The Girl You Gave Away: An absolutely gripping psychological thriller

by Jess Ryder

I sat next to Jade and placed my hand gently on her arm. It was the first time I’d touched my daughter since she was born, and it felt electric, an instant current running between us. She shuddered, as if she’d felt it too.

  ‘Are you okay?’ I whispered.

  ‘Yes.’ She opened her eyes and stopped rocking. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to cause a row. I’d given up, I thought you didn’t want to know. Then I got your email on my birthday. I was so shocked—’

  ‘What email?’ shouted Tom. ‘What fucking email?’

  I held up my hand. ‘Oli’s right, we need to calm down. Chloe? Oli? Come over here, let’s talk.’

  The children came forward straight away. Chloe perched on the other side of Jade – in a sweet gesture of solidarity, I thought – while Oli sat on the rug, close to his sister. Tom stayed standing up, but he leant against the windowsill and stuffed his tense, angry fists into his pockets.

  I cleared my throat. ‘I had Jade when I was fifteen; she was adopted immediately. I wanted to keep her but Granny and Grandad wouldn’t let me. I was made to feel really ashamed, like I’d done a terrible thing, ruined everybody’s lives. She became this dreadful secret. I was supposed to move on and forget about her, but I couldn’t. I felt really guilty about what I’d done. I just hoped she’d had a happy life.’ I looked at Jade for some kind of confirmation, but her expression didn’t change. ‘I didn’t hear from her at all until a couple of months ago, on my birthday, when she sent me a card.’ I looked at her again. ‘Was that you? Only I’m confused, because—’

  ‘Yes, yes, of course.’

  ‘Right. Okay. And you sent the email a couple of weeks later?’

  ‘Yes. But you didn’t answer. I thought you’d rejected me.’

  Tom cut in. ‘I can’t take any more of this.’ He pushed off the windowsill. ‘I need a drink.’ He whipped past me, heading for the hallway.

  ‘Please, Tom, let me explain …’ But there was no reply, just the sound of the front door slamming.

  There was a long pause.

  ‘Heavy stuff,’ muttered Chloe. ‘Dad never swears.’

  ‘He’s upset,’ Oli said. ‘He’ll be back, probably just gone to the pub.’

  ‘Oh dear …’ I sighed. ‘I’m so sorry, guys, I feel awful.’

  Oli shrugged. ‘Yeah, well, there’s a lot to talk about. Why don’t we leave you two alone for a bit?’ He stood up. ‘Come on, Chlo, let’s go up to my room, eh?’

  She nodded and got to her feet. ‘Good to meet you, Jade,’ she said, sounding oddly grown-up. ‘Sorry about all the shit. I’m afraid that’s what this family’s like.’

  Jade smiled weakly as they left the room. I sighed again, even more deeply this time. A weary silence descended on the two of us.

  ‘I never thought I’d be a secret,’ she said eventually. ‘On the telly, everyone already knows about the adopted child, and they’re all really happy for the mum, even the husband. You never see things like this. Not people shouting and storming off and stuff.’

  ‘Well that’s all my fault, and I’m really sorry you had to witness it.’

  ‘I should have sent you another email saying I was coming, then you’d have had time.’

  ‘I’ve had years, Jade,’ I said, ‘and I did nothing. It’s totally my fault.’ I hesitated, not sure how to broach the next subject. ‘I need to ask you something. It’s really important.’

  ‘Okay.’ She blinked at me.

  ‘After I received your email, somebody else got in touch with me on my mobile, claiming to be you. Obviously I thought it was you – I mean, my actual daughter. I met her a couple of times and …’ I paused to study her reaction. ‘Do you know who I’m talking about?’

  She was looking bewildered. ‘What? I don’t understand. You met someone who was pretending to be me?’

  ‘Yes. I feel really stupid now because she didn’t look anything like me and I didn’t really feel a connection, while you … well, I’d have guessed you were mine if I’d seen you in the street. You look so much like me when I was your age. And I just … I just know. Inside.’

  Jade’s eyes glistened. ‘Yeah, I feel it too. Funny, isn’t it? I’ve never felt that before. Never met anyone related to me.’

  ‘So who did I meet?’ I pressed. ‘Do you know her? Did you ask her to go in your place? She seemed to know all about me; she even gave me a copy of your adoption file.’

