“Can we help you?” she asks me. I can’t tear my gaze from his face.
“I’m Seraphine Mayes,” I manage to say. “I’m Dominic and Ruth Mayes’s daughter. I think you were a friend of my parents.”
His demeanor changes then. His eyes widen, he draws in two deep quick breaths, and he takes a step backward, holding his hands up as if to defend himself.
“Dad?” his daughter asks, but he doesn’t take his eyes off me.
“You can’t be,” he says eventually. “You can’t be. Ruth died.”
I step forward, warily.
“I know. She died on the day I was born,” I say.
He starts to shake his head, slowly at first and then more violently.
“No. No, it’s impossible,” he says.
“Dad?” his daughter says again, and he reaches for her hand without breaking eye contact with me.
“We need to go,” he says, taking another step backward.
“My brother Edwin remembers you,” I say.
An expression of pain distorts his face.
“Why do you say it’s impossible?” I ask.
He shakes his head, his mouth slightly open, no sound emerging.
“Have you been in contact with Laura?” I ask. “Did you send her a letter?”
“Laura?” he blurts. “No. What?”
Then he regains some composure and takes a step toward me, and then another, his eyes stretched wide, his face thrust forward.
“Whoareyou?” he demands, and I’m convinced that at any moment he’s going to snarl at me. I stumble backward. The young woman tugs at his hand, pulling him away.
“Dad, stop it. We need to go. Please, let’s just go,” she says.
He relaxes slightly and examines me all the way down to my feet and back up again in a swift moment.
“I don’t know who you are,” he says, his voice gravelly, “and I don’t want to talk to you. Stay away from me. Stay away from both of us.”
They cling on to each other as they hurry away from me,crossing the car park and climbing into a car. Several men and women have stopped outside the building and are eyeing me curiously. I’m shaking.Impossible, he said. It’simpossiblethat I’m my parents’ child. The conviction that this man is right claws at me, firing off the same three words over and over again in a staccato rhythm at the back of my brain.Who am I?
12
Laura
October/November 1991
WHEN ALEX DROPPEDRuth home after their lunch date, she went directly to her bedroom claiming a headache. I’d been making flapjacks with Edwin and Joel, and I chewed on a crispy corner piece as I watched the yellow car glide away down the lane. I guessed from Ruth’s headache that her outing with Alex hadn’t been a success.
That night, Dominic arrived at Summerbourne in a jolly mood, but the following morning he came off the phone and into the kitchen with his mouth in a flat line.
“That was Alex. He can’t come for lunch after all. He’s got to go back up to Leeds right away—some crisis at work.”
Ruth shrugged. “Oh well. All he could talk about yesterday was the work he’s having done on the cottage. It got boring. I wish he’d just ring you when he’s in that sort of mood—he’s your friend.”
