The Many Colours of Us: The perfect heart-warming debut about love and family

I pause. How am I? I haven’t really thought about it. I haven’t let myself, in much the same way as I haven’t let myself read the letters sitting in my handbag, or even think about what I’m going to do with this house.

‘I don’t know,’ I say. Because I really don’t.

‘I spoke to your mother last night after you’d gone to bed,’ he says as he breaks eye contact. He seems embarrassed although I don’t know if it is for himself or on her behalf.

‘And?’

‘She’s inconsolable.’

‘She’s inconsolable,’ I say. ‘What about me? What about the fact she lied to me for thirty years, about everything? Not only did she know damn well who my father was but she spoke to him, regularly. He owned the goddam house for Christ’s sake.’

‘Julia, I know you’re upset…’ Johnny tries to interrupt.

‘And then there’s the letters.’

‘Letters?’

He doesn’t know what I’m talking about. Well, well mother dearest didn’t tell him everything after all.

‘The letters my father wrote to me every year on my birthday for eighteen years. The letters that my mother sent back to him unopened every year.’

Johnny stares at me.

‘I had no idea,’ he says eventually.

‘Welcome to the club.’

‘Do you have these letters? How do you know about them?’

‘Edwin Jones gave them to me yesterday. It was off the record and not really part of the estate. Apparently Bruce called Edwin to the hospital a few days before he died to make sure I got them. I haven’t read them,’ I add predicting his next question. ‘I honestly don’t know if I want to.’

‘But you must,’ Johnny says with sudden force. ‘These will fill in all the holes I’m sure, like missing jigsaw pieces.’

I look at him rather astonished. He shakes his head, apologising under his breath.

Of course, my father is Johnny’s greatest rival in love. It’s natural he would want to know all the gory details about the man and I suspect he thinks those details are in these letters. Well even if they are he won’t be hearing them from me.

‘Anyway,’ I say, changing the subject. ‘Mum.’

He sighs. ‘Yes. She thinks you’re going to evict her and sell the house.’

‘Of course I’m not going to evict her. I bloody should though, just to teach her a lesson. I’m so angry with her, Johnny.’

‘Will you talk to her?’ he asks.

‘I can’t promise I won’t get angry.’

‘I think she’s expecting that. Just reassure her you aren’t about to evict her. She might come home then.’

‘Oh for God’s sake, can she not just come home and we’ll sort it out when she’s here?’ I am so sick of my mother acting like a spoilt child all the time, and everyone pandering to her as though her behaviour is perfectly acceptable. I’m sick of so many things and I feel as though I’m on my very last nerve with all of it. I’m scared that if I speak to her, thirty years of resentment will come flying out and I won’t have any control over it.

‘Julia, she’s hurting too. I know she did wrong, that she should have been honest with you years ago, but the love of her life has died and, try as I might, I’m no replacement.’ He smiles sadly and I suddenly feel immensely sorry for him and the huge secrets he has had to bear all for the love of a woman who will always hold him as second best. What a mess it all is.

‘I’ll talk to her,’ I agree. ‘But only because you asked me to.’

‘Thank you, Julia.’

‘Do you have a number?’

‘She’s on Skype these days.’

‘Skype!’ My mother has an inherent fear of all things technological. Her excuse for not cooking is the oven is too convoluted for her to understand. She has an old Nokia mobile phone that’s at least a decade old and dictates all her emails to Johnny.

‘So we can keep in touch when one of us is away,’ Johnny says. I don’t want any further details about that, thank you very much.

At the appointed hour I log on to my Skype account and my mother’s face looms into view on the computer screen.

‘Hello, dear,’ she bellows. Her accent has become a lot more New York since we last spoke.

‘Mother, you don’t have to press your face against the screen or yell at me. Just sit back and talk normally.’

She does as she’s told for the first time in living memory. I can’t really tell from the rather fuzzy image but could it be possible that she’s looking contrite?

‘So now you know all my dirty secrets,’ she says resignedly.

‘Yes. Why did you never tell me?’

‘You wouldn’t have understood.’

‘Mum, listen, it’s not about whether I would have understood or not. Bruce was my father and you knew who he was and where he was. I had a right to know my father.’

She sighs and blinks. Is she crying?

‘I’m sorry.’ She sniffs. She’s crying. I hate myself for thinking in the back of my mind that they are crocodile tears, simply for effect.

I take a deep breath. I am not going to get into a Skype argument with my mother.

‘Look, Mum,’ I say, deciding to keep this short and sweet, ‘why don’t you just come home. We can talk about all of this properly then.’

‘What are you going to do about the house?’

‘I don’t know. But I’m not going to evict you. Johnny told me you were inconsolable about it.’

‘Johnny exaggerates.’

‘Yes, well I know all about you two as well,’ I say. ‘But that’s something for another time.’ I notice she has the decency to blush.

‘Just come home,’ I repeat. ‘We’ll sort everything out, I promise.’