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She heard the door creak open, her name being called, and then there in the kitchen doorway stood little Dagmara.
‘Hello Shay,’ she said. ‘I don’t want to disturb, but I saw Paula leave the house. She made a zoom off.’
‘We had a row,’ replied Shay. ‘She didn’t like what Mum’s will said.’
‘Of course,’ Dagmara replied. ‘I’m sorry it was left to you. Roberta should have told her.’
‘You knew all about it.’ It wasn’t a question, but a statement.
‘I know everything.’
Shay smiled at that. ‘Oh, Dagmara, I wish you did.’
‘Your mama and I were friends for many years. We have had a lot of time to talk. I knoweverything.’ Dagmara said it again, like a piece of cheese trailed in front of a mouse. The mouse went for it.
‘Did she tell you that my father wasn’t my father, Dagmara? Because that’s what Paula just did.’
Dagmara let loose a long outward breath.
‘Yes, I knew this too,’ she said. ‘Ay, ay, ay. Shay, you need to come with me to my house. I have to show you something.’
Dagmara’s bungalow had the same layout as her mum’s, but there the similarities ended. This house had a surfeit of heavy dark wood furniture, tapestries on the walls, cheerful clutter, patterns on soft furnishings and curtains that should have jarred but somehow melded into homely, chalet-chic. There was a smell of spicy apple pot pourri, a faint air of Christmas inside at odds with midsummer and a raging sun outside.
‘Sit, sit,’ commanded Dagmara and Shay sank onto the oversized sofa. It was soft and squashy and received her as if it were grateful to be utilised.
Dagmara walked over to an ornately carved dresser and returned with a small glass full of dark liquid and a notebook.
‘It’s Latvian brandy,’ she explained. ‘It’s for shock. It’s for anything really, but today for shock.’
Shay picked up the glass and did something she had never done in her life: downed it in one. It was like drinking fire with nails in it. It burned and hurt the back of her throat and she coughed in response. She didn’t feel any better for it, so whatever it was supposed to do didn’t work. She’d need a lot more than one to numb her against the onslaught she’d just received.
Dagmara sat on the adjacent chair, the notebook balanced on her knees. It had been handled a lot, that was clear by the curled edges and the creased front.
‘Shay,’ began Dagmara, in earnest. ‘Roberta was my friend, as you know, and we could – and did – talk about everything, and I… I always felt it was wrong that she kept some things from you but at the same time, I understood why. She thought you would never find out, so why would she risk hurting you, destroying everything you believed. She said that sometimes the value of truth is overrated, keep the past as the past, unless it ruins the present. Unless it ruins the present.’ She repeated the phrase, her finger beating for emphasis. ‘Then that skip arrived and it made all sorts of things come to the surface in her head: the past she had tried to keep in the past. She realised her mistakes so clearly, when her mind was at the same time so confused. I think she wanted to tell you in the end but it was too jumbled up. She chose her path, she thought it was the right one. She chose the way, with love for you.’
Dagmara placed the flat of her palm on the book. ‘When she started to forget, we used to sit together and I would write her memories down with her. I told her it was an exercise to help her brain but I always feared today would come and this I did for you. So I ask you, dear Shay, do you want me to open this book or do you want to keep the past you have?’
‘Open it,’ said Shay; with no doubt in her voice. She didn’t want lies, they had damaged her too much already.
Dagmara nodded, opened the first page.
‘In the 1970s, there was a Cold War in the world between Russia and America and all their respective allies. The British government wanted Russian-speaking teachers for an accelerated learning programme. Your mother was asked to go, of course she was. It meant living away from her family for a year but it was important work and she wantedto do it, so she went. Harry and Stella between them looked after your sister.’ Dagmara paused, swallowed. ‘One of her pupils was an officer in Egyptian intelligence called Ammon Habib. She told me… everyone said he looked just like the film star Omar Sharif.’
Shay’s breath snagged. Broken pieces of her mother’s recollections began to drift together, fit in place.
‘She said he was the most beautiful man she had ever seen,’ Dagmara went on, smiling, eyes bright. ‘From the first time she saw his face, she knew that what she had thought of as love before was a mere pale imitation. He was clever, intellectually very gifted, a talented artist too. Look what he drew.’
She turned to the back of the book and took out a piece of paper which had weakened badly along the places where it was folded. It was a pencil portrait of a young Roberta with her long wavy hair, almost photo-perfect, drawn with a skilled hand; even the light in the woman’s eyes, just paper untouched by the pencil, was masterly; and in the bottom right corner, a signature, ‘Ammon’, and a date, June 1974 – eight months before Shay was born.
Shay’s finger brushed along the faded name; this was the closest she would ever get to him.
‘Is he my father?’ But she knew the answer before Dagmara even said the word.
‘Yes.’
Such a small word to have so great an effect on her. Her arms, legs, hands, feet, scalp began to prickle with shock. Had she been standing, she would have had to sit down. Her planet was jolted from its axis; her whole life had been built on a lie.
‘Did they go to the seaside and eat chocolate ice cream?’ asked Shay.
