Blue Monday

Chapter Twenty-two

On Tuesday afternoon, Frieda said to Alan, ‘Tell me about your mother.’

‘My mother?’ He shrugged. ‘She was …’ He stopped, frowned, look at the palms of his hands as if he could find the answer there. ‘… a nice woman,’ he finished lamely. ‘She’s dead now.’

‘I mean, your other mother.’

It was as if she had punched him very hard in the stomach. She even heard the whoosh of surprised pain that escaped him, and he bent forward slightly, his face screwed up. ‘What do you mean?’ he managed.

‘Your birth mother, Alan.’

He made a faint and querulous sound.

‘You were adopted, weren’t you?’

‘How did you know?’ he whispered.

‘Not by magic. I just saw the photograph of them in your house.’

‘And?’

‘They both have blue eyes. Yours are brown. It’s genetically impossible.’

‘Oh,’ he said.

‘When were you going to tell me?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Never?’

‘It’s not got anything to do with this.’

‘Are you serious?’

‘I was adopted. End of story.’

‘You are longing to have a child of your own, so acutely that you have vivid fantasies about it, and prolonged attacks of acute anxiety. And you think that the fact that you were adopted isn’t relevant?’

Alan shrugged. He lifted his eyes to hers, then dropped them again. Outside, the crane’s arm lifted higher in the hard blue sky. Great gobbets of mud dropped from its serrated jaw. ‘I don’t know,’ he muttered.

‘You want a son who looks exactly like you. You reject the idea of adopting a child. You want your own – with your genes, your red hair and freckles. As if you want to adopt yourself, rescue yourself and look after yourself.’

‘Not that.’ Alan looked as though he would like to jam his fingers into his ears.

‘Is it such a secret?’

‘Carrie knows, of course. And one friend. I told him once after a few drinks. But why should I talk about it to everyone? It’s private.’

‘Private from your therapist?’

‘I didn’t think it was important.’

‘I don’t believe you, Alan.’

‘I don’t care what you believe. I’m telling you.’

‘I think you know it’s important. It’s so important you can’t bring yourself to mention it or even think about it.’

He shook his head slowly from side to side, like a tired old bull being baited.

‘Some secrets give a form of freedom,’ said Frieda. ‘Your own private space. That’s good. Everyone has to have those kinds of secrets. But some secrets can be dark and oppressive, like a horrible dank cellar you don’t dare go into but you always know is there, full of ugly underground creatures, full of your nightmares. Those are the secrets you need to confront, shine a light on, see what they really are.’

As she spoke, she thought of all the secrets she had been told over the years, all those illicit thoughts, desires, fears that people gave to her for safe keeping. Reuben had felt poisoned by them in the end, but she had always carried them with a sense of privilege, that people allowed her to see their fears, allowed her to be their light.

‘I don’t know,’ said Alan. ‘Maybe there are things it’s best not to dwell on.’

‘Otherwise?’

‘Otherwise you’ll just get upset when there’s nothing to be done anyway.’

‘Do you think that perhaps you’re here, with me, because there are too many things you haven’t dwelled upon and they’ve built up inside you?’

‘I don’t know about that. We just never discussed it,’ said Alan. ‘Somehow I just knew we couldn’t go there. She wanted me to think of her as my mother.’

‘Did you?’

‘She was my mother. Mum and Dad, that was all I knew. That other woman, she has nothing to do with me.’

‘You didn’t know your birth mother?’

‘No.’

‘No memory at all?’

‘Nothing.’

‘Do you know who she was?’

‘No.’

‘You never wanted to know?’

‘Even if I did, it would be no use.’

‘How do you mean?’

‘No one knew.’

‘I don’t understand. You can always find out, you know, Alan. It’s really quite straightforward.’

‘That’s where you’re wrong. She made sure of that.’

‘How?’

‘She dumped me. In a little park near a housing estate in Hoxton. The newspaper boy found me. It was winter and very cold and I was wrapped up in a towel.’ He glared at Frieda. ‘Like in a fairy tale. Except that this is real. Why should I care about her?’

‘What a way to start your life,’ said Frieda.

