In-Laws and Outlaws Read online

  “Why do you always think it’s me that’s done something?” Dominic angrily demanded to know. If Dominic wasn’t my brother or if I had wider pool of relatives with whom to interact I’m pretty sure that I would have as little as possible to do with him, but there is something about the relationship I can’t give up on. I remember the little boy I once knew and while it wouldn’t be true to say my heart melts, my shields lower and I find myself sucked into situations I would rather avoid.

  “I didn’t mean you, in the singular, I meant you as in you and Sophie,” I clarified. I had meant Dominic in the singular, but there was no mileage in pointing this out. “What’s happened?”

  “Why do you always assume something’s happened? It could just be that Sophie is being bloody minded.” He can go on like this for hours. It’s very wearing.

  “Is she just being bloody minded?” I asked as non-committally as I could.

  “Kind of.” Dominic replied evasively.

  “Mmm,” I said.

  “We had an argument about me seeing Pixie and now she won’t let me see her at all.”

  “Not at all?” I asked.

  “Not overnight. She says it’s what Pixie wants, but I know she’s lying. So I’m going to take her to court and I need your help.”

  “You’re taking Pixie to court?” I asked.

  “Not Pixie, Sophie. Only an idiot would imagine I would be taking a nine year old to court.”

  “Why do you want my help if I’m an idiot?”

  “Is that a joke?” Dominic doesn’t really have a sense of humour. That is another reason why his success with the opposite sex is so difficult to fathom.

  “So is that all there is to it? You can’t have Pixie overnight,” I knew for a fact that Dominic didn’t like having Pixie overnight, but he conveniently forgets the facts when there is a principle at stake, “and you want to take Sophie to court over it?”

  “All there is to it? That I am being denied access to my daughter!” Dominic exclaimed. “I might have known you wouldn’t understand, not being a parent.” My brother loves saying this. He is very attached to his role as a father. Not because he has played any active part in Pixie’s upbringing, but because he believes that simply having had a stray sperm hit the target makes him morally superior to anyone who hasn’t reproduced. The only difference between me and my brother is a failure of birth control. He has literally done no more actual parenting than I have. Less probably, as I reckon I have had Pixie on my own far more times than he has. Sophie is an actress and while this means she is usually on benefits or working in a cafe, it also means that she needs childcare at short notice and at odd times of the day, when she has auditions for example, or the very occasional acting job. Dominic is a teacher and while one might think this would give him lots of free time to care for his child, particularly in the school holidays, one would be wrong. Sophie’s parents emigrated to Canada when she was at drama school, taking her younger siblings with them, so she has no family over here. So, as the only relative either of them has access to, I have all too frequently had to step into the breach. It’s not that I dislike Pixie, I am actually quite fond of her, but I have never wanted children (having my own has never figured in any of my family scenarios although I have toyed with the idea of being a fabulously fun stepmother, so long as the children lived with their mother) and am constantly amazed at how they can be so utterly exhausting and so extremely boring at the same time. It’s got better as Pixie has got older, and now she is nine I am coming to enjoy my time with her more, but nothing about the experience of being an aunt has made me think that motherhood would have been preferable.

  “It was in the street, and Pixie was there.” Dominic continued.

  “What was in the street?” I was getting a bit lost.

  “The argument, about access to Pixie. Sophie started screaming about how I was never there for Pixie.” Sophie had a point. “And then she said Pixie didn’t want to see me.” This was perfectly possible. Whenever I spent time with Pixie and Dominic the child seemed to get no particular pleasure from her father’s company. I could sense, however, that Dominic was trying very hard to make himself the victim of this story. It was proving a struggle even for someone as sure of his own essential victimhood as my brother.

  “Mmm,” I said for a second time.

  “This upset me so much that it’s just possible I might have pushed Sophie.” This was so clearly disingenuous I was amazed that my brother could bring himself to say it. He had obviously thought long and hard about the form of words he would use but they sounded as natural coming from him as it would to hear a dog asking you to please stop throwing that stick as they would rather read a good book, thank you very much.

