Trio

Part Four: Searching

Megan Marjorie

Nina

Nina

‘We’ve been up half the bloody night. Your mother’s been lying up there worrying herself sick and you waltz in, half-cut and stinking like a brewery.’ As he yelled the chords in his neck stood out like ropes, his face was purple and some spit flew out.

Maybe he’d have a stroke. She was ashamed of the thought but what the hell. She was sick of him.

‘Said I’d be late.’ She tried not to mix her words up. She was going to throw up. Vodka and barley wine. Rotten mix. ‘I need the loo.’

‘I haven’t finished!’ he thundered. ‘You’re fifteen-’

‘Dad, please.’ Her mouth filled with saliva.

‘Midnight. We said midnight.’

‘Sorry,’ she managed. She lurched towards the stairs but it was too late, she retched and a stream of vomit hit the carpet.

‘Sweet Jesus!’ he cursed.

‘Toilet. Now!’ Marjorie appeared at the top of the stairs.

Pressing her hands over her mouth, Nina ran up to the bathroom, her oesophagus contracting in preparation for the next eruption.

Her mother followed her and filled the basin while Nina hung over the toilet. When she’d emptied herself she wiped the strings of saliva from her chin and flushed it all away. She washed her hands and face. Marjorie said nothing.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I’ll clear it up.’

‘I know your idea of clearing up. It’ll need bicarb to get the smell out and Dettol I shouldn’t wonder. Go get yourself to bed. We’ll talk about this in the morning.’

She couldn’t resist the dig, thought Nina as she brushed her teeth. Her mother was always on about clearing up and being clean and tidy. As if being good at dusting or bloody ironing was in any way important. It was pathetic. And Stephen never had to do any of it, did he?

She drank some water. Her throat was raw and the sharp smell of sick clung to her. Shame. It’d been a good night until she’d had to come back here. They’d got into the Ritz, she and Chloe. They’d plastered loads of make-up on, it wasn’t hard to pass for eighteen, they’d even memorised false birth dates in case they got asked.

They’d got off with two blokes from Warrington way. When they left the club the blokes were planning to drive back but it was obvious that all four of them wanted something else before they left. ‘Bit of kissing and cuddling,’ Grant had said to her. They’d all sat in the car and shared a joint. It was grass and smelt like hay, which struck Nina as hilarious after a few tokes. Then Grant had taken her round the back, where there was a little alleyway. Chloe and John got to stay in the car, which was his dad’s.

They’d done it standing up against the wall. Knee trembler. He went on longer than Gary had ever managed and it was all right, but when he kissed her it was like he was hoovering.

After, on the all-night bus back, Chloe had told her that John had wanted to lick her down there. She’d said no. Nina wondered what it would feel like. She couldn’t remember much else about getting home.

In her room she threw her clothes on the chair and got her nightie on. She kept stumbling and the room kept tipping.

She pulled the sheets and blankets up and turned off the light. The room swayed and her head began to thump. She put the light back on and pushed her pillow up against the headboard so she could sit up a bit. She hadn’t really liked Grant. He’d made lots of jokes that weren’t very funny and when she said anything he’d only half-listened, his eyes roaming round the rest of the talent. She knew he was only after one thing but he didn’t pretend otherwise. Didn’t matter to her. Could have been anybody. Wham bam thank you ma’am. It made her feel good, not the sex so much but the fact that someone had picked her. Someone wanted her. The worst thing of all was to come home and you’d not copped off. That was the pits.

Megan

‘I’m afraid he’s simply not responding to any of the measures we’ve tried.’ The head teacher frowned. ‘And, as we said at the outset, there’ll have to be some clear signs of improvement, otherwise Aidan would have to leave.’

‘And then what?’ Megan said. ‘What is there for him then?’

Mr Brookes sighed. He reminded her of a baddie in a James Bond film, one of those public-school type actors whose sophistication hid real evil. Mr Brookes used fancy language and lots of slow sighs but he could snarl with the rest of them.

‘If there were more resources open to us then perhaps things could be different.’

‘His attendance is better,’ Brendan tried. ‘Up five per cent you said.’

Mr Brookes nodded once. ‘But that’s still only giving us fifty-five per cent, and his behaviour when he is in school remains unsatisfactory.’

‘So that’s it,’ Megan said. ‘Exclusion and he’s back on the streets day in, day out.’

‘For the school this is the only appropriate course of action.’

‘Right.’ Megan got quickly to her feet, a rush of anger flared through her chest.

‘Megan?’ Brendan stood too, confused by her sudden move.

‘Mrs Conroy,’ said Brookes.

‘Don’t bother,’ she said, ‘we get the message. And so will he. Thirteen and on the scrap heap. I know he’s a handful, we know he’s got problems. Do you think we haven’t worried ourselves sick about it all? Not knowing if the next knock on the door’s going to be the police saying he’s been thieving again or he’s been found behind the wheel of a wrecked…’ She faltered, sniffed hard and set her jaw. ‘We’ve done our best. Maybe it’s not been enough but we haven’t given up on him. Not like you lot. This school, you labelled him a troublemaker as soon as he walked in those doors and you couldn’t wait to be rid…’

‘Megan!’ Brendan protested.

‘It’s true,’ she retorted then turned back to Brookes. ‘This solves your problem but it does nothing for Aidan. Did anyone here ever praise that boy when he did try? Eh? Not once did any of you really give him a chance, really put some time and effort into him…’

‘We have six hundred…’

‘You failed him!’ Her voice rose and she pointed at the man. ‘And it’s a bloody disgrace.’

She walked to the door, trembling all over. She could feel a sheen of sweat on her forehead.

Mr Brookes cleared his throat. ‘I’m sorry you feel…’ His tone was languid, cool, he chose his words with care.

‘Oh, don’t bother! Save your breath.’

She walked out.

Brendan followed her, his eyes flicking to her and away several times as if he was worried she might start in on him next.

In the car she put her head in her hands. ‘It’s like waiting for an accident to happen. Like those dreams you have where the brakes don’t work or the steering wheel comes off in your hands. It’s driving me up the wall, Brendan. If I only knew why he was like that, what makes him so unhappy he’s got to get into all this bother. The next time he’s caught it’s a detention centre and that’ll just make it worse – schools for crime, they are.’

‘Megan, you said in there, we’ve done our best. And we have. We haven’t slung him out or let him down, have we?

She shook her head, pressed her lips together as her eyes smarted.

‘But it’s not enough,’ she whispered. ‘Why couldn’t we make him happy?’

‘Come here.’ He put his arm round her, pulled her closer. ‘It’ll be all right.’

Oh, Brendan, she thought, no, it won’t.

Nina

She had no idea how to go about tracing her mother. She went to Didsbury library and looked for books. There were two on adoption; she flicked through them quickly; there were lots of different people’s stories about what had happened to them. She didn’t want to read all that, just find out how to get started. At the back of one she found a list of places and she copied them down but she didn’t understand how it all fitted together.

Maybe she could try Central Library, they should have more books and maybe something directly about how to trace someone. She hadn’t been to Central Library for yonks. She’d joined once when her art teacher had got on to them all to use it for a project on the cubists and the impressionists. She still had her tickets.

She told Marjorie she was going to town.

‘Take this -’ Marjorie opened her purse – ‘in case you see something you like.’

‘Thanks.’ She felt awkward. If Marjorie had any inkling of where she was really going… The thought made her stomach clutch, a cold, rolling feeling as though the tide had come in. But if she refused the money how could she explain? She nodded and pushed the money into the back pocket of her jeans.

The library sat on the corner of Oxford Road and Mosely Street. A circular building, white stone with a domed roof and columns that made her think of postcards from foreign holidays. She went up in the cramped lift to the social sciences section. There were several books on adoption. She skimmed through and selected a handful and took them to a table to look at. She had brought pen and paper with her. Some of them used charts and tables to show the paths you could try to find someone – there were lots of different possibilities, but finding out if your birth mother was married was important because the name would change. Was she married? Had she had any more children? She felt dizzy when she tried to imagine that. She shut the book and opened another. It talked mainly about the need for counselling at every stage and said that counselling was mandatory for getting records. There were other places you could try too, like electoral rolls if you knew where they lived. One paragraph said the mother sometimes sent a note to the agency so if the child came looking they could find her. Imagine that.

She made notes but it all seemed to be a tangle and there were places that sounded the same but had different addresses so she wrote both down. By the time she had finished she felt overwhelmed. She put the books back and got the lift down to the cafe for a drink and a smoke.

The cafe was so gloomy, a real dive. She wondered whether they made it look like that on purpose so people wouldn’t use it much. There weren’t that many seats and the staff acted like they’d rather slit your throats than serve you drinks.

She smoked hungrily and washed away the parched feeling with swigs of coffee. She was just finishing when Tracy Metcalfe, who’d been in her class at school, swam into view.

‘Hiya, Nina. Fancy seeing you here. What you doing?’

Nina held herself still. Tracy had a gob like the Mersey Tunnel and was reputed to have done it when she was just thirteen. Tracy was a greaser with an eye for weaklings. Nina was no pushover but you didn’t want to get on the wrong side of Tracy Metcalfe. And what the hell was she doing at Central Library?

‘Having a ciggie. What about you?’ Nina tried to erase any sign of panic from her eyes.

‘That’d be telling!’ Tracy winked, swung her leather shopper off her arm.

Nina grinned.

Tracy sat down.

‘I’ve got to get my bus,’ Nina said.

Tracy nodded. She rooted in her bag for Number Six and Zippo lighter. ‘Tara!’ She clicked the lighter and sucked hard, flung her throat back in a gesture of pleasure.

Nina fled.

Back home she went slowly upstairs and put her notes in among her art folder. She was confident no one would rummage through that. Her mother was hoovering the dining room. Nina put the kettle on. Stephen came in the back door, saw the gas was on.

‘Make me one.’

‘Make your own,’ she said.

‘Nina.’

‘Well, when did you last make some?’

‘Yesterday.’

‘Not for me you didn’t.’

‘You are so childish.’

‘Fuck off!’ she said. And saw his shock. He never swore. He looked at her but he didn’t even look mad just sorry for her or something. He shook his head and walked out. Making allowances.

She hated that. Hated him. She didn’t need his fucking pity. She stood there, her arms locked across her body, her back rigid with tension. She’d show him, she’d show them all. Her real family, they’d be different. They wouldn’t pity her or feel disappointed in her. They’d understand. Well, it would probably just be her real mother but they’d be able to talk to each other. She’d be accepted for what she was, not what she was expected to be in someone’s boring little mind.

The kettle began to whistle and she turned off the gas. Her mother came in rolling the hoover. ‘I’d love a cuppa, Nina.’ She pushed the pantry door open and put the hoover away.

Nina poured water into the pot and swilled it round, went to open the caddy.

‘How was town? Did you get anything?’

‘No.’ her skin prickled and her breath caught in her throat. ‘No, I didn’t see anything.’

The following day she tried to make sense of the notes but she wasn’t sure which place to start with.

‘Ring Social Services,’ Chloe said when she told her. ‘They’ll know.’

She found the number in the phone book but it was another two days before she got the house to herself and a chance to use the phone. It was engaged at first, then she got passed on to a different department.

At last she spoke to someone who could deal with her. The woman asked her if she had her original birth certificate.

‘No.’ Mum and Dad might have it but she couldn’t ask them.

‘Do you know what your name at birth was?’

‘Yes.’ Claire Driscoll.

‘Good. If you know your name you can buy a copy of your original birth certificate. I’ll tell you where to write. When you’ve done that it will give you information about your birth mother and where she was living when you were born. Then, if you wish to, you can apply to see your adoption records – they are usually kept by the agency who arranged the adoption. But those aren’t automatically handed over, you have to see a social worker before you get them. We make sure everyone has that basic counselling before they have access to their records. A lot of people find it very helpful.

Nina was scribbling down as much as she could.

‘So, first I need my birth certificate?’

‘Yes, you write to the General Records Office and they will send you a form. I’ll give you their address in a minute. They make a small charge, a few pounds or so, for a copy.’

‘Right.’

Nina wrote the address down.

‘When you’ve got your birth certificate you can ring here again and we can make an appointment with a social worker.’

‘Thanks.’

She dropped the receiver as she replaced it, her hands were trembling. God. Maybe she should just leave it? She looked at what she had scrawled on the paper. If she just got the birth certificate, it didn’t mean she had to do anything else. Before she could get any more confused about it all she went up to her room, got out notepaper and an envelope, wrote asking for her birth certificate, sealed the letter and addressed the envelope. She sent it that afternoon, a sense of occasion. She would have to watch the post. A thrill made her want to run, or jump up and down. It was exciting, there was an undercurrent too, a pull of guilt as though she had done something naughty and might get caught. But it was done now. No turning back.

They told her to apply again when she was eighteen. Nina was furious. ‘I can get married,’ she ranted to Chloe, ‘leave home, work in a poxy little job for forty hours a week, but I can’t find out who I am!’

‘Could you find her without those papers?’

‘Chloe, I don’t know her full name. I can’t do anything till I have that. I’ll have to wait. They said it might be different if I had my parents’ permission but there’s no way I’m asking them. They’d go mad.’

‘You don’t know that.’

‘I do know that. But the day I’m eighteen I’ll do it.’

Chloe leant forward into the mirror and applied thick black mascara to her lashes. ‘What if you don’t like her?’

Nina shrugged. ‘It’s all right for you, least you know where you come from, who you look like.’

‘Yeah, the bloody Adams family!’

‘Give over.’

‘Pink or yellow?’ Chloe held up eye shadows.

‘Pink – and you should do your mascara last.’

‘Says who?’

‘Well, you’ll get pink all over it now, and then you’ll have to do it again.’

‘Are you coming like that?’ Chloe raked her eyes over Nina’s unadorned complexion.

‘No.’

‘Well, get a move on. It’s a pound more after nine o’clock.’

Marjorie

She loved this place. And it was always such a contrast with home. Each summer she’d be surprised afresh at the rough plaster walls, the stone-flagged floors, the simmering views over gauzy hillside terraces and fields. The hillsides were mauve and olive from the wild thyme and lavender. She relished the sound of cowbells in the air and the incessant chattering of the small birds that swooped in and out of their nests under the eaves, the smell of sun-baked pine.

They had all their holidays in southern France.

It had been an idyll, but now…

She waited in the sitting room, close to the drive for any sound that would interrupt the shrilling of the cicadas, swivelling the bracelet on her wrist. Moths batted against the windows, crazy for the light.

At last she heard the crunch of gravel and hurried to the door. It was Stephen on his butcher’s bike. He slithered to a stop and propped the bike against the wall.

‘She’s in the square,’ he said. ‘She’s been drinking. She was in the fountain.’

‘Oh, God!’ Marjorie closed her eyes at the thought.

‘Dad’s bringing her back.’

‘Come in.’

‘I hate her, Mummy,’ he blurted out, his normally placid expression twisted with dislike. ‘She ruins everything. She doesn’t care about anyone but herself. Her top was all wet. Everyone could see.’

She shared his shame and anger. ‘Oh, Stephen!’

‘Why do you let her do things like that?’

What do you expect, she wanted to say, what can we do? If she’s hell-bent on raising Cain how can we stop her. Lock her up?

‘I’m sorry. You mustn’t let it spoil the holiday.’

‘Frederique came out of the restaurant and asked her to get out and she just made fun of him. You could see how upset he was.’

He began to cry and she pulled him close. He was taller than she was now, his chin on her head as he cried. Compassion choked her. And guilt. Could they have done more? What, though? Oh, my poor boy. It’s so unfair. Thank God he was off to university in October. Away from all the awful arguments.

She heard the sound of a car drawing closer. Stephen pulled away. ‘I’m going to bed.’

