‘I do remember at your wedding thinking he was very bonny for a premmie baby.’
‘No. I saw his hospital bracelet. He weighed over 7lbs. Phoebe was only 6lbs 3oz.’
‘I always said you should have stopped work earlier. No wonder Phoebe was small, the way you ran yourself ragged.’
This was why I could never have a discussion with Mum. Her ability to allow irrelevant details to become her focus was legendary.
I’d had enough drama for one night. I didn’t feel up to justifying any other areas of my life to date, so I let it go. We walked the rest of the way with Mum musing about her astonishment that Ginny had kept Victor’s parentage a secret. ‘Imagine not breathing a word for all those years.’ I was pretty sure Mum would never find herself in the position of keeping something to herself for so long.
I unlocked her front door. We didn’t do a lot of hugging, but she flung her arms open.
‘They’re all lucky to have you. And if that Faye causes any trouble, I shall put everyone right about that daughter of hers.’ Mum leaned forward. ‘She had her head in his, you know…’ she said, waggling her finger downwards. Thank goodness she’d never overheard Phoebe giving the rundown of who’d done what with whom at their parties. Enough to make Mum’s evaporated milk curdle.
I bundled her inside and disappeared, with a warning not to mention anything about tonight until I told her it was okay.
I was just walking home when I saw an Uber turn into the drive. I hung back, giving myself time to consider my options. Tell Victor now, without Patrick, before anyone else did? Phone Patrick and tell him what had happened? Hope that there wouldn’t be a domino effect of Faye telling Georgia, who would then tell Victor. I’d never make a living as a government strategist.
I leant on the church wall, staring up at the stars. My mind was pick, pick, picking at why Ginny had acted the way she had. I didn’t want to believe that my lifelong friend had intended to hurt us. Even so, there was no escaping the fact that she’d deliberately sat on a secret that had gathered more and more power to inflict damage as the years went by.
What if she’d phoned me on New Year’s Day and told me she’d had sex with Patrick, before I’d got involved with him? What if he’d just come clean, as soon as it became apparent we had feelings beyond simple friendship? I wouldn’t have loved it. But I might have been able to live with it. Anything would have been better than decades of believing Ginny was my safety net, my go-to listening ear, only to discover she was my betrayer.
In the meantime, I had to stop wallowing in what it meant for me and protect Victor, to make sure the next cataclysmic shock in his life was delivered as gently as possible.
I hurried up the hill. I’d have to ring Patrick, tell him that I’d let him down, that word was out before we were ready for it. I mourned the decades of my childhood when however angry you made someone, no one else heard about it in the time it took to vent in a WhatsApp group, a Facebook post or any of the myriad ways Victor might find out who his dad was.
I crept into the house. I heard talking in the kitchen and hoped Phoebe wasn’t filling Victor in just yet. Instead, at my table sat Georgia, crying her eyes out, with Victor kneeling on the floor, trying to calm her down, and Phoebe making hot chocolate.
‘What’s happened?’ I asked, despite being tempted to run away shouting that my trouble trove was already full and closed to further crisis.
Victor stood up. ‘Georgia’s had a bit of a falling out with her mum.’ He brushed his hand over his face. ‘Faye drove off in a temper when she came to pick up Georgia because, well, she kind of accused me of something and Georgia stood up for me, but it got a bit nasty. I didn’t want to leave Georgia on her own so I hoped it might be okay if she stayed here for the night.’
My heart went out to this boy. Whatever Ginny had done wrong elsewhere, she’d instilled in him such a sense of responsibility and kindness. God knows, the world needed more people like that. ‘Yes, of course.’