  She sniffed back her tears. ‘I really don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘She was taller than you, with long hair – brown with blonde highlights – hazel eyes, painted fingernails, face caked in make-up.’

  ‘No. Don’t know who you mean. Nothing to do with me.’

  ‘I gave her a lot of money.’

  She stopped short. ‘You did what?’

  ‘Yes. I told her it wasn’t good timing to tell the family – as you can see, I knew it was going to be difficult – and she said that if I helped her pay some debts, she’d leave me alone for a bit.’

  Jade frowned and look puzzled for a moment, as if she was working out a particularly difficult sum out in her head. ‘You thought she was your daughter … and you didn’t want anyone to know she existed, so … you paid her off, like?’

  ‘I know it sounds bad, but I had good reason—’

  ‘Yeah … yeah, I get it. You were ashamed of me.’

  ‘No, it was just bad timing. Look, you’re missing the point here, Jade. I gave this person ten thousand pounds, I was the victim of fraud, and I’d like to get my money back.’

  ‘Ten thousand pounds? Ten thousand pounds! That’s how much you wanted to keep me a secret, was it?’ She stood up. ‘Well I’m really sorry I spoilt all your plans. No wonder your husband’s pissed off with you. You’re just a dirty liar who’ll do anything to get her own way; you don’t care how much it costs. Ten thousand pounds? Huh! Well, it’s all out in the open now. Your family knows how disgusting you are.’

  I recoiled. ‘No, Jade, you misunderstand. I know you’re genuine, you’d never do a thing like that. It’s this other woman, she blackmailed me, threatened to make trouble for my business.’

  ‘Oh, so it’s your business you really care about.’

  ‘No! I care about my family – I care about you. We’ve been tricked. Both of us. Come on, you must know who she is.’

  ‘Well I don’t, so there. And even if I did, I wouldn’t tell you.’ She pulled up her hood and marched from the room.

  ‘Please don’t go,’ I pleaded, following her. ‘I’m sorry, so sorry … It’s not how it looks.’

  ‘Just piss off,’ she said, opening the door. She threw me a last withering look and then walked out, slamming it in my face.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Jade

  April 2020

  Jade is angry – angry, hurt and upset. These are just a few of the emotions swirling around her body. She can’t even put a name to the rest of them; they are too dark, too dangerous. The feeling is overwhelming, terrifying. She’s been here before and knows how badly it can end.

  She pushes open the door to her room and slams it behind her. Oli and Chloe’s faces stare smugly at her from the noticeboard. Her brother and sister; how she hates them now. How did she ever think her birth mum would let her get anywhere near them? She rips down the photos, tearing them into tiny pieces and scattering them across the carpet. She grinds her boot into a fragment of Chloe’s grin. This is what her birth mum has done to her – torn her dreams apart. Now she’s going to tear them apart and see how they like it.

  She kicks the chair over, empties the waste-paper basket onto the floor and jumps on it until it breaks. Then she picks up the flimsy bedside table and hurls it at the window. The glass doesn’t crack but the table smashes. Good. Hurling herself onto the bed, she pummels the bedding, biting the duvet until her teeth hurt. The temperature inside her is rising; she’s going to boil over any second. She so badly wants to hurt someone, but there’s nobody here.

  The st
upid noticeboard will have to be her victim. She wrenches it off the wall and throws it across the room. It merely bounces off the bed, so she lunges at it, picking it up by the string and beating it against the wardrobe until it cracks. She stamps on its back, hatred and fury coursing through her body. How dare she treat her like this? How dare she? She’s just as good as them, the same flesh and blood.

  The noticeboard is in pieces. She stands back from her victim, gasping. OMG, she’s going to be in big trouble. Trashing your room is not tolerated; she could be chucked out, thrown onto the streets. She’ll have nowhere to go. She’s not going back to Hampstead, no way. And her birth mum doesn’t want her. She thinks she’s trash, junk mail you can just ignore or throw in the bin. But if she’s trash, it’s because she comes from trash.

  An anxiety attack is threatening; she knows the signs now, she’s been taught to detect them. It always starts at the edges and creeps in. Her fingers and toes are tingling with pain, as if somebody is stabbing them with needles. She feels dizzy and disorientated, her head cut off from the rest of her. And now she can’t breathe properly. She tries to fill her lungs but it’s as if there’s a blockage there, a hand squeezing her throat. There’s a panic button in the room but she’s not supposed to press it unless she’s in danger. They mean from other residents, not herself.

