Goodness, Grace and Me

by Julie Houston

  ‘I told you to give me a good half-hour before you arrived,’ he hissed at Camilla as I led them both back down to the warmth of the sitting room which was now snug and comforting after the unwelcoming chill of a few hours ago. The thick, tapestry curtains were drawn against the cold November evening and the lamps were dimmed, sending warm shadows across the room.

  ‘Is someone going to tell me what’s going on?’ I asked, motioning them to sit down. I reached for the untouched glass of wine that Dan had poured earlier and took a sip. Even though my heart was pounding, and a huge swig was what was really needed, I was mindful of my present state and carefully placed the glass back on the coffee table.

  ‘Well?’ I demanded, when both of them remained silent. ‘Aren’t either of you going to say anything? Maybe you could just tell me who the hell Patricia is?’

  Camilla had stood up and walked over to where she’d left her bag on the floor, made to open it, but then obviously thought better of it. She glanced at Dan and then said quietly, ‘Patricia is my mother.’

  ‘Right. Ok. So, why would your mother send you, presumably all the way from Australia, to see me?’

  Camilla took a deep breath before saying, ‘Because I think she’s your sister.’

  ‘My sister? Why would your mother be my sister? Camilla, I really don’t know what you’re talking about.’ I looked helplessly towards Dan but he just raised his eyebrows towards Camilla, indicating that I should listen to her.

  ‘My mum was born in the UK – her birth certificate says that her mother was from Midhope in West Yorkshire. When I knew I was coming to work in England – I was supposed to be spending the two years secondment in London – Mum asked me to try and visit her mother’s place of birth. I hated living in London – it really was too big – so when I was given the choice of transferring to Manchester or Leeds I jumped at the chance of coming here to see if I could dig up any family history.’

  Camilla paused as Liberty came into the sitting room.

  ‘Libby, I need you to do me a big favour,’ I said, urgently. ‘I want you to ring Auntie Diana, now, and tell her she must come up here this minute. If she argues with you, tell her she has to come, right now, because I think I’ve found Patricia.’

  ‘Blimey, what’s going on? And who’s Patricia? Hi, Uncle Dan. Is this your new girlfriend? I thought she was called Camilla, not Patricia?’

  ‘Libby,’ I said, through gritted teeth, ‘please just go and do as you’re told. Tell her it’s urgent.’

  ‘Problem, Mum – there’s not one phone working in this house.’

  ‘Here, use mine.’ Dan proffered his mobile and I grabbed it, pressing the buttons of Diana’s home number.

  ‘Diana,’ I said, trying to speak calmly, ‘can you get down here straight away? Don’t ask any questions. Just grab your coat and come over. I think we’ve found Patricia.’

  I handed the phone back to Dan and said, ‘Go on, Camilla.’

  ‘Well, when I arrived in Midhope last January I had no clues as to who my mum’s mum might have been. Mum had been adopted at birth and been taken to Canberra by her new parents when they emigrated back in the early 1950s – they went out to Australia on one of those £10 assisted passages, loved it in Canberra and never came back to the UK. Mum had known from being a tiny girl that she was adopted, and to be quite honest had never had any interest in finding her real parents.’

  ‘Mum, can I have one of those posh chocolate biscuits you keep hidden in Bones’ biscuit tin?’ Kit paused at the door, surprised to see so many people in the sitting room. He glanced across at Camilla and then did a double take, colouring furiously as his adolescent brain frantically tried to deal with the images sent out from the beautiful redhead sitting in his usual chair by the window.

  ‘Shh,’ hissed Liberty. ‘Listen to this, it’s really interesting.’

  ‘Go on, Camilla,’ I said again, pouring her some more wine. She took a good slug of it before continuing, occasionally looking at Dan as if for help. She must only be about twenty-four, I guessed. She really was very young to be so far away from her home, her family and friends.

