The Accidental Life of Jessie Jefferson (6 page)

His eyes are wide open, and when he speaks it’s with stunned horror. ‘Why are you always such a little—’ He stops himself and takes a deep breath.

‘Go on! Say it!’ I yell, tears filling my eyes. My next question comes out of nowhere. ‘Do you know who my real dad is?’

His mouth abruptly shuts.

‘Do you?’ I ask again.

He looks away from me and the blood drains away from my face. ‘Do you?’ I ask once more, this time with shock. I step around the coffee table and kneel in front of him. ‘Stuart?’ I ask, my pulse still racing. ‘Stu, please? Do you know?’

He won’t meet my eyes.

‘I thought that when Mum died I’d never find out the truth . . . If you know, you have to tell me.’ Tears track silently down my cheeks as I stare at him, my last hope for my world’s biggest secret.

Slowly, his eyes meet mine and I know that the answer is yes, he knows.

‘Please tell me,’ I beg, as the tears continue to stream relentlessly down my neck, soaking the rim of my T-shirt.

He rubs his hands over his face in a frustrated, lost gesture, upsetting his horn-rimmed glasses. He takes them off and pushes his right hand through his hair, studying the glasses in his left. I wait in breathless silence. He shakes his head.

‘I don’t know, Jessie.’

‘Stu, please,’ I say again. ‘I need to know. It’s why I’ve been so . . .
angry
. . . I can’t move on, I can’t say goodbye to her. Not really. I’m so hurt and upset that she kept this from me.
Please
. . .’ There is a lump the size of a ping-pong ball inside my throat now. ‘I just want someone to be honest with me. I don’t care if he’s in jail. I’ll get over it if he’s dead. What could be worse than that?’

He shakes his head. ‘He’s not in jail.’

My breath catches and I freeze, staring at his face.

‘And he’s not dead,’ he adds.

‘Then who is he?’

He sighs. ‘He has a family. He doesn’t know you exist.’

‘So that’s it? I can’t know who my dad is because he doesn’t know who
I
am? Because I might upset his happy little family? Well, tough! What about me?’

‘It’s more complicated than that,’ he tells me.

‘How can it be more complicated than that?’ I don’t understand. I so wish I did.

‘He’s . . . well known.’

‘
What
?’ My brow furrows. Now I’m even more confused. Is he a celebrity? A politician? ‘Have I heard of him?’

He nods slowly. ‘His name is Johnny Jefferson.’

My world tilts off its axis. Not because I think my dad is Johnny Jefferson, but because Stuart has just
told
me that my dad is Johnny Jefferson. How could he be so cruel as to openly taunt me?

‘How could you?’ I ask, my head spinning. Why would Stu mock me like this? To teach me a lesson for acting out?

‘I’m not lying to you,’ he says solemnly and I want to slap his face. ‘I’m not! I’m telling you the truth.’

‘I hate you,’ I reply bitterly.

‘Jessie,’ he says firmly. ‘Your dad is Johnny Jefferson.’

I stare at him. What is he talking about?

Stu sighs. ‘Your mum was a groupie of Johnny’s first band, Fence, before they became famous.’

‘A groupie?’ I shake my head in confusion. Aren’t groupies really slutty?

‘Yes. She followed the band everywhere, was obsessed with Johnny.’

My face flushes. ‘Are you being serious? If you’re lying to me I will walk out of this door and you will never see me again,’ I swear vehemently. Maybe that’s what he wants.

‘I’m not lying to you,’ he replies. ‘I swear on your mother’s grave that I’m telling you the truth.’

I feel dizzy as now my world completely breaks away from its axis and starts to roll downhill, gathering speed as it goes. I fall backwards and my back hits the wall. I slide down to the floor and stare up at him in shock, looking down at me from his armchair.

‘Are you serious?’

‘Yes.’

‘Holy shit.’

He closes his eyes briefly in resignation at my language, while I ready myself to hear the bedtime story to end all bedtime stories.

‘You know that Candy – your mum – was my first love? That we went out when we were sixteen but then broke up,’ he starts.

I nod impatiently, because I’ve heard this story before. They were in the same year at school, and Stu had a crush on her for ages. A few years ago he told me he thought she was the coolest girl he’d ever known – I imagine she was a wild child, while he was a bit of a geek. Anyway, she decided to give him a chance, but after a year they broke up. Mum got pregnant soon after that, and Stu was there for her through the whole thing. But they were just friends until I was about six, when they got back together, although he didn’t move in with us for another two years. Those details I know.

