Chapter Text
My favorite books are the Harry Potter series, so I thought I'd describe my family as the Dursleys in my lit assignment. My parents are just as status conscious as any Dursley. Mum always wants an expensive vacation somewhere sunny with a beach while Dad needs a new car every other year. They are not ugly like the Dursleys--in fact Dad is quite handsome and even turns heads when we go somewhere despite his age--but they are as conventional and "normal" as Petunia and Vernon Dursley. And as boring. Maybe even more boring--or at least that's what I thought.
We even have an Aunt Marge like the Dursleys -- my Auntie Sue. She's my great-aunt, actually, my grandfather's sister. She is just as opinionated and bullying as Harry Potter's aunt but doesn't even have a disgusting dog to soften her edges. Auntie Sue doesn't like animals and doesn't approve of having pets in the house. I always wanted a puppy or kitten but my parents always said no, they were too much trouble and too dirty. I was lucky they let me have riding lessons, really, but I told Mum that all the most popular girls rode. That was the clincher. Mum is all about being popular and pretty. As long as I take care with my hair and makeup and wear the right clothes, Mum doesn't hassle me. She says a pretty face and good figure will take me far. She's not bright enough to see the limits of that philosophy--if I want to be a veterinarian or a scientist, I don't think having a pretty face is really going to help me nearly as much as good grades in maths. At least Dad is proud of my grades in school. He says I take after him.
We don't have mysterious letters delivered by owl or a cupboard under the stairs where I have to sleep, but my grandfather does have a junk cupboard under his stairs, which is where the Harry Potter type mysterious things really began, things I didn't expect when I was planning my essay. Grandpa Geoffrey is Dad's father. Dad's mother died long before he and Mum got married. Mum's parents are dead as well, so Grandpa Geoffrey is the only grandparent I remember. He lives north of us in Masham which is the town where Dad grew up. We visit him fairly regularly as it's less than an hour drive.
We went to visit him a month ago. There's nothing much to do in Masham, so William and I went downtown to wander around. He'd just got his driver's license so our parents let us take the car. We parked in the middle of town and William made a beeline for the pub to sneak a drink. He's tall like Dad and looks older than he is, so as long as no one knows him, he can get away with ordering a beer.
As the last thing William wants is his baby sister hanging around while he flirts with girls, I walked in the opposite direction. I saw an old church so I went inside. It had some interesting carvings--a stone crab climbing the wall, a couple in Medieval outfits reclining on a sofa propped up on their elbows Roman style, a nice stained glass angel. After I looked around a bit, an old lady arranging flowers showed me the church register and helped me find my parents' wedding listed in it. I took a photo of their signatures, intending to show them, thanked the old lady, and wandered outside. I bought myself an ice cream cone and sat on a bench in the sun, waiting for William.
Idly eating my vanilla with sprinkles, I thought about William because his birthday was in a month and I needed to think about a present. Then something about the dates I'd just seen started to bother me. Dad's an accountant so I pay attention to numbers. Suddenly, it hit me that my parents got married four months before William was born. "Naughty, naughty," I said to myself, remembering the "Nice girls don't sleep with boys before marriage" lectures Mum gives periodically, usually before a school dance. They'd had to get married. Well, I didn't think Mum had minded. She was jealous of Dad even now and they'd been married forever. I wondered if Dad had wanted to marry Mum. Occasionally he flirted with women he met in passing or with the moms of William's and my friends. I don't think he's ever cheated on Mum but who knows? He'd have opportunity on his business trips and so would Mum as she's not working and is alone all day.
Well, this afternoon we'd be back at Grandpa Gregory's house, so I'd ask to see any of my parents' wedding pictures he has. After I'd finished my ice cream, I sat in the sunshine a while, watching a little girl with red blonde hair eating her own ice cream cone. After a bit a man with the same hair collected her and they left, arm in arm. I wish I had hair like that. My blonde hair, though natural, is a bit ordinary.
At last William reappeared, waved to a curvaceous brunette his own age, and joined me at my bench. "Ready to go?" he asked, pulling the car keys from his pocket without waiting for an answer. I followed him meekly and soon we were back at Grandpa Gregory's where Mum and Dad were looking over brochures for Spain. Grandpa Gregory has a vacation rental there and they were talking about all buying a place together for summer holidays and winter excursions to escape bad weather. I managed to corner Grandpa Gregory in the kitchen where he was pouring drinks for himself and my parents and asked him if I could see my parents' wedding pictures. He smiled vaguely at me and told me the photo albums were in the cupboard under the stairs. I thanked him with a pretty smile and headed for the cupboard.
Everyone else was busy elsewhere when I opened the cupboard door, turned on the overhead light using the old-fashioned pull chain, and looked around. Everything was neat but a bit dusty. I soon found a box labeled "photo albums" which I grabbed and took upstairs to the guest bedroom where William and I shared twin beds when we visited.
There were five old picture albums inside. One was full of very old photos of what appeared to be Grandpa Gregory and Grandma, who reminded me of Auntie Sue. They had the same downturned and disapproving mouth. I flipped through those, put the album back in the box, and found a scrapbook of photos of Dad and Aunt Kimberly, his younger sister, when they were children, then more photos of Dad and his sister and parents when Dad and Kimberly were older. In a few Dad had his arm around a tall girl with the same red-blonde hair I'd seen on the man and his daughter downtown. Must have been his girlfriend at the time, I thought. I put that album back as well. The next album appeared to be quite old. It had Grandpa Gregory's wedding photos and pictures of him with my grandmother. An old wedding invitation told me her name had been Karen. At the end of the wedding album there was a birth announcement for my dad who had been born 18 months after the wedding. No extramarital sex for Grandpa Gregory, then, at least none that had ended with an unplanned pregnancy.
The next album was Mum's and Dad's wedding photos. There was an invitation to the reception, plenty of pictures of the old church smothered in flowers, a happy looking Grandpa Gregory (actually he looked drunk but who knows?) and Mum glowing. Dad looked happy, although he wasn't beaming like Mum. Most of the photos were carefully posed to show Mum from the front but I did find a few candid snaps that showed her Empire-waisted gown from the side. There was a distinct baby bump showing if you looked from the right angle. I wondered if the crowd had whispered about the pregnant bride. Probably so, knowing how people talk. Now that I had confirmation that Mum had been pregnant with William when she and Dad got married, I put that album back in the box and took out the last one, just out of curiosity.
It was a wedding album as well--with a wedding invitation on the first page for the marriage of Robin Venetia Ellacott and Matthew John Cunliffe, three years before Dad and Mum had married.