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

No amount of internet searching or scouring old newspapers and library records has ever given anything away about who my father was. God knows I’ve searched enough over the years.

My earliest memory is from 1986, my third birthday. It’s summer, twilight, but still warm. I’m wearing a sundress with red dots and I’m barefoot. We are in the garden and there are dozens of people everywhere, inside and out. Philadelphia Simmonds’s parties were legendary, perhaps less so in the 80s than they had been in the 70s but infamous nonetheless.

The air is thick with smoke and laughter and music, so much wonderful music. There is a song playing that I really love and I ask for it to be played again and again while a man with long dark hair and a beard that tickles my cheek spins me round and round. Whenever I think about it I can still smell the faint aroma of spice and turps that surrounded him. He tells me the song is called Penny Lane and I tell him I like the bit about the fire engine best.

And then the memory disappears. I can’t work out what happened to the man with the beard or who he was. Whenever I’ve asked my mother about it she claims she doesn’t know what I’m talking about.

Part of me has always liked to daydream that the Penny Lane guy was my dad and that he had to go away on some secret mission, or something equally romantic. Suddenly today I’m wondering if he was, in fact, my father. If that guy with the long hair and beard was Bruce Baldwin circa 1986. I know absolutely nothing about Bruce Baldwin – I didn’t even recognise the name when my mother first mentioned him, but as Pen said, I’m an absolute philistine when it comes to art. I know that picture of the melting clocks was by Salvador Dalí, but that really is the limit of my knowledge.

If the guy from my third birthday is Bruce Baldwin I’m sure Google Images could let me know quickly. But right now I don’t want to find out, because if that isn’t him then the only thing I’ve held on to from childhood will be a lie.

The practical side of motherhood did not always come easily to Philadelphia Simmonds. While she was always there for kisses, cuddles and games, it was often her long-suffering personal assistant Johnny who was there for the big moments in my life. It was Johnny who bought my first school uniform, who took me to school on my first day, who was there when I opened my GCSE and A Level results. It was Johnny who met me off the train at Kings Cross when I came back from my interview at Cambridge University. He stood on the platform in his little pebble glasses and his perfectly pressed handmade suit bearing a huge bunch of flowers and a big grin. He was the nearest thing I had to a father, even if he did get paid to do it.

So, as I sit down at the kitchen island, my mother’s note in front of me, and pull my phone out of my handbag, it’s Johnny I ring first.

He picks up on the second ring.

‘Hello, sweet girl, I was expecting your call. How are you?’

‘Did you know?’ I ask, even though he must have done.

Johnny pauses for long enough for me to realise he knows exactly what’s going on and is now trying to work out where his loyalties lie. ‘You’ve been to see Edwin then,’ he says. It doesn’t sound like a question.

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ I demand.

‘I think you already know the answer to that.’

I don’t know what to say and I really don’t want to take my anger out on Johnny, who was just doing his job.

‘Julia,’ he says, interrupting my thoughts.

‘How long have you known?’ I ask.

‘I’ve always known. I couldn’t tell you; I promised your mother I wouldn’t tell you.’

‘And she left it to her lawyer to tell me?’

‘Well, to be honest, I wasn’t happy about that. I begged her not to go to New York. I begged her to tell you herself.’

I know as well as anyone that if my mother has her mind set on something wild horses aren’t going to change it.

‘Do you want me to come over?’ he asks.

I sigh. ‘No. I think I need a bit of time alone to get my head around all this. And apparently there’s a lot of legal stuff to go through.’

‘You take all the time you need,’ he replies. ‘You know where I am if you need me.’ He always has been way too understanding with both me and Mum.

‘And, Johnny,’ I say before he hangs up, ‘tell Mum to come home.’

I sit in the kitchen with my phone in my hand – wondering what to do with myself to avoid thinking about what I found out this morning – when it suddenly starts ringing. Alec’s name flashes up on the screen.

‘Hey, you,’ I answer.

‘Julia, where are you?’ Alec, my boyfriend of the last decade is an academic at Cambridge University and muddles through life in a sort of hurried bemusement. He clearly wasn’t listening last night when I told him where I’d be today.

‘In London – I told you. I had to see that solicitor.’

‘But your phone has been off all morning. I need to talk to you. When are you coming home?’

I hadn’t really thought that far ahead. I’d been expecting Mum to be here and had taken a few days off work to see her. I’m sure I told Alec this yesterday, but after ten years together he still doesn’t listen.

‘I don’t…’ I begin, but Alec butts in as usual.

‘Look I’m free tomorrow evening. Have dinner with me, will you?’

I pause, thinking. Now my mother is across the Atlantic, I don’t have to be anywhere in particular until my next meeting at Jones & Cartwright at the end of the week. I may as well go back to Cambridge. Back home.

‘Julia,’ he says impatiently.

‘Yes, sorry! Tomorrow’s fine. Shall I meet you at the college?’

‘Yes, about eight. See you then.’ And he rings off.

It isn’t until he’s gone that I realise he didn’t even ask me what the solicitor wanted.

6th June 1986

My dearest daughter,

Today I held you in my arms for the first time since the day you were born three years ago. You didn’t know who I was and something tells me it will be a long time before you do, but it was a joy to be with you on your special day.

I don’t know much about children – I haven’t ever had the chance to learn – and I don’t know how much you will remember about today, but I will carry it with me for the rest of my life.

Today marks sixty days of sobriety for me, which is the longest stretch in a long, long time. I think that’s why your mother let me see you. I’m staying clean this time, my darling girl, just for you and the hope that if I do, I will get to see you more and more.

There were so many people at the party that I’m sure you won’t remember me. All your mother’s friends were there. I can’t keep up any more with who lives at the house and who doesn’t. I only had eyes for you anyway.

Do you remember dancing with me? Perhaps you do, perhaps you don’t. You said my beard tickled. We danced to Penny Lane by the Beatles; you asked for it to be played three times. You loved the bit about the fire engine.

You fell asleep before the sun set, exhausted from the excitement, the presents, the music and too much sugar. Somebody, probably Johnny, carried you to bed and the party went on late into the night. It may have gone on until dawn for all I know. Once you were no longer there I wasn’t interested in the temptations of a Campden Hill Road party, not like I used to be.

I tried to talk to Delph. I tried to ask her to let me see you. I asked if I could take you out sometime, just to the park or something. I said I would never tell you who I was but she was adamant. There was nothing I could do.