  “Pushed her? Pushed her how?” I asked.

  “Shoved her. In the shoulder,” Dominic continued. “She was saying, screaming,” he quickly corrected himself, “that I was a crap father and that Pixie didn’t want to stay over anymore and then she came up and shouted right in my face and I shoved her away.” I have known Sophie for a long time and I have rarely heard her raise her voice, and then only if she thinks Pixie is about to come to harm. She doesn’t strike me as a shouter, and Dominic had never mentioned any previous incidents of Sophie shouting.

  “And then what happened?” I prompted.

  “She says I can’t be trusted with Pixie.”

  “That’s very disappointing for you,” I said briskly, “but I’m afraid I can’t talk now, Gideon has just come in. Hi Gideon,” I called to the empty flat. Gideon was actually out for the evening at some academic thing. He’d asked if I wanted to go too but I can only really take professors one at a time so had declined.

  “The thing is I need you to be a character witness for me.” Dominic said in a wheedling tone that set my teeth on edge.

  “Really?” I couldn’t see any upside for me in doing what my brother wanted. If Sophie didn’t want him to have Pixie overnight I felt that was very much up to her. Not only had he given Sophie very little help bringing up their child, he had even gone so far as to intimate on occasion (usually when Sophie needed money) that he couldn’t be absolutely sure Pixie was his, although he’d never pushed it so far as to get DNA test. While I would be sorry if the fallout between Sophie and Dominic led to me not seeing Pixie, the one way I could see of making certain I wouldn’t get to see my niece would be to side with my brother in a case he would probably lose. I really couldn’t see how committing perjury on Dominic’s behalf could benefit me at all.

  “So you’ll need to go and see my solicitor,” Dominic continued. “I’ll send you the details.”

  “I didn’t say I’d do it.” I replied.

  “Yes you did.” Dominic sounded so affronted that I wondered for a moment if I had acquiesced without realising it. My brother can do that to you.

  “I really do have to go,” I said, “OK Gideon, I’m coming,” I shouted to a still absent Gideon. “Look, Dominic, I’ll call you tomorrow. Oh, and I had to change my email again so there’s no point in sending anything until I give you the new one. It might not be secure.” I knew this would ensure that I got no emails from Dominic. My brother is a world class conspiracy theorist. He is absolutely convinced that there are powers at large that control everything through a vast web of informants and henchmen, but despite the huge power this cabal wields they are unaccountably concerned with what a geography teacher at a failing east London school thinks and says about them. “What was that?” I added, just to ram the point home. “Did you hear a click on the line?” As it happens I had heard a faint click, but it was probably just static.

  “Yeah, bye. Speak soon.” Dominic hung up with indecent haste, and mercifully just before I let out a snort of laughter.

  CHAPTER 3

  Gideon had described his mother as ‘amazing’, and while it was true that I had been amazed by her behaviour in the short time I had known her, I didn’t think it was in the way that Gideon meant. I must, I thought, be missing somethi
ng. I therefore decided to call on the expertise of my friend Claire, who is training to be a clinical psychologist and so knows a thing or two about human behaviour, to try to get a better understanding of what was going on in Marjorie’s head. It was through Claire that I had met Gideon so she did, I felt, have some responsibility for ensuring that things turned out well.

  I remember the first time I clapped eyes on Gideon with great clarity. I had met up with Claire at the university at which she was studying and we were in the post graduate cafe. It was just before Halloween, I remember this especially clearly because the cafe was selling cupcakes decorated with spider’s web motifs in black icing, one of which I had foolishly purchased. The very moment I first saw Gideon my mouth was filled with the most cloying buttercream concoction and I’m pretty sure that my teeth were blackened by the spider’s web icing. Of all the types of cake available cup cakes are among my least favourite, but everyone else had bought one and so I had felt that I ought to do the same, especially as I shouldn’t really have been there, not being either a post or even an undergraduate at the university.

