Mary came back into the room, while he was still studying the picture. She was carrying a tray and placed it on the dining table, at the far end of the sitting room. She saw at once what her husband was doing, came over and laid a hand gently on his arm.
‘David, why don’t you call Eytan? You really should talk to him, you know.’
Vogel nodded in apparent agreement, but made no move to use a phone.
‘It might not even be true,’ Mary persisted.
‘It’s true all right,’ said Vogel. ‘You’ve read the letter. It wasn’t written by a nutter. There is no malice in it, just the opposite. It’s the work of an intelligent, articulate woman, someone who had assumed that I at least already knew I was adopted. After all, adoptive parents are supposed to tell their children the truth as they know it, aren’t they?’
Mary nodded, ‘Call Eytan,’ she said yet again.
Vogel glanced at his watch.
‘It’s too late,’ he said. ‘Don’t forget Israel is two hours ahead of us, perhaps I’ll call tomorrow.’
‘David, that means it isn’t yet nine o’clock in Tel Aviv. Surely not too late to call your father…?’
Mary let the last words tail away.
Vogel smiled wryly.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘And that’s the whole point, isn’t it? I’m calling a man who, almost certainly, isn’t my father at all.’
All the same, he picked up the phone and began to dial.
Al
There was something about Melanie Cooke which particularly attracted me from the moment I first spotted her entry on LetsMeet.com.
It wasn’t just the way she looked, although she was stunning. The photo she chose to post showed her wearing a skimpy top, those shorts they call hot pants that I so like, torn tights and very high heels. I was turned on by that, certainly, but it was what I could see in her eyes that really got me.
She was knowing, as if she had done and seen it all before. She didn’t look like the kind of kid who would run, when confronted by a man instead of a boy. Indeed, just the opposite. I told myself she was looking for someone like me, just as much as I was looking for someone like her.
We began to correspond.
She told me early on that she lived in Bristol. She might have had a knowing look in her eye, but she was totally disingenuous. I told her I lived in Bristol too. She opened up even more after that. It was if my having said I lived in the same city provided some sort of reassurance. Silly girl.
She wrote to me in detail about her family life, about the problems she had coping with her too-strict stepfather and her too-clingy father and how she hated her younger sister, whom she felt had taken her place with her mother. I couldn’t imagine sharing the kind of stuff she shared with me with my closest friend — that is, if I had any close friends, which I didn’t.
I was very careful in my replies. I said nothing suggestive at any time. Neither did I ask her to send me any photographs of a more explicit nature. I had a pretty good awareness of the trending interests of young teens. For obvious reasons, I kept up to speed. I was able to talk to her about her interests, as if I too were a teenager. I asked about the kind of music she liked, the apps and games she had installed on her laptop and phone, and I was able use the right sort of language. Or I hoped so, anyway. I could go way beyond cool, wicked, and savage. I kept up to date through the web, because teen slang changes so rapidly. I sympathised with her about her fam (family) and enquired about her squad (group of friends).
I really worked at it. Melanie Cooke was different to the others.
I knew I would just have to make a move on her sooner or later. But I didn’t want anything incriminating about me on LetsMeet.com, however unlikely it was that anyone would be able to trace me from my entry. After a couple of weeks or so of apparently innocent exchanges, I asked for her phone number.
She gave it to me straight away.
I called her on the untraceable, pay-as-you-go phone I’d bought specifically for the purpose. I kept our first chat light. I tried to pitch my voice higher than usual, and if she noticed that mine was the voice of a man much older than nineteen, she passed no comment. Instead, she asked if I was Scottish. I was surprised. I thought my accent was light, But it seemed she had a Scottish grandmother, so she had picked up on the nuances.
‘That’s another thing we have in common,’ I gushed, without giving anything more away.
I didn’t text her at all. Texts remain on the records of mobile phone providers, as do messages left on 121, but there are no records of the content of spoken calls. We had several more phone calls, only very slightly flirtatious on my part, before I invited her to meet me. She took surprisingly little coaxing, agreeing quite swiftly to meet.
I told her to dress the way she had for her LetsMeet picture and that I liked her style. I kept everything light. I was becoming desperate to meet her. I didn’t want to say anything that might frighten her off, but Melanie Cooke was putty in my hands. She was asking for it all right and I couldn’t resist.
I was ready to cross the line. I had no choice.
Nineteen
The conversation which followed shocked Vogel to the core.
‘Is there something you’ve forgotten to mention over the years, dad?’ he asked casually.
‘Sorry son, what are you talking about?’ Eytan responded.
‘I’m talking about he fact that I am not your son at all.’
‘Sorry? You’ve lost me.’
‘No, Dad. Please don’t dissemble. I was adopted, wasn’t I? And neither you, nor mum, chose to tell me.’ Vogel spoke in an even enough tone, but inside he was in turmoil.
‘Ah,’ murmured Eytan Vogel. It was little more than a breath.
‘Come on, dad,’ persisted Vogel. ‘Show me some respect. Tell me the truth.’
‘Uh yes, uh, we never wanted you to find out this way.’ The shock was clear in Eytan’s voice. David Vogel didn’t care.
‘Your mother always said it could happen,’ Eytan continued. ‘That you might learn the truth from someone or something else. She wanted to tell you from the beginning. It was my fault we didn’t. You know what Jewish fathers are like with their firstborn, I wanted you to be my son. You were my son. You are still my son, every bit as much as Adam. We never expected that your mother would get pregnant after we adopted you. We’d been trying for years, perhaps it was because there was no pressure any more. That’s what they say happens sometimes, don’t they…?’
Vogel let Eytan Vogel’s words wash over him, in the distance. He’d known. He’d already known, but having it confirmed on the phone, from three and a half thousand miles away, by the only father he had ever known was an extraordinary moment in his life.
Automatically, he began to reflect on what he’d already learned from this, so far, brief conversation. Adam was the natural son Eytan Vogel had longed for, so what did that make him, David? Not the much desired firstborn, that was for sure.
Another thought occurred to him.
He had stopped listening to his father and interrupted him anyway.
‘Dad, am I a Jew?’
‘Of course you’re a Jew, David. We brought you up a Jew. You were circumcised. You had your Bar Mitzvah, didn’t you? What more could we do?’
‘So my birth parents were not Jewish?’
‘Uh no. But that doesn’t matter David. You’re a Jew all right.’
‘Right. Goodnight, dad.’
Vogel ended the call before his father, or the man he had always thought was his father, could say any more.