  ‘All that Mum knew was what her adoptive parents had told her – that she’d been born on the Isle of Man – I don’t even know where that is – but that her birth mother was actually from Midhope in the North of England, and that she’d been named Patricia. She’s called Joy now, by the way. Over the months, while I’ve been here in Midhope, Mum has become much more curious about her past. She’s been in touch with various adoption agencies and she rang me last week to tell me what she’d found out.’ Camilla stopped in mid-flow as we heard the front door bang and, five seconds later, Diana bustled into the sitting room.

  ‘And?’ I asked as Diana stared agog at the assembled company.

  ‘And my mother’s real mother was Keturah Morgan from Midhope in West Yorkshire.’

  ‘Bloody hell,’ Kit whistled. ‘I think I’d better have some of that wine to make sense of all this,’ and he grabbed my virtually untouched glass.

  ‘What I don’t understand is how you realised the name Keturah Morgan had anything to do with Harriet?’ Diana asked after shoving Kit off the settee and catching up with the bits she’d missed.

  ‘I wouldn’t have had any idea if it hadn’t been for Dan.’ Camilla had the grace to look a little embarrassed: at the end of the day she had run off with my best friend’s husband. ‘When Mum rang me last week to tell me she’d now found out her birth mother’s name, I obviously told Dan …’

  ‘Well, how many Keturah Morgans can there be in one small town?’ Dan spoke for the first time since Camilla had started her tale. ‘I mean, if your mum had been called Betty or … Dorothy or something usual we’d have been none the wiser. But knowing your mum was called Keturah, and having met your Granny Morgan at various family dos – and you don’t forget Granny Morgan in a hurry – well, I just put two and two together.’

  ‘Bit of a coincidence, isn’t it, Camilla? You shacked up with Harriet’s best friend’s husband, I mean?’ Diana could be very cutting when she wanted.

  ‘Well, yes, incredible coincidence.’ Camilla stood her ground, holding Diana’s stare. ‘I’ve a couple of photographs of Mum here.’ She went over to her bag and brought out a large, buff-coloured envelope.

  One was of Patricia as a toddler with very fair hair and big blue eyes, holding onto an oversized ice cream with one hand and a rather plump, but kindly-looking woman’s hand with the other. I turned the photograph over. It just said, ‘Joy, Canberra 1957.’

  ‘I don’t think my Nan ever got over ending up with such a beautiful daughter. Nan and Grandpa were very ordinary people – from Liverpool originally – and they suddenly found themselves with this very bright, very pretty daughter. I know she’s my mum, and perhaps I shouldn’t say it, but she was, and still is, a very attractive and very gifted woman.’ Camilla looked very sad. ‘I’ve really missed her while I’ve been in England.’

  ‘Beautiful and gifted?’ Kit screwed up his nose. ‘I wouldn’t say any of your family are “beautiful and gifted” would you, Mum? Apart from me of course. I know Granny Keturah is a whiz at making stew and dumplings, but gifted …?’

  Ignoring Kit, I had a good look at the other three photographs Camilla had brought with her. Patricia/Joy was certainly a very beautiful woman. The last photograph was the most up to date, having been taken, apparently, last year when she was fifty-six. I couldn’t stop looking at it. This was my sister, for heaven’s sake. My sister.

  ‘Have you got brothers or sisters?’ I suddenly realised I might have nephews and nieces I knew nothing about.

  Camilla smiled. ‘Yep. There’s Patrick. He’s the eldest. He’s twenty-nine and a pilot with Quantas. My sister, Saskia, is three years older than me. She’s twenty-seven and runs her own consultancy business. Mum always hoped one of us would follow in her footsteps.’

  ‘What does she do?’ Diana asked.

  ‘Mum? She’s a consultant obstet
rician. One of the best in the country actually.’

  ‘So, how do we tell Mum that we’ve found Patricia?’ Diana demanded once all this information was beginning to sink in. ‘I mean,’ she went on, turning to Camilla, ‘I am assuming your mum is only our half-sister. Dad doesn’t seem to know anything about any baby. If he’d known Mum had had a baby when she was, what … eighteen? he’d have known all about Patricia and, of course – it’s all falling into place now – the Isle of Man. Why the Isle of Man, I wonder? Why didn’t she just have the baby here in Midhope?’

