Roma was silent, her face blotched red.
Then realisation caught Lily’s breath. ‘I can think of one man you had a relationship with. But he was some one-night stand whose name you didn’t even know … you said.’ She gazed into her mother’s eyes, at the apprehensive, apologetic agony she read there. ‘Wasn’t he a one-night stand? My father?’
With a noisy swallow Roma shook her head. ‘It was a mess. You know most of the story.’
Lily’s stomach dropped down a shaft. ‘But not all, evidently! Tell me. I want to try to understand.’
Roma covered her eyes. ‘Patsie and I wanted a family. She had a settled career with maternity benefits. She became pregnant with your sister Zinnia via the sensible route: anonymous donor. But I got jealous. I wanted a baby too.’ She clasped her hand over Lily’s as her voice broke. ‘Patsie wouldn’t agree, particularly before the first baby was even here. I was a freelance photographer scraping a living and there was childcare to be considered. If there was to be a second pregnancy then she wanted to have artificial insemination again using the same anonymous donor – possible to arrange even in 1983 – so the babies would be full siblings. I thought she was unbearably pragmatic.’ She gave a bitter laugh. ‘It wasn’t a one-night stand I had, it was an affair. Marvin was an older man, who, in my reckless, heedless naivety I thought wouldn’t be hurt by me using him. He never knew I was only in the relationship to get pregnant.’
The kitchen clock ticked from above the range cooker, loud in the silence. ‘Why did you lie when I asked about my father?’ Lily demanded, rocked by an unexpectedly keen sense of loss.
Lurching to her feet Roma took down a glass and filled it from the chilled water dispenser in the door of the fridge. Footsteps dragging, she returned to her seat. ‘I met Marvin through a photography job – headshots of managerial staff for a company magazine. He developed a thing for me and let it show. He was shocked when I, a woman in her mid-twenties, responded.’ Colour flooded her cheeks. ‘He was fit and good-looking for early fifties. I thought he’d be kind to me and most of my experience was with women.’ She cleared her throat and raised her gaze to Lily’s. ‘Are you sure you want to hear this?’
Lily’s heartbeat seemed to have taken over her whole body, pumping in her stomach, her head, her throat. She nodded.
Roma hooked her hair behind her ears. The wind had tumbled her corn-coloured waves. ‘It lasted for five months, the length of time it took me to get pregnant. I was sorrier than I thought I’d be to end things. Poor Marvin was devastated. Said he’d fallen in love with me. Had risked his marriage, the happiness of his kids. He was so hurt. It was awful. I’d been so immature and self-centred that I truly had barely given his marriage a thought. Looking back, I can’t believe my own selfish behaviour. And Patsie—’ Roma’s hands were shaking now. ‘I almost destroyed us. She’d been so happy in her planned pregnancy and all the time I’d been betraying her.’
‘With a man,’ Lily whispered, shocked.
A bitter smile twisted Roma’s lips. ‘Yes. Well. That it was a man didn’t help. But I’d betrayed her trust, her plans for our future. It was rocky for a long while.’
Through the enormity of everything she was hearing, Lily craved information on one person. ‘Tell me about my father,’ she demanded hoarsely.
The semblance of a smile flitted across Roma’s face. ‘He was a company director. Fair-haired, clean-shaven, looked good in a suit. He liked old-school rock ’n’ roll, rugby, tennis, cinema, detective shows on TV, holidays in America.’
Lily felt her insides had been hollowed out with a giant spoon. ‘And you didn’t think his concern for “his kids” should extend to me?’
Roma rose and quietly poured coffee from the filter jug. Her voice was low and filled with shame. ‘I couldn’t find a way to make things right. Be fair to everyone. There were two babies on the way; I was desperate for Patsie and I to stay together and be parents to both. The only way to bring that about was for her to know the full story … but nobody else. I couldn’t risk Marvin knowing about you or you knowing about him because Patsie would have been faced with him in your life.’
Lily gazed at the cup of coffee her mother put before her and felt faintly revolted by it.
Roma sat down and wrapped her arms around her, smelling of fresh air and compost. ‘If you only knew the hours we talked about it! Everything, anything I thought of doing just felt as if it would make my wrong wronger, risk my family and risk his family. If we’d told you the truth and you wanted to find him it would change the entire dynamic of our family – you and Zinnia, Patsie and me. Lily, don’t hate me! You had two mothers and a sister. I wanted it to be enough.’
‘So, on my behalf, you chose to exclude me from his family. One half of my family.’ Lily propped her head on her fist. She could actually see how her mother had made the choice she had, though it left her feeling as if she had a black hole where her insides should be. ‘I don’t hate you, Mum. It’s all so … you. Chaotic and impetuous. It’s just tough to find my father and lose him in the same instant.’ Tears prickled her eyes.
Then, slowly, Lily sat straighter, pulling the iPad towards her, rereading the obituary. And in it she saw her consolation prize. In silence, she highlighted the first of two names and tapped it into a search engine. A list of hits filled the screen and it took her seconds to access one. Then it felt as if the words she read reached into her chest and gripped her heart. ‘Look. The eldest of my two half-brothers, Harrison Tubb, is the landlord of The Three Fishes pub in a village called Middledip.’ She looked up at her mum with a surge of excitement. ‘It’s here in Cambridgeshire. I could find him.’
Roma sat back with a horrified gasp. ‘Oh, Lily … no!’
November, two years later
Lily passed a string of coloured Christmas lights through her hands and wondered whether, if she looped it several times, she could use it to gag her sister.
Zinnia, supposedly helping Lily decorate The Three Fishes, had so far done no more than fidget with a fistful of silver tinsel and give Lily earache. ‘We’re your family!’ Zinnia declared, shoving her fingers through her chestnut hair. ‘What you’re doing could hurt Patsie and Roma.’
Lily climbed on a stool and began to feed the string of lights through hooks above the bar. ‘They understand it’s my decision. You know this, Zin. Let’s not press “repeat” on the conversation.’
Zinnia bulldozed on. ‘Aren’t we enough for you? You and I grew up sharing a bedroom! We’re sisters—’
‘And you’re the loveliest sister in the world.’ Lily hoped popping in a positive note would distract Zinnia. She jumped down, scraped her stool towards the next few hooks, gave Zinnia a hug then clambered up again. ‘How about twisting that tinsel around the ivy swags along the mantelpiece?’
‘Lily!’ Zinnia tossed the tinsel onto the polished wooden bar. ‘I know you! I’m where you come from. I understand how it feels when people think we’re weird because we come from a single-sex family.’
‘I know,’ Lily agreed gently. ‘But there’s more to my life than that. It’s the part you don’t share that’s the problem, isn’t it?’ Plus the fact that a couple of years ago Lily had visited the village to find her half-brother and had ended up applying for a job in his pub, finding somewhere to live in Middledip – and here she still was. Zinnia was particularly upset by that.
Zinnia didn’t offer a direct reply to the question but her voice softened. ‘You’ve completed your mission and met him. You should either tell him the truth or leave the poor