‘There’s milkshake in the fridge if you want to take some.’

She let him go and watched as the car headlights swept in at the end of the drive, picking out the Bougainvillea that scrambled along the wall. Her stomach fluttered with dread at the shouting match to come.

Robert cut the engine and snapped off the lights. Nina was still. Thank God she’s not singing.

Robert opened his door. ‘Get a towel,’ he called.

She went in and fetched one of the beach towels from the drying rack in the kitchen. When she returned, Robert was by the house. He took it from her and opened the passenger door. Marjorie half-expected Nina to fall out like some comic drunk but she didn’t move.

‘Get out,’ Robert said coldly, holding the towel up, the gesture at odds with his tone.

Nina got out slowly. As she stepped away from the car the light from the lantern by the front door fell on her.

Marjorie gasped.

Nina’s face was cut, an angry gash bled below one eye, her eye half-shut. Her upper lip was split and swollen. Her wet blouse was torn and Marjorie could see another mark on her upper arm. Her hair was plastered to the side of her head. The cloud of moths batted against the light, casting shadows over Nina’s wounds. A bat flew swiftly above.

‘What on earth’s happened?’

Nina looked blankly at Marjorie.

Robert draped the towel around her.

‘Nina?’

‘Leave her,’ Robert instructed.

‘Robert?’ She didn’t understand.

‘Go to your room,’ he told his daughter.

She began to move slowly, walking stiffly, her face still expressionless.

‘But she’s hurt.’

‘Let her go.’

‘What on earth has happened?’

‘She’s had a bloody good hiding, that’s what. Knock some sense into her. And not before time.’

She stared at him incredulous, felt the hairs on her arms prickle.

He gave a short humourless laugh and shook his head. ‘She’s had it coming, Marjorie. There are limits. Should have done it years ago.’ He went inside.

She moved, balanced against the little archway to the side of the door. Traditionally a shrine to the Virgin Mary.

She looked up at the sky but in place of the stars she saw only the brutal damage that Robert had done. It was wrong. No matter how far Nina had pushed him, to do that… break her face, beat her up. She covered her mouth with her hand. She felt sick. She closed her eyes and prayed: Sweet mother of God, help me. Oh, God, help me.

Nina

Life was a mix of work and waiting. She’d got taken on by British Home Stores at the Arndale Centre. She knew her parents were disappointed. They had wanted her to get more qualifications. ‘I’ve five O levels,’ she told them.

‘Well, why stop now?’ Robert Underwood demanded. ‘You’re a bright enough girl, if you’d only apply yourself…’

‘I don’t want to. I’ve had enough of all that.’

‘You could even go to art school,’ he said in desperation. He’d always regarded her success in art as an amusing but essentially irrelevant achievement.

‘I’m not going back, I’m going to get a job.’

‘You’re cutting your nose off to spite your face!’ he shouted.

‘You don’t even listen. You never try to see my side of things!’ She had slammed out of the room. Silence clouded the days that followed. Cold disapproval. She comforted herself with the thought that she would save once she was working and she would get enough to put a little deposit down on something. And before long she’d have a place of her own and he’d have to eat his words.

But saving hadn’t been easy, she didn’t know where all the money went. She gave Marjorie some for her bed and board and she bought quite a lot of clothes from work, where they got staff discount. She got the chance to move into window dressing after her first three months. A chance to use her eye for colour and design.

On her eighteenth birthday she wrote again for her birth certificate. It took almost six weeks for it to come after she had returned the fee and the application form. Nina had stopped watching the post quite so avidly. It was Stephen who brought it into the kitchen, where Marjorie was clearing up the breakfast post and Nina about to leave for work. It was a training day.

‘Official letter for Nina.’ Stephen waved the brown envelope.

She snatched it from him. She saw the postmark and her stomach swooped.

‘Who’s it from?’ Marjorie asked.

‘Work, something to do with the tax office. I’ll be late, better go.’

She didn’t dare open the letter on the bus, she needed to do it in private. She was eager to know what it said but also frightened. It was like opening a Pandora’s box.

She tried to pay attention as they went through the forthcoming season’s plans, stock returns and health and safety but her mind darted back to the envelope all the time. She waited until after tea at home to go up to her room and open the letter. She used her nail file to slit it open. She drew out the certificate and unfolded it. Pink paper, the headings all in red ink. Her eyes flew across the columns. Megan Driscoll… Collyhurst… Claire. She forced herself to stop and read it slowly. When and where born – Twenty-fourth May 1960, Withington Hospital, Nell Lane, Withington. Name, if any – Claire. She had looked up Claire and it meant clear or bright, a nice name. Sex – girl. Name and surname of father – just a dash across the page. Name, surname and maiden surname of mother – Megan Agnes Driscoll (factory worker), 14 Livesey Street, Collyhurst. An address, a proper address. Some places put down the mother and baby home, she’d read, but this was her real address. She couldn’t sit still, she jumped up and walked slowly about, continuing to read. Occupation of father – another line struck through the column. Signature, description and residence of informant – Megan Driscoll, mother, 14 Livesey Street, Collyhurst. When registered – Twentieth June 1960. Signature of registrar – D.H. Coombes, Registrar. And at the edge of the page, D.H.Coombes had written Adopted and signed it.

There was nothing about how old Megan had been. She scanned it again to make sure. Megan Agnes Driscoll. And the address. With that she had some place to start from. She read and reread the piece of paper. Megan, wasn’t that a Welsh name? But Driscoll sounded Irish. There were loads of Irish in Manchester. Collyhurst was just out of town. She had passed through there on the way to Leeds on the coach. It was a run-down area, lots of slums. She thought they’d knocked quite a bit of it down.

She could look it up in the A-Z, see if it was still there. She wanted to go there now. Daft. She told herself to calm down, sit down. Her ears were buzzing with the excitement and her heart felt like it was too big. That’d be great, wouldn’t it? Have a heart attack and die before she could trace her. Marjorie and Robert finding her, the certificate clutched in her hand. Wracked with remorse for never understanding her.

She pulled out her portfolio from under the bed, brushed off the fluff and dust and untied the ribbon. She got out her folder and looked again at the notes she’d made from the books and from the phone call with the social worker. She could use this now to write to the adoption agency, the Catholic children’s place, and to ask them for her adoption records. But she’d be expected to have counselling from someone before she was given them. She might as well see what they had. There was nothing to stop her seeing if the house was still there in the meantime.

She went the following Saturday. Collyhurst was awful. Even worse on foot. She felt out of place and some boys had called out at her, made dirty suggestions which made her feel frightened. There was no 14 Livesey Street. The whole lot had been flattened. There was just a big patch of waste land and, beyond the railway bridge which crossed the street, there was a primary school and a scrap yard.

She had passed some shops a few minutes down the main road with a newsagents amongst them. She retraced her steps and went in. She had practised a story, which she trotted out to the woman behind the counter and the customer she was chatting to. Nina said she had moved away and lost touch with relatives who had lived on Livesey Street. When had they knocked the houses down?

‘Be a good few years now,’ the shopkeeper said. ‘You could try asking at the Housing. Some people went out to Wythenshawe. What were they called, love?’

‘Driscoll.’

Recognition lit the woman’s face. ‘Anthony Driscoll. They had a stall on Tib Street for years. Don’t think they’ve got it now though.’

Would that be Megan’s father? Nina’s grandfather.

‘And Grey Mare Lane,’ the other woman piped up.

‘I couldn’t swear to it but I think they moved out to Wythenshawe when they did the clearance. Try the Housing, they should know.’

Nina nodded and left.

It was cold and she struggled against the wind as she walked back along Oldham Street to Piccadilly Gardens. People waited at the bus stops, many of them poorly dressed and carrying bulging shopping bags. Nina was aware of her neat, new clothes – one of the perks of working at the shop. A couple of tramps were begging and Nina gave them some change. The wind seemed to howl down the street, lifting litter and dust and blowing over a sandwich board outside one of the shops.

Wythenshawe was the other side of Manchester, near the airport. A stall on Tib Street and Grey Mare Lane, a market. Nina had never been there but it would be like the market in Longsight, she thought, cheap and cheerful. Was that what Megan did? Worked on the market with her family? Outdoors in all weathers. She might be really common, swearing and rollers in her hair, like Hilda Ogden off Coronation Street. And what would Megan make of Nina? A right snob? But then when she was adopted that’s what people wanted, didn’t they? A better life, a good home for their child.

In Piccadilly the pigeons flew in an arc around the gardens. The place was noisy and busy and her bus was full so she had to stand all the way back. If she got stuck tracing Megan she could always try finding her father first in Wythenshawe, look in the phone book. Nina was getting closer. The bus lurched to a halt suddenly as the driver swerved to avoid a car. People muttered and cursed. Nina straightened up, smiled at the woman who’d bumped into her. She must tell Chloe. What next? She could try and find a marriage at the records place so she’d know if Megan had changed her name, or she could just go up to the markets the woman had talked about and see if anyone knew where the family had moved. Or try the Housing Department, but she thought they might be a bit cagey about giving details out unless you could prove a connection. She could even put a little advert in the paper. But that felt scary. How would people contact her anyway without Marjorie and Robert finding out? It was probably best to wait and get her proper records. After all, Megan might have sent details of where she was so she could be easily found. Yes, she’d hang on and do that first.

‘There are only the formal records, I’m afraid,’ the counsellor said. She held the large manilla envelope in her hand. Nina wanted to snatch it from her.

‘Sometimes there is a letter or photo but that’s less likely because of the time when you were adopted. In the sixties your birth mother would have been told very clearly that she was giving up all right to you, she had to swear in court, to make everything legal.’ She drew out the papers. ‘I’ll just explain what’s here and then I’ll give you a little time to yourself if that’s what you’d like?’

Nina nodded. Get on with it. Her palms were damp and her throat felt as though she’d overeaten.

‘This is the History Sheet.’ She showed Nina a typed-up form. ‘It would have been made by the social worker when your mother first applied to the society for help, and attached are some notes obviously made after you were born. Then there’s this medical record – all the children had to be examined by the doctor, of course. I’ll be next door if you need anything or want to ask any questions.’

Nina felt disappointment steal through her. There was so little. She read it through slowly. There was some new information. Her mother’s age – sixteen, only sixteen – and a note that she had been a packer in a factory. She read the handwritten sheet.

24/5/60 Baby girl born at Withington. Both well.

27/5/60 Baby baptised Claire by Father Quinlan.

10/7/60 Baby placed for adoption with Mr and Mrs Underwood, 29 Darley Road, West Didsbury, Manchester.

12/7/60 Megan discharged home.

Two days after, oh God! She wiped at her eyes. Looked at the medical form – nothing there of interest except her birth weight, six pounds twelve ounces.

Nothing about who the father might be or how Megan came to be pregnant.

No letters.

No photo.

She had been expecting so much more.

Maybe Megan didn’t care, hadn’t cared. Maybe ‘Claire’ had been the result of some silly mistake, larking about with some loser from the market or the factory, him taking advantage and bingo, a bun in the oven. A problem to be got rid of. Forgotten about. These days she’d have an abortion, it was illegal back then and dangerous. Nina was furious. She hated her. How could she just leave her like that? Walk away and never, not once, think about her and leave some sign.

When the counsellor returned, Nina tried to hide her rage but it was too big for that, clambering all over her.

‘I want to punch her,’ she blurted out. ‘That sounds stupid doesn’t it?’

The counsellor talked about anger and emotions and how she might feel lots of different things and try to accept them. She gave her leaflets and a magazine. She told her to take things at her own pace and to come back any time if she wanted to. She talked about the importance of using a go-between if she tried to find her mother, an intermediary she called it. Less threatening all round. Nina nodded to show she was listening but already her thoughts were racing ahead. She’d find her, see what she had to say for herself.

‘Some people wait a long time, years and years, before they are ready to start tracing, some don’t go further than this, it’s enough for them.’

Not for me, Nina thought. Can’t stop now. It was the only thing she could think of. She had to do it, the sooner the better. Whatever it was like.

Marjorie

‘We don’t know where to turn, Father. It’s affected the whole family. I’m only glad Stephen doesn’t have to put up with it.’

‘He’s gone to Birmingham, is that right?’

‘Yes, he’s doing really well. But Nina, this constant depression. Moodiness. I can’t remember the last time there was any joy in the house. It’s like walking on eggshells.’

‘Adolescence is a tricky time,’ he agreed, ‘hormones all over the place, identity crisis, the rest of the world all seem to be against you. But it will pass.’

‘Will it? I don’t know, I think it’s more than just the usual teenage ups and downs.’

‘You’re not the first parent to sit here and say that. When you’re in the middle of it, it seems never ending. Talk to your husband, try and share this, support each other.’

If only, she thought. Robert had completely withdrawn from any attempt to be a father to Nina. He endured her presence at mealtimes and that was it. Marjorie felt as if they were all actors pretending to be a family but with no conviction.

None of them ever referred to the night in France. Marjorie had tried to talk to Nina about it. Just the once. ‘I’m sorry,’ she had said the following morning as the two of them sat on the verandah eating bread and apricot preserve and drinking coffee. The sight of Nina’s face sickened her. ‘Nina, I’m sure he never really…’

‘It wasn’t you,’ Nina said. ‘You don’t need to be sorry. I don’t want to talk about it, anyway.’

It was like a boulder of shame rolling round the house, like a leg iron they each wore, silent and invisible but dragging the life from them. She could never tell the priest about it. That would be disloyal. And Nina had been difficult before then.

She knew Nina continued to drink too much, probably meddled with drugs as well but she no longer flaunted her abandonment for the family to see. She spent a lot of time at her friend Chloe’s. She had become secretive, withdrawn and uncommunicative. The fight had gone from her and now she was sullen instead.

‘I don’t know how to help her, Father. There doesn’t seem to be anything I can do.’

The priest nodded. ‘Listen,’ he said. ‘That’s all you can do. Be there for her and listen.’

What to, she thought, the sound of silence?

Nina

‘Have you no regard for your mother’s feelings?’ Robert thundered, his face dark with rage.

‘I never asked you to,’ Nina retorted and then, sensing rather than seeing her mother flinch, she reined in her temper. ‘I wasn’t going to tell you, I knew you’d be upset. I’ve a right to find out about my own background. Lots of adopted people do it.’

‘Stephen hasn’t.’

‘This isn’t about Stephen, and it’s not about you. I’m not doing it to hurt you, I’m doing it because I want to – for me. I’m sorry if you’re upset.’ She could hear her voice shaking and hated herself for it, ‘but those are my papers and I want them back.’

‘Why?’ Marjorie asked. ‘I don’t understand why you have to drag it all up. Weren’t we good enough? We love you like our own…’ She couldn’t continue and Nina looked away.

‘I want to know, that’s all.’

‘She didn't want you,’ Marjorie said. ‘What is she going to feel like when you barge into her life?’

‘I don’t know.’ She hugged her arms tight to her body.

‘It’s downright selfish. You go trampling all over people's feelings, not a thought for anyone else. Well, I suggest you think about this very seriously before you carry on.’ He thrust the papers at her. ‘And I, for one, don’t want to hear another word about it. You are our daughter. We clothed you, fed you, taught you right from wrong, or tried to. This woman has never been a mother to you.’ He sighed, his face folding into weariness. ‘I don't know where we went wrong with you, Nina, but if you want to break your mother’s heart you’re going the right way about it.’

She closed her eyes. There didn’t seem to be any way to make them understand. None of this should have happened. If her mother hadn’t gone into her room, Nina on the bed and the papers ranged all around her. The distinctive colour of the birth certificate, the bold headings for the Catholic Rescue Society. Too late to try and scoop them up, her mother’s eyes had drunk them in, looked at Nina, wounded. She tried to explain. Marjorie had made a small sound of distress and had run stumbling into Robert, who had taken her downstairs. Nina had waited for the summons. She had collected the papers together and, when he called, taken them down. Thinking with some small, uninformed part of her mind that they might care to know something of her story. Stupid. They couldn’t see past their own injured feelings. They certainly weren’t interested in anything she thought or felt.