  It’s hard to move. She can’t feel her feet properly; it’s as if she’s walking on bubble wrap. Holding onto the furniture, she staggers to the bathroom and runs the cold tap, waiting for the water to turn icy before she depresses the plug. She fills the basin until it starts to overflow, then plunges her face into the water, keeping it there for as long as she can before lifting her head and spluttering for air. Her therapist taught her this technique. It’s an animal thing; it’s got the words ‘mammal’ and ‘diving’ in it. Putting your face in cold water slows your heartbeat, which releases tension. It’s not as good as cutting, but she’s promised Mandy she won’t do that any more and she really, really wants to stick to it.

  Her cheeks are wet, mascara clogged. She pushes soggy strands of hair behind her ears. What’s the other thing she’s supposed to do? Oh yes, exercise. A minute of intense activity, running on the spot or jumping jacks. She hates exercise, it makes her tits hurt, but this is an emergency. She wraps her arms around her chest and drums her feet against the floor of the bathroom, feeling like a cartoon character – the idiot who runs in mid-air before crashing into the ravine below.

  After a few seconds, her legs give way, pushing her down onto her knees. Her hair drips onto the tiles, her eyebrows must be smudged, her lashes ruined. She feels ridiculous, and not much calmer. The anger is still present, simmering just beneath the surface. She cannot – will not – take the humiliation of being rejected again.

  The only thing that gets her back on her feet is the thought of being discovered. Her door is locked but the staff have a master key. She’s been making so much noise it’s a wonder they haven’t come to see what’s going on.

  She goes back into her room and picks up the broken pieces of the bedside table. It’s only a cheap IKEA thing; she can buy another one. The waste-paper basket is wrecked too, but easy enough to replace. Then there’s the noticeboard … She sighs. It’s not the cost she cares about, it’s the trouble she’s going to be in if – when, knowing her luck – Mandy finds out. She’s already on a final warning.

  She can’t bear the humiliation of being told to get out. She’ll leave now. Before anyone comes to tell her off. She opens her wardrobe and tears the clothes off their hangers, flinging them on the bed. Then she runs to the communal kitchen and nicks a few bin liners, goes back to her room and stuffs them with her belongings. It doesn’t take long to pack. She hasn’t accumulated much stuff in the time she’s been here. Just a few bits and bobs. And the stuff she brought from her parents’ place, of course.

  She leaves a note on the desk. Moved out. Jade x What else is there to say? Hmm … Mummy and Daddy would want her to apologise for trashing the place. She adds Sorry!! then picks up the bin liners and walks out of the hostel.

  Her destination is obvious. She doesn’t even have to think about it. The keys to Mia’s flat jangle in her pocket, where they’ve been ever since Amy and Mia left for Lanzarote. As she makes her way across to the estate, she thinks about her birth mum again. Her insides boil like thick, angry soup, spitting and hissing, bits of herself burning on the bottom of the pan. Except it isn’t anger she’s feeling; it’s something deeper, more frightening, more permanent.

  She lets herself in and immediately flings herself onto the sofa, burying her face in a cushion that smells of something sharp and chemical – it shoots right up her nostrils and she has to hurl the cushion across the room to get away from it. Nail varnish remover. Amy spilt some while she was getting ready to go away, she remembers. The thieving little bitch.

  There’s no doubt in Jade’s mind that it was Amy who impersonated her. It has to be. Amy’s the only other person who had access to the adoption file. They went together to Erin’s old address, pored over the photos and documents the neighbours sent. Amy helped her choose the birthday card and virtually wrote the email herself. The lies about being brought up in care belonged to Jade, but Amy didn’t know that. ‘We’ve got to write a good sob story,’ she said.

  When Erin didn’t reply, Amy pretended to be disgusted. She made a big thing about Jade not writing to her again or following up with a phone call, even though they had the number. She even suggested Jade delete her special email address, which she’d been meaning to do but it had slipped her mind.

  Did Amy plan it from the beginning? Perhaps the idea came into her head when they discovered Erin was a rich businesswoman. Not that rich; probably not as well off as Erin’s adoptive parents, funnily enough, who live in one of London’s most desirable postcodes. But her ‘executive home’ is still luxurious compared to Amy and Mia’s flat.

