. I knew she’d taken it, because it was one she didn’t have, and she was always jealous about it.”
She shook herself out of the diversion. “Anyway, the point is, they moved away that summer, before Amanda was born. It must have been him….”
“Calm down, Jennifer—that’s a bit of a wild leap, don’t you think?”
“Think about it, the timing fits.”
“So what?”
“What do you mean, so what? This guy could be Amanda’s dad!”
“Yeah, and he might not be. Besides, what’s the relevance of that? It’s a quarter-century later.”
“What’s the relevance of that?”
Jennifer’s voice was getting shriller and louder. Lisa wanted to calm the situation down.
“Listen, Jen. It’s not like Amanda was close to Dad. They barely even knew each other, really. If she’s ever considered a man to be her father, it’s Mark, and this changes nothing about that. I can’t see what good it could do, raking up the past, naming names, especially when you’ve got no idea what you’re talking about.”
“I wasn’t naming names. I was just saying…”
“I know. I’m sorry.” Now Jennifer looked resentful and somehow hurt. Lisa was glad that she had decided to tell her, rather than leave it to Amanda. If Amanda was planning on telling anyone at all apart from her. Jennifer could be so brittle.
“What do you think about it?” she was asking Lisa now. “I mean, about Mum. Leave this guy out of it….”
“About Mum?” Lisa was a little sideswiped by the question. She wasn’t sure how to answer it, being reasonably certain that her moral skew would be different from Jennifer’s.
She took a deep breath. “I think Mum and Dad were unhappy for a long time. We know they were, in fact—we were there. Dad cheated on Mum. I suppose I think good for her, to be truthful. I hope it granted her a bit of happiness and restored a bit of self-confidence. I think it was…colossally stupid to get pregnant, and if she were here I’d tell her so myself. And I think it was a bit cowardly, keeping it