‘When Candy was seventeen, she went to London to see a new band. Fence. I wasn’t much into rock music – not like her – so she went with a friend.’ He pauses for a moment. ‘She was on such a high when she got back from that concert. She bought her tickets to their next one straight away. It became an obsession. She would travel around the country going to every gig she possibly could, spent all her money on them. She became more and more distant, and then one day she called it off with me.’

‘Just like that?’ I ask.

‘Yep. I was devastated,’ he admits. ‘I wanted to at least continue to be friends, but she was so into Fence, into Johnny, that she didn’t want anything to do with me. I was too much of a nerd for her to be associated with. I’d always known she was out of my league,’ he muses.

I feel a wave of pity for him. It sounds like Mum was pretty harsh.

‘Anyway, one day, a year or so later, she did come knocking. She was in such a state, really upset.’ He looks dazed as he remembers. ‘Only a couple of months before that she had seemed so full of confidence, even more than usual. She came to tell me that she was pregnant, that the baby was Johnny’s. I asked if she was sure, and she said without a doubt, there hadn’t been anyone else. She didn’t know what to do, whether to tell him, whether to keep the baby.’

She thought about having me terminated?

‘She didn’t think about it for long.’ Stuart continues hastily, flashing me a sympathetic smile. ‘Her parents went absolutely ballistic went they found out – that’s partly why she came to me.’

‘Did they know the baby was Johnny’s?’

‘No. Your mum never told them.’

‘Why not?’

‘Stories about Johnny’s women started hitting the headlines.’

‘Oh.’

‘She was devastated,’ he says sadly. ‘She hadn’t realised that she was one of many. She thought she was special. She was, but only to me.’

‘Oh my God.’ I try to let all of this sink in. ‘But why didn’t she ever tell me the truth?’

‘She didn’t want to lose you.’

‘What do you mean? She wouldn’t have lost me!’

‘She thought that you’d want to get in touch with Johnny. Maybe choose his life over hers.’

‘But that’s crazy. I wouldn’t have left her!’

‘Try to see it from her side. Look around you.’ He pauses, so I do. I take in the tiny living room with its threadbare carpet and the faded floral hand-me-down sofas – it hurts to acknowledge the left-hand corner which was always her favourite place to sit, with her knees up and her feet tucked underneath her. I stare at the scratched wooden coffee table that she picked up from a charity shop and occasionally bothered to polish, and the curtains that are hanging off-kilter from their hooks, ever since I accidentally grabbed hold of one to steady myself days before she died. We’ve never lived in a palace. We’ve never had a fortune. Not, it seems, like my biological father.

‘But he might have helped us,’ I say, shaking my head. ‘We might not have had to live like this.’

‘She didn’t want to ask for his help,’ he says in a tone that implies I should know this. And he’s right. Mum was stubborn. She never asked anyone for help, not even her parents, my grandparents, who have never played a big part in my life. Mum never forgave them for that, and now my granddad is dead and gran is in a home with senile dementia. ‘She did think about telling you, but when you were older,’ Stu reveals.

Em’s comment from a couple of days ago flashes in my mind.

‘He lived nearby for a while, didn’t he?’ My real dad, a twenty-minute drive away and I never knew.

Stu nods and stares sadly at his hands. ‘She was a mess when he moved back.’

‘Was she?’

He nods, and I can see his eyes shining.

‘I think she still had feelings for him.’

He coughs suddenly, almost with embarrassment. I’m not sure he meant to reveal that. ‘Anyway, I always thought you deserved to know the truth.’

‘Did you?’ I ask in a small voice.

He looks up at me and slowly nods.

‘Thank you,’ I say.

He swallows. ‘So what do you want to do now?’

‘What do you mean?’ I ask.

‘Do you . . . do you want me to contact him for you?’

I feel faint. Ten minutes ago I didn’t think I’d ever know who my real dad was. Now Stu’s offering to help me get in touch with him. ‘You would do that?’

‘Yes.’

A tiny little voice inside asks,
does he want to get rid of me?
But I don’t want to know the answer to that question. Not right now. Right now I want to meet my real dad. Whatever the consequences.

Chapter 6

‘We have the same hands.’

I look down at our fingers splayed out, our palms pressed together as we lie side-by-side on my single bed. She’s right: we do have the same hands. She links her fingers through mine and squeezes, then turns and presses a kiss to my temple.

