Frisky Business (6 page)

 

She set great store by
land and property
, she’d written,
and she was very fond of this house. It shows how much she thought of you that she would leave it to you … I know it looks like a wreck, but in her day it was quite something, and I’m sure in her mind she still saw it in its former glory
.

 

He felt ashamed now that she had been correct in surmising what an ingrate he was. At the time, he had just been annoyed that his aunt hadn’t left him a straightforward cash bequest, like she had Ethan and Hannah, instead of this albatross.

He read over the will again, taking in every word this time, and actually finding comfort in the formal solidity and clarity of the legal language. Finally, he took out the details of the house – the title deeds and photograph. The glimmer of hope he had been feeling sprouted wings and took flight when he looked at the photo. It was even worse than he remembered – except that it wasn’t ugly. It wasn’t pretty – it was practically a ruin – but it had grandeur and elegance, and it was actually rather beautiful, in the way that an old overgrown graveyard could be beautiful. He had no idea if he would be able to restore it to its former splendour without bankrupting himself – or whether or not it would even be worth doing. He couldn’t afford to sink his paltry savings into renovating the house if he wasn’t going to be able to sell it when it was finished. But if there was any chance that this could be his ticket back to New York …

There was a light tap on the door and his mother pushed it open, balancing a laundry basket on her hip. ‘I’m doing a white wash if you have anything to throw in,’ she said.

‘Oh, that’s okay, thanks,’ Kit said, sitting back on his haunches. ‘I’ll do my washing myself.’

‘It’s no bother,’ she assured him with a cheery smile, glancing towards his overflowing linen basket.

Reluctantly, he got up
and pulled out a couple of his best designer shirts, dumping them into her basket with a mumbled ‘Thanks.’

‘Sure. And the
X-Factor
is starting in a few minutes, if you’re interested,’ she said as she turned to leave.

Kit sighed and flopped down on the bed. He was a very long way from Riverside Drive.

When she had packed up
all the stuff Luke needed for an overnight stay and her mother had come to collect him, Romy went to shower and change for the party. Danny and Lesley were coming early for a debriefing and they would be arriving soon – because there was more to tonight’s party than met the eye. As well as all the usual suspects, she had invited everyone she could think of who might have been at David Kinsella’s party the previous year, and told them to bring anyone they wanted, in the hope that Luke’s father might turn up – or ‘return to the scene of the crime’ as Lesley put it.

It had been Lesley’s idea and, realistically, Romy didn’t hold out much hope. It had been a year, and while she could
round up the old crowd from school, she didn’t know half the people who would have been at David’s house that night. Nevertheless, she saw it as a new beginning because she had decided to use her party to draw a line under the whole thing. After this, she was going to forget about trying to find Luke’s father and just get on with her life as a single mother.

True to her word, after the night at David’s party, she hadn’t made any attempt to discover the true identity of Darth Vader. Then, by the time she discovered she was pregnant, the trail had gone cold. David and Katie had moved to Canada, and the details of the party were hazy for those she spoke to, their memories dulled by the passage of time as well as the vast quantities of alcohol they had consumed on the night. She felt entitled to make oblique enquiries about him once she knew she was having his baby, but she had come to a dead end – no one seemed to know who Darth Vader was.

She hadn’t made it any easier by not letting anyone else in on the secret of how Luke was conceived. She had kept her pregnancy to herself while she decided what she wanted to do, and then she had presented it to everyone as a fait accompli, making it clear that the father wasn’t going to be involved and she didn’t want to answer any questions about him. She had been touched by the way her friends and family had respected her wishes and backed off, even though she knew they were all dying to ask questions. She had let them draw their own conclusions, knowing that they assumed he was married or just didn’t want to know. And she had been happy to let them assume that – until a couple of weeks earlier, when she had spilled the beans to her little brother and her best friend.

Lesley and Danny were hanging
out at her flat. They were all a little drunk, lying around on the sofa, stuffed full of nachos and in that giggly, semi-drowsy over-sharing mode brought on by too many margaritas. Danny had told them about the drunken night in Majorca when he and his boyfriend Paul had ended up in bed with all five members of a well-known boy band. Then Lesley had started to regale them with the horrors of her latest adventures in internet dating.

‘He seemed quite nice,’ she was saying about the accountant she had dated the previous week. ‘So I went back to his place after dinner. But then he asked me if I wanted some wine, and when I said yes, he – get this – he poured himself a glass, took a mouthful, and then he told me to open my mouth, and he sort of dribbled it into my mouth.’ She shuddered.

‘Jesus!’ Danny swore.

‘Eew!’ Romy grimaced. ‘That’s gross.’

‘I know. I think he thought it was romantic.’

‘A sort of wine spritzer with drool instead of soda – very romantic!’

‘I’d say he saw it in a film or something. Films are terrible for giving fellas ideas.’ Lesley took a slug of her drink. ‘So that was the end of him. Then on Wednesday I went out with Michael.’

‘Oh, was he the one who was just out of a long relationship?’ Romy asked, remembering the men she had helped Lesley to vet online. ‘Graphic designer, thirty-five? He was nice looking.’

‘Thirty-five my arse!’ Lesley scoffed. ‘He was more like a hundred. Turned out, the picture he’d posted was his son. I mean, did he think I wasn’t going to
notice?’
she asked, while Danny and Romy shrieked with laughter.

‘So what did you do?’ Danny asked. ‘Did you blow him off straight away?’