‘I’m sorry,’ she repeated quietly and left them. In her room she stretched out fully clothed on the bed and stared at the ceiling. She wished she could cry. To let the hot churning inside go, but she couldn’t. She had liked that about herself in the past: her resilience, the strength she had, but now it felt like she was choking, a chain around her heart.

I must get out of here, she thought. And soon. She lay there until the room grew dark and she climbed under the covers to get warm.

Megan

‘Is that Megan?’

‘Yes.’

‘This is Claire.’

‘Claire?’

‘I’m your daughter.’

‘What?’

‘You had a baby in 1960, May twenty-fourth. You called me Claire.’

A rush of images flickered through Megan’s mind – a matinee jacket, the prams in a row at the back of the house, the turrets on the building, her mother leaving her there, Joan and… the other girl, Caroline, the quiet one who tried to run away. Her own horrific labour, screaming for her mother, getting the photo…

‘No,’ she said, ‘no, I can’t. I’m sorry. There’s been a mistake.’ She put the phone down.

Her stomach clenched with spasms. She breathed in sharply. Dear God, what a mess! Oh, God! She half expected the phone to ring again but it didn’t. She heard the Neighbours theme tune start up. Time to get the tea on. Carry on as normal. Chicken and mushroom pies from the freezer, new potatoes, peas. Tea, wash-up, telly, bed. Just keep going. Pretend it never happened.

When Brendan woke later that night she was sitting in the chair in the corner of the bedroom, a blanket round her.

‘What’s up?’ He rolled over. He could only see her silhouetted against the window. The moon was up and it was lit up like a football pitch out there. ‘Too hot? Am I snoring again, or what?’

‘Brendan.’

Oh, God. He could hear the weight in her voice.

‘I was thinking about Claire.’

‘Ah,’ he said, waited.

‘If she ever tried to find us, what would we do?’

He breathed and released it slowly. What did she expect him to say? ‘Well, I suppose she’d have a right, wouldn’t she?’

‘And Francine and the boys?’

He sighed again. ‘It’d be awkward,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t fancy having to explain it to them.’ He paused. ‘Hell, Megan, we were only kids, we did what we did for the best.’

‘That’s what they all told us.’

‘What’s brought all this on?’

There was no reply.

‘Megan?’

‘She rang up.’

‘What?’ He sat up higher, turned the lamp on.

She turned her face, shielded her eyes with her hand. ‘Today. She rang here. It was such a shock. I thought I was going to collapse.’

‘What did she say? What happened? Are you sure it was her?’

‘She just said is that Megan, I’m Claire. Your daughter. She gave her date of birth.’

‘Good God!’ He ran his fingers through his thinning hair several times, looked at her. ‘Bloody hell!’ he said.

‘How did she find us?’

She shook her head, pulled her curls back and held them in her fist.

‘How did she get the number?’

She shook her head again, let her hair loose. His questions were irrelevant in the light of what she had yet to tell him.

‘Bloody hell,’ he repeated. ‘Why didn’t you say ’owt?’

She sighed. ‘It was such a shock, hearing like that, and I just kept saying no. I told her there was some mistake. I hung up.’ She looked across at him. ‘What if she never tries again? What if she does? I don’t know which’d be worse. Oh, Brendan, what have I done?’

Nina

She didn’t want to eat. Just looking at the food made her feel nauseous, brought a metallic wash into her mouth. She’d skipped lunch at work too. She hadn’t felt like it and then someone had come in and said there was a fire up at Woolworth’s. People had been trapped inside, banging on the windows. On the bus home they said ten people had died. You heard stuff like that, saw the building and everything and people expected the world to carry on as normal.

‘I’m not hungry.’ She pushed herself away from the table.

‘Nina…’ Robert started.

‘Leave her,’ Marjorie intervened.

In her room Nina sat on the floor, back against the bed. She was wiped out. She had intended to look at flats at the weekend but she couldn’t face it. Nothing mattered any more. Megan wouldn’t give her houseroom, denied she was even her mother. How could she do that? She’d always been a disappointment to Marjorie, it was mutual, but she never expected to be cut off like that. The rotten cow. Self-pity made her throat ache.

‘You should write,’ Chloe had said. ‘It must have been a shock for her, coming on the phone like that.’

‘She’d probably chuck them away if I did.’

‘You can’t give up now. I bet if you give it a bit of time then write a note…’

‘And what the fuck do you know about it?’ She rounded on her friend.

‘Pardon me for breathing!’ Chloe was stung. ‘I’ll come back when you’re fit company.’

That was rich coming from someone who spent ninety nine per cent of her time moaning and being moody.

Chloe had hesitated at the bedroom door. ‘Fancy the Ritz tomorrow night?’

Nina had shaken her head. She didn’t fancy anything.

She sighed and let her head fall back against the edge of the bed. How could she hang up on her like that? Maybe someone had been listening, making it impossible for her to talk? A flicker of hope.

She stirred herself and found pen and paper. After an hour she’d got nowhere. Everything she thought of sounded like some sloppy love song. How did you write? What did you write? Sod it. She flung down the pen. What did she want? To see her and to find out why. She could hardly write that, could she? Bound to get slapped back.

She felt her anxiety rise, peeling up her back, knotting her stomach. She began to rock. It was getting worse. She’d had to leave work early on Thursday, claiming she felt sick. She’d been dressing the homewares window and had felt a powerful impulse to smash the glass, to watch it shatter and scream through it to the passing crowds. She was going mental. She must go to the doctor, see if he could give her something. But each time when the horrible feelings had gone she hoped that was the end of it.

She heard Marjorie coming upstairs and kept still and quiet. She heard the timid knock. ‘Nina, are you all right?’

‘I’m going to sleep.’ She couldn’t face her now.

‘Would you like some toast or a drink or anything?’

‘No, thanks.’ Food turned to shit in her mouth, it was dirty. She couldn’t bear the feel of it.

But she didn’t sleep. She spent the night with the light on, hugging her knees, rocking and waiting for the dawn. Sick and tired and fearful of the demons inside her – nameless, faceless and getting larger by the day.

Marjorie

She hated ironing though it wasn’t a chore she could get out of. She put the radio on and began on the shirts. Nina looked like death warmed up these days. She’d not eaten anything at breakfast, though she had pretended to and then slunk back to bed. The doctor had got her on sleeping pills but only for a limited period. There was a crash from upstairs and the sound of something breaking. Marjorie set the iron down and hurried upstairs.

‘Nina?’ She opened the door without knocking. The bedside lamp was on the floor, Nina was on the bed, eyes closed. There was the sharp smell of vomit. ‘Nina?’ The bottle of pills was beside her, the lid on the floor. Oh my god. She rang an ambulance, her heart thudding in her chest, praying frantically.

Marjorie was at the hospital all night while they pumped her daughter’s stomach and monitored her. Robert came too but when it was clear Nina was out of danger Marjorie sent him home. She could feel the irritation smouldering underneath his concern. His presence just added to the tension.

The following morning Nina was pale, withdrawn, submissive. For a moment Marjorie missed the turbulent, prickly young woman whose anger was so much healthier than this apathy.

After rounds they told Marjorie that Nina was being discharged; she was on antidepressants and had an outpatient appointment for the psychiatric unit.

‘Gave us all a nasty scare but she should respond well to the drugs. Any worries, contact your GP.’

Robert couldn’t cope with it, had no idea how to respond. Gave Nina a stiff little hug when they got back from the hospital.

Marjorie was more forthright. ‘You scared the life out of me. I love you, Nina. I hate to see you like this. If you’d just talk to me.’

Nina was tired and unresponsive. The tablets coated her reactions like polystyrene. She was muffled, dopey.

Time passed, she returned to work. Slowly, steadily, she came back. But not the old Nina. It was as if the light had gone out inside her.

Megan

Her stomach lurched and she stepped into the nearest shop doorway. Panic made her want to run so the girl wouldn’t see her but she told herself to ‘get a bloody grip Megan’ and she stepped out again. She could still see her, back view, fifty yards away, in a green coat. The hair was exactly the right shade, the same as Francine’s, the same as hers. She was tall though, tall as Brendan. She followed the girl along Market Street and into Littlewood’s. Megan pretended to examine leather coats by the door, bomber jackets, like Francine was angling for. She kept one eye on the red hair. Then the girl turned to leave and with a swoop of relief Megan saw she was much too old, late twenties at least.

The same sort of thing had happened half a dozen times in the months since Claire’s phone call. It always caught her unawares and she felt so daft. She was being haunted: not by a ghost but by half the redheads in Manchester.

There’d been no more phone calls. The memory of the girl’s voice, Claire’s voice, and her own denial cut at her. She shouldn’t have said no. If she’d only had more time, it had been such a shock. She thought of Claire ringing again with a mix of hope and fear. She longed to put things right but she didn’t like to think of telling her other children about her. Perhaps it would never come to that.

A weight of disappointment settled on her and she felt like getting straight on the next bus home. But she’d only have to come in again next week to finish her Christmas shopping. She’d got sweets for her nephews and nieces, she’d exchanged most of her books of Green Shield stamps for a cassette player for Chris, who at thirteen had discovered punk rock. Bloody awful noise. He walked around looking a right sight with ripped black clothes, zips here and there, head practically shaved and a safety pin in his ear. It was all show with Chris, though. Little lamb, he was. Not like Aidan.

Maybe it was best Claire had not tried again, after all, Aidan wasn’t exactly an advert for happy family life. He wouldn’t be home for Christmas. He wouldn’t be home for another eighteen months and how long he’d manage to stay out of trouble then was anybody’s guess. When she visited him she could see the place was only making him worse. Not borstal but good as.

He’d been scared at first, she’d seen it in those first few visits: licking his lips, his knee twitching, signs a mother recognised. She was devastated. She’d still no idea why it had all gone wrong. She wanted to cuddle him better but he was a gawky fifteen-year-old and when she put her arms about him he wriggled free. As the weeks went by he started playing the hard man, growing a skin of disaffection.

The last time she’d been, his first words were, How many fags did you bring us? Not Hi, Mam or Thanks for coming. She wanted to shake him, to tell him that how he dealt with this place, and what he did after, would set the course for the rest of his life, that there weren’t any more chances. She could give him love and help but you couldn’t give a thing to someone who was turning away from you. She told him, without the shaking, and he sighed and shuffled on his chair and gave her a dead look with his eyes.

She checked her Christmas list. Francine wanted a watch. There were a couple of jewellers on Shude Hill she could try.

Francine had started her nursery nursing course. Megan had tried to talk Francine into staying on and going for A levels if she did all right in her exams but the girl didn't want to.

‘Keep your options open,’ Megan had said. ‘If you got more qualifications you’d have a chance of more jobs, better money. There’s two million people out of work, you know. A piece of paper will go a long way to getting something.’

‘I want to do the nursing,’ Francine insisted. ‘I’ve had enough of school.’

Well, if it didn’t work out for her with the nursing she could always work at the shop. Bit boring really but she was good with people.

Francine was courting. She and Shane seemed serious. He was a mechanic. They were saving for a deposit on a flat – rent, not buy. Megan had told her not to rush anything but Francine told her to stop fussing. ‘Frightened I’ll make you a Grandma too soon? You needn’t worry, I’m on the Pill.’

Megan had looked at her. The Church still banned Catholics from any form of artificial contraception and sex before marriage was forbidden. The bishop sent letters round every so often reminding his parishioners of the edict. But the bishop hadn’t got a sixteen-year-old daughter, had he?

‘Good,’ she said. ‘Don’t forget to take it.’

Francine beamed, pleased that her Mam was understanding and hadn’t gone all religious on her.

At least if she was protected, Megan thought, and things didn’t work out for her and Shane, there wouldn’t be a baby in the middle of it all to consider.

Marjorie

The doorbell rang. She wasn’t expecting anyone but it could be a door-to-door salesman. There seemed to be more and more of them; wanting to demonstrate the latest vacuum cleaner or sell you household insurance or tarmac the drive. A sign of the times. Rising unemployment. The winter of discontent they called it and it had been awful, with countless strikes. People will always need glasses, Robert said, though they might patch the frames with sellotape if times were hard. More and more people were trying contact lenses and he’d started stocking those too.

‘Mrs Underwood?’ Two police officers in uniform, a man and a woman.

‘Yes?’ She held her breath.

‘Stephen Underwood’s your son?’

‘Yes,’ she whispered, her throat suddenly dry and her chest tight.

‘Can we come in a moment? It’s about Stephen.’

‘No.’ She tried to shut the door, they moved into the way. She pushed harder. ‘No,’ she repeated, her voice cracking. ‘No.’

‘Mrs Underwood, we need to come inside and talk to you.’ The man eased the door back. She moved away. The woman stepped inside, took her elbow. Marjorie twisted aside. ‘No.’ Her thoughts scrambling to get away.

‘Come on, now.’

She let them lead her into the lounge. Her heart was galloping. She sat down, her belly heavy with dread.

She watched them mouth words, silly little words: car, roundabout, passenger, revive, failure. Silly, little words, each tearing a bit of her soul. The dread rose, flooding her throat, full of love and anger and breathtaking pain. She opened her mouth hoping that if the roar of it were loud enough it would drown out the man and the woman and bury the stupid, little words. Force them away, back down, anywhere. Stephen. Into the past, into another time, another place. Oh, Stephen. ‘No-no-no-no!’ she howled. ‘No-no-no-God-no!’

The words floated free, too strong to be shouted down. Once spoken they soared above like balloons cut free. And burst like her heart. Stephen. Dead.

Nina

She couldn’t believe it. Even now. It was like some gross practical joke. Like God had looked down and seen what a mess she was in and how bloody fed-up she was. He knew how when she looked in the mirror this ugly, fat cow was there and when she looked inside herself there was just a black hole. Everyone hated her. And then God had looked at Stephen, last year of university, studying chemistry, lots of friends, popular and hardworking, even a steady girlfriend, attractive now he’d grown his blond hair longer. And God had decided to take Stephen. Not her. Or maybe he’d gone eenie-meenie-miney-mo. And Stephen was dead. When it should have been her. They all thought that. Even she did, for heaven’s sake. ’Course, no one said a word, but you’d have to be mental not to think it. And she’d been such a bitch to him. Teasing him for being boring and goody-goody when he was just a boy, just a nice boy who’d learnt his manners and didn’t have to put up with everyone hating him. He was dead and it was like they all were.

Her mother. The sound of her mother weeping was the loneliest sound in the universe. And Nina couldn’t help her, she didn’t know how. She felt responsible. It was her fault really. Her father cried too. She’d never seen him cry, but that first day he’d sat there, his red face all furrowed, eyes shut and these awful huffing sounds coming out of him. Her mother went and held him and Nina stole away. She shouldn’t be there. She went upstairs and listened to them cry. She felt the pressure inside, a lump in her chest, but she couldn’t cry. There was no release.

The weeks passed, Christmas and Easter came and went; their only significance was in marking Stephen’s absence.

She knew she should leave. Get away so her mother wouldn’t have to face her every day. See her and not Stephen, feed her and not Stephen.

Chloe invited her to move into a house she had found. It was a dump but they could sort it out a bit. Put some cotton throws over the furniture, get a couple of beanbags and some coloured light bulbs. She hadn’t seen much of Chloe, who’d started a nursing course and was going out with a Punk called Ali. She said yes. Spare her mother. And she’d be able to diet if she needed, without her mother watching her eat, forcing her to eat. Now she had to tell her parents.

She told them over tea.

