I’d put on the brakes originally to avoid bumping into a woman who was heading fast in my direction. My intention was to swerve around her and let her continue on in her path, but my feet were incapable of moving.
She stopped, too. We were about a metre apart.
I hung onto the heavy bags, the plastic handles digging into my skin as I stared at the woman across from me.
My mother. Mandy.
It was definitely her. There was no mistaking it this time; no trying to delude myself that it wasn’t her, that the woman I’d met outside of Fortnum and Mason’s was simply someone who happened to look like my mother. I’d managed to find an old photo of her at my dad’s place and compared it to the blurry photo Sigrid had managed to take. It hadn’t been a conclusive match. But now I was sure, they were one in the same.
The woman at whom I was staring, and who’d been there on that fateful day, was my mother. The woman that had abandoned me as a child.
“Hello again,” she said softly, and stepped a little closer.
It took a moment or two for my brain to start working again before I could say anything. I was stunned. Shocked beyond belief that it was truly happening, that she was there again. And she didn’t know it but she was about to ruin what would’ve been a magical day.
“What do you want? Are you following me?” I asked forcefully. That seemed to be the only explanation. London, after all, was a big city and for her to turn up, twice now, and be in the same exact spot that I was in was no longer a coincidence. No, it was three times, I reminded myself. She’d been in the hospital, too.
“Can we talk?”
“I’m not sure we have anything to talk about,” I responded coldly, eager to have the encounter over and done with. I wanted to carry on as if it had never happened, that I’d never bumped into her on the street. I wanted to go home and be with Drake and my kids. And finally give my son a bloody name!
I didn’t want to have to deal with this shit. Not that day. Not ever.
“Please. I just want to speak to you. It won’t take long, I promise.”
“Why now? Why after all these years that you decide that now is the time you want to speak to me?”
Mandy took another step closer, like she was trying to ease herself into my life. “I promise I’ll explain. Maybe we could grab a coffee? Sit down somewhere? Five minutes?”
I glanced left and then right. The quickest way to get back to Drake was to get this over and done with. Let her have her five minutes then leave. Otherwise I knew I’d always wonder what she wanted to say to me. It would plague me forever.
“Fine. Over there,” I said as I spotted a coffee chain. “You get five minutes, and that’s it.”
“Okay,” she said, a tiny smile playing on her lips.
“Five minutes is all you deserve.”
Mandy swallowed. I walked past her and presumed she was following as I marched across the road. I didn’t look behind; I stared doggedly at the coffee shop, my destination. As soon as I opened the door I spotted a table near the window and claimed it, bypassing the counter. I wasn’t about to order anything. Five minutes was all she would be allowed, I told myself again.
“I’m going to get something, I’ll be right back.” She hesitated for a moment then turned toward me. “Do you want anything?” I shook my head.
While she was away I tried to dredge up and work through all the things I’d wanted to ask her when I was a kid. There had been lists upon lists of them. Like what was she doing? Where was she? Did she ever think about me? But as I sat there going over them, none of them truly mattered now. There was only one real question that I wanted her to answer. And that was why.
Carefully balancing a cup on a saucer so the contents wouldn’t spill, she shuffled back toward the table and slipped into the seat opposite me. She took a quiet sip of her drink. “That’s quite good, are you sure you don’t want—”
“No. I don’t.”
After this I predicted I probably wouldn’t ever be able to set foot in one of these coffee chains. They’d be ruined for me.
“I just want you to get on with it.”
“Okay.” She set her cup down and lay her hands in her lap. “Gosh, I don’t know where to start now.”
“Well, you better think quick. You already wasted a few minutes by getting that drink.” For a second I didn’t even recognise my own voice. It was so harsh, so cruel. Cold. That wasn’t me, but I had to steel myself against this woman. It was crucial that I did so.
“In that case: I’m sorry. You have every right to be angry with me, and I deserve whatever you throw at me right now. But I want you to know I am sorry.”
“Sorry for what?” I wanted her to say the words. I needed her to tell me exactly what she was sorry for.
“You want specifics?”
I nodded.
“Well, I’m sorry for not getting in touch sooner.”
“Is that it?” I interrupted. “Not for anything else?”
She cleared her throat and I could tell she knew exactly what I was trying to get her to say.
“If you mean am I sorry for leaving you when you were little, I’m afraid I can’t do that.”
My mouth dropped open. Was she serious?
“What?” Anger welled up inside me. She had the audacity to sit there and tell me that she didn’t feel one ounce of sadness when she left me! “I thought you were here to apologise. But you don’t actually regret leaving me?”
My mother tensed up and took in a deep breath as if she was expecting this reaction and getting ready to recite something she’d prepared.
“If you let me explain,” she said, “please.”
