The man who ran the corner shop told Con that he might be his father. It made the morning unusual. Perhaps he’d misheard.

‘Sorry, Mr Livingstone. Miles away. What was that?’

Wes scanned the barcodes on Con’s chocolate and newspaper. ‘I said, there’s a good chance I’m your father. Back then, your mother and me, we had a bit of a thing.’

‘A thing?’

‘You know, a thing for each other. That’s four pounds ten, please.’

Con presented his card. ‘My mother was Annie O’Donahue. Are you sure?’

‘Annie. Red hair. Course I’m sure.’

Con checked no one was listening. ‘But Mr Livingstone, you’re from Barbados. You’re black, and I’m white. How can you be my father?’

‘It surprised me as well,’ said Wes. ‘I figured you must be one of those double recessives, or one of them mutation things.’

In less than a minute Con had gone from mundane council employee to illegitimate mundane council employee, to illegitimate mutant mundane council employee.

‘I don’t get it. I’m over forty. I’ve come in here on the way to work for twenty odd years. Why tell me today?’

Wes shrugged. ‘Thought it only fair you should know. I heard your mother passed recently. I’m sorry. She was a lovely lady.’

With a queue forming behind him, Con took his things from the counter, shook his head, and left. The day might return to normal if he pretended the conversation hadn’t happened. He drove to work, parked in his regular spot, said ‘Good morning’ to the usual people on his way into the town hall, climbed the stairs to the council tax office, made coffee in his favourite mug, read the paper till nine, and none of it helped. The day remained unusual, and therefore unsettling.

The week’s priority was a pile of letters to residents behind on tax payments, checking they were still alive. The previous year, some reminders had been sent to dead people. He’d been warned to be more thorough, which involved checking across several systems. Uninterrupted concentration on two screens gave him ideal cover to research double recessives and genetic mutations. Much of the material was technical, in difficult language. All he wanted was simple proof that Wes Livingstone was talking nonsense.

One search led to a tabloid front page from the archives. Below the headline, a couple in West Africa smiled proudly at their blond, curly-haired, fair-skinned baby. In the article, scientists put forward possibilities, the word mutation appearing more than once.

It was time for another coffee, stronger than before.

* * *

Into the evening, the day continued to be unusual. His meal, the second half of a casserole he’d cooked and frozen two weeks before, didn’t taste right. Most went into the bin. The accompanying bottle of wine was good, though. It helped change his focus. All day it had been ‘This is impossible.’ With the wine it became ‘Even if it’s true, so what?’ He was the same person as yesterday. Why should it change who he was? And if he didn’t tell anyone, how could it change how they saw him?

The approach helped for about an hour but, when he’d finished the wine, the whirlwind in his head gathered speed again. He needed to talk, but how? It would sound mad. A should-I-shouldn’t-I debate ended with a phone call to his sister.

‘Bridget, it’s me.’

‘I know. You came up on the screen.’

‘Are you well?’

‘Well enough. You?’

‘That’s why I’m calling. Listen, you’re older than me.’

‘Still well under fifty, thank you. What is this?’

‘I mean, you remember more than me. Did Mum and Dad ever argue?’

‘They might have, I suppose, but I never heard a row. Have you finally met someone? Is that what this is? Are you asking how relationships work?’

‘What? No, nothing like that.’ A pause, and then, ‘You know Mr Livingstone in the paper shop on the corner?’

‘What about him?’

‘When you were little, before I was born or when I was a baby, did Mum ever take you in there?’

A cautious ‘Why?’

‘Just wondering.’

‘Yeah, we went there.’

‘Did he treat you and Mum differently from anyone else?’

A long pause this time. ‘Has something happened?’

‘He says he and Mum had a thing for each other.’

‘A thing?’

‘You know, a thing. Can you remember?’

‘Well, when I was five or six, and you were in a buggy, I’d talk Mum into taking us into his shop on the way home from school. Sometimes he’d give me a pack of sweets with a wink, and say to give you some.’

‘Did you hear him talking to Mum?’

‘Can’t remember.’

‘Was Dad around?’

‘Only weekends sometimes. He was away on the roads.’

It rang true. At their father’s funeral, when Con was a teenager, Annie O’Donohue had been full of it. ‘Without my Paddy, God rest his soul, wouldn’t there be no motorways in the country. Work day and night, he did.’

Con didn’t push it further. He finished the call, and sighed. The evidence was building. It was likely Wes and his mother knew each other before he was born and, with his father away, there was opportunity. His own research had shown that a black couple could have a white baby, so it followed that mixed-race couples could have one too. And Wes had winked at Bridget, a sure sign of a something unspoken.

There was another undeniable fact. Wes was capable of procreation. He had a son who lived away somewhere, and a daughter, Zelpher. She was a nurse, and ran the shop when Wes was ill or had time away. She was fun. Always smiling.

