‘How is he?’ Brownjohn asked, still chuckling at the memory.
Daniel looked at him, puzzled. ‘Didn’t you know? He died before I was born.’
Now it was Brownjohn’s turn to look puzzled. He stared at Daniel. ‘But I saw him a couple of years ago. He came up behind me in the High Street. “John Brownjohn,” he said. “John Brownjohn!” and he laughed. I’d know that laugh anywhere.’
He stared at Daniel, taking in the young man’s look of shock. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I don’t know what’s going on, but if that’s your father, he’s still alive.’
DANIEL FIRED QUESTIONS AT Brownjohn for another hour, but the old teacher hadn’t much more to say. He kept repeating that Daniel’s father was alive, then he corrected himself. ‘At least he was alive a couple of years ago.’
The first name was Chris, he told Daniel, but he couldn’t call to mind the surname.
Daniel frowned, thinking about it. Chris was not the name his mother had given him, but he guessed the old man was somehow confused.
By now he could see that Brownjohn was tired and bored. Daniel said he was leaving, then asked to borrow the photo. Brownjohn handed it over with a speed which hinted he was glad to get rid of his guest. Daniel didn’t notice.
As he left, his mind was already busy with the questions he planned to ask his mother. He went straight to her house, which was a semidetached in the north of the borough.
Daniel had lived there for most of his life. Sarah had married while he was still in primary school. Looking back on those days, Daniel recalled that moving and leaving the home he’d always known had been one of his fears after his mum told him about getting married. Another fear had been that she would leave him, to go off with the man she was about to marry. This was one he had never told her about. As it happened, they didn’t move. Instead his new stepfather came to live in the house with them. Daniel’s room became his refuge, somewhere he could safely ignore the couple.
He had never told his mother how angry he had been in those days.
It was already past ten o’clock by the time he got there. As he walked up the garden path he hoped his stepfather would be out. More than he ever had in his life, he wanted to see and talk to his mother alone. He wanted to show her the photo, then look into her eyes and ask her for the whole story.
Thinking back on it, he realized how little she had told him in the past. When he was younger he used to press her for stories about his dad. What he wanted was the sort of stories other kids told: something funny or even weird he could talk about on the way home from school. ‘That’s just what my dad’s like,’ he imagined himself saying.
However much he asked, though, she was always vague. What she told him made him more curious without giving him anything he could get his teeth into. They had met when she had just started work as a teacher.
‘What happened? Daniel would ask. ‘Where was he?’
Someone had introduced them. She couldn’t remember who it had been. They hadn’t known each other long before she found she was pregnant. It had been a matter of weeks. All Daniel’s questions about the details met with the same answer. She didn’t know. His father had no family. He had been brought up in care, the same as herself and her sister Nancy. There was no one to worry about; they had been enough for each other. When she told him she was about to have a baby, he was happy.
He had been a photographer starting on his career, working for newspapers and magazines. The week she told him about Daniel he was offered a freelance job. They thought it was a good omen. They didn’t think about danger. They were young and death seemed far away. He was only going to be away for a month. She thought that all the questions could be answered when he got back. But he never did come back. A week later she was phoned to say that he had been shot and killed. There was no more.
Daniel opened the door with his key and went in quietly. As he had hoped, George his stepfather was slumped dozing in front of the TV. His mother was sitting in the little room behind. Through the half-open door he could see her peering at the computer screen, fingers busy on the keys.
Seeing her like this, it struck him that she was still pretty. She was almost fifty, but her figure was still straight and slim. The photo he had borrowed from Brownjohn was twenty-five-years-old. It seemed such a long time, and he wondered, for a moment, how living through all that time had changed his mum. In the picture her blonde hair had been longer, swinging down to her shoulders.
Now it was cut short, and if you looked closely you could see the streaks of grey. Those were only outward changes, he thought.
‘Mum,’ he said quietly.
She looked round, and smiled when she saw him. ‘Hello, love. I was just thinking about you.’
Normally, when he visited like this, they would chat about what he was doing but this time he couldn’t wait. He took the photo out of his pocket and held it up in front of her.
‘Who is this, Mum? Tell me who this is.’
She took the photo from time, her smile fading. She held it up to the light, turning away from him, studying it with care. ‘Where did you get this?’
She had her back to him and he couldn’t see the look on her face.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ he answered. ‘Just tell me who these people are.’
I don’t know,’ she said slowly. ‘Who is it supposed to be?’
He paused for a moment, amazed at her reply. ‘That’s you,’ he said harshly. ‘Don’t you know your own face? And that man is “Chris”. And that baby is me.’
She held the photo up to the light again Watching her closely, he thought he saw her hand tremble, but it was gone in a flash.
‘I really don’t know,’ she said. ‘It looks like me. But I don’t remember it at all. And this man…I never knew a Chris who looked like this. I’ve never seen this man in my life.’
‘BUT THAT’S YOU, MUM,’ Daniel persisted.
For a moment he felt unsure about where he was, like someone lost in an alien landscape.
‘Yes, I suppose it is me,’ she said. ‘Yes. It’s me, but I don’t remember.’
She turned around and looked at him, smiling. ‘Well, I did look like this once. A long time ago.’ She paused, thinking about it. ‘It looks like the garden at Number 12. You were only a few months old.’
‘Is that my dad?’
She raised her eyebrows in surprise. ‘No. I don’t know who that is.’ She looked again. ‘There were always people coming and going,’ she said. ‘I guess he was a friend of someone’s. Maybe Nancy.’
This was her sister Nancy. The two of them had been orphans, brought up in a series of foster homes. His mum didn’t like talking about those days. She had once told him that she felt guilty about the fact that he had no grandparents. She knew nothing about his father’s parents, which meant that they were all alone in the world.
‘Never mind, Mum,’ he had said. ‘I’m used to it.’
‘So was I. Until you came along. It was always just me and Nancy.’
Nancy had been the pretty one, she always said, who had married well and died young.