‘Oh,’ her mother said softly and Nina glimpsed pain in her eyes.

Her father looked at her with incomprehension. Then he gave a short, humourless laugh and shook his head.

‘Robert…’ Marjorie said.

He held up his hands. ‘I won’t waste my breath.’ He stood up.

‘What?’ Nina said.

‘Never mind.’

‘No, what’s the matter?’

‘Nina, it’s all right.’ Her mother tried again.

‘You don’t get it, do you? You really don’t get it. You’re so bound up in your own selfish little world…’

‘No!’ she protested. The loathing in his voice taking her back to the beating, to the ferocity of his blows. ‘I thought it was the best thing to do.’

‘For who? For Nina?’

‘No.’

‘Robert.’

‘Your brother hasn’t been dead a year and you think it best to… to just walk out? Very thoughtful.’

She was horrified at how he twisted it all.

‘Mum,’ she turned, seeking her response, wanting her to say it wasn’t so, that she didn’t agree with him.

Marjorie prevaricated. ‘You have your own life to lead. It’s all right.’

But it wasn’t. She’d messed it all up again.

Marjorie

Stephen had gone. It was still too soon to know whether she could ever come to terms with it. How could you? It was something to be borne. She felt as though they had torn a piece from her. Each day was a struggle. She found some solace in prayer and she had begun to go to Church daily.

And she knew Nina would leave, they were losing her, one way or another. She’d either starve herself, or start taking drugs or simply move out and drift away. Robert had washed his hands of her. The two of them were strangers. He had no affection for her, no regard for her. He was unable to forgive, either Nina or himself. Most of the time the old aggression was replaced by a cold indifference. How Stephen would have hated it.

She knew Nina would pursue her natural family, with or without their approval. She suspected that had something to do with her problems now but she wouldn’t talk about it. They didn’t seem to know how to talk as a family any more.

Marjorie sighed. She hadn’t had children to lose them like this. It was different for Robert, he had his work; men weren’t involved in the same way. She loved Nina in spite of everything. She couldn’t help it. It wasn’t something you could choose. Nina might be exasperating and prickly and sullen but she loved her. She was so thin now, gaunt, very fashionable according to all the models in the magazines but not healthy. She had seen how easily she tired, how weak she was becoming. If she kept on…

Maybe they would never be as close as she had hoped for. Maybe Nina would always be hard work, veering from depressed to defiant, but Marjorie was sick of feeling that she was to blame somehow. Nina was Nina. If she just let her go she could imagine herself down the line somewhere regretting not having tried harder, resentful and lonely. She didn’t want that. She would keep trying. She was a mother, for God’s sake, infinitely giving. A doormat, some might say, or a martyr, but rather that than abandoning her daughter. She would not give up, ever. It was impossible to talk to her but she could write it down. Write to Nina, put it all on paper. How she loved her, how she had come into their lives, her hopes that Nina would find happiness, her complete acceptance that Nina might want to trace her birth family, wishing her well with it, her sorrow that she had been so unhappy. She would write it all down, in black and white. A love letter. Not for the daughter she had dreamt of but for the one she had. My dear daughter, Nina…

Nina

She walked past the house twice. Her bowels had turned to water and she was biting her teeth together, jaw rigid. She couldn’t see in. There were net curtains at the windows. A small front garden, little picket fence, for show more than anything. She’d used one like that in her spring fashion window, set off with green catkins and the season’s gauzy prints, a high-street version of the see-through styles that the more daring wore in London. She walked back more slowly. Number sixteen. Sweet sixteen. Megan had been sixteen when she had her. She came to a halt at their gate. She felt exposed, half the street could peer out and see her, spot a stranger prowling about. She bet people round here all knew each other, kept an eye out. The only privacy once your door was closed. It was quiet now, people out at work, but she could imagine it later, kids out on their bikes and roller blades, in and out of each other’s houses. Roaming in a big gang.

Not like her and Stephen. They’d never played out much where they lived. He was too fond of his books and she found herself falling out with the few children there were. Either bored with them and losing her temper or finding herself made into the victim. Carrot-head, Ginger.

She was startled by the clunk of the door opening. Saw the woman – red hair, long, green dressing gown – open the door to let a dog out. Red hair. Nina felt her limbs go heavy. Rooted. The woman looked out, straightened up, her hand moving to her throat, clutching at the collar of her dressing gown even though it was fastened.

Nina took a step, then another. Placed her hand on the gate, unsmiling, her eyes fixed on the woman. ‘Megan,’ she said.

The woman nodded, a fierce little movement and her mouth trembled.

‘I’m Claire.’ Thudding in her head. Please. Oh, please.

‘Yes.’ She put one arm out towards her then lowered it. Her bright blue eyes were brimming. She nodded again. ‘Hello, Claire. I think you’d better come in.’

Joan Lilian

Pamela

Pamela

It was a year of reminders. A parade of events each highlighting her loss. The first birthday without her mum, first Christmas, first time planning her holidays without seeing if Lilian fancied a week somewhere.

She had left the little house in Fallowfield for months. There was no hurry. It wouldn’t be hard to sell, there were always landlords after houses to let to students in that area. It would go up for sale when she was good and ready. Her Aunt Sally offered several times to help her clear it out, but each time she said she’d wait a little longer.

She dreamt about her mother frequently. She saw her too. Round the shops, in her garden, at the market, passing the leisure centre. The first couple of times she was petrified, thinking grief had made her mad, but two of her friends who had lost parents reassured her that it was commonplace. Someone lent her a book about bereavement. There were nights when she poured over it, eager for reassurance.

Work was fine. It helped. There she felt safe, valuable, capable.

In May she was ready to face the clear out. She booked a weeks leave, the week before her birthday, and tackled it with a combination of practicality and ritual. Clearing the house was also a way of making her farewells. It was the last link to the years she had shared with her mother.

She had been back twice since her mother’s death, twice in the blur of time before the funeral when she had cleared the fridge, taken meter readings, chosen clothes for her mother to be buried in, emptied the bins, removed jewellery, video and telly, her will and bank books, which she had kept in a biscuit tin in the kitchen. Pamela had left a spare key with neighbours in case of any trouble.

She drove over from Chester. There was no parking immediately outside but she found a space further down the road. Put her steering-wheel lock on.

Opening the door she allowed herself the fantasy of her mother being there to greet her – a generous smile, easy familiarity, her genuine delight whenever Pamela came home. Her stomach tightened as she stepped inside. She took a breath. The house smelt stale. It was resolutely empty. She put down her bag. A pile of junk mail lay on the floor. She checked through. There was nothing personal. She wandered round the rooms, she had to visit them all, some silly superstition. She was oppressed by the emptiness and silence.

Tour completed, she switched the mains back on in the kitchen and turned the stopcock on for water. She lit the gas fire in the living room to take the chill away. She opened the back door to let some fresh air in and saw the lilac was still in bloom. Its scent hurled her back through the years and tears filled her eyes. ‘Oh, Mum,’ she said aloud, ‘I do miss you.’

She found scissors in the kitchen draw and cut branches of the lilac, got vases from the shelf and put the fragrant sprays round the house.

She had brought tea and milk with her and after she had finished her drink she got out her notebook and pen and went through the rooms making a list of things she needed – bin-bags, labels, boxes, string, old newspapers, tissue paper, sellotape – and a list of items she would like to keep.

In her old room she sat on the bed. The walls were still painted in the lemon colour she had chosen as a teenager. The curtains still a hessian weave which let all the light in. Once she’d moved out, her mother had bought a cornflower-blue duvet set to replace the old candlewick bedspread and sheets and blankets from before. She had been happy here on the whole.

She peered out into the back yard and the alley beyond. From here you could see rows of terraces like a brighter version of the Coronation Street title sequence. It had been a good place to grow up. Plenty of children, a park not far away. She’d been pally with Natalie from next door. One summer they had rigged a message system up between their bedroom windows, string and yoghurt pots. Last she’d heard, Natalie had moved away, somewhere down south.

She stepped away and turned to look in the mirror. It was a nice mirror, oval with a dark frame. She’d take it if Aunt Sally didn’t want it.

She rang her aunt and explained what she was hoping to do. Asked if they would come and see if there was anything they’d like. ‘I’m going to get one of those charities to take most of it, for the homeless or whatever.’

‘Well, I can come tonight.’

‘There’s no rush.’

‘You can stay with us, Pam, we’ve plenty of room.’

‘Thanks, but it feels fine here. I’d like to be here.’

‘Come and have tea with us, then.’

‘Yes. Tomorrow or Wednesday?’

‘Wednesday’s good. Ed has his craft club tomorrow, so we generally have a fish supper.’

‘Right.’ She didn’t quite catch the logic but it didn’t matter. She had heard that Ed’s health wasn’t good, he was becoming very absent-minded, losing track. Sally took him to various clubs for the stimulation – and to give herself a break.

‘So, we could come down in the morning, if you like?’

‘Fine, see you then.’

She rang off. Considered her list. There was a mini-market at the end of the road. They should have most of the stuff she needed and they might have some boxes. She could get something for her tea too.

By the time Aunt Sally and Uncle Ed arrived the following morning Pamela had assembled a pile of objects she wanted to keep in one corner of the lounge. After a little hesitation Sally soon gathered a pile of her own. They offered to help her fill bags and wrap china but she encouraged them to leave. She was more comfortable doing it on her own. She saw them out, promising to be at their house for five the following day.

She went up to her mother’s room. All Lilian’s clothes needed packing up. Pamela would never wear any of them – the patterned jumpers and blouses and skirts were a world away from the power suits she wore to work or the plain cotton leisurewear she wore when sailing or relaxing. She began to fill bin liners. The first armful of jumpers still smelling of her mother’s perfume and cosmetics. She emptied the drawers and then began on the wardrobe. She slipped dresses and suits off hangers and folded them up. Some brought back memories: the silk skirt she had treated her mother to when they went to Paris, the stupid jacket that she had bought in Lisbon and hardly ever worn. Her old camel car-coat, worn round the cuffs but so comfy she had insisted on keeping it. Pamela had once tried to find a replacement but there was nothing exactly that length.

In one of the compartments at the bottom of the wardrobe she found a slim cardboard box, rectangular with a pattern of faded roses on it. She opened it expecting a chiffon scarf or kid-leather gloves. But inside were a batch of papers.

She sat on the edge of the bed, surrounded by half-full bin liners, to examine them. A letter from a Sister Monica wishing them every happiness. She shrugged, her mother had friends connected with the Church but she didn’t know the name. A scrap of paper with Sat – 10.30 – Girl scrawled on it. Her mother’s writing. And a birth certificate belonging to someone called Marion, mother’s name Joan Hawes. The same birthday as hers. She felt a rush of confusion. Had she had a twin? Don’t be stupid, different mothers. Why had Lilian got someone else’s birth certificate? She looked again and as comprehension dawned she felt a wave of confusion and horror. Oh, my God, the truth slapped at her, it’s me!

‘Why didn’t she tell me?’ Pamela, still pale with shock and sick with the upset, demanded of her aunt. She had driven straight round there.

‘I don’t know. I don’t think she ever set out to keep it from you. When you were very small I remember she and Peter talking about explaining to you when you were older. Then, with your father dying.’

Except he wasn’t even my father, she thought bitterly.

‘It must have got harder as time went on,’ Sally said.

‘You knew. Who else?’

‘Just close family.’

‘I can’t believe it!’ Her face stretched with indignation, her indigo eyes glinted. ‘You should have told me, she should have. I’m almost thirty-one years old. Can you imagine what it’s like to suddenly find it’s all been a sham?’

Sally looked worried, her brow creased. She caught her lip between her teeth. ‘She was a mother to you, that wasn’t a sham.’

‘But she let me go through my whole life thinking I was theirs, and I wasn’t.’

‘You were all she wanted. She’d been to hell and back before they got you.’

‘What do you mean?’

Her aunt sighed. ‘She lost three babies, miscarriages. The last was very late on.’

‘Oh, God!’ Pamela put her face in her hands.

‘They said if she fell pregnant again it could kill her.’

‘Tell me about it, everything you can remember, please, all of it.’

Joan

The clinic was crowded and far too hot. Joan craved some fresh air but was worried that if she left she might miss her name being called. There were women of every age, shape, size and colour. All here to see Mr Pickford. She no longer pretended to read the magazine on her lap but rested her head back against the wall and closed her eyes, imagining the bay, the way it looked, not yesterday with a summer blue sky and white caps on the waves, but on a calm November day, a sea fret curling from the water, the gulls arced like nail marks in the sky. Visualisation, they called it in the support group. It was supposed to help in the healing process; a calm place to take yourself. Along with raw food and aromatherapy and the more toxic treatments that Mr Pickford provided. But was she healing, or dying?

She steered her thoughts away, to work. Good news. There was a chance that ‘Walk My Way’ would be used for a new television drama series; the ’60s were back in fashion. Her agent was cautiously optimistic but these things took forever, it seemed. Even if that didn’t come off, Paramount – well a company who worked for Paramount – had commissioned an original slow ballad for a bittersweet romantic comedy. She’d read the treatment and put a few ideas down on tape. They’d liked two of them and asked her to develop them. Plus she’d sold several recent songs to the pop market.

‘Joan Hawes.’

She put the magazine on the low table and followed the nurse along the corridor. She suspended her thoughts, focused on the carpet, the paintings hung on the wall.

Mr Pickford shook her hand warmly and gestured that she should sit. He took a moment to check her notes. He drew a small breath and looked across at her and she knew. A flutter of compassion in his eyes told her everything. She blinked hard and pressed her knuckles to her lips as he spoke. The words bumped past her – secondary, extensive, chemotherapy, hard to say.

She didn’t need the words anyway, the message was clear. She was dying. They could poison her and chop at her and hook her up to pumps and tubes but they would only be prolonging her illness.

‘I want to go home,’ she said when he had finished. ‘I don’t want any more treatment. I want to be at home from now on.’

He nodded. ‘You have support?’

‘Yes. What about medication… if… when…’

‘Your GP will be able to prescribe. I can write.’

‘Yes.’

She was relieved he offered no opposition to her quick decision, that he had no desire to push desperate last treatments on her.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

She bit her tongue and nodded. Sniffed. ‘Thank you.’

The nurse knew or else he’d sent some sort of signal to her. She asked Joan if she would like to make an appointment to see the counsellor. She shook her head, her eyes swimming over all the women in the waiting room: the young girl with the dreadlocks and her mother, the one with the wig, the woman in the sari whose little boy had fallen asleep on her lap, the very old woman with skin like crêpe, the business woman concentrating on her laptop. All the women. ‘Can you call me a taxi? To the station.’

‘You’ve come on your own?’

She nodded. Penny came when she could but today’s appointment clashed with her school inspection. She had considered ringing in sick but Joan had persuaded her to go. ‘If I need more treatment I’d rather you took the time then.’ And if I’m dying.

‘Yes, my friend couldn’t come today.’

‘I’ll get you that taxi.’

It ran in families. They’d talked about that in the group, fearful for their daughters and grand-daughters. They implied she was lucky, no children to worry about. She had thought about owning up but it didn’t seem fair. Their children were real, they had names and faces, they came to the hospital and saw their mothers, they shared their lives, they heard them throwing up after radiation treatments, saw the clumps of hair in the bathroom bin, heard the talk of biopsies and percentages, prosthetics and remission. They loved them. Her daughter was barely fact, someone else’s daughter now.

Pamela

The waiting room was decorated in pastel colours. The walls held a display about adoption – clippings from recent newspaper articles, child’s drawings, poems. A leaflet rack had caught her attention on her first visit. Tracing Your Family, Sibling Attraction (oh God!), How To Search.

