Page 122 of The Garden of Forgotten Wishes
‘Did you say “butter paddles”?’ Mike said. ‘What on earth are you talking about?’
‘I’ve got a pair of giant wooden butter paddles and I’ve had this fantasy that if you turned up, I’d clap your head between them as hard as I could,’ I explained.
‘You’re mad!’ he said, but cringed back slightly as if he thought I might whip them out from somewhere and actually do it.
I wish.
‘Have you really got giant wooden butter paddles?’ asked Roddy with interest.
‘Oh, yes, I brought them back from France and they’re unusually big. I thought they might look nice in the garden museum.’
Mike was now edging away along the sofa as if he was thinking of making a run for the door. I dampened a bit of kitchen towel and handed it to him.
‘I’d clean your face a bit, if you’re thinking of leaving, but otherwise,hasta la vista, baby.’
‘Yeah, stay not upon the order of your going, or whatever it was Shakespeare said,’ agreed Ned. ‘And if I were you, I wouldn’t come back, or make any more attempts to communicate with my fiancée, because I wouldn’t take it very well.’
‘Fiancée?’ Mike looked as surprised as I felt – until I realized Ned had just said it to protect me.
He put his arm around me and said, ‘Yes, but don’t bother congratulating us – just go.’
‘You were the one who insisted I come in here!’ Mike got up, throwing the smeared damp wad of kitchen paper on the floor. ‘You totally misjudged my intentions. I only wanted to make sure that my wife – ex-wife – was all right and to give you a friendly warning—’
‘I really wouldn’t say anything else, if I was you,’ Ned advised him, dangerously, and Mike backed towards the door – which suddenly burst open, sending him flying back into the room again.
I expected to find a tornado had struck but no, it was just a skinny teenage boy.
He was pursued by Steve, who was shouting, ‘Come back, you!’
The boy ignored him and, fixing a pair of glowering blue eyes on Ned, flung out a dramatically pointing hand and demanded: ‘Are you my father?’
‘Oh God, that’s all we need, the Bloody Child,’ said Ned wearily, ‘though it’s clearly Melodrama Week, not Shakespeare. Who are you and why on earth should you think I’m your father?’
‘Because that’s what Mum told that journalist last year – I overheard them. But she said she could only reveal it now because my dad – the man Ithoughtwas my dad – was dead. He’d been paying maintenance, you see.’
‘Well … not really,’ said Ned, still frowning.
‘Then the story came out and some of my friends said stuff – but Mum wouldn’t discuss it with me and I didn’t know where you were until I saw you on the telly the other week,’ the boy finished in a rush.
‘Right … so you’re Sammie Nelson’s son?’ he ventured.
‘Yeah, the one she was pregnant with when you threw her over and she had to leave college,’ the youth said accusingly.
Now I came to really look at him, he did remind me of Sammie, though fairer. But he didn’t look a bit like Ned, which was hardly surprising.
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Mike sit back down again, with an expression of enjoyment on his face.
‘Look—’ I began, then broke off. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Jonas,’ the boy said sulkily.
‘Right, Jonas, I’m Marnie Ellwood and I was in the same year as your mum at Honeywood Horticultural College. Ned was in the year up and though they did briefly go out together,shethrewhimover, because she’d got off with the presenter of a documentary that was being filmed there. Is that the man you thought was your father?’
The boy, who looked very young and very angry, nodded. ‘He thought I was his, too, and he lived with Mum for a bit, but then he went back to his wife after I was born and I hardly saw him. He had a heart attack.’
‘I’m very sorry,’ said Ned gently, ‘but … I’m afraid hewasyour real father. How old are you?’
‘What?’ Jonas looked taken aback, then said, ‘Fourteen,’ then added his birthday and Ned and I both did some rapid arithmetic.