I waited. Forcing myself not to say another word. To let her speak and have her remaining minutes that were ticking away.
She steeled herself again. “To answer your question: no, I don’t regret it. I had no choice. I had to do it.” I went to open my mouth, but she held up her hand. “I know it pains you to hear me saying these things. But I promise I am not trying to intentionally hurt you. I’m trying to explain that I had no choice. I had no right being your mother. I made the right choice at the time.”
My mother glanced down at the table. “I chose life instead of death.”
I shook my head, “I don’t understand.”
“Maybe it’s different for you and your little one. I hope to god it is. But for me, the day they put you into my arms I knew right away there was something wrong. Something wrong with me. Not you. Do you understand? You did nothing wrong. It was all me. I’ve been through so much therapy to realise this but I was never meant to be a mother.” She smiled as if that would explain things, but I was still lost.
“You cried so much, and there was nothing I could do to make you stop. You hated me, and I guess in a way I started to hate you. The burden of it all—I was at the end of my tether. But I didn’t want to hurt you. Please understand that, I wanted no harm to come to you. Yet every moment that I stayed, a little piece of me died inside. I was becoming a shell. I was dying. Thinking about it all the time. And instinctively I knew I had to choose. Either to die or to live.
“And I chose to live.”
The clatter of coffee-shop sounds bombarded us all around when she stopped talking. They’d always been there, in the background, but it was only at that moment that they were coming back into focus.
“Do you understand?” she asked quietly.
I shook my head. “No,” I lied, even though I understood perfectly well. I didn’t want to hear her words or have them sink in. I needed to push them away and not give them any attention… those same feelings that she’d described, it was like walls closing in around me. Unable to escape. A helpless desperation that I couldn’t shake off.
She smiled. “Well, I’m glad that you at least you haven’t experienced the same thing with your children. You have two, right?”
“Yes,” I stuttered, trying to refocus my mind and not let it wander into the dark places it seemed
to want to go. You are not like your mother. “How do you know about them? I mean… have you been stalking me?”
“In a sense, yes,” she admitted. She bowed her head as in an admission of guilt and busied herself with her coffee for a moment. “I know it was wrong, but I wanted to know I’d made the right choice.”
“What do you mean?”
“I knew your father was capable of raising you, that I had no doubt about. But I still wanted to see how you turned out. And here you are; a successful woman, her own little business, a wealthy husband, and two little ones. So I think it’s safe to say you turned out just fine… I made the right choice.”
I should’ve stood up and left right then but I was glued to my seat.
“How dare you think you had anything to do with how my life turned out—”
“But I did, don’t you see? If I’d stayed we’d both would’ve been miserable. And most probably—well there’s no probably about it—I would’ve killed myself.”
I sat back as if she’d slapped me.
“So you would’ve still ended up with no mother. It would’ve just been a more tragic ending.”
I took a deep breath and shook my head. “You’re insane. I can’t believe this is what you wanted to tell me…”
She sighed as if she was used to hearing that word: insane, but was now able to get past it. “It’s not what I wanted to tell you, well ask you really, but I guess I had to start from the beginning.”
Despite myself, I had to know. “What then?”
“A few years ago I went into renal failure.” She stopped and put her hands up in case she thought I was going to flee. “Don’t worry I don’t need a kidney, I’m okay now,” she said with a short smile. “But the whole process made me realise how short life is. And of course I had a lot of time to think. You go over all your regrets and all the things you wanted to do but never did, when you’re dying. And while I don’t regret leaving you and giving you the best chance in life—you were so much better off with your dad, and without me—I do regret not getting to know you. I never stopped thinking about you. Or how you were, or what you were doing. I just knew I couldn’t be your mom, no matter how much I wanted to. It would’ve destroyed us both.
“So I guess this is my long-winded way of saying I want to be in your life. I want to know who you are. And I’m sorry if I made all this awkward or if I went about it the wrong way. I used a private detective you see to find out where you were…” she trailed off.
“Viola?”
“Stop. You have no right, no right whatsoever!” I said knowing I was raising my voice and people were starting to look our way. “You don’t get to come back after nearly thirty years and decide you want to know who I am as an adult. You don’t get to have that privilege! You should’ve stayed if you… You don’t get to waltz back into my life now as if nothing happened. As if we could be friends and you could get to know me! No right at all!
“You don’t get to do this to me. And turn my life upside down again. I can’t even look at you right now. I am not like you, do you understand?”
“What do you mean, you’re not like me? Vi?”
“It doesn’t matter, because I’m not. And this conversation is over. I never want to see you again. Come near me or my children again and I’ll have you arrested.”
I stood and the chair was flung backward into another customer. I quickly apologised to the person I’d just hit with my chair, grabbed my bags, and left the coffee shop. Leaving my stunned mother still sitting in her seat.
