Prologue
Ginny
I’d never admitted to anyone what happened that night. And I’m a woman who processes her stuff by telling everyone. The woman on the supermarket checkout probably knows as much about me as my mum did. It might have confirmed what they all thought of me anyway. The party girl, the good-time girl, the no-surprises-there girl.
I was nearly thirty and long-term love didn’t look like it was going to happen for me. And I really wanted kids. So it wasn’t what I imagined, nothing like that fairy tale I think we all have in us right from the word go, that there’s one unique man out there who, somehow, through a miracle of timing, serendipity, God’s will or whatever, will stumble across us, realise we’re the one and be desperate to combine the best bits of himself with the best bits of ourselves. Preferably when we’re financially stable with a good idea which direction life is heading in.
No. I can categorically say that little fairy tale disappeared quicker than the trail of Hansel and Gretel’s breadcrumbs. But once I knew I was pregnant – and it took me a bit of time, helloooo, Ginny, wake up girl! – I kind of made peace with the fact that what happened that night was a secret I’d have to take to my grave. That no one could ever know.
Ironic really that I’ve been saved from decades of secret holding by dropping dead at forty-seven (unless I learn to walk on water) rather than at the ninety-five I’d hoped for. But, of course, that’s a double-edged sword. I’m the only one who can tell Victor the facts about his dad. But should I? Will it help him? Will he want to know?
It’s funny the thoughts I’m having. I’m even sort of glad Mum died early so she hasn’t had to live through me dying too. She’d probably have added that to the list of things I’d done to let the family down. She’d already had to bear the disappointment that I didn’t become a lawyer. ‘I’m still writing about the truth, Mum. Journalists do investigate things, just in a different way.’ I’d nearly curled up and died when Mum had rushed out to buy five copies of the first magazine I’d worked for, only to discover that my contribution was interviewing women about their favourite sex toys. ‘You are a disgrace to this family.’ Nonetheless, she told all her friends I was ‘a very important writer’.
Her disappointment about Victor still hurt me though. ‘A baby? With a white man?’ As though skin colour was the thing that mattered above whether the father had been a kind and decent person with good morals passing down his DNA. I’d phoned her from Canada, warming her up with the excellent news of my promotion to publishing editor of two prestigious women’s magazines. It didn’t quite have the effect I was hoping for, as her response was: ‘Why couldn’t you get a job at the BBC?’ It had been so tempting to bang the phone down and not tell her my other bit of ‘news’. I couldn’t back away from it though. It was one of those now-or-never conversations. Delaying wouldn’t change the outcome of my mother’s reaction and I needed the grey cloud of doom hanging over me to dissipate, so that my baby didn’t absorb disappointment into his bones before he’d even left the womb.
I’d been hanging onto the fact that as she’d been asking me since the day after I graduated when I was going to get married – ‘I don’t want to be too old for grandchildren!’ – that she might overlook the lack of wedding ring and celebrate the baby. But she’d done a whole dramatic wail down the phone. ‘You have finished me. You want to kill me.’
I’d ended the conversation promptly. The evening ahead, the pinnacle of my career so far, should have been a grand excuse for champagne celebrations. Instead, I sat huddled up, drinking green tea in my armchair, imagining Mum and Dad’s faces, struggling to adjust to welcoming my white husband into the family. For the time being, it was better than imagining the disbelief that would follow as they adjusted to not welcoming any husband at all into the family.
When I finally confessed months later that there was no Mister in the picture, Mum sniffed and said, ‘Let’s hope the baby don’t turn out too white.’
In the event, my beautiful boy had skin several shades lighter than