  Gideon’s presence was brought to my attention by one of Claire’s fellow students, Theresa, to whom I had taken an instant and initially unaccountable dislike, and who also had black icing on her teeth, which only confirms my belief that I was highly likely to have had some on mine.

  “Oh my god, it’s Professor Rowe,” Theresa hissed excitedly, spraying a light shower of cupcake spittle onto the table. Everyone else seemed to know what this meant and clearly shared her excitement.

  “Who?” I asked.

  “Professor Rowe!” exclaimed Claire, clearly aghast at my ignorance.

  “Who?” I asked again, as I felt that simply repeating the professor’s name, however emphatically, fell well below Claire’s usual explanatory powers.

  “He was in a documentary on BBC4, and we’re just about to go to his first lecture.” Claire was watching Professor Rowe intently throughout this explanation. “He’s a bit of a superstar at this place, not that that means much.” I like Claire a lot but she is a bit of an academic snob. She went to Oxford, or possibly Cambridge (for many years I had thought she went to Oxbridge but it turns out there’s no such place), one of the two anyway, and got a first in something extremely brainy before going on to do a PhD in something even brainier. She never let an opportunity pass to point out that she was slumming it at the University of the Arse End of Nowhere, as she liked to call the institution in which we were now sitting eating Halloween cupcakes.

  “He isn’t as good looking in real life as he is on television.” Theresa added, rather sniffily I thought. Following her eye line, and that of pretty much everyone else in the room, I took my first look at Professor Gideon Rowe. I could only wonder how good looking he had appeared to be on television as in the flesh he was one of the best looking men I had ever seen. I should say at this point that I don’t believe in fate and I don’t think that the universe has been ordered to please me. If it had it would most certainly have been very different in very many ways. It follows, therefore, that I don’t believe there is such a thing as a soul mate, one person specifically designed for each of us. If there were what would be the chances, realistically, of ever meeting that person? If one’s soul mate happened to be a llama farmer in the Andes while one was based in west London and had no particular interest in llamas this would surely prove an insurmountable barrier to true love. When I saw Professor Gideon Rowe, however, I felt an instant and very strong connection with him. It was almost as if I recognised him, despite not having seen the BBC4 documentary referred to by Claire. It was simply that he looked familiar, as if he were an old friend that I simply hadn’t come across yet. It was as if, I suppose, he were family, but in a good way.

  “This lecture you’re going to,” I asked Claire as we left the cafe, “what’s it about?”

  “Perception and memory,” she snapped as she struggled to get her coat on while not dropping her book filled bag. Claire is very clever but she is a bit inept in some of the more basic motor skills.

  “Let me carry that,” I said taking the bag from her. “Perception and memory you say? Sounds fascinating, mind if I tag along?” It sounded boring, but I wanted to see this Professor Rowe in action.

  “No it doesn’t,” she replied, “not to you anyway. And as you so clearly want to ogle Professor Rowe I don’t suppose I could stop you anyway.” Claire stalked off down the corridor with me tripping along behind, looking rather as Quasimodo must have tripping around Notre Dame as Claire’s incredibly heavy bag dragged my shoulder down.

  I had no idea how I was going to bring myself to the professor’s attention but where there is a will there is, in my experience, generally a way. As it happened the way involved signing up for a psychology conference in Blackpool (the things we do for love or whatever you want to call it) that I could ill afford, and finding out far more about perception and memory than I ever wished to know. But the upshot was that I was now living in the gorgeous Prof’s gorgeous flat in gorgeous Chiswick.