She had found out about the adoption charity in a leaflet from the library. She had spent most of the first session in tears and inarticulate, and when she had managed to talk it had been about the deaths of her father and mother rather than about discovering she was adopted. The second session had been just as harrowing, though she’d talked more about the adoption.

Today she would see her adoption records. They had been easy to get hold of. The counsellor, Donna, had been surprised that Lilian had Pamela’s original birth certificate.

‘It’s most unusual. Someone must have given it to your parents. Anyway, it means we have the details we need if you decide to send for your records.’

Donna had talked about tracing too but Pamela would never do that. It would be like a betrayal.

‘Pamela.’ Donna invited her through to the room. There were couches and easy chairs, a box of tissues prominent on the low table. Her hands felt clammy as Donna talked about having the records and drew them from a folder.

Pamela read the details.

Joan Hawes, shorthand typist, aged nineteen. Father unknown. Baby expected April, possibly later. Family don’t know she is pregnant. Plans to move away after baby is born. Baby girl born May twenty-fourth. Baptised Marion. Sixth July, baby placed for adoption with Mr and Mrs Gough, 8 Skinner Lane, Chorlton.

‘What’s this -’ Pamela pointed to a sum: two figures added up to make £4.10s.6d – ‘her bill?’

‘Yes. There would be a charge for the nights she stayed there and the smaller figure would be for the baby.’

Me. Sudden tears blinded her. She pulled out a tissue. Donna said nothing. Pamela wiped her eyes and read on.

Discharged, July tenth. Four days later.

‘I can’t imagine it.’ She blew her nose. ‘I know I’ve never had a baby but walking away…’ She blew her nose.

‘It’s very difficult. We see birth mothers who tell us it’s affected their whole lives.’

‘There were so many lies,’ she said. ‘I asked her, my mum, Lilian – I asked her once what time of day I was born, for a chart, astrology thing, and she told me, made it up. She even told me what my birth was like.’

‘What did she say?’

‘“Straightforward.” She’d had three miscarriages before they got me and she never told me about any of that. I thought we were close. I thought we had a really good relationship.’ She stopped talking and put her hand to her mouth. It hurt too much. After a minute she began to talk again, haltingly trying to pick her way through muddled thoughts, around feelings that caught at her like brambles.

‘I’ve never really had a serious relationship. I’ve never been close to settling down or getting married or having children. I used to think it was work, putting everything into that and… it didn’t seem all that unusual, lots of single women, modern times, but now…’ She paused. Donna listened. ‘First Joan, then my father, now Mum. They’ve all left me.’ She turned to the other woman, her face creasing, eyes hot with pain, lips stretching with grief. ‘They’ve all left me,’ she cried, ‘and they all lied, it’s no wonder I can’t trust anyone.’

Joan

‘It’s all coming to you, there’s no one else. Tommy’s no need of anything. There’s just George. I’d like him to have the platinum discs, for ‘Walk My Way’ and ‘Swing Me’.

Penny nodded. Joan knew she was fighting not to cry. But what did it matter? What were a few more tears between friends. More than friends. Lovers, soul mates.

‘I want to be cremated,’ she said. Penny made a small choking noise. ‘And my ashes scattered on the sea out there. I’ve written it all down. It’s in the blue box with the will. Oh, Penny, come here!’

She gathered the weeping woman into her arms, stroking her coarse hair. The texture had changed over time as Penny’s straw-coloured hair had gone grey.

Joan rested her chin lightly on Penny’s head, felt Penny’s hot, damp tears on her neck. She looked out through the window to the horizon. Almost noon and a strange brilliance, bright as neon, stretched the width of the skyline. Above it storm clouds hovered and solitary seagulls were tossed by mercurial winds.

‘I don’t want to leave you,’ she said quietly when Penny had calmed down. ‘You know that. I haven’t given up. I still love you, I still want to share my life with you, stay here…’

And there were all the other things too. All the tunes in her head, the verses, the phrases and words waiting to be found and shaped and completed. All the songs she wanted to write. Would never write.

‘Joan-’

‘Sshhh. But if it is time, if I have to go, then I want it to be here, to be with you, to make the best of it. A good death.’

‘I know. I’m sorry.’

‘Don’t. Don’t be sorry. No regrets.’

‘No.’ The women clasped hands.

‘God, I must look ghastly,’ Penny said.

Joan surveyed the bloated red nose, the watery eyes and blotchy skin. ‘Yep.’

Penny laughed and fought not to cry again.

Joan laid her head back against the headboard. ‘Get me a drink?’

‘Tea?’

‘I was thinking Pernod.’

‘Pernod? Do we have Pernod?’

‘No, don’t think so. It used to be my special drink, for celebrations, years back.’

Penny raised an eyebrow. ‘We’re celebrating?’

Every moment, Joan thought. She shook her head. ‘A glass of red.’ It might make her nauseous, sometimes it did but she loved to savour the taste. And she might manage another couple of hours before her next medication.

Penny went and returned with two glasses of wine. She climbed on to the bed beside Joan and they sat peaceably for a while. Penny spoke first; Joan caught the nervous edge in her voice before she made sense of the words.

‘Joan, the baby you had, the one that was adopted. Do you want to do anything? Try and contact her?’

Joan stiffened. ‘No.’ Definitely not. ‘It wouldn’t be fair. I’m dying. I couldn’t expect… I’ve never considered it before and it wouldn’t be right now. And I think if she’d wanted to find me, well, she’d have done it by now.’

‘Would you have liked that?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said honestly. ‘It’s difficult to think about. It was a very unhappy time. Having a baby was the last thing on earth I wanted. I know I did the right thing and I’ve tried as much as I could to put it behind me. If she’d come looking, it would have brought it all back. I think that was part of why I moved to London, to create some distance.’

‘You’ve never really talked about it.’

‘I don’t think I can.’

There was a pause but Joan sensed Penny needed to hear more. She took a breath, sipped her wine.

‘What did you call her?’

‘Marion. I liked the name at the time, that’s all. No other reason.’

She had a giddy surge of memory. Little Megan, the one with red hair, talking about names and initials and Joan not wanting to pick a name, not wanting to choose clothes, not wanting any of it. ‘It was awful, Penny. There was another girl there at the time, Caroline she was called, very young – only sixteen – and her Grandma died and they wouldn’t let her go to the funeral.’

‘Oh, god.’

‘Would have let the cat out of the bag you see.’

‘Thank god times have changed.’

Joan drank some more and felt a wave of fatigue flood her limbs and up her spine.

‘I think I’ll rest a bit.’ She put her glass down.

‘Shall I leave the curtains?’

‘Yes.’

‘Penny?’

‘Yes?’

‘Love you.’

Penny nodded and kissed her softly on the lips.

Joan lay, facing the sea, eyes drifting open now and then. Noting the slow progress of the storm clouds, seeing how the sea changed from silver to lead. She could feel the electricity on the air, hear the snap of the wind in the eaves of the house. She shut her eyes and watched lightning sizzle and heard the low rumble of thunder leading to the crack at its heart. And she prayed that wherever Marion was, whoever she had become, that she was happy and healthy and loved.

Pamela

After getting her records and a couple more sessions crying to the counsellor Pamela had put it all on one side and got on with her life. Work was frantic. There were mergers going on with the Netherlands and Portugal. She spent four months in Lisbon and considered emigrating but there never seemed to be time to look into the pros and cons. When she did return to her cottage it felt just like home and she knew that she would have to keep it, and had she the energy to keep two homes? There was no time for anything. She still missed her mother, still caught herself wanting to ring and tell her good news, ring and say she was home, and then found herself hurting afresh as she remembered that she was dead, still dead. Would always be dead.

Curiosity about her background emerged very gradually, in fits and starts. She would go for weeks without giving it a thought then a chance conversation or news item would catch her unawares. I’m adopted too, she would think. She began to wonder more about Joan. Who had been the father? It still hurt to think that Peter, her beloved father, was not her natural parent. They had been so close. She remembered how he would play with her, football and snakes and ladders. Almost like a child himself, except he also told her about the wider world, injustice and the need to fight it. He’d talked about apartheid and human rights – to a six year old. They’d released Nelson Mandela this year; there would be a new South Africa but only last week they’d seen pictures of the Serbian death camps. Was the world any more humane since he had died? It didn’t seem so.

And her natural father, what would he be like? What if she was the result of rape or of incest? What had happened to Joan afterwards? If she tried to trace her what might she find? An alcoholic, a derelict; she might be in prison or on the streets. She could be happily married with grandchildren by now. Did she ever think of the baby she had given up?

Her curiosity grew but she resisted it. Then Sally died. Ed was already in a home, his mind had gone and Sally had not been able to care for him herself. ‘I can cope with the feeding and changing and all, it’s the fact that he’s not there, that he doesn’t love me anymore that’s getting me down so,’ she had told Pamela the last time they’d spoken.

As she stood in Southern Cemetery, one of a handful of mourners, she realised that her past was gone. There was no family any more, no one to tell her how it was, no one who remembered her father or could remind her of her childhood. Ian, Sally’s son, was there, but he didn’t remember Peter and he lived down in Cornwall. They’d probably never see each other again. There was no past and as she looked ahead there was no future either, no children, not even any nephews or nieces. The sense of being completely alone and unattached shook her to the core.

Two weeks later she wrote to the National Organisation for the Counselling of Adoptees and Parents

and applied to go on their register. If Joan had ever done the same they would find a match.

NORCAP wrote to tell her there was no match. She was bitterly disappointed. In-between business trips she tried to trace the Hawes family from the electoral records. But although she was able to find the parents resident in Manchester until 1978 there was no mention of Joan. Where had she gone afterwards? It took hours to get nowhere and she gave up for several months but then resumed her search. This time she searched the records for a marriage. She found several Joan Hawes and spent time and money contacting the relevant registrar’s departments only to find that each was a false lead.

Frustrated, she went back to NORCAP and contacted a researcher that they recommended. She met with the man and passed him all the details she had gathered. Later that night she flew out from Heathrow on her way to an international seminar in Harare. She wondered whether she would ever find Joan. And if she did would Joan agree to see her? Some people refused. How would she bear that rejection? She sat back in her seat and said a quick prayer to St Christopher, something she did whenever she travelled by air. The cabin lights dimmed. Joan seemed to have sunk without trace. She had read in the newsletters from NORCAP of people spending ten, twenty – more – years and not succeeding. The plane banked after takeoff and Pamela looked down at the lights scattered below. What if Joan had emigrated? What if they were looking in the wrong country?

Joan

Morphine played strange tricks on her, mixing up the sounds and pictures so that the seagulls’ shrieks became the cries of a child and the shush of waves on the beach a woman’s breath.

Rachel, Penny’s daughter, came in with the baby, already a toddler, and for a moment she saw Penny with a child in her arms. So alike. Mother and daughter. And now three generations in the same house. The child was a boy. Tiny, with caramel skin, crinkly black hair and shiny brown eyes. Complete contrast to Rachel and Penny with their straw-like hair, pale skin, apple cheeks. She wondered how it would be to raise a child so different from yourself. Not to see yourself reflected in the plane of a cheek or the shape of the mouth or the curve of the wrist. Would it be easier, would you allow the child to be more of themselves and less some minor version of you? Would you find yourself in them in other ways: their temperament or gestures, the way they laughed or their footsteps, their talents and dislikes?

When she had first seen her own baby, she had been shocked. A living child. Her very existence was incredible. Unreal. Joan had never been able to see beyond the pregnancy. That was where it all would end, she imagined. But this; this tangible, human creature… she had never really bargained for this. Or the appalling slew of emotions that assailed her.

She’s me, she’d thought. And immediately dismissed the bizarre notion, but it lingered like a smell. She could not face the child. Literally. She had to handle her to feed and change her but she avoided looking at her. She did not trust herself to meet those eyes, to gaze at that face. To admit those feelings. The memory brought anxiety and she turned away from it.

It was good that Rachel would be here with Penny in the coming months and what a perfect place for the boy. Room to play, the beach on the doorstep.

Rachel had gone. Joan had slept maybe. She wasn’t sure. There was a tune in her head. A lovely tune, haunting. A bit like Acker Bilk’s ‘Stranger On The Shore’ – the yearning, that opening sequence that went straight to the solar plexus. She listened to it fade. They came like that sometimes, so intense. Unbidden. Usually the tune but sometimes the lyric. ‘Spring Lament’ had been like that. A gift. Maybe a burden. Too close for comfort. It’s May again, blossoms, swaying in the rain again, another year and still I dream. And the bluebells make me blue, wonder where are you? She had written it down and the process had drained her. It became a favourite with the jazz singers; the syncopation and the key changes a challenge for interpretation.

She shifted her weight in the bed and felt pain stirring again. She closed her eyes, hoping to escape into sleep for just a few more minutes.

Pamela

Her stomach went into free fall when she got the message to ring the researcher. She made a coffee and got pen and paper ready before returning the phone.

‘I’m afraid I’ve some sad news,’ the man said. ‘I managed to trace your mother, she was living in Scarborough but I’m afraid she died last year. I’m very sorry.’

They all leave, they all go. Last year. Only last year.

‘I’ve written a summary of what I’ve been able to establish, I’ll fax that to you?’

‘Thank you.’

‘There is something else, Pamela. Joan had a close friend, they shared the house for many years. I’ve had a word with her and she asked me to tell you that she would be very happy if you wanted to get in touch. She has some things, things of Joan’s that she’d like you to have.’

He continued to talk but she couldn’t concentrate. She felt as though someone had thumped her very hard, knocked the stuffing out of her. She managed to remain civil and conclude the call. Then she remained sitting, stunned. The coffee cooling and the room darkening. She sat and let the thoughts shuffle round, slow and painful, and a part of her observed how numb she felt and she wanted to stay like that, not to feel the full impact of the news

A couple of months later, having spoken to Penny on the phone, she made the journey to Scarborough, the seaside town perched on the East Yorkshire coast.

‘Come in. I’ve made soup and sandwiches,’ Penny greeted her. ‘You must have been travelling for hours. The bathroom’s upstairs, first on the right, if you want to freshen up.’

‘I will, thank you. It’s a beautiful house.’ She took in the stripped wooden banisters, the large airy hallway with its abstract rugs and warm terracotta walls.

‘It is, it was in quite a state when Joan bought it, but she completely refurbished it. The kitchen’s through here when you want me.’

‘Thanks.’ She was relieved that Penny had already referred to Joan and so easily. Upstairs she practiced a smile in the mirror. She had butterflies in her stomach. Would she be able to eat?

The kitchen was warm, the savoury smell of soup and the yeasty scent of warm bread made her mouth water.

Penny had set the table for two, a white linen cloth, a small vase with freesias in it. Simple. Beautiful.

‘It’s only vegetable, I didn’t know if you were a vegetarian.’

‘No, but that sounds great.’

She placed the pot on a mat at Pamela’s side with a ladle. ‘Please, help yourself. I’ll get the bread.’

Pamela poured herself a modest serving, relieved at not getting drips on the cloth, and then accepted a warm roll. It was just possible for her to swallow but she remained nervous. She broke the silence. ‘You lived here with Joan?’

‘Yes. She’d always had lodgers, a lot of people from the theatre would come for the summer season. I moved in in ’79. Over twenty years ago now. I had quite a journey to work. I was headmistress at a school in Pickering, that’s about twenty miles from here. But Joan worked from home.’

‘And she wrote songs?’ One of the facts Penny had told her when they had spoken on the phone.

‘Yes. Do you write?’

‘No.’ She smiled and shook her head. ‘I’m not musical, not really. I sang in a choir when I was at school, nothing since.’

‘You’re in management?’

‘Banking.’

‘Is it very pressured?’

‘Can be. But I must be doing something right, they keep promoting me.’

‘Joan was good with money. Shrewd. She was investing and sorting out a pension years before most women even thought about it.’

