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  There was no more time. He felt the growing imminence of another violent contraction in his mid-section and saw it; his one chance to avoid spray-painting the whole room. A metal bucket with a mop. He grabbed the mop and threw it aside, then dropped to his knees and hurled what felt like the full contents of his and several other people’s stomachs splashing into the pail.

  When the fifth wave had overwhelmed and drained him, leaving only remorse and a furious pounding in his head, Graham attempted to spit the noxious taste out of his mouth and crouched helplessly, barely daring to move for at least three minutes. When he felt he could, he raised himself to kneel and unsteadily got to his feet.

  The bucket had caught most of the malodorous liquid, but by no means all of it. It was a horrible mess. Looking down, Graham noticed the tell-tale patches of warm orange puke down the front of his shirt and on his jeans.

  What could he do? He knew he should at least attempt to clean up the cupboard, but could not face it. He certainly could not go back in to Lena. So he turned off the light, closed the door behind him and skulked off into the glorious summer morning.

  ‘Yes, I remember Lena. We were at uni together, on the same course. Why do you ask?’

  Andreas’s expression became grave. His eyes dropped to linger with unseeing sadness over the gear lever between them.

  ‘She was my mother. She passed away 10 months ago.’

  Graham’s heart sank. Though they had not seen each other since that end-of-term party and had made no attempt to get back in touch, he felt the sorrow in those words.

  ‘I am sorry to hear that, Andreas. She was a nice person. Please accept my condolences.’

  ‘It was a car accident,’ the younger man continued without lifting his gaze or acknowledging the offer of sympathy.

  ‘She and my pappa were returning from a meal with friends when their car left the road, apparently without reason, and hit a tree. They were both killed instantly.’

  Graham was struggling to find any response which could fit the gravity of the added detail. He shook his head sombrely and said meekly: ‘That’s awful.’

  A heavy silence settled over the car interior for what felt like an age until Graham could find the courage to speak again.

  ‘I’m so sad for you, Andreas. I’m sure you must have been through so much, but could I ask - why did you...? I mean, why did you feel you needed to find me to tell me your news? I mean, Lena and I barely knew each other really and I haven’t seen or heard from her since the day we finished uni. It just seems...’

  ‘My mama was a very open and honest woman,’ Andreas added. ‘She told me everything. Trusted me. She was even prepared to confide in me the truth that I was conceived out of wedlock. You see, I was not truly my pappa’s son.’

  Andreas raised his head and stared piercingly into the eyes of the man beside him.

  ‘You are my real father.’

  4

  The red tail lights of the silver Jaguar glowed brighter with a touch on the brakes as the car paused momentarily at the end of Seathwaite Street and turned left, disappearing from view behind the line of houses.

  Graham stood on the path outside his home and watched it go. He stared up the road even after it had eased out of sight like an imagined spirit.

  The numbness which had enveloped him when Andreas revealed the reason for his unexpected visit had not yet eased. They stayed in the car, together, for a few minutes more after the revelation. Five minutes? Ten minutes? It was mostly Andreas talking. Graham didn’t say much. He couldn’t think what to say. Andreas told him a few more things but he couldn’t remember the details. Graham muttered an ‘I see’ and a ‘yeah, OK’ but quite what that was in response to was impossible to recall.

  Maybe the last expression was after Andreas had offered him the business card he now clutched in his left hand. Just after it was handed over, Graham said something about needing to go because he was already late home and had fumbled to locate the handle to open the car door. He had to get out of there. Did they even say goodbye? Must have. Probably shook hands as well.

  He glanced at the card.

  Andreas Johnson

  Managing Director

  Harry Johnson Global Logistics Ltd

  He had a telephone number and an email address now. Did he give Andreas his number in exchange? Must have.

  Graham flipped the card over to look at the back, as if expecting that side to offer some reflection of the magnitude of the news he had just been given but all it had was a colour picture of a large and gleaming lorry in red and yellow livery with the name of the company emblazoned down the side of the trailer.

  He turned it back and read it again.

  My son?

  It was far too much to take in. How could such a thing even be possible? It must all be a big mistake.

  Then his heart skipped a beat and he turned his head sharply to look at his home, as if startled by a noise from within it.

  What the hell am I going to tell Janet?

  She was in the kitchen with the radio playing, preparing their evening meal, and was singing to some half-remembered pop song from the 1980s which would really have been best completely forgotten. She had changed out of her work clothes into jeans and a loose top, as she usually did when she first arrived home, and had her back to him, cutting vegetables and moving her hips slightly to the music.

  He stood in the doorway watching her and, just for a second or two, could see her as she was when they first met 30 years ago, only a couple of weeks after he moved to Derby to start a new job in the libraries service.

  It was a blind date. Graham’s mate from Leeds University, Pete, had alerted him that there was a job going and suggested he apply for it. He said it would be great to work together and pick up on their social life again. Graham had worked for three years for the council at Preston, following the best part of three years in Bradford. He didn’t enjoy either job and had found it difficult to make good friends, so he thought that might be a good idea. Why not?