* * *

For a few weeks Con changed his route to work, buying his paper at another shop. Wes couldn’t say things like that to his customers and not expect it to affect his business. But time led to a softening. Wes had said Con’s mother was a lovely lady. It matched his own memories. She was sweet, never speaking badly of anyone. When at primary school, after calling into the shop on the way home, he’d be taken to one or other of his mother’s friends, all referred to as aunties and uncles: widows, widowers, the sick, the housebound, the lonely. Visits had centred around cups of tea, and the steady tick of a clock on a mantelpiece. He’d hated it, longing to get home for the telly, but now the memory was comforting.

Would it matter if his mother really had been intimate with Wes? It must have been lonely with her husband away so much. She had her oldies to visit, and her two children, but everyone needs company their own age, and it was possible to love two people, wasn’t it? Look at Dr Zhivago.

Con had no plans to take it further until watching a TV drama where the central character, a young married woman, was confronted by a stranger claiming to be her father. She wouldn’t believe him until he agreed to a paternity test. As the suspense built around the man’s motives, Con’s attention turned to further internet research, and a plan was formed.

* * *

Next Saturday evening, Con hung around outside the shop. Towards nine o’clock, Wes came to the door and turned the sign to CLOSED. Con dashed over carrying a small bag, and tapped the glass.

‘Mr Livingstone, I’ve got something for you.’ He held up the bag, smiling.

Wes opened the door.

‘Can we talk inside?’ said Con.

‘Don’t see why not. Come on in.’ He locked the door. ‘Not seen you for a while. Thought you must be ill. Chocolate sales have slumped.’

Con laughed. ‘No, nothing like that. It’s what you said about you and my mother. It threw me, but now I’ve thought about it, we should have a drink.’

He put the bag on the counter and took out two of his mother’s best Waterford crystal glasses, and a bottle.

Wes began to chuckle. ‘Oh man, where did you find this? Barbados rum, the best on the island. I ain’t seen a bottle for years.’

Con poured an inch into both glasses. Saliva, the instructions had said, was an excellent source of DNA, although prone to contamination, especially in infants. Cheek swabs were more reliable but, being an adult, Wes’s saliva had less chance of contamination. Besides, how do you sneakily take a cheek swab?

The rum was good. Wes talked about Barbados, his parents, his school, his teachers, going to beaches, early days in England, meeting his late wife, and his children. Nothing about Annie O’Donohue, but plenty about Zelpher.

‘Don’t know how I’d have managed without her when my Gloria died. Always good to me, but still no man of her own. Lovely caring girl like that shouldn’t be alone. It ain’t right.’

 When Wes’s glass was empty, Con poured more rum into a fresh glass, and put the first in a plastic bag concealed in the main bag.

Three measures later, Con’s head was swimming from nostalgic tales of the Caribbean and an excess of rum. Leaving the rest of the bottle with Wes, he put the glasses into his bag and left with a ‘See you next week’ and much back-slapping.

* * *

The following Monday, Con didn’t see Wes because he drove to a newsagent with a Post Office counter, to send the paternity test by special delivery. A four to six day turnaround was promised.

So it wasn’t until Tuesday that Con returned to his old route to work. There were more people inside the shop than usual, and behind the counter was Zelpher. ‘So sorry for the delay,’ she kept saying. ‘It’s a new till. I’ll be faster tomorrow.’ She was calm and cheerful, grinning at the faces in the queue.

Wes had seemed fine on Saturday, and hadn’t mentioned going away. Something was wrong. Con pretended to browse magazines until he and Zelpher were alone.

‘Nice to see you, Zelpher. Everything OK with your dad?’

Her face changed. ‘You seen him lately?’

‘Saturday. Is everything alright?’

She looked anxious, and checked the shop was empty. ‘Did he say anything to you? Anything odd?’

Con froze. The notion she was his half-sister was ridiculous. Those lovely eyes, the smooth round cheeks, the full lips. Why on earth had he wasted two hundred pounds on a paternity test?

‘You hear me? Did he say anything?’

‘Just the usual chat. Why?’

‘He’s ill. Dementia or something. Can’t get much out of him. Some fool gave him a bottle of rum. He shouldn’t drink with his meds.’

Con’s eyes widened. ‘That’s terrible. What happened?’

Zelpher spoke softly. ‘The police came. There’s been three complaints.’

‘Against your dad?’

She checked the shop again. ‘He’s been telling people he’s their father. You ever heard anything so crazy? One woman even made him give her a cheek swab.’

Gulp.

‘I’m worried sick,’ she said. ‘I can’t be here all the time, but it’s not safe to leave him alone. I’ve got to sort something.’

‘Can your brother help?’

She tossed back her head. ‘He’s the other end of the country, and more use there than he would be here.’ Her eyes became moist. ‘Sorry, not your problem.’

Their eyes met. Something was happening, something unfamiliar. Con offered no resistance.

‘Look, I’ve got work now, but call me. If you want, I can help.’ He tore a corner off his paper, and wrote his name and number.

‘Con,’ she read, making it sound special.

‘Short for Connor,’ he said. ‘Please think about it. You shouldn’t face this alone.’

Zelpher put a hand on his. ‘Thanks. I’ll call.’

The warmth of her touch spread through his body in a way that was new. He returned her smile. An idea was forming. A different future where, instead of confirming deaths for the tax office, he could confirm his own life in the company of the warm, caring, and beautiful Zelpher.