‘Were they well off – her family?’

‘No, not particularly. She made her money writing, which is nothing short of miraculous, I’m told. But she had a hit very early on and she insisted on a particular clause in the contract, which made her a great deal of money. That’s what I mean about shrewd. That more or less paid for this house. “Walk My Way”, you’ve heard it?’

Pamela frowned.

‘Bit before your time,’ Penny laughed. ‘Nineteen sixty-four. You’d only have been four. But everybody and their brother covered it after that. I’ve got a copy for you. And lots of photographs.’

They finished eating and Penny cleared the bowls away. ‘You’re very like her.’ She shook her head. ‘It’s quite uncanny. Her hair was straight, but apart from that…’

They had always told her she took after Peter with her dark hair and blue eyes.

‘Would you like tea or coffee?’

‘Tea, please. Just milk.’

‘Why don’t you go up and I’ll bring this. Have a look round. It’s her study, I thought you’d like to see it. All her things are there. The top of the stairs at the front on the right.’

Pamela escaped gratefully. The soup had been light but she still felt her stomach churning. She could feel the tension in her neck and along her spine, the strain of the unfamiliar, highly charged visit.

The first thing that struck her was the view: a panorama of the bay, right round to the headland and the sea and sky stretching away on a palette of greys and blues. The desk was quite clear. But this was where she would have sat and written.

Pamela looked back out to the water. The sea was choppy, the outlook bleak, elemental. She had sailed not far from here a couple of years ago. They had fought bitter easterly winds and had to tack for several miles. She had never imagined…

She turned to the fireplace and examined the objects on it. Driftwood, postcards, a carving of dolphins, a small cowbell, a harmonica. There was nothing of herself in any of this. She felt unsettled.

On the piano there was a collection of snapshots in frames. Nothing formal; no weddings or graduation photos, no airbrushed babies on sheepskin rugs. Penny on the beach, Penny with a younger woman by a palm tree, Penny crouched beside a dog, with a baby. With a jolt she realised that Penny was more than a lodger or companion. Embarrassment made her cheeks burn. Not at the fact of it but at the possibility that she had already said something crass in her ignorance. But how was she to know? On top of everything else it was too much to take in.

Penny brought up the tea and they sat on the sofa by the fireplace. Penny gestured to a pile of albums. ‘There are loads here. Anything you want copies of we can sort that out and most of these should come to you anyway. I’ve all her family’s here. Joan’s parents are both dead and she only had one brother, Tommy. He emigrated to Australia. He took what he wanted after their mother died. They didn't keep in touch, just Christmas cards. I found this one last night. She would have been your age in this.’

Pamela took the small, square, black-and-white photograph. She inhaled sharply – it was like looking at a version of herself, the same-shaped face, the long nose, same shape eyes, even the curve of eyebrows exactly alike. Like sisters. Like mother and daughter. She took a breath. Why couldn’t you wait?

‘And this must have been just after she had you, she moved to London…’

On the train home she stared dry-eyed out through her own reflection, replaying fragments of Penny’s narration, her own clumsy questions.

‘When did she tell you about me?’

‘I’d known her for a while. I had just left a very difficult marriage and I’d been talking to her about the whole business of regret. She said there was only one thing she had regretted and that was having a baby and giving it up for adoption.’

‘Which bit did she regret? Having me or giving me up?’ The bitter question appalled her. Penny would think her so rude.

‘I don’t think she could separate the two things,’ she said carefully.

‘Did she say who my father was?’

‘No.’

‘Never?’ Surely she would have said something, let something slip.

Penny shook her head. ‘No. He was married, that’s all she ever told me.’

She would never know, then, it wasn’t fair.

Penny had talked about Joan’s illness. ‘The nurses were wonderful, they made her so comfortable. We put her bed by the window so she could see out. It’s at the front like this room. She loved that view. It’s not a pretty place, it can be wild some nights, but she said it inspired her. I suppose she didn’t write pretty songs really…’ Penny had got upset at that point and apologised and wiped her eyes. Pamela thought of Lilian losing Peter.

‘These were hers. I’d like you to have them. And these were her mother’s, heirlooms.’ She had taken the pieces of jewelry.

‘This is the song, “Walk My Way”. I bet you’ll recognise it when you hear it.’

‘She said Marion was just a name she liked. There’s a friend in Germany too, she knew Joan when she first went to London. If you ever want to meet her I can put you in touch… Your mother died very suddenly, you said?’

‘Yes. My father too. I was seven when he died… It was only when I was clearing out Mum’s house that I found out…’

‘Oh, Pamela, it must have been awful.’

‘If I’d known…’

Maybe I’d have got here sooner, maybe I’d have heard her sing, found out who my father was, taken her sailing.

‘I may be talking after the event,’ Penny had said, ‘but I think she wrote this one about you, “Spring Lament”.’ A slow, haunting ballad. It’s May again, blossoms, swaying in the rain again, another year and still I dream. And the bluebells make me blue, wonder where are you? I’m not dancing, no romancing, only glancing over my shoulder, another year older and it’s May again…

The train entered a tunnel, the clattering got louder and the lights flickered on and off.

Too late now. Never know you, nor him. You should have left a note, something. Whatever you thought of him – a one-night stand, a drunken party… still my father. I had a right to know where I come from. Who I am?

As the train emerged she found herself blinking at the light. She felt empty and overwhelmed at the same time. So much to take in. With time perhaps she would feel better. She could take some leave, see if Felix and Marge had any plans. Sail away – let the waves rock her and the space of the sea and the sky stretch around her. Make her peace. She pulled the photo from her bag and gazed at it again and watched it blur as her eyes filled with tears.

Caroline Kay

Theresa

Theresa

‘Does it make you curious?’ Craig asked her, rubbing his thumb along the sole of the baby’s foot. ‘Make you wonder about your own background?’

‘No,’ she said shortly.

He looked at her, brows raised at the edge in her voice. ‘Not at all?’

‘Craig, she didn’t care enough to keep me, why the hell should I want to know any more about her?’

‘Whoa!’ He held up a hand to her. ‘Steady on. I just thought having Ella might make you inquisitive. Now we’re back in the UK it wouldn’t be so hard to get information. And she probably did care, you know, they were very different times.’

‘And I wasn’t exactly perfect.’ She cupped her hand to her ear, a habitual gesture.

‘That’s ridiculous.’

‘What?’

‘She wasn’t married,’ he said. ‘You know that much and she went into the Mother and Baby Home to have you so she’d already decided to place you for adoption even before you were born. It wouldn’t have anything to do with what you were like.’

‘Nothing personal.’

He frowned. ‘Why so defensive? You never used to be so prickly about it.’

‘Craig, don’t analyse me.’

‘Just an observation. Your parents are more laid back about it than you are.’

‘I’d never do anything about it even if I wanted to. I wouldn’t treat them like that. I think it’s awful the way people from really good families, happy families, go off… it must be so hurtful. I’d never do that to Mum and Dad.’

‘What if she traced you?’

‘I wouldn’t see her. It’s none of her business, my life. Nothing to do with her.’

He pursed his lips and exhaled noisily. ‘Jeez, I better change the subject.’

‘You think I’m being unfair?’

‘It can’t have been easy for her. It must have been heartbreaking, when you think of it.’ He nodded at Ella on the bed between them.

‘You don’t know that, Craig. I just think…’ Her mouth tightened and she stopped.

‘Go on.’

‘I think it was terrible, to leave me…’ Sudden emotion distorted her face.

‘Oh, Tess!’ He moved closer. ‘I’m sorry. I’ve put my foot right in it.’

‘I am more bothered by it. Since having Ella. I get really cross. I look at her and hold her and I adore her and I think that was me, all those years ago, that was me and she abandoned me. I’m twenty-five years old and suddenly it matters. And I’m so angry inside, like it’s only just sunk in what happened to me. And then I feel guilty about Mum and Dad. And feeling this way. I was only a few weeks old, it can’t have mattered really, not so tiny, but I can’t bear to think about it.’ She cried, ‘Bloody hormones.’

He held her and kissed her hair.

The baby woke then. Her mouth stretching, a cry gaining volume.

‘Perfect timing.’

She laughed and pulled away, reached for a tissue to dry her face.

‘I’ll make you some tea?’

She nodded. ‘And crumpets. I’m ravenous again.’

Like mother, like daughter, he thought, but bit his tongue just in time. The phrase might seem loaded given Theresa’s state of mind.

She turned to plump the pillows up behind her. Lifted Ella from the bed and let her latch on. She wouldn’t think about it again. It was all too upsetting and she had enough to deal with coping with all the demands that a new baby brought.

‘Craig! Craig!’ The terror in her voice brought him, taking the stairs two at a time, banging his elbow on the door jamb in his urgency.

‘What?’

‘Ella.’

Theresa stood beside the cot. Inside, Ella was jerking and bucking, her back arched, her limbs flailing, face con torted.

‘It’s a fit. She’s having a fit.’

‘Ambulance!’ He wasted no time.

Theresa put her hand on the baby’s stomach, willing the terrifying movements to stop. Epilepsy, brain fever, a seizure. Fear sang through her veins. She wanted to lift her up and cradle her but was frightened she would do more damage if she moved her. If she dies… the thought took the ground from under her, she clung to the cot side.

Craig reappeared. ‘They’re on their way.’

‘What do we do?’

‘Nothing. They’ll be here soon. Oh, God.’

Ella’s limbs tremored then stopped. Her features slackened, the red drained from her face, her abdomen sank back on to the mattress. She began to whimper. Theresa lifted her up, cradled her against her left shoulder, gently rubbing her back, making soothing sounds. ‘Is she awake?’

Craig checked. ‘Yes, she looks fine. Bit sleepy.’

‘Where are they?’

‘Here soon. You poor wee babby,’ he said to his daughter.

At the hospital they needed to perform a battery of tests to try and establish the reason for the seizure. Family history was one of the questions that kept being raised.

Craig had already rung his mother and established that there was nothing on either side of his that he could have passed on.

‘I’m adopted,’ Theresa told the consultant. ‘I’ve no idea.’

They took turns sitting by her bedside. They allowed Theresa to stay the night, sleeping on sponge block on the floor. She barely slept in the unfamiliar place. The sound of other children sleeping, the whir of heating and clanking of pipes competing with any sound from Ella, so she strained to hear, bracing herself to call the staff if her breathing altered or there was any sign of discomfort.

After two days and three nights there had been no repetition, they had made no positive diagnosis and Theresa was dead on her feet.

‘Some of the blood tests are still being completed,’ said the consultant, ‘and that may tell us more, but I must say there doesn’t seem to be any clear indication at this stage.’

‘Would it help if you knew more about my family history?’ Theresa said.

‘It would help us to rule out or factor in genetic predisposition, but at the end of the day it might not give us an answer.’ She nodded. She could feel Craig’s eyes on her, questioning, would she? She continued to look at the doctor, not wanting to make a decision about it here, in front of a stranger.

They took Ella home. If she had any further seizures they should bring her back to the hospital immediately. They had a list of do’s and dont’s. Don’t use duvets, cot bumpers or too many blankets, don’t overdress the baby, make a note of any symptoms that precede a seizure – aversion to light, vomiting, diaorrhea, high temperature. It was like living with a time bomb.

The following evening she sought out Craig in his study, where he was preparing lectures.

‘You think I should find out my medical history, don’t you?’ She lowered herself into the easy chair.

He put down his pen, blew air out through his mouth. ‘You heard what the doctor said: ‘It might help them get to the bottom of it’.

She rubbed at her forehead. ‘That’s all I’d want,’ she said, ‘just the medical stuff.’

He waited.

‘I’d just be doing it for Ella.’

‘I know.’ He looked at her.

‘It’s scary. Even that.’ She frowned, eyes suddenly wet. ‘Don’t know why.’

‘The unknown.’

She agreed. ‘And ignorance is bliss. But if there was something, in my genes, and I hadn’t tried to find out…’ she shook her head.

He moved around his desk and stood behind her, hands on her shoulders, bent to kiss her hair. ‘I love you,’ he murmured.

‘Me, too.’ She kissed his hand. But her thoughts were distracted, strewn about like dropped papers, and she felt only dread at the thought of the journey ahead. The unknown stretched before her like a chasm, black and bottomless.

Caroline

She was walking the Pennine Way, the whole of it, from Edale to Kirk Yetholm, right along the backbone of England. On their visits to Paul’s family in Settle she had walked a lot in the Yorkshire Dales, she had done the three peaks – Ingleborough, Pen-y-ghent and Great Whernside – and had promised herself one day she’d walk the whole length of the hills and here she was. Bliss.

She had left Malham that morning carrying her pack. It was a fair morning, bright and blustery, the sort of day when you could see right across the fells, pick out tiny sheep clinging to hillside tracks and watch the clouds chase across the sky, skimming shadows over the undulating green swards. Most of this section was treeless. The lower slopes would once have held forests but these had been cleared hundreds of years before for farming. The Romans had marched over here, building their long, straight roads, some of which were now part of the route.

Limestone country, and the white rock gave a bright, luminescent feel to the landscape, so that even in the foulest weather it never had the bleak, god-forbidden look of places like Dartmoor with its darker stone, where she had walked the previous summer.

She checked her map and followed the lower trail, which would take her down the hillside to meet a path rising from the hamlet below. She let her thoughts ramble as they did whenever she walked. Not concentrating on anything but aware nevertheless that there was an accounting going on. A weighing up of what she had made of her life, a consideration of what she would like to change, an assessment of her emotional health.

As she rounded the corner she found a stile set in the dry-stone wall. Just beyond it was a cairn of stones and, following tradition, she found a small pebble to add to the mound. Large rocks, fissured and worn, scattered the area and she decided to stop and have lunch among them. She had brought a piece of the creamy Wensleydale cheese, bread rolls, tangy orange tomatoes, locally grown, a flask of coffee and some flapjack. She ate and drank and then closed her eyes, savouring the quiet that was interrupted only by the pee-wit of the lapwing or the melancholy cry of the curlew and the barking call of grouse.

She felt safe on the hills. The nearest she got to peace. ‘The one place I can’t follow her,’ Paul joked. And there was some truth in it. She relished the solitude and gently avoided linking up with other walkers, preferring a brisk ‘good morning’ as she passed them to any conversation.

She would be forty-three next birthday. Her hair was showing grey and every day brought more wrinkles but she felt reasonably fit, work kept her active.

Davey had joined them in the business. He was less interested in the plants but a natural at the landscaping and the structural side of design. People wanted more than a patch of lawn with borders these days and Davey was developing that side of things. He seemed happy with it. She didn’t need to worry about him. Sean was settled too. Doing a computing course. She barely understood what he did but he was happy and had good prospects and he was engaged to an energetic young woman in PR whose confidence was breathtaking.

She had never heard from the Children’s Rescue Society. She had never stopped hoping but sometimes it was hard.

She stirred herself and packed up her rubbish. She hefted the rucksack on to her back, groaning a little at the mild ache in her shoulders. She skirted the rocks and regained the path.

Theresa

‘How was it?’ Craig put his briefcase on the kitchen counter, pulled out a chair.

‘Awful. Just like I expected. Why on earth they can’t just send you the stuff in a sealed envelope and let you get over it in private…’

He raised his eyebrows. ‘It’s a safety net, I suppose. Someone to listen, could be quite traumatic…’

‘Craig, there was a letter.’

‘What?’

‘A letter. From her.’ Her face crumpled, her brown eyes glimmered. ‘I never thought… It’s all very nice but I didn’t want… I just…’

‘Tess.’ He went to hug her. She pulled away after a minute and handed him the white envelope.

He drew out the paper and read it. He blinked several times, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down. ‘Jeez. She was sixteen. Caroline.’

‘You think I should write back?’

