Page 46 of Just for December

She breaks off and reaches for her handbag on the floor, rifling through it, presumably for tissues. Duke closes his eyes and sighs deeply. Can this really be it? Just like that, his mother has changed? It feels stupid to trust it, naïve. Immature. He had to grow up fast, having a mother who loved booze more than him. He’s used to life without a mum. And yet …

‘Was it my fault?’ he asks then, his voice wavering on the edge of cracking. He hates himself for needing her to say no, for being a thirty-seven-year-old man who needs Mummy to give him a big hug. He’s done so well without her. So, so well. It might even bebecauseof her that he’s done so well, if not in spite of. She couldn’t love him but, look at that, now the whole world does. But … it isn’t enough. ‘If I had been better,’ he presses. ‘A better son … done better at school or did more around the house …’ He is openly crying now. Bugger. Bugger, bugger, bugger. His mother hands him one of the tissues she found.

‘No, Derrick,’ she says, using his real name. ‘No. Is that what you really think …?’ And now her tears are falling harder, and faster, and she reaches out a hand across the coffee table and Duke looks at it, and then takes it. He grips her tight, and then stands up to hug her, because even if he can’t trust her, he believes in this moment. Hebelieves that she’s really here. He’s needed her here for so long. Better late than never, maybe. He doesn’t know what comes next, in the future, but he can hug her now if that’s all they have.

They stay like that, his mother sat, Duke leaning down over the table, arms wrapped around each other, crying and letting it all out. They’re probably quite the sight, but what can be done? Emotion can’t be timed, can’t be neatly arranged to be convenient.

It might be five minutes they stay like that; it could be ten or fifteen, but eventually the crying stops. Duke sits back down and takes a big gulp of water. He feels purged. Tired.

‘I don’t know what happens now,’ he tells her. ‘I don’t know what I want to happen next.’

His mother nods. ‘That’s fair,’ she says.

‘You can’t just … be in my life because you’ve decided it’s time to get yourself together. You know that, don’t you?’

She nods, wincing the tiniest amount, as if it hurts to hear him say that. But so what, Duke thinks. He’s hurt for decades.

‘I know,’ she says. ‘And I really will prove it. From near or far, things are different now. That’s why I waited so long to make sure – well, nearly ten months. It’s the longest I’ve ever gone, and it’s because I told myself that I’d come find you, if I could do it. I want to know you, Derrick. I can’t tell you how much shame I have,’ and she starts to cry again, now, taking big gulps in between her words. ‘How much shame I have,’ she repeats, taking a shaky breath, ‘that I don’t get to see my son. I want to know you. I know I don’t have a rightto anymore but I’m hoping that maybe one day things will be different again.’

Duke nods. ‘Okay,’ he says. ‘Let’s just see, okay?’

‘Okay,’ his mum tells him, wiping her eyes with a damp tissue yet again.

25

Evie

‘God,’ Magda says over a traditional Bavarian breakfast ofWeisswurst, BrezelandBier –literally, white sausage, pretzels and beer. ‘I mean, Duke seems like a cool, well-adjusted guy but can you imagine your newly sober mother turning up out of the blue when you’re essentially atwork? And not to make myself a main character in this when I am, at most, a peripheral observer, but isn’t it crazy that I met her at the airport?’

Evie shakes her head. ‘It’s stuff like that that makes me believe in fate,’ she says. ‘We were at that restaurant becauseshetold you about it, to be fair. But what were the chances, even then?’

‘Infinitesimal,’ agrees Magda. ‘I mean. I wonder what her plan was – was she simply going to ask around about where the nearest film set was and … wait?’

Evie shrugs, dipping her pretzel into some hot mustard. She isn’t hungover, but having been up late with Duke and then waking so early, the sleep deprivation makes her feel that way. In fact, she’s had less sleep on this German trip than she even did at college. She’s too old for this. There’s not enough eye cream in the world.

‘That’s what the fans do, I think,’ Evie says. ‘Get wind of what city we’re in, share the info online, on blogs or whatever, and then hang around waiting to get glimpses of everyone.’

‘Another world.’ Magda sighs. ‘Although, if I was born in the Seventies, I totally would have been a music groupie. Trying to sleep with Bowie or the Beatles or whoever, following them around from gig to gig.’

‘If you’d have been a teenager in the Seventies,’ Evie jokes, ‘you wouldn’t have made it to the Eighties.’

Magda shrugs. ‘I’d have had a great time, at least.’ She smiles. Then, changing the subject, she says, ‘And, hey. Just checking in to see how Duke’s alcoholic parent showing up like this makes you feel about your dad? We don’t have to talk about it, but I have to ask. You okay?’

Evie considers it. Shehasbeen thinking about her dad a lot, considering she’s back in his world – not to mention the newspaper identifying him as her father. Any hope she had that he’d reach out is dashed, if it was even there. But still. She can’t lie. He’s occupied more of her thoughts than usual.

‘I suppose I’ve been thinking of him a bit, yeah,’ Evie admits. ‘More from, like, an empathetic point of view. Like what would I do if my dad showed up like Duke’s mom has.’

‘And?’ Magda pushes.

‘I honestly just don’t think he would. I don’t exist to him.He has this whole other family, but I don’t know if he’s sober now, or still drinking … I mean, if his other kids know about me, surely they’d let me know if he died or whatever. But other than that …’

Magda nods. ‘And that’s … okay with you?’

Evie raises an eyebrow. ‘This doesn’t put me in the mood for some big fuzzy reunion, if that’s what you mean,’ she says drily. ‘If Duke gets to patch things up with his mom, then I’m happy for him, but, no, it doesn’t inspire me to track down my dad. I don’t think he wants to hear from me anyway.’

‘Hmm,’ says Magda. ‘It’s interesting, isn’t it? You’re both the children of alcoholics and both do very public work. You make each other laugh, you seem relaxed with him …’

‘What’s your point?’

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