‘There was no blowing
of any kind, let me tell you. But I was brought up to respect the elderly, so I had a very nice early bird dinner with him, and I helped him across the street before I kicked him to touch.’ Lesley knocked back the rest of her drink and poured herself another from the jug on the coffee table. ‘Oh, and I’m going out with the son next week,’ she added.

‘What?’ Romy spluttered.

‘Turns out he actually
is
just out of a long-term relationship. I made Michael promise to introduce us – said I’d have him up for grooming me on the internet if he didn’t.’

‘Oh, you
have
to marry the son,’ Danny said. ‘Just think what a cool story you’d have about how you met.’

As they all laughed, Romy racked her brain for something she could contribute to the conversation, but she came up a blank. Was she really that dull? Where were
her
funny stories, her tales of indiscretion? She could only think of one, and she suddenly found herself wanting to tell them because it felt daring, and it was funny and would make them laugh, and what the hell did it matter now anyway.

‘So, do you want to know who Luke’s father is?’ she asked teasingly, while they were still laughing.

Danny and Lesley seemed to sober up instantly. Their laughter ceased abruptly and they both suddenly sat up poker straight and literally on the edge of their seats. ‘Yes!’ they gasped in unison.

Romy smiled to herself, prolonging their agony for a moment. ‘Me too!’ she said finally, and burst into giggles. Lesley and Danny looked at her uncomprehendingly, and then frowned at each other in bewilderment.

‘What – you mean you don’t know?’ Danny asked.

‘Nope. Absolutely no idea.’

‘But how – when—’ Lesley spluttered.

‘Well, remember David Kinsella’s Hallowe’en party last year …’ And so she had confessed all. She told them about Darth Vader, the cupboard, everything.

‘So,’ Danny said, ‘what you’re saying is Luke’s father is … Darth Vader?’

‘Yes.’ She glanced at Danny warily, bracing herself for his reaction. To her amazement, a wide grin spread across his face.

‘Cool,’ he breathed.

She laughed in relief. ‘Well that wasn’t the reaction I was expecting.’

‘That’s why you called him Luke,’ Lesley said.

‘Yeah. It seemed the obvious choice.’

‘You could have called him Darth, after his father,’ Danny said.

‘Was Darth his first name, though? Were his parents Mr and Mrs Vader?’

‘Yep. If you married him, you’d be Mrs Vader.’

‘Wouldn’t I be Lady Vader? He’s a lord, isn’t he?’ ‘A Dark Lord.’

‘I could be a Dark Lady, like in Shakespeare’s sonnets.’

‘I’m not sure if that would make you a lady. I don’t know how the peerage works in the Galactic Empire.’

‘I doubt
anything
can make you a lady after that,’ Lesley said. ‘And you won’t be getting into any sonnets with that kind of behaviour.’

‘Lady Vader,’ Romy mused. ‘It has a nice ring to it.’

‘So that was why you were always asking about him. I wish you’d told me this sooner.’

‘What difference would it have made? We’ve already asked everyone we know who was at the party. No one knew who he was.’

‘Couldn’t you have just asked David?’

‘I did. He’d gone to
Canada by the time I found out I was pregnant, but I friended him on Facebook, and asked him. He said he didn’t know.’

What he had actually said was that he must have been a friend of Katie’s. She thought about Katie sometimes. It was weird knowing there was someone out there in the world who could simply give her the name of her baby’s father. But how could she ask? She didn’t know Katie, and even if she didn’t feel it would be breaking her promise to Darth Vader, how could she approach a virtual stranger and ask who she had been cheating on her husband with? She would probably deny the whole thing anyway.

‘Still, you should have told us,’ Lesley said. ‘Maybe we could have helped.’

Danny sighed. ‘Well, maybe we can help now. Let’s go over it again. Tell us everything you know about him.’

Romy thought hard. What did she know about him? Very little. She knew he didn’t believe in God, but he prayed sometimes in his head. And she knew he had been having an affair with David’s wife, but she couldn’t tell them that. ‘He was tall,’ she said eventually with a helpless shrug.

‘Okay, good,’ Danny nodded encouragingly. ‘And he likes
Star Wars
, we know that.’

‘I suppose.’ Romy bit her lip. ‘But he might not. I mean, what if that was the only costume he could get? He might have just picked it at random.’

‘Okay, tall and possibly likes
Star Wars,’
Lesley put in. ‘Any other clues?’

‘Um … I think he could be asthmatic.’

‘Really? What makes you think that?’

‘Well … he was breathing really heavily the whole time. He sounded quite out of breath.’

‘Romy,’ Danny smiled pityingly, ‘you were having it off.’

‘You know I hate that
expression.’ She frowned.

‘Okay, you were …
making love
, whatever.’ Danny sniggered. ‘You were making love in a wardrobe with a guy you couldn’t pick out in a crowd—’

‘Oh, shut up!’ She grabbed a cushion and swatted him with it.

He laughed more, raising his hands to defend himself. ‘Okay, okay. But y’know, everyone breathes deeply when they’re in the throes. Plus you were in a wardrobe – it was probably pretty stuffy in there.’

‘And on top of all that he was wearing a mask,’ Lesley added.

‘Yeah, I know.’ Romy sighed. ‘I’m just clutching at straws.’

‘Besides,’ Danny said, ‘he might have just been getting into character – you know, if he thought the Vader thing was a turn-on for you. Did he say anything?’

‘Ugh! I’m not giving you details.’