Free Tangled Lives by Hilary Boyd

good.’ Richard cast an amused glance at the table, laden with fresh croissants, pains au chocolat, dishes of apricot and blackcurrant jam, hard-boiled eggs in their shells, fresh orange juice in a glass jug, thick slices of ham beside a wedge of Manchego cheese on a white china platter. ‘Are we feeding five or five hundred?’ he teased, but Annie was used to it. After all, she had first met him in the tiny galley kitchen his company used for hospitality, and even on first acquaintance he had been in awe of her culinary zeal.
    ‘Normally we just get cold ham and salad,’ he’d told her back then, looking longingly at the crusty chicken pie just out of the oven and the buttery new potatoes. ‘You don’t have to go to so much trouble, you know.’ Annie had sent him a scathing look and said, ‘But I like cooking. Where’s the fun in ham and salad?’
    Now she said, ‘You know it calms me down.’ She spokelightly, as she lifted the warm muffins into a basket. ‘Will you do the coffee, please?’
    ‘Sure.’ But before he did so, he came up and put his arms around her. ‘I know you’re nervous, but there’s no need to be. They love you.’
    Annie sank back against his chest for a moment. She was hot from the cooking, but she felt a sudden shiver, as if her nerves were short-circuiting.
    ‘I hope you’re right, but thank you … thanks for the support.’ She took a deep breath and returned to the soothing task of arranging the muffins in a loose pyramid.
    ‘Morning.’ Lucy came into the kitchen.
    ‘Hi, sweetheart,’ Richard responded.
    ‘The others not here yet?’
    Annie glanced at the clock. It read just before eleven. ‘I’m sure they’re on their way,’ she said.
    Lucy helped herself to a sliver of ham and for a moment there was silence in the kitchen.
    Ed and Marsha arrived together. Annie thought they seemed a little subdued. She wondered what Lucy had said to them.
    ‘Coffee?’ Richard was bright and businesslike as he handed out cups of coffee. ‘Sit … sit,’ he encouraged.
    Annie felt her stomach churn. She glanced over at her husband, his eyebrows raised as he urged her on.
    ‘Muffin? They’re blueberry.’ She indicated the basket.
    ‘Mum!’ Lucy’s voice sounded like a pistol shot. She didn’t need to say more. Annie took a deep breath and stoodup. It felt better to be free of the table. She leant her back against the cold porcelain of the butler’s sink. The expectation in the room was suddenly palpable, everyone avoiding everyone else’s eye.
    ‘I have something to tell you,’ she began. ‘Something that I should have told you years ago, but I didn’t know how. It never seemed the right time.’
    She paused, mesmerised by her children’s expectant faces, frozen in the moment. Richard pointedly cleared his throat.
    ‘I have a son.’ She forced the words out. She’d rehearsed all sorts of versions, but in the end she forgot everything and just told the bald truth. But hearing what she’d just said, she quickly corrected herself. ‘Another son. I gave him away for adoption when I was nineteen.’
    She waited. Ed and the girls were just staring at her in stunned silence, their faces no longer expectant but bewildered.
    ‘I told your father when we first met … at least, when I knew we were serious about each other. But at the time I thought I would never see Tom – I called him Tom but he’s called Daniel Gray now – I never expected to see him again. I looked after him in the hospital until he was adopted … in Kent.’ The hot flow, once started, of hitherto secret history felt like a sort of balm. She wanted to go on talking about him forever now. Her children, however, were still gaping in astonishment, as if they didn’t understand a word she was saying.
    ‘Adopted children didn’t have the right to find theirbirth parents in 1967, nor the other way round. Then the law changed.’
    ‘And he’s found you?’ Lucy asked.
    ‘Yes. That’s where I was the