‘I can’t remember it, so it doesn’t matter. It’s just a story.’

‘A story about you.’

‘I never knew her, she never knew me. She doesn’t have a name, a voice, a face. She doesn’t know my name either.’

‘It’s quite hard to go through pregnancy and give birth and then abandon your baby and never be discovered,’ said Frieda.

‘She managed it.’

‘So you were tiny when your parents adopted you. You never knew anything else?’

‘Right. Which is why it doesn’t have anything to do with what I’m feeling now.’

‘Like when you were talking about having your own child, and then about the possibility of adopting.’

‘I told you. I don’t want to adopt. I want my own child, not someone else’s.’

Frieda looked at him steadily. He met her gaze for a few seconds, then dropped his eyes, like a boy who has been caught out in a lie.

‘Our time is up. We’ll meet again on Thursday. I want you to think about this.’

They both stood up. He shook his head slowly from side to side again, in that futile, hapless gesture of his, as though he was trying to clear it.

‘I don’t know if I can do this,’ he said. ‘I’m not cut out for it.’

‘We’ll take it one step at a time.’

‘Through the darkness,’ said Alan, words that caught Frieda off balance so she could only nod at him.

When Frieda returned home, she found a small package on her doormat and at once recognized Sandy’s handwriting on the envelope. She stooped and picked it up very carefully, as if it might explode with any sudden movement. But she didn’t open it immediately. She took it to the kitchen and made herself a cup of tea first, standing at the window while the kettle boiled, looking past her reflection at the darkness outside and the night sky, which was clear and cold.

Only when she had a mug of tea in her hand and was sitting at the table did she open the package and take out a silver bangle, a small sketchpad with a couple of her drawings in it and a soft-leaded pencil, five hair grips held together by a thin brown hairband. That was all. She shook the envelope, but there was no letter or note. She looked at the paltry objects lying on the table. Was that really all she had left there? How was it possible to leave so little trace?

The phone rang and she picked it up, wishing even as she did so that she had left it to the answering machine.

‘Frieda. You’ve got to help me. I’m at my wit’s end here and her stupid fucking father isn’t any help either.’

‘I’m here, you know,’ said Chloë. ‘Even if you wish I wasn’t.’

Frieda held the receiver slightly away from her ear. ‘Hello?’ she said. ‘Which one of you am I meant to be talking to?’

‘You’re talking to me,’ said Olivia, her voice high and shrill. ‘I rang you because I just happen to be at the end of my tether. If someone’s rude enough to pick up the other phone and eavesdrop, then that someone has only got themselves to blame if they hear things they’d prefer not to hear.’

‘Blah blah blah blah,’ jeered Chloë. ‘She wants to gate me for being drunk. I’m sixteen. I was sick. Get over it. She should gate herself.’

‘Chloë, look –’

‘I wouldn’t talk to a dog the way she talks to me.’

‘Nor would I. I like dogs. Dogs don’t shout and nag and feel sorry for themselves.’

‘Your brother just said it was part of growing up,’ said Olivia, ending on a sob. She always called David Frieda’s brother or Chloë’s father when she was more than usually angry with him. ‘He should try a bit of growing up himself. It wasn’t me who ran off with some young tart with dyed hair.’

‘Careful, Olivia,’ said Frieda, sharply.

‘If you try to gate me, I’ll go and stay with him.’

‘I’d love that, except why do you think he wants you? He left you, didn’t he?’

‘You both have to stop this now,’ said Frieda.

‘He didn’t leave me, he left you. I don’t blame him.’

‘I am now going to put the phone down,’ said Frieda, very loudly, and she did.

She got up and poured herself a small glass of white wine, then sat down again. She fingered the objects that Sandy had returned, turning them over in her fingers. The phone rang.

‘Hello,’ came Olivia’s small voice.

‘Hi.’ Frieda waited.

‘I’m not coping very well.’

Frieda took a sip of wine and rolled its coolness in her mouth. She thought of her bath, her book, the fire that was laid, the thinking she needed to do. Outside, it was winter and an ill wind blew through the dark streets. ‘Do you want me to come round?’ she said. ‘Because that would be fine.’