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Dara nods. ‘You could say that. First grandchild and all that. So, I hear congratulations are in order for you too. Another number one single. Sell out tours. Screaming fans wherever you go. God you make me sick.’ He grins at Tate and they both laugh. Dara climbs onto the tailgate and sits beside him. ‘I remember when we took guitar lessons together for a few months. Did you ever think you’d end up here?’
‘No way. Any regrets giving up music?’
Dara shakes his head. ‘Dad keeps going on about it. Like if I stuck with it I could have been as good as you are. I didn’t have the patience for it though. It’s something you either have or you don’t. Sort of like the ability to listen in Mr. Donnelly’s maths class.’
‘I don’t know what it was about that man. He walked into the classroom and my brain switched off.’
‘Might have been easier if he put you on a permanent detention. Would have saved him a few minutes every day.’
‘Don’t remind me. Mum and Dad must have spent nearly as much time with the principle as I did in detention.’
‘It was quite the family scandal at the time.’
Tate snorts. ‘Yeah, I’ll bet.’
‘You’ve shut them all up now though. You’ve got to be worth more than all of us combined. Bet that feels good to prove them all wrong, huh?’
‘I didn’t do all this to prove anything.’
‘I didn’t mean it that way.’
‘I know. We all worry a little too much about what everyone else thinks.’
Dara nods. ‘Couldn’t agree more. But that’s the fun of family, right? Anyway, I suppose we better head back in and help clear up. Gary should be finished talking to the tree by now.’
‘I’ll be there in a minute.’
Dara smiles at him and jumps down from the back of the truck. Tate watches him walk back into the house then lies back and looks up at the sky. He didn’t dislike Dara, but he had little to nothing in common with him anymore.
He holds up the bundle of post and shuffles through the letters. Most of it is junk but one letter in the middle stands out. The envelope has his name and parents’ address printed on it but there’s no stamp. He sits up and shines his phone torch on the print. It looks like whoever sent it used a typewriter.
He tears it opens and pulls out the sheet of paper. At the top of the page in the same typewriter print is a line of writing above a printout of a photo showing a woman with her arms around a young boy.
Is it your fault she’s dead?
He turns the page over but there’s nothing else. He directs his phone torch on the photo and his heart hammers loudly in his chest. What the fuck? That’s him in the photo. He’s a bit younger than he is in the first photos the Archers took when they adopted him. Maybe a year before so he’d be around six, but it’s definitely him. Did that mean the woman in the photo is his mother? He doesn’t remember his biological parents. He was told they died.
‘Is it your fault she’s dead?’
Saying the words out loud doesn’t produce an answer. If it is his mother, is it his fault she died? But he was only a kid, how could it be down to him?
He reads the words again. Who the fuck would send him something like that?
‘Hey! You too much of a celebrity to help? Tate? Hello!’
He looks up at his mum waving at him from the door. ‘What?’
‘Gregg is attempting to polish off the tray of leftover sausage rolls without you. If you don’t come in now, he’ll devour the lot, and then he’ll be sick. I’m not having a replay of last year. I’ve only just got the stains out of the rug.’
‘Yeah. I’ll be there in a sec.’
Tate wipes a hand over his face and folds the sheet of paper. He climbs down from the truck and stuffs it into his back pocket. Whatever the fuck is going on there is no way he’s going to mention this to her. The Archers gave him a family when no one else wanted him. Thanks to them he’s had an amazing life for nearly thirty years. That’s all that matters to him.
