‘Because I didn’t want you to make the same mistakes I did,’ I said, though I suppose if it hadn’t led to pregnancy I would have conveniently forgotten the whole Midsummer Night’s madness – or put a romantic gloss on it.
‘Why does even Mal think it was this Tom, then?’
‘He just assumed it, like Granny, since it’s not an episode I ever wanted to discuss, even if it did mean I had you, darling, which I’ve never regretted in the slightest. And please don’t bring the subject up when he’s about, will you? It’s all best forgotten.’
Mal is the jealous kind, so one previous lover seemed as much as he could take when we were at the true-confessions stage of our relationship. Mind you, although I didn’t tell him who Rosie’s father was – or wasn’t – my words circled in an endless holding pattern around this perfectly obvious gaping hole in my narrative, and he never once asked the question.
Rosie had got up and was wandering restlessly about, scowling. ‘But if you are telling the truth this time, Mum, then you can tell me something about my real father, can’t you? You did at least know who he was? Didn’t you want to tell him about me?’
She came back across the room, a paler, taller version of myself at her age, as though her father had been a ghost, which for all I could remember of him he might well have been. I mean, in eighteen years I’ve nearly convinced myself that there was no second party involved, so Rosie’s was practically a born-again virgin birth: she’s mine, all mine.
‘So what was he called? Where did you meet him? What did he look like?’
‘I … can’t remember,’ I said uncomfortably, but I could see I wasn’t going to be allowed off the hook until I’d given her more than that. ‘He was just passing through the town and we picked him up in a pub somewhere and took him on to the end-of-term party with us. We’d all had a lot to drink. He said his name was Adam, and he was a gardener, but that’s about all I know about him.’
‘And you expect me to believe that?’ she said angrily.
‘Well, I did. And he had an old camper van,’ I added, though that’s one of the details I have allowed to go fuzzy over the years … except that sometimes I wake up with a thumping heart in an absolute panic, thinking I’m back in the damned thing and trying to creep out before the stranger I’ve spent the night with wakes up.
(And it smelled like a potting shed, come to that, so perhaps he really was a gardener, generous with his seed. But let’s leave the analogy there before I start to feel like a Gro-bag.)
‘Mum, you could at least tell me the truth, and not fob me off with yet more fairy stories!’ she said vehemently. ‘A camper van!’
‘I have, Rosie,’ I said, getting up and giving her a hug, which she endured rather than returned. ‘I have told you the truth, and if I knew more details I’d tell you those too. But I love you, and Granny loves you – isn’t that enough?’
I didn’t include Mal, fond as he is of her in his way, for the relationship’s always been tinged with mutual jealousy, though things are better now that Rosie’s away during term-time studying veterinary science. But she’s always spent a lot of time with her granny anyway, since Mal is not a pet lover, and so most of her menagerie stayed with Ma after we married, something I’m not sure she’s ever quite forgiven him for.
Mal’s footsteps sounded upstairs and Rosie said quickly, ‘I wish I knew if you were telling me the truth this time!’
‘Rosie, I’m sorry if it’s not what you wanted to hear, but that’s what really happened,’ I assured her. (And how did I come to have such a bossy little cow for a daughter?) ‘And by the time I knew I was pregnant there was no way to find out more – no means of tracing him. I never even knew his second name.’
‘You must have talked to each other!’
‘Yes, but we had both drunk an awful lot, don’t forget,’ I said patiently. ‘I don’t remember what we talked about, but he must have been really nice or I wouldn’t have gone back with him. I was only horrified next morning when I was sober, because I thought I still loved Tom.’
‘But if Tom was your boyfriend, why are you so sure he’s not my father?’ she demanded.
On any list of twenty questions you didn’t want your daughter to ask, this would come fairly high up.
‘I just am … And although I wasn’t on the pill, we always took precautions.’
‘Accidents happen,’ she pointed out. I hope she doesn’t know this from experience, but am not about to ask her while she is interrogating me. Or even at all.
‘Well they didn’t,’ I said firmly, though I couldn’t put my hand on my heart and truthfully say that I was one hundred per cent sure that Rosie wasn’t Tom’s baby, because we might have got a little slapdash with the contraception towards the end of our affair … ‘And don’t think I didn’t try and convince myself that you were Tom’s, because I did – but I’m positive you’re not.’
She changed tack with disconcerting suddenness. ‘You could tell me something about this Tom Collins, though – like, why his parents called him after a drink?’
‘Collinge, not Collins!’ I said. ‘And why do you want to talk about him? It’s pointless – what’s past is past. We’re happy now, aren’t we? That’s the important thing.’
This was rhetorical: no teenager is ever going to admit to being happy, it’s not in the job description.
Mal came in, the tall, dark and handsome answer to any almost-maiden’s prayer, except for the thunderous frown, and snapped, ‘Rose, your phone’s been going off every five minutes in your bedroom – can’t you hear it? And why must it play such loud, irritating music?’
Rosie gave him her best ‘you’re speaking a dead language, you fossil’ glare. ‘Why didn’t you tell me before?’ she demanded indignantly, and dashed off.
It was probably one of the boyfriends she prefers not to tell us about, though why they have to be a deep, dark secret I don’t know. Perhaps they vanish if exposed to the light of parental inspection.
I could feel the twitchings of an idea for a new cartoon coming on – or perhaps one of my Alphawoman comic strips. Something involving vampires and unsuitable boyfriends … But before I could pin it down Mal jerked me back into reality by demanding, ‘When did you say she was going back to university, Fran? And why does she have to be so untidy? The place is like a pigsty!’
The newborn inspiration turned its face to the wall and died; I do hate these sudden transitions from my out-of-body experiences. And ‘untidy’ was two abandoned magazines and a scatter of rose catalogues on the floor and an empty glass on the coffee table’s otherwise pristine surface. Pigs should be so lucky.
‘She takes after me and Ma: chaos comes naturally to us. And she’s going back to university on the fourth, after my birthday,’ I sighed. ‘I do miss her when she’s gone.’
‘Well, you’ve got me,’ he pointed out jealously.
‘Not for girlie chats, though, and you’re off on that six-week contract the day after Rosie leaves,’ I said.
Mal is something clever with computers, so he often works away troubleshooting. I might have added that even when he is home he is either up in his study messing about with his stamps, or down at the marina with his boat, but I didn’t want to seem to be complaining. It’s not like his hobbies are gambling, binge drinking and loose women, is it?
‘We’ll be able to keep in touch by email now too,’ I reminded him, for his surprise Christmas present to me had been the creation of the Fran March Rose Art website, which was very thoughtful of him. Rosie has promised to get me confidently surfing and