  ‘And if Grandad wasn’t the father,’ Liberty burst in excitedly, ‘who was?’

  Libby’s excitement about Patricia was contagious. I had a new sister. A new sister for heaven’s sake! Diana and I just looked at each other, silly grins on our faces, unable to say a word.

  I looked at my watch. Too late now to start introducing Mum to the idea that not only had we found Patricia but that, in doing so, we all knew that she’d committed that most heinous of all crimes – having sex out of wedlock!

  Chapter 22

  Tuesday morning and there was no way I could go to work. I had an appointment with my GP, India was still running a temperature, and Sylvia appeared to have disappeared into thin air. As far as I knew, Sylvia had been spending the weekend in Surrey with some people she’d apparently known for years, but she’d been expected back yesterday. We’d tried to persuade Sylvia to get a mobile, even offered to buy her one for Christmas, but she was adamant she didn’t need one. Maybe she’d already got wind of Nick’s defection and had made the decision to throw her lot in with Little Miss Goodness and her camp. Wouldn’t blame her if she had – Italy with her son and his lover would, I’m sure, seem an infinitely more promising prospect than West Yorkshire in November with an increasingly cantankerous daughter-in-law with Compulsive Granite Disorder, and her strange relations.

  Despite being so utterly tired – I felt as if I’d been squeezed and left out to dry, a bit like one of my mother’s dishcloths which she would regularly make from Dad’s ageing Y-fronts: bleached, boiled and hung out on the line – I’d been unable to sleep, and had tossed and turned all night until, at four o’clock, I’d gone downstairs and made myself some hot milk and given the worktop a bit of a polish. The double realisation, that within a few hours I’d quite possibly lost my husband, my house and security but gained a half-sister and a whole new family in Australia, had done nothing to help me nod off, but everything to bolster my compulsion to clean the granite.

  Tony Drummond, our new head and my new best friend, had been fine about my missing the first half of the morning when I’d approached him at school yesterday. He’d promised to hold the fort with my class until my return, but I hadn’t envisaged not having Sylvia as back-up if India was unable to go to school – which by the look of her she wasn’t. My sensible head assured me that India had nothing more than an ear infection, but my neurotic head – taking over, it seemed, at an alarming rate – insisted that she had something more serious.

  Once I’d got Kit and Liberty off to the school bus, I decided to take India to the surgery with me and, if she was well enough, drive her over to Mum and Dad’s so that I could at least have the afternoon at school. I’d also be able to casually explain that Diana and I were going to pop in that evening with a friend of ours who we thought they’d both like to meet. Before she’d left last night, Diana and I had arranged to meet up with Camilla so that we could take her round to our parents’ house. Beyond that we didn’t have a plan.

  I’d assumed that Daniel and Camilla had left together, going back to her flat in Netherfields, but now, thinking back to Dan’s pleading that he wanted Grace back, I wasn’t so sure. I was determined to find out, though. Grace, I presumed, would want to know and, even if we were being pretty cool with each other, I just had to tell her that the woman her husband was hitched up with was, in actual fact, my niece!

  Where was Sylvia? I actually felt a bit miffed she hadn’t been in touch – just left me high and dry, wondering where she was. I did hope she hadn’t been mugged and was lying in a gutter somewhere. Mind you, I suppose it would be a bit difficult for her to tell me what she was up to when all our phones appeared to be on strike. I’d made the decision, during last night’s fight with insomnia, not to do anything about the phone problem for the moment: ostrich-like I was actually terrified of speaking to Nick and of him telling me things I was terrified of hearing. Also, the lack of a phone would stop the kids spending more of my hard- earned cash on interminable and, I felt, unnecessary, phone calls to their mates.

  Leaving India in the surgery play area, where she’d not only pass on her own bugs but no doubt collect several others from the snot-encrusted toddler who was leaving a viscous trail of green goo on the books and toys, I made my way to the far end of the surgery from where my name had been called by Dr Chadwick.

  ‘Right, Harriet, what can I do for you?’ she asked without looking up from her computer.

  ‘I’m pregnant.’

  ‘That good or bad?’

  ‘Bad. Most definitely bad.’

