AllFreeNovel
Share Us
‘Fucking hell, what a bitch, to let them blame Don like that.’
I can feel Mum tense on the bed beside me. ‘She was very young, Gethin, remember?’ she says quietly.
‘Yeah, as in a year younger than me? I’m hoping I’d have more guts than that.’
‘You’d know all about being alone and pregnant with bully boy brothers kicking off?’ Jez growls.
‘OK, sorry, carry on.’ I pull back into my pillows, totally shown up, ashamed of my reaction.
‘Well, this Dutch geezer never turned up. So, Ruthie took herself to Inverness and had a termination.’
‘Oh my God, no baby?’
Jez goes on to explain how apparently this Ruthie said she couldn’t face bringing up a kid on her own in that community. And then how after she’d got rid of the baby she decided to get away and got herself a nannying job in Germany. I feel like a delayed reaction in taking this story in, still absorbing the fact that there is no baby.
‘So, what, are the brothers still blaming him for it all?’ I ask eventually, wondering why this is still a big deal for Don.
‘I don’t exactly know. He’s so tetchy, right? Thinks they’re all against him there.’
I remember that guy Robbie, saying Don was his own worst enemy. ‘So, am I just a bit of gossip too much for him, then?’ I ask, my heart thumping.
‘No, I don’t think it’s that,’ Jez weighs her words carefully. ‘He thinks he’s best keeping away from people. Like any time he lets his guard down, it all goes pear shaped.’
I nod slowly, still taking it in. I think of how he was that first day with the kippers. OK he was gruff, but he actually shared a shred of his life with me. I feel a sudden welling of tears.
Jez looks at me, head cocked to one side. ‘He did ask me to let him know how you are.’
‘Right, what a shame I haven’t died to make him feel really bad.’ I grin, blinking furiously.
‘Oh Gethin!’ Mum pulls a weak smile. Guessing this whole thing is the weirdest for her. As in, suddenly it’s all about the guy she never met whose sperm she squirted into her body. We have never needed him.
‘He’s just a bit scared, I think,’ Jez says.
‘Scared? What of?’
‘Getting too attached?’
‘Attached?’ I run the word around my battered brain. Emily talked about Attachment Theory before she dropped out of A level psychology. She reckoned she had an anxious-ambivalent attachment with her mother.
‘I’m not sure I’m looking for parental attachment, to be fair?’
I look from Jez’s quizzing eyes to Mum’s pursed lips, the obvious question like forming in the space between us?
‘What the hell am I looking for?’
‘Only you can answer that,’ Mum says quietly.
I lie back and try to work it out. I think about Don’s museum and all those stories about the clan, the big house, the history. I was seduced, isn’t it, by the idea of having a solid connection to such an awesome place? These past few days I’ve felt more alive than I have for ages. But it hasn’t exactly been all about Don, not even mostly. It’s about the landscape and Jez and the bike and the referendum and the whales. The whales.
And I start to tell Mum about the whales, Jez filling in where I’m too garbled.
‘Aw, Mum, they are such awesome creatures. It was totally overwhelming seeing them so helpless and distressed. But the fact that we could help a bit… we actually got one whale off the sandbank even though Aiden nearly drowned.’
‘You rescued Aiden too, right?’ Jez butts in.
‘Ha! Aiden thinks I’m his dead brother, isn’t it?’
‘What?’ Mum sounds exasperated.