‘I like this song,’ she says, as ‘Jump Into The Fog’ by the Wombats comes on.

‘It’s cool,’ I agree, gently extricating my hand and letting it lie across my stomach. I love her to bits, but I’m not really comfortable lying here holding my mum’s hand at my age.

‘You have good taste,’ she tells me and I smirk. Fancy my mum telling me I have good taste. Of course I bloody do. But I’m content so I don’t make a sarky comment. I lean my head against hers and can see her dark hair out of the corner of my right eye, up close and out of focus. Her hair is long and wavy, and looks even more so next to my straight blonde locks. She has caramel-coloured eyes; mine are green. We’re different in some ways, but similar in so many others. I’ve got her slight build and she’d like to think that we have the same taste in clothes as well as in music. But while I can just about handle her downloading my songs, I draw the line when it comes to her raiding my wardrobe. She kicks one slim leg up in the air and I stare at her toenails, painted cherry red.

‘Is that my nail polish?’ I ask accusatorily. She giggles and puts her foot down. I smack her knee and lift my own leg up and she mirrors me. It’s exactly the same shade.

‘Mum!’ I squawk as she puts her leg down but continues to laugh. Suddenly she freezes and falls silent.

‘What?’ I ask.

‘Nothing.’ She brushes me off. ‘Not so keen on this song.’

‘What? Why not?’ I ask with surprise. It’s ‘Locked’ by Johnny Jefferson. It should be right up her street. I sing along: ‘I’m locked inside us and I can’t find the key, it was under the plant pot that you nicked from me . . .’

Abruptly she gets up and presses skip on my iPod.

‘What did you do that for?’ I glare at her.

‘Sorry.’ She flashes me a small smile.

‘That’s really annoying!’ I berate her, getting down from the bed and stubbornly pressing the back button.

‘Fine,’ she says curtly. ‘I’d better crack on with dinner anyway.’ She walks out of the room and I stand there, listening to the strains of Johnny Jefferson’s deep, soulful voice as I wonder what the hell that was all about . . .

Now I understand why she reacted that way. My heart aches because I can’t ask her about him, and I have so many questions. So many questions that will never be answered. I miss her so much. I roll on to my side, knowing that I could wish on every dandelion in the world, but she’ll never lie next to me again.

Stuart asks me to keep the news to myself for the time being, until he’s managed to contact Johnny’s people. I don’t mind, actually. You would have thought that, having found out that my long lost dad is a global megastar, I’d be wanting to shout about it from the rooftops. But I feel strangely private about Stu’s revelation, like I want to protect this secret, nurture it, hold on to it while I can. Besides, who would I really tell? Libby would understand, but we’re no longer close. I feel sudden regret at the loss of my best friend, but I try to harden up – what’s done is done. As for Natalie, she’d be excited, sure, but I doubt that she would take it very seriously.

My head is still spinning. I don’t know how this is going to turn out. Maybe Johnny will want nothing to do with me. I know I’m going to be a big chink in the armour of his happy little family. He’s married with two kids now, and it doesn’t take a genius to work out that I’m probably not going to be very welcome.

Well, tough. I didn’t ask him to shag my mum and get her pregnant. His actions have consequences and he’s going to have to face up to them.

I feel a flurry of nerves. That’s bravado talking. Deep down I feel like a scared little girl.

I’m in a daze the next day at school. I decide to spend lunchtime in the library, so I don’t have to talk to anyone. I walk in and am surprised to find Libby quietly reading a book in the corner. I almost turn and walk out again, but she looks up and sees me.

‘Hi!’ She sounds surprised.

‘Hi,’ I reply, reluctantly dumping my bag on a nearby table.

‘Are you OK?’ she asks with a frown.

I nod brusquely. ‘Why wouldn’t I be?’

‘I don’t usually see you in here,’ she replies, awkwardly tucking her hair behind her ears. It always looks neat and tidy, unlike mine. I couldn’t even be bothered to brush it this morning.

I shrug. ‘I just needed a bit of peace and quiet.’

Sympathy crosses her face, but she looks down almost before it can register. I haven’t rewarded her recent empathy with anything but meanness, so I can hardly blame her. Out of the blue, I miss her, really miss her, and I desperately want to confide in her. Libby understands how much it’s killed me not knowing who my real dad is. I can trust her.