  This had obviously attracted her attention for she deigned to glance up. ‘Why?’

  ‘I’m working full time now – we can’t do without my wage. My children are all at private school. I’m constantly tired and bad-tempered. I’ve just discovered that my poor mother who, in addition to going a bit, you know, ga-ga, has another child which means I’ve got a new sister, not to mention a niece who, unfortunately is shacked up with my best friend’s husband. This best friend isn’t my best friend anymore because I was really horrid to her when I found her having sex in my potting shed with Enrique Iglesias. My husband seems to have moved permanently to Italy, living La Dolce Vita with Enrique’s mother who I adored when I was eleven, hated when I was fourteen, and with whom my whole security now hangs in the balance. Oh, and India has got something horrible.’

  Like an unstoppable geyser, the torrent of words spewed out, landing in an undignified, but invisible heap on my doctor’s neatly bobbed head.

  ‘Harriet, whoa, whoa, slow down. Take your time. Tell me everything.’ The good doctor had now taken off her glasses, poured both of us a plastic cup of water from the water cooler outside her room, and settled herself for the duration.

  ‘Harriet, you are in no state to make any decision about this baby,’ Dr Chadwick said ten minutes later, handing me a tissue to mop up the tears that had begun in earnest as soon as she started being sympathetic. ‘For a start, Nick isn’t here. It must surely be a joint decision as to what conclusion you come to. The other thing is, there is no certainty that this pregnancy will be viable.’

  ‘Viable? What do you mean, viable?’ I sniffed.

  Dr Chadwick had been scrolling down through her computer. She’d obviously found what she’d been searching for because she now said, ‘The two babies you lost, several years ago, were both caused by a blighted ovum. Your chances of other pregnancies going the same way increase greatly once you’ve experienced one of these. You’ve had two – and you’re now seven years older. What I want you to do is what you did when you were first pregnant with India. I want you to make an appointment at the hospital for an early scan. It’s no good doing it before you are six weeks’ pregnant – the heart of a healthy baby can’t always be seen until then. If there is no heartbeat, then the amniotic sac has carried on forming but the baby itself hasn’t. In effect, the baby never got going. What I also suggest you do, once you’ve let me have a quick look at India, is go home, put both of you to bed and stay there for the rest of the day. Things might look a bit better after that.’

  And so we did. On the way home I popped in to Ralph-Next-Door’s to use their phone and rang school to say I couldn’t leave India as the doctor had confirmed she had an ear infection, rang Dad to say we were coming round to see him and Mum that evening, and rang the hospital consultant’s secretary to arrange a scan in a week’s time. I was about to ask Ralph’s wife, Deirdre, if I c
ould possibly ring Italy, but then thought better of it. I really didn’t want to face up to anything Nick might be going to tell me about his business – or Mandy.

  India and I then snuggled, like nocturnal hamsters, into my bed, her with Calpol and me with toast, marmite and peanut butter, and stayed there until Liberty and Kit were due home from school.

  By seven o’clock that evening I was ready to face Mum. Actually, after catching up with several hours sleep and feasting on a huge home-cooked lasagne I’d found lurking in the depths of the freezer, I was beginning to feel I could perhaps face the world as well. There was absolutely nothing I could do about this pregnancy until after my scan, and I also felt I’d done a fairly good job in convincing the two elder children that everything was absolutely fine and dandy. Kit in particular seemed to have been affected by recent events, and spent a lot of time keeping me in his sight – something he hadn’t needed to do since he was a little boy and frightened of the wolf on the landing. There seemed to be little else I could do about the state of my marriage while I was deliberately remaining out of contact with the perpetrator responsible.

  I left Liberty in charge and set off with Camilla to pick up Diana, making a quick detour via the village co-op so that at least we’d have milk, bread, juice and fruit in the fridge the following morning.

  ‘Sorry about that,’ I said to Camilla, throwing the bulging carrier bags on to the back seat. ‘It’s chaotic enough at our house in the morning with breakfast. Without it, it’s sheer hell.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said almost wistfully. ‘I never thought I’d miss the breakfast arguments back home, but I do.’