‘The opposite of him,’ I said softly. ‘I suppose I’m somewhere in the middle.’
‘Yeah. You’re east meets west. Oligarch meets hippy. You’ve turned out pretty normal, considering.’
‘So … he came to see you?’
‘Yeah, like I said. Just turned up, out of the blue, at my stall. I don’t think anyone recognised him because he wasn’t smartly dressed or anything and he wasn’t surrounded by bodyguards like you see him on the news.’
‘But you recognised him?’
‘Oh, yes. I’d know those eyes anywhere. See right through you.’
She shivered.
‘What did he want?’
‘To meet you. Said he knew where you worked and he’d find you anyway, but he wanted to tell me first. Just so I knew.’
‘Jesus,’ I said, then I couldn’t think of anything else. It was all too much to take in, all at once. Twenty-seven years of life and then wham! Everything changes.
‘You know, do you,’ I said, my fingers tight around the steering wheel, ‘that he’s Joss’s mystery tenant at Willingham Hall?’
She didn’t.
‘Do you think he’s known I was there all this time?’
‘No,’ said Mum. ‘He only thought about it when he saw your byline in the local paper last month and realised you were still living here.’
‘And he wants to … to what? What does he want from me?’
‘He says he wants to know you.’
‘After twenty-seven years?’
‘We were both young when you were born. Kids, really. Eighteen. He went back to Russia, got into natural gas, got rich. He didn’t think about you again until I wrote to him and, at that time in his life, he was too busy to care. He’s been coming to the UK more and more in the last ten years and he admits that you were on his mind a lot but he didn’t feel you’d want to know him now, after all these years.’
‘Perhaps he’s right,’ I said, my mind whirring furiously. ‘And perhaps he isn’t.’
‘So what do you want to do?’
I took her hands and squeezed them.
‘This has really got to you, hasn’t it? Seeing him again? Is that why Animal walked out?’
‘Yeah. He couldn’t deal with me like this. Head all over the place. The thing is, Lu – shit, this is going to sound so selfish, but – I’ve only just got you back. And I’m worried sick you’ll leave me again, for him. He’s got so much more to offer you …’
‘Oh, shut up! I mean, seriously. Shut up. You’re my parent. He’s just the man who donated the sperm. It’s always been that way, and it always will be, here.’ I struck my left breast.
‘I wasn’t the best mother to you …’
‘You did your best. And I was happy and secure. No parent can do better than that.’
‘Do you mean that, Luce? Do you really mean it?’
‘I’m here for you, always. We’re a team, aren’t we? You always said that when I was a kid. We look after each other.’
She winced.
‘Should’ve been me looking after you. You shouldn’t have had to … all those days when I couldn’t get out of bed. Or when I went on a bender. Shit. I feel so awful, looking back. When you went to Hungary, it gave me a lot of time to think about how I’d lost you, what I’d done wrong.’