He shook his head in bewilderment. ‘God knows. This was written in nineteen seventy-eight. She’s not heard anything in all this time…’

‘So I should feel sorry for her,’ she said resentfully.

‘No. I don’t know.’

‘I feel cornered,’ she said. ‘I didn’t want this. I didn't ask to be born. I didn’t ask to be adopted.’

‘What did the counsellor say?’

‘“Take some time”.’ We haven’t got time though, have we? I still need to know about the medical stuff. There’s nothing here -’ she gestured to a large, manilla envelope – ‘only a basic check they do at the home.’ Her hand sought out her ear. He didn’t miss the movement.

‘I feel so cross, there’s nothing to help with Ella, nothing. So that means if I want any more I need to trace Caroline and then write or get the agency to write and ask specifically. And what if it’s on my father’s side. There’s no indication who he was. It’s a nightmare.’

She looked at him. He looked haggard, his face creasing. She knew what he was thinking. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll do it.’

‘This counsellor could write for you?’

‘First we’d have to track her down. There’s no address on the letter. And they haven’t any record of where she is. She could have left her address.’

‘Maybe she doesn’t want to be found, a new family and all. She just wanted to leave something for you, wanted you to know.’

‘Wanted forgiving?’

‘That’s a bit harsh. I know I can’t really imagine what it’s like for you but she was sixteen, Theresa, a schoolgirl. She obviously thinks about you…’

‘Don’t. You’re right, you don’t know.’

In the days that followed she found herself obsessed by thoughts of Caroline. She read and reread the letter, her feelings swinging from fury at being abandoned to compassion for the woman. She tried to imagine Caroline. She’d be forty-two. Married, two sons. Was she happy? Moments of spite pricked through her thoughts – hope she’s lonely, lost without me, hope she’s regretted it. She despised herself for such petty, cruel impulses. She was tearful too. When Craig was out she allowed herself to indulge in bouts of weeping, wondering where all the tears came from, whether this was a delayed case of postnatal depression. She was exhausted. She had to act.

‘I’m going back for more counselling with Helen next week. I’m all over the place with this. I’m going to start the tracing. Mum will have Ella for me.’

‘What does your mum say about it all?’

‘Haven’t told her yet, there wasn’t a chance really, just said I had a meeting. I don’t want to upset her. She’s on the waiting list now, for the hysterectomy. She’s a lot on her plate. I just need to find the right time.’ She felt awful keeping it from Kay, but she was frightened of what her reaction would be. She couldn’t bear it if Kay was distressed by it. It might be best to wait until she’d had her operation and recovered.

Ella thrived but their pleasure in her was shadowed by the fear that she was ill. That something lurked inside her waiting to rear up and create fresh delirium, fresh traumas.

At the age of eleven months she had a second fit. It was a mild Tuesday morning. Theresa went to the lounge, where Ella was asleep on her playmat, a loose cotton blanket covering her. Theresa heard a strange sound and when she went to investigate she found the child wracked by spasms, her eyes glassy and protruding like marbles, her legs quivering. She dialled 999 and went on to autopilot.

The stay at the hospital was like a rerun.

‘If only we knew why,’ Theresa told the doctor. ‘It’s not knowing what’s wrong that makes it even worse.’

‘I’m going to order a CAT scan – that’s where we take a picture of the brain – and I want to refer you to a neurosurgeon.’

Theresa went dizzy with fear, she laced her fingers tight with the strap of her handbag. A brain tumour? Brain disease. She tried to listen while he talked on about being cautious and keeping things in proportion and all she could imagine was a tiny coffin. It was all she could do to stay in the room.

‘Good grief, Tess!’ Craig said as they walked back to the ward. ‘How do people cope?’

‘How can I go back to work with all this?’ she said to him some days later.

‘What are your options? You can stay here, at home with Ella, and leave your career on hold indefinitely, or go back to the department, get on with your life. The nursery’s in the next block, we can make sure the staff are fully briefed. Your call.’

She frowned.

‘Tess, giving up your work won’t make her better. It’s not about sacrifices. If you want to stay home because you’d rather do that than go back to the university that’s a different issue.’

‘I don’t. I want to go back. There’s a lot going on in the department. I want to be part of that, and they’ll let me do part-time.’

‘There’s your answer. Try it at least, see how it works out.’

‘Yes.’ she nodded, raked her fingers through her hair. She’d had highlights put in to pep up the colour, which she always thought of as boring brown. She still wore it long, often with a stretchy hair band that held it off her face and covered her ears. She put her hands on her hips and stretched her back, which was tight with tension. ‘Craig, about Caroline. There’s days you can go to St Catherines’ House, they help you find marriage certificates and all that. I’m going to go.’

‘Good.’ He nodded.

‘I thought last night… what if she’s dead?’

He made a noise.

‘Then we’ll never know, will we?’

‘We might not anyway,’ he pointed out. ‘There may be no epilepsy or anything else in the family.’

‘I keep thinking about it, more and more, what I’ll do if we find her. Things I’d like to ask her, not just health stuff. Maybe… I don’t know… see her face to face.’

He looked surprised. ‘Really?’

She nodded. ‘Unfinished business.’ She smiled ruefully.

‘Would you do it if Ella was OK? If they found out what was wrong?’

She considered, stroking her hair over her left ear. ‘Yes,’ she said at length, ‘I think so. Not like this, not immediately, I’d want to take it more slowly, but yes, I think I would now. It seems… inevitable – if she’s still alive. If she’s willing to meet me.’

‘Jeez, Theresa. Been a hell of a year.’

She blew a breath out. ‘You could say that.’

Kay

How on earth did you break the news to your children? She’d practised the phrases – Daddy and I aren’t getting along very well, we’ve decided to separate – and rehearsed the responses to the inevitable questions – no particular reason, we’ve just drifted apart, it’s mutual.

She had decided not to reveal anything of Adam’s affairs. Oh, there was still a vindictive streak in her that would have relished souring his reputation for them but she didn’t want to hurt them. They didn’t need to know.

It had been two weeks since she’d told Adam she wanted out. And it had taken her months to find the courage to say so. He was putting away the Christmas decorations at the time. All the little bells and baubles. The figures they’d collected over the years. Thirty years. The set of robins that had been the twins’ favourites. She dragged herself away from reminiscence and into the harsh reality of the present.

‘Adam, I want a separation.’

He sat back on his heels, peered at her. He wore glasses now, his hair had turned a steely grey but he was still an attractive man. He always would be.

‘But why?’ He sounded amazed.

‘The children have gone, there’s no need to stay together…’

‘But we’re happy.’

She shook her head.

He sighed, started to speak and stopped. Began again. ‘This is about Julie, isn’t it?’

‘No.’

‘Yes, you’re still punishing me… after all the…’

‘Adam. I’m fifty years old. I’ve raised a family and I’m proud of that, but that part… I need something else… Not this.’

‘It’s a mid-life crisis…’

‘Adam. I’m not going to change my mind.’

‘Jesus, Kay. I thought we’d grow old together.’

‘Don’t,’ she said sharply. She couldn’t bear the sentiment. She had dreamed of that once. No longer.

She felt her lip quivering and fought to contain her emotion. She must be strong.

‘Are you seeing someone?’ His face darkened.

‘Oh, Adam,’ she laughed, tears in her voice. ‘No. We could sell the house – too big for us now.’ She couldn’t imagine leaving the house. It would be as big a wrench as ending her marriage. The babies had grown up here, learnt to walk, climbed the apple tree. She knew all the neighbours, the people in the parade of shops on the main road.

She felt her composure crumbling. ‘We’ll need to sort things out. Not now. But I had to tell you.’ And she went upstairs, away from his consternation and his wounded eyes.

And now in her daughter’s London home, in the kitchen with its Aga and its pretty blue-and-white tiles, pine cupboards; with her grand-daughter in her arms she prepared herself to tell Theresa.

She saw the shock ripple through her daughter’s features, noted the unconscious movement of her hand to her left ear, waited for the questions to tumble and answered them as best she could. She was determined not to join in when Theresa began to cry, clenched her teeth fiercely around the inside of her cheeks and sniffed several times.

They drank tea and talked and Theresa fed and changed Ella and made more tea.

‘Mum,’ she said, ‘there’s something I need to tell you, as well. It’s… When Ella had her fits, the doctors wanted to know our medical history.’

Kay nodded. Theresa pulled at her hair, stroking it over her ear again. Why so nervous? Was there bad news about Ella?

‘It’s easy for Craig, but me… well… I’m trying to trace my birth mother, to see if there’s anything on my side. I’ve got my records, my adoption records. I wanted to tell you. And there’s a letter.’

Oh, God. Kay’s head swam. She closed her eyes, squeezed them tight. She swallowed. Opened them again. Nodded. ‘Yes,’ she said, offered a wobbly smile. Thinking all the while, Oh Jesus, I don’t think I can cope with this.

Theresa

‘Is Caroline there, please? Caroline Wainwright.’ She stared across the office wall to her certificates displayed on the wall opposite, the family photos alongside them.

‘She’s not here at the moment. Can I help? This is Paul Wainwright.’

‘No… erm, no thanks. Thank you.’

Theresa put the phone down. Sat down. Stood up immediately. She made a curious jumping movement across the room, then clasped her hands to her mouth. ‘Oh, God!’ she exclaimed.

She picked up the phone again and punched in a number.

‘Craig, I’ve found her, it’s the right place. She wasn’t there but her husband answered. Oh, God!’ She stopped speaking.

‘Good God!’ Craig said.

‘I can write or get Helen to, she said it’s best to use an intermediary at first. Oh, God. I can’t believe it. It’s really her. Somerset… No, I’m fine. I’m going to ring Mum, let her know. Yes, see you later.’

She paced some more, her face alert with excitement, shaking her head with disbelief, and then rang her mother.

‘Mum, it’s me. I rang that number, it’s the right one. She wasn’t there though, she’s away, but I spoke to her husband. Pardon? No, not like that, just to ask for her, and he said could he help, he was Paul Wainwright. Probably thought it was a customer or something, it’s a nursery and garden centre.’ Sudden, unexpected emotion robbed her of further speech or coherent thought. She listened to her mother’s congratulations and fought to retain control. She cleared her throat. ‘Talk later,’ she managed. ‘Bye.’

She locked the door to her office and returned to her chair, the tears already splashing down her face. Like a dam bursting, bringing relief and easing the awful pressure in her chest. She let it all go. All those hours in the records office searching, peering over microfiches and registers. The awful fear of not getting there in time.

Once she had found the marriage certificate she had to go all the way to Bristol to follow up the records. It had been hard, the family had moved. But she tried local phone directories in adjoining counties and found Wainwrights listed in both the residential and the business section in listings for Somerset. Now she had found her. Even if they never met, never spoke, she knew where she was. And she could write and ask about Ella.

She wiped her eyes and blew her nose. She had a tutorial group in fifteen minutes. She went to the ladies’ and washed her face. Tried to make herself presentable. It obviously didn’t work, for on the way back she passed her colleague Dan Kingsley, who looked at her with concern. ‘Theresa? Bad news?’

‘No.’ She smiled and with alarm felt her eyes water again. ‘Good. Just a bit hard to take in. Found my birth mother,’ she explained. ‘I’m adopted.’

‘Oh,’ he said, disconcerted, and his face flooded with colour.

‘And now I’m late for my ethics tutorial.’

‘Busman’s holiday, eh? Digging up your past? Mining for information.’

‘Very good, Dan.’ She was grateful for his clumsy humour. ‘I’d best go. First years and still keen…’

Caroline

The address was handwritten and the sender had printed Private in the top left hand corner. That alerted Caroline’s curiosity but that was all.

She invariably opened her mail when she stopped for coffee halfway through the morning. Carl the postman called in about ten most days and the bulk of the mail was for the business.

She assumed the letter would be from one of the work-experience students wanting a reference or some local youngster enquiring about vacancies. Unemployment was high in the area, farms were going to the wall, and although people were moving into villages they weren’t bringing jobs with them. They were commuters, happy to spend a couple of hours a day travelling into the city.

Dear Caroline Wainwright,

I am writing on behalf of Theresa Murray, who I believe you knew briefly in Manchester in May 1960. Theresa would very much like to contact you and has left a letter with me to give to you.

Would you please ring or write and let me know if I can pass this on to you?

If you have any queries I would be more than happy to talk with you, at your convenience, in complete confidence.

Yours sincerely,

Mrs Helen Fairley

She scrambled to her feet, spilling her coffee. No, it couldn’t be. No. She stood by the desk, staring at the letter as though it might lash out and bite her. Theresa Murray. Theresa. The name rang in her head like a bell. The name she’d chosen. She tried to imagine her but the picture she had in her mind was of an infant, Baby Theresa. What was she going to do? How could she possibly tell Paul? Or Davey and Sean?

She made a moaning noise, sat heavily in the chair and rocked to and fro. The letter before her. Oh, my baby.

After a few minutes she got up and put the snib on the Yale lock on the office door. Her heart was hammering as she dialed the number. She could just get the letter. No one need know.

‘Hello, Helen Fairley here.’

‘This is Caroline Wainwright. You wrote to me,’ she cleared her throat, ‘about Theresa.’

‘Yes, of course. Thank you so much for ringing. She will be so pleased. It must have been a terrific shock.’

‘Mmm,’ she mumbled, not trusting herself to speak.

‘I ought to explain my part in all this. I’ve been helping Theresa with her search and counselling her as well. With something like this everyone needs time and space to adjust and it’s not in anyone’s interest to rush into things. I’m what they call an intermediary, a sort of go-between. I’ll be there to support Theresa, and you as well, if you wish, with each stage of the contact process.’

‘My husband doesn't know, my family. I can’t…’ She broke off.

‘You haven’t told anyone about Theresa?’

‘No.’

‘That’s quite a common situation. Theresa already knows that you’re married and that you have two sons, from the letter you sent. We did wonder whether they’d been told anything since. Obviously you have built up a life of your own since the 1960s and Theresa understands the need to respect your privacy and your wishes, though I know she very much hopes to meet you eventually.’

Oh, Theresa. Caroline pressed her lips tight together but there was nothing she could do to contain the tears that began to stream down her face. She sniffed loudly. ‘I’m sorry,’ she squeaked.

‘It’s a very emotional time. A rollercoaster for everybody. If at any time you’d like to talk, then we can meet up. I’m based in London but I can always get the train your way if it’s difficult for you to come up to town.’

‘Tomorrow, I could get there by the afternoon,’ Caroline blurted out. ‘Can I come then? And get the letter?’

‘Yes. I can give you Theresa’s letter then and tell you a bit more about her.’

‘Is she…?’ What? Happy? Lonely? Beautiful? Gifted? Angry? ‘Is she all right?’

‘Yes, she’s married and she has a little girl. She has a good job as a university lecturer. They have been living in America for some time but now they’ve moved to London.’

Caroline tried to collate all this with the events of twenty-seven years ago and failed completely.

‘I have a photograph for you with the letter.’

Caroline couldn’t talk.

‘Let me give you directions. Will you be driving?’

Mechanically Caroline wrote down the details and agreed that she would aim to arrive after midday.

When the call was over Caroline gathered up the letter and placed it with the directions in the envelope. Her hands were shaking, thoughts helter-skeltered round her mind. She mopped up the coffee from her desk. She took the envelope with her and went up to the house. She washed her face and brushed her hair. It was a grey, cold day but she had to get out. She wasn’t expecting anyone that afternoon, Paul and Davey were visiting a site for a water garden, they wouldn’t be back till later. She left a note for them, saying she’d be home in time for tea. She changed into her walking boots, got her waterproof coat out and let the staff know she was going out, they could run the place for the afternoon.