  Anyway, he got the job and Pete took it upon himself to make it one of his first tasks to fix Graham up with a girlfriend. His lack of success with women seemed more of a concern to Pete than it was to him, though he was happy enough to go along with the plan.

  So Pete convinced his girlfriend at the time – what was her name? Caroline? Catherine? Something like that. Anyway, he convinced her to talk one of her friends into coming along on a double date. She was a secretary too.

  They met up at The Dolphin. Graham’s nervousness translated into a huge feeling of awkwardness at the whole situation and, on first impressions, Janet appeared to feel exactly the same. They barely exchanged a word in the pub and could hardly hold eye contact with each other beyond a glance but, after a couple of drinks, they all went across the road to the American diner place on the corner of Queen Street and the two of them began to relax.

  By the end of the night, they were getting along like a house on fire and had already arranged to see each other again. She was two years younger than him and a Derby girl. He liked that she was quietly spoken and shy and could see there was no falseness in her. Getting her to talk about herself was a challenge to the point of being difficult, but he got the feeling that was not because she was reluctant to open up but because she considered there was not much to tell. Graham decided there was plenty about this petite, unassuming, charmingly wary young woman that he wanted to get to know.

  Two years later, they were married.

  Pete was his best man. It seemed appropriate. He was happy to take full credit for the union in his speech. He had a different girlfriend by then and Caroline/Catherine had lost touch with Janet after moving jobs. Pete also moved on shortly after the wedding. They only ever made contact through social media now.

  But he and Janet were in it for life. They were made for each other in every way but one. They had never been able to have children together.

  She sang the chorus one last time as the song reached
an end, getting the lyric slightly wrong, as she often did, and turned in rhythm to retrieve something else from the fridge. She was a little more rounded than she was when they first met and her hair had been drained of much of its natural blonde, but she was every bit as beautiful now as she ever was, in his eyes. Possibly even a touch more beautiful now than usual.

  She started when she realised he was watching her from the door frame.

  ‘Oh hello, duckie. I didn’t hear you come in.’

  She stretched to the tip of her toes to kiss him on the lips.

  ‘You’re a bit later than usual. Get held up?’

  Before he could answer, she touched his jacket with her fingertips and pulled a motherly, concerned face.

  ‘Look at you! You’re soaked! Go and get yourself out of those wet things before you catch your death. Dinner will be ready in about 15.’

  He smiled and turned to do as instructed, happy for the extra time to think how he might break his news. He had to tell her. It was a matter of trying to work out how.

  They decided they would try to start a family four years after they married, when they were both in their thirties. At first, it was fun, spicing up their sex life liked a shared naughty secret, but month after month passed and the real thrill they wished for never came. The excitement waned and concern began.

  They read up. They changed their diets. They stopped drinking. They tried to work out the optimum time for conception. Still nothing.

  After a year of trying, they went to see the GP. The GP told them there was not much more they could do to increase their chances of a successful pregnancy. Tried to reassure them. Let nature take its course, he said. Told them that of the couples who don’t conceive in the first year, about half do so in the second. Said that they should come back in another six months to a year if there was still no news and they could talk about further measures.

  They left it eight months. The GP referred them to the fertility clinic at the hospital. The doctor at the clinic was very nice, which helped them deal with all the uncomfortably personal questions. She took blood from them both to try to establish the source of the problem and sent Graham into a room by himself to ejaculate into a tiny pot, which he found acutely embarrassing.

  When the results of the tests came back, they were told Janet wasn’t ovulating properly. Quite a common problem, the doctor said. She was prescribed medication to try to redress her hormonal inbalance and they were relieved. It sounded like a pretty straightforward potential solution and was certainly much less invasive than some of the procedures they had read about.

  They had hope again.

  Three months into the course of treatment, Janet was pregnant. She had bought four testing kits and used them all before she felt safe breaking the news to Graham. Before she dared believe it herself.

  No matter how much they urged themselves and reminded each other to remain cautious at such an early stage, the brakes were off. Their imaginations raced into the future to favourite names and nursery plans and pram walks and first steps and those were, in so many ways, the happiest days they had ever shared. They were going to be parents.

  A few days later, Janet miscarried.

  As they were stacking the plates in the dishwasher following their meal, Janet placed her hand on his arm.

  ‘Are you all right tonight, Gray? You seem a bit off it.’

  He thought he had done a pretty good job of acting as if everything was as normal, in the circumstances. He had given all the appropriate responses to all the details of her sister Linda’s latest bust-up with her husband, who always came out of these tales sounding like a bit of a cock but never struck him as being that bad a bloke really. He thought he had shown sufficient enthusiasm at the suggestion of inviting her parents around for lunch the next Sunday. Clearly, the performance was not good enough. He could never hide anything from Janet.

  He pulled a pained expression. There was no point putting it off.

  ‘Not really,’ he said. ‘Let’s have a sit down. There’s something I have to tell you.’

  He took her by the hand and led her to the sofa. He kept hold of her hand. She looked concerned.

  ‘It’s nothing serious. Well, it is serious but it’s nothing...’

