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

But I will always love you.

Happy Birthday, Princess.

I hope we will see each other again soon.

Your Father

Chapter 3

‘You couldn’t make it up!’ Graeme exclaims in astonishment, as he reaches over for another cupcake. I’m sitting opposite him and Pen, my two best friends, trying to tell them about Edwin Jones’s news.

‘And it’s a damn sight better than that elephant’s foot,’ Pen interjects.

Pen and I have been friends for years. We live together in Cambridge and Graeme often comes along for the ride. We all used to work in this café together. I was still a student at the time and am several years younger than both of them. I met Pen the summer before my final year at university. I hadn’t wanted to go back to London that summer; I couldn’t face three months living with my mother, and Pen was looking to rent out the spare bedroom of the house she’d recently inherited from her grandmother.

The café was always looking for new waiting staff, even clumsy hopeless ones like me, so the job came with the room. After I graduated I moved into Pen’s house and the waitressing job full-time. I don’t think she realises how grateful I am to her. She helped me find some independence when I needed it most.

Pen and Graeme run the place these days, whereas I have moved on to the headier heights of paralegal work at one of the big law firms in the centre of Cambridge. I’ve worked my way up from office junior over the last eight years. After university I’d been intending to go to law school and working at the office was supposed to give me some experience. I hadn’t intended to stay there for eight years.

When I worked here the café was one of those ‘Olde Worlde’ tearooms that historic cities love so much. You know the type: scones and cream and white lacy aprons. It had been there for as long as anyone could remember. Just after I left the owner died and the café was bought out by an American, who turned it into a 1950s’ diner, complete with neon signage, old-fashioned jukeboxes, and huge milkshakes.

Cambridge is divided into people who love it and people who think it’s the worst thing to have happened to the city in 800 years. There was so much correspondence about it in the local paper when it first opened that the editor had to call an end to any more letters on the subject. I’m mostly glad I don’t have to work here any more; I’m far too tall for the vintage uniforms.

Creamadelica, as it’s now called, has become one of the busiest cafés in town over the last few years and the three of us are squeezed into one of the hot-pink, faux-leather booths during a lull in service.

‘All my life I’ve wondered who my father was and now it turns out he’s dead and everyone has heard of him but me.’

‘Had you really never heard of Bruce Baldwin?’ Graeme asks.

I shake my head. Somehow this famous Turner-prize-winning artist has passed me by. I wonder how this has happened. It seems Bruce Baldwin was famous enough that even people who weren’t that into art have heard of him, like that guy who pickled a cow when I was a kid. Sometimes I feel as though so much has passed me by.

I realise Graeme is waxing lyrical about my father. Turns out he’s something of an art buff.

‘He held one final exhibition last autumn. He knew he was dying by then I suppose, so he had this big installation at the Tate Modern. Do you really not remember me talking about it, Julia?’

I shake my head again. Graeme talks a lot about a lot of different things. It’s mostly impossible to keep up with him. I notice Pen is staring out of the window; she finds it hard to keep up with him too.

‘I went along because rumour had it that it was his last exhibition. God, it was just wonderful. He left all his work to the Tate, right?’

I realise he’s asking me a question. ‘Everything that isn’t privately owned, yes,’ I reply, trying to remember what Edwin had told me. ‘It’s all in my name now, which is rather mind-boggling, but it lives at the Tate.’

Graeme nods and carries on and I realise that he’s quite passionate about Bruce Baldwin’s work. Pen and I exchange a glance. Who knew?

‘He’d created these huge, larger than life abstract paintings of kids on their own. Not lost or anything, just ignored or lonely. It was incredibly haunting. He called it…’ He stops mid-flow, which is very unlike him.

‘What?’ I say, realising they are both looking at me and my untouched cupcake.

His voice is quieter now, less animated. ‘It was called Lost Daughters.’

I feel like the air has been knocked out of me. I can hear Pen and Graeme talking but it’s as though they are under water. I haven’t had any time to think about any of this. When I’d got back to Cambridge at lunchtime I’d hardly had time to unpack my bag before meeting up with Pen and Graeme at the café.

I keep feeling waves of grief and anger and confusion, most of them directed at my mother, some of them at Johnny. And every now and then there’s another feeling, like the very beginnings of butterflies, whenever I let my mind drift back to Edwin Jones.

‘Julia,’ Pen is trying to get my attention. ‘I’ve got to get back to work. Are you going to be OK?’

‘Yes…’ I force a smile ‘…of course. I should get going myself I guess. I’m meant to be having dinner with Alec tonight.’

Pen smiles at me vaguely. I have a feeling she’s not really listening.

As I get up to leave Graeme squeezes my hand. ‘You know where we are if you need us?’

I nod.

‘And, Julia?’

‘Yes.’

‘Can I eat your cupcake?’

*

Alec is a lecturer in economics and in the middle of writing a very important book. It’s thought he’ll get professorship next academic year and be the youngest professor the Faculty of Economics has ever had. He’s something of a genius in European macroeconomics, lectures all over the world and is constantly busy.

While Alec is away at college dinners, giving lectures, flying off to other universities all over the world and Pen and Graeme are busy at the café, I am often left to my own devices. I go to yoga twice a week, even though I’ve still got to convince myself I love it, I joined a book group, even though no-one was ever interested in reading the books I suggested.

It’s unusual, then, for Alec and me to see each other during the week. If I’m honest, we’ve been seeing less and less of each other over the last few years. While other people my age are getting married, buying houses and having babies, my life seems to have come to a bit of a standstill and my relationship seems to be going backwards.

I know that’s my fault. I know that Alec wanted to get a house together years ago, but I always had an excuse. He said we didn’t have to get married, but I was scared. Just like I was too scared to go to law school. I’ve been feeling for a while I need to make changes and now I’ve turned thirty it’s time I implemented them.

And then like a punch in the gut I remember. The change has happened. It happened yesterday morning in a wood-panelled office in Mayfair. I found out who my father was. I found out that I am, to all intents and purposes, a millionaire.

I take a few breaths, trying to ward off the impending panic. This is what I’ve been waiting for all these years and I have no idea what to do with it.

Although that hideous office job can go for a start.

Alec has this habit of appearing suddenly from nowhere and after ten years he still surprises me. Tonight, as I wait for him outside Trinity College, he’s there suddenly, interrupting my thoughts.

‘Let’s go to the Pickerel,’ he says, nodding towards the pub we’ve been going to since we were students. I’m surprised, as he usually wants to eat somewhere fancier than the pub. He holds my hand as we walk down Bridge Street but doesn’t really say anything. I know this mood. Something’s happened but he doesn’t know how to tell me what it is.