Free Far From My Father's House by Elizabeth Gill Page A

bitter young man since his mother had died and he didn’t care who he took it out on.
    ‘I don’t know what to say to him,’ Frank said. ‘He’s nobody. He’s just somebody’s bastard.’
    ‘Frank, if my mother hears you use a word like that in this house, you’ll be an ex-visitor.’
    ‘Do you know who he is?’
    ‘What do you mean?’
    ‘I mean do you know who his father is?’
    ‘Nobody knows.’
    ‘I do. Charles Vane.’
    Annie wanted to shiver.
    ‘That’s not true,’ she said.
    ‘Yes, it is. I heard my father say so when he was drunk. Drunk people always tell the truth. He’s a Vane, that’s who he is, or rather isn’t.’
    Frank stopped there and Annie heard or rather sensed somebody outside the door in the darkness of the passage.
    ‘Oh, go away, Frank, why don’t you?’ she said.
    Frank went, fumbling in the darkness for the back door and Annie walked through the big kitchen where her parents were sitting and up the stairs. She didn’t knock or ask if she could come into his room, she just opened the door and walked in. There was no light when she had closed the door.
    ‘Blake, are you in here?’ she said, narrowing her eyes to try and see him. ‘I think Tommy’s gone to the pub again. If he gets drunk Dad will find out. Come and help me. Blake?’
    She could just make out where he was sitting on the bed.
    ‘It isn’t true,’ he said roughly.
    Annie gave a sigh of horror that her notion was confirmed and Blake had been about to walk into the kitchen and heard them talking about him.
    ‘It couldn’t be true,’ she said.
    ‘Are you sure?’
    ‘Frank’s a fool.’
    Even without touching him she could feel the distress.
    ‘What if it is true, what if Alistair’s father is mine? That would make us brothers.’ He sounded as though this was the worst thing that could possibly happen.
    ‘Alistair’s not that bad,’ she said.
    ‘It’s not that. It would make him my older brother. It would mean . . .’
    And then she understood.
    ‘So it can’t possibly be true. Alistair’s parents were married when you were born.’
    ‘Do you think my mother went with a married man?’
    ‘No. Frank was just talking, just . . . he hasn’t been right since his mother died, you know he hasn’t. He’s hurt and he wants to hurt other people.’
    There was an intake of faltering breath from Blake. She couldn’t be sure since she had never heard him cry before. She certainly didn’t want it to happen now. She sat down as close as she could and took him into her arms. He fastened both arms around her and from the front of her cardigan said in muffled tones, ‘You really don’t think it’s true?’
    ‘I really don’t think so.’ She stroked his hair, silently cursing Frank.
    ‘Why would Mr Harlington say it if it wasn’t?’
    That was a harder one to be reassuring about. Annie frowned in the darkness.
    ‘He probably never said it,’ she countered.
    ‘If it is true it means that he never wanted me, never liked me, would have let me go into a home when my grandparents died but Alistair . . . Alistair has everything.’
    There was no point in arguing with that, Annie thought. Alistair certainly had everything – except good parents, and this wasn’t a choice moment to start comparing those. She was just beginning to think that perhaps she ought to move Blake from where he was comfortably settled against her breasts when he let her loose and moved back.
    ‘Let’s go and find Tommy,’ he said.
    They trudged up the road in the dark.
    ‘Do you think I look like Alistair?’
    ‘No.’
    ‘We’ve both got blue eyes.’
    ‘So has half the nation.’
    ‘They’re rich.’
    ‘They’re not very happy. Mrs Vane has a face like a wet fortnight and Tommy says Mr Vane’s too mean to shit.’
    She meant Blake to laugh but he didn’t.
    ‘Just think if he is my father. He’s such a horrible man. He’s the last man I’d want. I’d rather have Mr Harlington.’
    ‘Oh, I don’t