  Not a good start. Her sense of dread deepened. He thought he could see her face pale.

  Out with it.

  ‘As I was walking from the bus stop tonight, just about as I was on our drive, actually, a man called out my name and came across the road to me. He introduced himself and we went to sit in his car for a bit and he told me...’

  He drew a deep breath.

  ‘He told me he was my son. He told me he was the product of a one-night stand between me and this girl who was on my course at university. I knew nothing about this, obviously, until he said that and I was a bit, like, you know, taken aback by this, as you can guess, but anyway he said that I was his father and that his mother had told him about me and that she and her husband had been killed in a car crash about a year ago, I think, sometime last year anyway, and that he felt he needed to find me to talk to me and tell me that he was, you know, my ....son.’

  The quietness of the room was suddenly deafening. Her gaze had been fixed on his face throughout as he stared at his knees. He looked up now to meet her eyes, hardly daring to learn what her reaction would be.

  She was expressionless. Stunned, as if a firework had exploded within feet of her and had clouded her eyes with bursts of bright light. She needed a few moments to readjust to the world in its more familiar tones.

  ‘What does he want from you? I mean, we haven’t got much,’ she said, finally.

  ‘I don’t think he wants anything. He drove off in a great big shiny Jag and the card he gave me...’ He felt in his pockets for the card but realised he had pushed it into the pocket of his jacket when he came inside. ‘...said he owns a haulage company. I don’t think he wants anything apart from to finally meet his real, you know, father. At least, that’s what I think he wants.’

  She nodded, reassured to an extent.

  ‘And is it true? Do you remember this girl and having sex with her?’

  He smiled, which did nothing to make her feel easier about the situation.

  ‘I remember her. She was called Lena. We were in the same tutorial groups sometimes. I remember the night it must have happened but, to be honest, I never knew for sure if we went all the way.’

  He told her the story. The punch. The room. The morning. The bucket.

  ‘Charming.’ She listened with an air of distaste rather than ribald amusement. He knew she didn’t approve of behaviour like that, which was why he had never been tempted to tell her the story before. Actually, he had never told anyone.

  ‘It wasn’t my finest hour.’

  ‘And you just ran off and left the poor girl to wake up to find you’d not even had the decency to say goodbye? It’s no wonder she didn’t want anything else to do with you.’

  ‘I was embarrassed.’ He needed to attempt mitigation. This was not going down well.

  ‘I had sick all down my front and I felt like shit and I was embarrassed. I couldn’t go back to her room like that. I just wanted to get out of there and that was the last day of the course. I didn’t see her when I went to collect my final grades and I meant to catch up with her and apologise on graduation day but she didn’t go.’

  A realisation dawned. ‘I know why now, of course. I had no idea where she lived and I didn’t have a telephone number. It’s not as if you could track somebody down on social media, like you can today, so I decided it was perhaps best to just ...forget about it. Of course, if I’d known...’

  If I’d known – what? What would I have done? I was 21. We barely knew each other. What would I have done? What would we have done? My whole life could have taken a completely different course.

  Janet’s expression softened. She knew he would have done the right thing. She knew he wasn’t the type to take advantage of a girl and then run aw
ay. She could sympathise with his embarrassment.

  But she could not stop this from hurting.

  ‘I’m so sorry I couldn’t give you a child,’ she said finally, sadly.

  Graham shuffled closer to her and gripped her in an embrace, pulling her tight.

  ‘No, no, no, no, no – don’t say that. You can’t even think that. We agreed to never go down that route. No blame, no regrets, remember?’

  No regrets. That wasn’t entirely true. He had plenty. He wished he had been able to cope with the loss of that early pregnancy much better than he had, for one.

  And if anyone was to blame for them remaining childless, it was him.

  Graham had been haunted by the powerlessness that ripped at his heart as he watched her doubled by the agony of cramps and saw her become drained, physically and emotionally, while her body gave up the pregnancy that had already come to mean so much to them. When the blood test confirmed that her body had completed its dreadful task efficiently enough for the doctor to decide no further intervention was necessary, it was the most scant of consolations.

  After the tears – and there were lots of tears – Graham felt angry.

  He felt angry when people were sympathetic and felt angry when people tip-toed around them because they didn’t know what to say. He felt angry when he saw strangers with pregnant bumps and he felt angry when adverts came on TV for baby products. Then he felt angry with Janet because she appeared better at coping with their grief than he did and he didn’t understand why that should make him angry at all, so that made him feel angry with himself.

  Not once did Janet confront him for being incapable of giving her the solace she needed. When he began to understand the benefit of the professional help she suggested they seek together and as the veil of anger began to lift, only then did he realise how recklessly he had been endangering the security of their marriage. That really scared him.

  It scared him so much so that he could not face the possibility of going through it all again. They talked about the possibility of IVF but he had to confess to her that his fear of further grief had become greater than his desire to be a father. It took a lot for Janet to accept that but she did and even though she clung on to the thought that he might have a change of heart one day, she knew really that their dreams of having a family were over.