She walked quickly over the footbridge and into the woods. She began to climb the hillside but she was oblivious to her surroundings. She was in a new dimension, turning the unfamiliar facts over and over in her mind like the nuggets of stone that she carried in the deep pockets of her waxed jacket. Strange as a new language. Theresa had a little girl. That made her a grandma, somehow. She thought of her own grandma, calling her Mouse and entertaining her with her daft antics. Theresa. They’d kept her original name. Theresa. Who was now Theresa Murray, married, a little girl, America, lecturer – Theresa Murray. Would like to meet you. She sifted them again and again. Drumming them into her soul.

He could sense the tension in her. Even though she returned his smiles and made small talk, asking how the site meeting had gone, he could read the signs. Eyes slightly guarded, the set of her shoulders, the extra precision with which she cut up her food. As if control was in the detail, the banal. And she had taken off this afternoon.

He wouldn’t press her, she would confide in him if and when she was good and ready. Any enquiry he made would be met with a dismissive shrug followed by brighter smiles and further withdrawal. It was a game of suspense. He reminded her that Davey was taking the transit, he wanted to collect some parts for the old motorcycle he was fixing up.

‘I’m going into town tomorrow,’ she said. ‘Dentist. This crown’s bothering me again.’

Perhaps that was it. She loathed the dentist.

Kay

‘It’s bloody awful timing,’ Kay told her friend, Faith, who was sitting beside her hospital bed. ‘I want to support her, I have to. But if I’m honest I just wish…’ she let her hands play along the edge of the sheet.

‘What?’

She glanced away, uncertain whether to continue, her mouth pulling with emotion.

Theresa had rung Kay a week before after another session with the intermediary. ‘I’ve been a secret all this time. So she said that she couldn’t see me but Helen says that often changes, that if you don’t push too hard they often decide to tell their family. She passed on my letter and she was really pleased to have it.’

Kay had held the phone, not trusting herself to say much. Theresa was so bound up in this business, it dominated everything. It was like she was in love or something, she couldn’t think about anything else, anyone else. She was frightened of rejection but desperate to meet Caroline. Kay was expected to listen and love and support her every inch of the way when Kay wanted to explode with worry and hurt.

‘I’m not going to sleep,’ Theresa said, ‘my mind’s just full of it.’

You’re not the only one, thought Kay.

‘I’d better go collect Ella. Oh, Mum, what will I do if she doesn’t want to see me? I couldn’t bear it.’

Kay tried to sound bright. ‘Given time, I’m sure she will.’ She had closed her eyes and leaned her head back against the wall.

‘Kay?’ Faith prompted her.

‘I’ve dreaded this. Oh, I can be rational and understanding till I’m blue in the face about her right to know and how Adam and I are the parents who raised her and loved her and… but I’m frightened she’ll walk away, fall in love with this stranger who just happens to be her blood mother and that’ll be us done with.’ She tore at a paper napkin as she talked, shredding it and rolling the pieces into tight balls. ‘I keep imagining them meeting and it… it makes me sick to the stomach. I’m jealous, Faith, I know that’s ridiculous but that’s what I feel. And on top of all this there’s this operation and, God,’ she hissed, ‘I feel so bloody hateful. I keep hoping she’ll turn out to be a horrible person and Theresa will never want to see her again.’

‘It’s only natural.’ Faith reached out to touch her arm. ‘Anyone in your position would feel the same. Have you said anything to Theresa?’

‘A little. But how can I, really? I’ve talked about what an upheaval it’s been and that her father and I have worries but we love her and she has to do what’s best for her. Adam never says much about his feelings but then she hasn’t discovered a birth father, he doesn’t have a rival in that sense.’

Kay had spoken to Adam on the phone about it. It was easier than meeting. They saw each other still on family occasions, Ella’s birthday had been the last time. He had a new partner, Karen, but at least he had the tact not to bring her along – yet. It hadn’t taken him long to find someone. Maybe he had her lined up, ready and waiting. Kay dreaded the prospect of meeting her. And she resented the fact that even now what Adam did could still hurt her so. It was as if the scars had never healed properly. Or perhaps she still loved him.

‘I never really expected this. I know I always told them they could search for their parents if they wanted to but… when we adopted Theresa, and the others, that was supposed to be it. Legally ours, no redress. Like it or lump it. It was a promise. Now it’s all changed and it feels like that promise has been… dishonoured. I just wish it was all over. But I was thinking this morning, it can’t be the same, whether Theresa meets her or not or sees her once and never again there'll always be that woman there… oh, it sounds so awful.’

‘You’re the ones who raised her and you and Theresa are close. I’m sure it will be all right.’

Kay stretched, winced at the pain.

In the days immediately after the operation she had found herself angry with her body. At the womb that had never held a child and then caused her such pain. Its removal felt like a symbol writ large – she had been barren before but now there could be no late miracle to affirm her womanhood. She had been surprised at such thoughts and depressed by them. What did it really matter? But in those bitter moments she counted her regrets rather than her blessings. All the things she had never had: the swelling of her stomach month by month, the twisting of a child inside her, the magic of birth, the feel of a new born in her arms, breast feeding. Not being able to look at her children and see herself in them, her own parents in them, gestures, the way they walked.

And now Theresa was likely to meet the woman who had all that. Birth mother. Caroline. And Kay felt pierced and ugly and spent and miserable. It was truly lousy timing.

‘I’d better go,’ Faith said. ‘They’ll let you home tomorrow, yes? Shall I pick you up?’

‘Theresa’s offered.’

‘OK. I’ll call round. Let me know if you need any shopping or anything. Remember, no lifting.’

Faith turned back to her. A good friend, so important. ‘What about a holiday? We could go away.’

She looked at her askance, peering over the top of her glasses.

‘No, really.’ She smiled. ‘Do something for ourselves. You and me, free woman now. Once you’re feeling better.’

She couldn’t imagine feeling better.

‘I’ve always fancied the States,’ Faith said.

‘Christ, Faith. I was imagining Devon.’ Faith had holidayed there for years. The odd trip to Brittany. No further afield with three children.

‘The States?’ Kay repeated.

‘Yep. Well, where would you go?’

‘I don’t know,’ she considered, her mind flicking through continents and countries. ‘Egypt.’

‘Egypt!’

‘Yes,’ she smiled.

‘OK.’

‘OK, what?’

‘Egypt, this year, the States the next.’

Kay grinned. Why the hell not? It wouldn’t change everything else but it wouldn’t make it worse. And after all it was about time she saw something of the planet.

Caroline

She had written again and Theresa had replied again. More photos. Wonderful pictures of her with her husband and Ella, the little girl. Her grand-daughter. They were worried about Ella. Theresa had asked Helen to find out about the family medical history. Caroline didn’t know of anything like epilepsy in her background and she didn’t remember anything like that about the Colbys. There was a picture of Ella as a newborn and she looked just like Theresa had. She had put everything with her stones, hidden away.

She had spent two hours with Helen in London. Once she started talking she couldn’t stop, an avalanche. She had told her everything. About the breakdowns, about the night they caught her trying to run away with her baby. The memories so vivid they were like flashbacks and the feelings so strong she got in a right state but Helen was very good about it.

‘Some things have gone forever,’ she said, ‘the ECT, bits that are just missing. I feel so guilty. She sounds so happy but I still feel guilty. I always have. Like carrying a big sin around. No one knew. Well, my parents, but they pretended it was all hunky-dory. I’d lost a child and there wasn’t even a grave.’

I want to meet her, she realised. I want to see her.

‘I’d like to meet her,’ she told Helen. ‘But I have to tell Paul. I don’t know what he'll do.’

‘What do you think he’ll do?’

She shook her head. ‘And the boys.’ She sighed, maybe she shouldn’t.

‘We find that siblings are often quite pleased to find a brother or sister, especially when they’re already grown up. After the first surprise it can be quite a strong relationship. Responses vary of course but it sounds like you’re quite a close family anyway.’

Caroline shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I’m frightened of what might change. It’s like blowing everything up.’

‘It feels destructive?’

‘Isn’t it?’

‘I don’t think so. It’s a big upheaval certainly and people feel a lot of conflicting emotions but there’s the positive aspect of some sort of resolution. You must decide for yourself, take your time. If you want to talk to me just pick up the phone. And if you do decide to tell you husband and your sons I’d be very happy to see any of them if they needed some support.’

But she hadn’t told them yet. And each time she thought about it she felt her skin grow cold and her stomach sink and dread seep into her, tainting the joy and the passion she felt when she looked at the pictures.

There was a small enclosed area to the side of the house that Davey and Caroline had designed to try out some ideas for the garden makeover service. It had become known as Mum’s grotto. The main feature was a large still pool, with flagged paths alongside it. Its edges were fringed with marginal plants, reeds and rushes. At one end they had placed a huge slab of the local limestone, big enough to sit on. Two sides of the garden were built in dry-stone walling and dotted with alpines and creepers, a homage to Paul’s Yorkshire roots. Opposite the rock an arching framework covered with honeysuckle and wisteria provided an arbor for a seat.

The grotto, or variations on it, had sold itself several times over at the upper end of the market.

Caroline was sitting on the arbor seat when she heard Paul coming, with the distinctive footfall and the tap of his stick.

‘Getting late,’ he observed, sitting beside her.

‘Yes.’

He put his hand on her leg. She stiffened. Then covered his palm with her own. ‘Paul, there’s something I have to tell you.’

He turned to look at her, she stared straight ahead. She’s leaving me, he thought, though the idea surprised him. Why would she want to leave him? Where would she go? With whom?

‘Before I met you, when I was just sixteen, I had a baby, a girl. She was adopted.’

There was a pause. ‘I know,’ he said.

‘What?’

‘I know…’

‘But…’

‘One of the doctors let it slip, when you were in hospital, when you were in Collins Hill, after Davey.’

She gasped. ‘Why didn’t you say anything?’ She was stricken.

‘How could I? You’d kept it a secret, you never breathed a word, what else could I do? I thought about it but I was worried that… I didn’t want to upset you.’

‘You just carried on?’ She was angry.

‘Like you did, you mean?’ He retorted. ‘Pretending Davey was the first? Talking about how a girl might be nice? Yes, Caroline.’

‘Oh, god. You must have hated me.’

‘No!’ he protested. ‘OK, I felt deceived at first. It felt like everything was false, our marriage, Davey. I was furious, actually, but what could I do? You were ill, Davey was at my mother’s. It felt like everything was coming apart but I didn’t want to lose you. I wanted us to make a go of it. So I settled for second best.’

She whimpered.

‘No, not like that.’ He put his other hand on hers. ‘I mean, because you couldn’t trust me, I had to get used to the idea that you didn’t love me enough to share everything. So I decided that would have to do, I’d take whatever you could give. And the kids, of course, they mean the world to me. They always have.’

‘Oh, Paul!’ Her eyes stung, ‘I did love you, I do, completely. I was a coward. I thought I might lose you if I said anything and then as time went on… Was I wrong?’ She began to cry, noiselessly. ‘Maybe I was wrong but I didn’t dare test it out. I’m so sorry.’

‘Why now?’ He asked her. ‘Why tell me now?’

‘She’s been in touch. I’ve got photos, letters… she…’ She could no longer speak and turned sobbing into his chest.

And he held her close and let his own tears slide down his face and into her hair.

Kay

‘I just want today to be over,’ Kay said. ‘I’d like to go to sleep and wake up and find it’s next week.’

‘We could go out for bit,’ Adam said, ‘get lunch.’

Once the date had been arranged Adam had offered to visit Kay. She suspected that Theresa had put him up to it. She had almost refused, not sure she wanted to share her vulnerability with him but then he was Theresa’s father. It was the two of them who had been to St Ann’s to bring her home and watch her grow and read her Winnie the Pooh, and who had taught her to sing ‘Incy Wincy Spider’ and to ride a bike and make daisy chains, and who loved her. He had always loved her, just like Kay, and it seemed appropriate that they wait together for word of the reunion.

‘She might ring…’ She looked at him in anguish.

‘Kay, they’re not meeting till two o’clock. Why would she ring before?’

‘Reassurance?’

‘So we just sit here?’

‘And climb the walls.’

The doorbell interrupted her. She went to open it.

‘Dominic! Jacob!’ She put a hand down to her grandson, still having to avoid heaving things about. ‘This is a surprise! Come in.’

Dominic winked at his father. ‘I need a haircut, Gill’s at work. I thought if you could have Jacob for a bit…’

‘Of course. Give me something to keep my mind occupied.’

‘You sure this is all right?’

‘Fine,’ Kay said, ‘be as long as you like. C’mon, Jacob, let’s find you something to play with.’

Caroline

‘Time to go,’ Paul yelled up the stairs.

Caroline hung over the toilet, retching without effect. She rinsed her mouth out, took another Rennie. ‘Oh, God,’ she prayed. ‘Help me.’

Downstairs she looked around anxiously. ‘Where’s my bag?’

‘There, with the presents.’

She collected her coat.

‘Ready?’

‘No.’ She blinked hard, took a breath through her nose. ‘Yes.’

She followed him out.

‘Paul, I’m scared.’

He rested his stick against the wall. Put his hands on her shoulders. ‘It’ll be all right.’ She looked into his eyes, warm and loving. Nodded, Yes.

Heard her grandma’s voice, loud and full of life, urging her on. Go on Mouse. Go on. Laughter.

She took a deep breath of air, full of the scents of her plants. Looked back at the house, which would never be the same after today, and turned to the car.

I’m coming, Theresa. I’m coming.

Theresa

‘Is it creased?’

‘It’s fine.’

‘Oh, Craig, I’m so nervous. It’s worse than getting married.’

‘It’ll be all right.’

What’s the time? We can’t be late.’

‘We’re not late.’

‘What if she hates me?’

‘Nobody’s going to hate anybody.’

‘What if she doesn’t come?’

‘She’ll come. Get in the car, for the love of God.’

‘You’ll wait outside, you promise?’

‘Aye, until hell freezes over.’

She swallowed. ‘I feel sick.’

He looked at her steadily. ‘Car.’

‘Hold me.’

He hugged her tight.

‘I love you,’ she said.

‘Me too. Now get in the car.’

It was time to go. Time to discover her past. And to find her future. Time to complete the circle. She stood on the threshold and felt the world stop turning.

Outside the door, poised for flight. Her heart was bumping too fast in her chest, fingers clenched. She could just go. Turn and walk away. Cruel, yes, but not impossible. This side of the door there was still room for fantasies, for dreams of what she might be like, for scenes of happy ever after, of coming home, of finding peace. But in there, once across the threshold, there would only ever be reality: stark, unrelenting, unchangeable. No going back. No escape. Her ears were buzzing and her skull and back felt tight with tension. She couldn’t breathe properly.

She closed her eyes momentarily, fighting the rising panic. Don’t think. Just open the door.

She put her hand out and grasped the handle. Turned and pushed. Stepped into the room. Saw the woman on the couch rise unsteadily to her feet. Smiling. Moving towards her, mouth working with emotion. Little exclamations popping softly, hello, oh, hello. Arms opening, eyes drinking her in.

The two women embraced.

Theresa started to cry, noisy sobs and sucking sounds.

‘Twenty-eight years,’ Caroline said, her voice muffled with emotion, ‘I never thought I’d see you again. Come on.’

She led her daughter to the couch and sat with one arm around her, listening to her weep, her own tears sliding down her face. She smelled Theresa’s hair and felt the smooth skin of her fingers and waited for the crying to gentle and cease. There was no hurry after all. Years lost, but now they had all the time in the world. Forever.

And Theresa in her hot, damp sea of tears, felt them emptying out of her, on and on like when they change the lock gates on the canals. Made no effort to control them. Holding the hand, strong and bony like her own, hearing the drumbeat in her ears. Till she is all cried out. Feeling the wheel turn. Finding herself in a new place. Tender and bewildered and brave.