Page 65 of The Battle of the Bookshops
“But you didn’t end up with this mystery man?”
“Sadly no. Still,” said Flo briskly, “better to have loved and lost and all that.”
Here, Flo fell silent, looking sad.
“And youdefinitelywouldn’t consider moving in with Mum?”
“I’m afraid your mother is a rather complicated person,” she said, returning to the previous topic. “Quite a handful, as I have doubtless told you often enough, but she had her reasons. Losing her own mother so young...”
“But then she had you to bring her up,” added Jules. “She was lucky.”
“AndIwas jolly lucky to be around whenyouwere growing up too,” said Flo. “Of course, you came along unexpectedly, when your poor mum was barely an adult herself. She was certainly ill-equipped to be a mother, that’s for sure.” Flo gazed into the flames, remembering.
“How much do you know about who my father might be?” asked Jules. She had never asked Aunt Flo such a direct question. She had asked her mother once and was still recovering from the resulting meltdown. She had not asked again.
Flo sighed. “I did know, of course. At least I’m pretty sure I did,” she admitted.
Jules waited, her heart pounding. Was this it? Was she suddenly going to acquire a father late in life? Even some half siblings perhaps?
“So...” Flo went on, “it was one summer, just after Maggie—I mean, your mother—dropped out of college. She had been doing a typing course with secretarial skills.”
“A bit of a cliché,” Jules pointed out, “the whole assumption that women were the secretaries, taking shorthand and sitting on the boss’s knee.”
“I don’t know about that,” said Flo. “It was a very popular thing for women to do in those days, and she was bright enough really,but she was too lazy and lacking in application to go to university. Shame. It would have done her the power of good, I believe— it might have made her grow up a bit. Anyhow, there she was, looking for someone to transport her from sleepy Middlemass to something a bit more exciting without her really having to make much of an effort. She thought her looks would be enough, and, to be fair, she was a stunner.” Flo sipped her wine, gazing into the flames as she remembered.
“She picked up a receptionist job at the Grand Hotel on the seafront, you know the one?” she asked. “Like a big white wedding cake—art deco—really quite glamorous back in the twenties, I imagine, but awfully shabby-looking these days. Anyway, there was a man there running the bar, Alistair was his name. He was quite a bit older than Maggie, but—to her at least—quite sophisticated and very keen to flash the cash. Oh, and very married, did I mention?”
“Ouch,” murmured Jules, transfixed.
“Indeed,” said Flo. “Anyhow, I’m really not sure who threw themselves at who, but poor Maggie was silly enough to think she mattered to this man. I think he, in turn, was flattered that this pretty young woman appeared to worship him. They didn’t bother to hide it, either of them. There was lots of gossip, whispering. His poor wife got to hear about it, and that was that: Maggie was given her marching orders. She lost Alistair—as much as she had ever truly ‘had’ him—and the hotel sacked her over the affair, so she lost her job too.”
“How unjust!”
“I know. Absolutely. Poor, silly girl that she was. That was what it was like then: if one of them had to go it was the woman, the younger one, as often as not. Totally ridiculous, but there you are.” Aunt Flo thought for a moment, before continuing. “Anyhow, your poor mum was distraught. I was sympathetic, of course, but therewas lots of silly nonsense about him being the love of her life and so on. I wanted nothing more than for this man to just leave Portneath altogether, to stop her pining after him. She was stalking him, I discovered, and pleading with him to take her back, when he told her to stop.” Flo sighed. “It was all a bit of a mess.”
“And he was my father?” prompted Jules, keen for Flo to continue.
“As far as I could deduce,” Flo admitted.
There was a pause.
“So, where is he now? Do you know?” said Jules, hardly daring to hope.
And then Flo’s face fell. “I’m so sorry, darling, I’m so caught up in the tale. So, I got my wish. He and his wifedidgo away, and then, I am sorry to say, I heard back that he—well, he was killed, darling.” Aunt Flo reached across and put her hand on Jules’s arm. “For all that he was a vain, silly man without sense or morals, I was sad to hear the news. His wife and he had gone on a long make-or-break holiday, I was told, and he was in a horrible accident on a Jet Ski. Head injuries. Died at the scene.”
“And he and his wife—did they have children?” Jules asked, not yet quite ready to let go of her dream of half siblings at least.
But Flo shook her head sadly. “No, no children. I’m afraid the only thing that man bequeathed you was your beautiful green eyes and fabulous hair. Hewasa handsome man, I’ll give him that,” she added with seeming reluctance. “But, darling, I’m amazed your mother has never told you all this!”
“She did tell me once that she lost the love of her life in a terrible accident. It was all very dramatic, I got that impression. I was so young I’d not even properly remembered that much until today. She got really upset that I’d asked so I didn’t raise it again.”
“Trust your mother to twist the story so it sounds like they were parted by death,” observed Flo. “It could never be her narrativethat he just summarily dumped her for another woman some time before, which, I’m afraid, he did.”
Jules nodded, lost in thought. Her poor mum.
“You need to try and be kind to your mum,” said Flo gently, as if she had heard Jules’s thoughts. “She’s a silly woman, I know, and she’s not been the best parent, but it’s tough getting old when you’ve always relied so heavily on your looks, as she has.”
With the warmth of the fire and a full belly, Jules’s eyes were drooping with tiredness again, despite all the sleep she had had that day.