  I had always thought that it was rather mercenary of Lizzie Bennet to only realise that she fancied the britches off Darcy once she had seen Pemberley, but I have since learnt the wisdom of her point of view. A good man is a good thing, a good man with a good property, well that puts him in another league quite frankly, and while Gideon’s home isn’t exactly Pemberley it’s still a pretty impressive abode. He bought the flat, which is on the top floor of an Edwardian Mansion block, many years ago when mortgages could be obtained by five year olds with only a handful of Lego and some soft toys in lieu of a deposit. It has three bedrooms (one of which Gideon uses as a study), a sitting room, and a very large kitchen. It does, unfortunately, have a bus terminus in front and an industrial estate behind, but I’m sure that Elizabeth found things about Pemberley that were not entirely to her taste once she moved in. It also looks very much like a flat in which a man with no interest in interior design has lived alone for many years, but these are minor quibbles when set against the fact that it is in Chiswick, which is somewhere I have long wanted to live. I have hopped around west London over the years, circling the prize if you will, but now I had finally landed and living here was even nicer than I had anticipated. So everything on that front was just peachy, even if Marjorie was in danger of taking the bloom off my wonderful new life somewhat.

  Having met up with Claire for a coffee I explained in some detail what had been going on with Marjorie since I had first met this ‘amazing’ woman.

  “Don’t you think you might be overreacting slightly?” Claire suggested. “Do you think that you are, perhaps, judging Marcia’s . . .”

  “Marjorie’s.” I corrected her.

  “ . . . Marjorie’s behaviour by your own? Just because you engineer situations to get what you want doesn’t mean that everyone else behaves in the same way.” Claire looked at me thoughtfully over the top of her coffee cup. We were in a cafe on the top floor of a department store on the King’s Road. Claire, having completed the course at the jumped up sixth form college (her words, not mine) where Gideon worked, had begun studying for a doctorate in counselling. I had thought that perhaps this might be a possible new career for me, to become a counsellor, mainly because I enjoy telling people what to do and generally think that I know what’s best for them. It turns out, however, that this isn’t what being a counsellor entails at all. It takes an absolute age to become one, costs a fortune, and you have to listen non judgementally to people moaning on about their miserable lives (and I already had enough of that from Dominic), so that was the end of that.

  “I don’t know what you mean, when have I ever engineered a situation?” I replied huffily.

  “Oh come off it Eve, do you really think I didn’t see through your machinations over Gideon when we went to Blackpool? All that nonsense about my having to arrive at exactly . . . well at exactly the time it was you told me to arrive.”

  The Blackpool trip which had mark
ed the start of my relationship with Gideon had taken some engineering, it was true. Theresa also had her eye on my (as I already thought of him) professor and had planned to use the journey up north to get to know him better. But as she, along with Claire and Gideon, had travelled together to Blackpool in my car I had managed to ensure that Gideon sat in the front with me, and the rest, as they say, is history.

  “So you’re saying I am only with Gideon because I engineered, allegedly engineered, the seating arrangements on a car journey?” I tried my best to sound affronted.

  “Of course not. Once you had decided you were going to have Gideon Theresa never stood a chance . . .” Claire continued.

  “Because of my machinations . . .” I interrupted, indignant at the aspersions Claire was casting on my relationship.

  “Yes, because of your machinations. If only you would use your powers for the good of humanity, imagine what you might achieve.” Claire replied calmly. Claire is almost always calm. “The point is that Gideon was in your thrall from the moment you two met. Theresa couldn’t compete.”

  “What do you mean, couldn’t compete? Her father’s very rich you know, and a doctor.” I had lost count of the times Theresa had casually dropped this information into conversation on the way to and from Blackpool (I had managed to pretty much avoid her while in Blackpool but she was difficult to get away from in a car).

  “Oh do shut up,” said Claire, but she did smile. “You know exactly what I’m talking about.” What she was talking about was my supposed looks. People have been telling me that I’m good looking, beautiful even, all my adult life. I was, as my school photos attest, an ugly child but something happened in my teenage years that changed the way that other people viewed my features. I, on the other hand, still think I’m pretty ugly. I’m not being modest, I just don’t see what others see in my features. I have huge bug eyes, a snub nose and fat lips. I do have good cheek bones, but that’s about it. I prefer to believe that it is my sparkling personality that men find attractive. “Theresa is a very fragile woman,” Claire continued, “She just wants to be loved.”