  Jade shifts onto her elbows and surveys the shabby furniture, the stained carpet, the damp patch in the corner where the window frame doesn’t fit. She knows why Amy wanted – no, needed – the money. It wasn’t for home improvements. She wanted to make Mia’s dying wish come true. Two months in Lanzarote. Sun, sangria and sea glimpses. It’s not surprising that she was tempted to extract some dosh out of Erin, especially when she realised Jade wasn’t capable of running such a scam. Blackmail. Impersonation. That’s hard-core acting; it takes guts, what Daddy would call ‘chutzpah’. Jade has never understood the meaning of that word until now.

  The irony is, she would have given them the money like a shot, if only Amy had asked. She has several thousand pounds saved from the top-up money her parents pay into her account every month. Most of the time she doesn’t know what to do with it. She doesn’t use drugs any more, has no social life, no hobbies, nobody to go on holiday with.

  But then she remembers Amy doesn’t know about her easy-touch adoptive parents – the ‘payrents’, as she used to call them. Why? Because Jade is just as much of a liar as Amy. And now it turns out that her birth mum is the biggest liar of them all.

  Lying is not good. Jade already knows this; she’s had it drummed into her enough times by her mother. Her stories have got her into considerable trouble over the years, with teachers, school friends and their parents, neighbours, shopkeepers, even the police. Her relationship with the truth has always been fragile. And now she knows where it comes from. It’s in the blood.

  She gets up and goes into the kitchen, runs the tap and fills a glass with cold water. Drinks it down in one go. She’s feeling a little calmer now, but there’s a bad feeling in her gut. She knows what’s coming next. A huge wave of sadness is slowly rumbling towards her; she can feel it building and swelling. By the time it reaches her, it’ll be so big it’ll knock her off her feet. This always happens when she has a crisis. She gets sucked down and can’t find her way back to the surface for days, sometimes weeks. It’s like swimming underwater when the sand has been churned up and you can’t
see. It’s like choking on your own spit.

  She goes back to the sitting room and flicks on the television, anxious to find something to take her mind off the mess she’s in. Images pass before her eyes but nothing pierces her brain; it’s too clogged with thoughts of her birth mum, who paid ten thousand pounds thinking she was getting rid of her; of Amy, who used and abused their friendship; of Mia sitting on the balcony of her Lanzarote apartment, gazing at the sunset. At least one good thing has come out of it; one person’s dream has come true.

  And now what? Should she call Amy and give her a flea in her ear, send her a load of bile-coated texts? She could even fly over and confront her at the apartment, if she wanted. Not that she’s ever been on a plane by herself before. When she was a child, the family flew all over Europe for holidays – villas in Tuscany or the Greek islands, cultural trips to Berlin, Paris and Madrid. But then Stephen and Sarah decided their carbon footprint was too great and started using high-speed trains instead. Jade was pleased, on two counts. She was happy to do her bit to save the planet, and it meant she didn’t have to fear for her life four times a year.

  She dismisses the idea of turning up in Lanzarote unannounced. Mia might not know about the blackmail. It doesn’t seem the kind of thing she would support. If she finds out what Amy has done, it’ll spoil their holiday; it might even cause a rift between mother and daughter, and there’s been enough of that kind of thing lately.

  No, she can’t accuse Amy and demand she give the money back; it wouldn’t be fair to Mia, who might have to come home and spend her last days stuck in this dreary place with only the grimy city to look at from her bedroom window.

  And there’s something else to consider. If Jade falls out with Amy, she’ll have to leave the flat, and then where will she go? There’s no way she can go back to her parents; that wouldn’t work. She’ll end up on the streets, bunking down with Bobby opposite the charity shop.

  She closes her eyes and shivers as nasty memories bubble to the surface. Druggies robbing her, drunk guys pissing on her sleeping bag, old men asking her for sex. Rats. The endless biting cold. Nope, that’s not for her. Mia’s flat is no palace, but it’s warm and mostly dry. The fridge and oven work; the shower leaks, but she can still clean herself and wash her hair. And she likes it here on her own, with nobody nagging her about finding a proper job or reminding her to take her anxiety pills.