Chapter Sixteen
How dare she.
How dare she ruin everything! My head was so full of her words, infiltrating every cell with doubt. With realisation. With the truth.
I had a right mind to go back there and slap her across the face, transfer all the pain I was feeling into a forceful blow that would remove that worried look from her face.
As I walked, not paying attention to where I was going, just walking for the sake of walking because that seemed the only thing to calm me down, I kept replaying her words over and over. They wouldn’t stop.
You cried so much. There was nothing I could do to make you stop.
I stopped abruptly and closed my head attempting to shake away the words.
You hated me. I started to hate you.
“No,” I said out loud to myself. A passer-by glanced at me but carried on walking away from me. Like I was a crazy person, too dangerous to go near. I wouldn’t let her words infect me. They had nothing to do with the way I was feeling. Nothing at all. I wasn’t like her.
I loved my son. Loved him to pieces, didn’t I?
I would’ve killed myself, I heard my mother’s voice say.
“No, no, no,” I muttered as I carried on walking as if I was on a mission to drown out the voices in my head by the loud sounds of my footfalls.
But it wasn’t working. Nothing seemed to make sense anymore.
Always drawn to water, I found myself in a small park with a good-sized pond. A couple of swans floated lazily along the surface, and I sat on a wooden bench, one that was going green with age, to watch them. I told myself if I could concentrate on them for long enough, a kind of meditation of sorts, I would soon forget about the short conversation I’d had with Mandy. So I stared and stared, following their movements as they glided around. Sometimes they would occasionally stop, circle around each other. And sometimes they would come up onto the muddy bank, shaking their bulbous bodies, ridding themselves of the water that clung to their feathers.
For the most part the process was working, but it was when the pair drifted to the centre of the pond that was built up of fallen trees and branches—a safe haven for the wildlife in the park—that the tears came back with a vengeance. The pair of swans had hidden away in the undergrowth a little signet baby and both of them looked so happy to be back with their offspring.
I loved him, I told myself. I did. So why couldn’t I feel it? Why didn’t I feel the bond that I was supposed to?
Maybe I was like her.
I didn’t want to admit it, but in that moment it seemed like the only logical conclusion. It made sense. I was her daughter, I had her genes… it wasn’t so far fetched that mother and daughter would be alike. She’d abandoned me; would I abandon my kids?
I covered my mouth with my hand feeling the impact of every single doubting thought I’d had ever since the difficult birth hitting me all at once.
Her story and mine felt so similar. The dread, the feeling of incompetence, the void that was left—all consuming me. And the utter unbearable thought that everything would be better if I was no longer around.
Professionals in suits, in singles and pairs, started to enter the park finding their way to benches and tables. They took out their lunches and began to eat. I’d been gone for so long, Drake would be starting to worry, I knew.
I dug out my phone. The last thing I wanted him to be was worried. I still needed to sort through the jumble in my head. But I couldn’t give him the silent treatment and have him again go through the process of trying to find me like when I’d wandered off the last time. Albeit it wasn’t quite the same—I hadn’t been in my right mind then—did that mean I was in my right mind now? My mind interjected.
Shaking off the thought I constructed a simple message that would kill two birds with one stone; give me some more time and stop Drake from panicking and calling the police.
Got held up with something. Not sure when I’ll be back home, but don’t worry. Love you, Vi.
My phone almost immediately buzzed in my hand. A reply from Drake.
What happened? Come home soon, our boy is eager to be named. x x x
I started to type out a response but in the end nothing seemed right, and I tapped the delete button, then turned my phone off before it could buzz again.
I shook my head trying to fight, warring with myself. We still hadn’t named him. It was ironic but as I began to wonder whether I was fit to be his mother, whether he wo
uld be better off without me, that the perfect name for him popped into the forefront of my mind. It would suit him so well, and I was sure Drake would’ve approved of it, too. But what right did I have to name the child I was considering leaving?
Oh, god. I felt sick.
My breasts ached, still swollen and heavy with milk that I was unable to give him. He didn’t want what I had. I couldn’t make him happy. Maybe women like my mother, Christine, and me just weren’t meant to be moms?
For what seemed like the thousandth time that day I started crying again and dug into my purse for a tissue. The packet was empty. I’d used them all up already.
“God damn it!” I cursed and managed to scare a few little birds that had been happily pecking near my feet.
A hand with a crisp, white handkerchief appeared directly in front of my face. The cotton fluttered in the slight breeze, revealing for a moment the stitched initials. DM.
My eyes darted right, following the length of the person’s arm to see who was attached to it at the other end. Drake Millar.
Drake smiled sadly once our eyes connected and he offered the handkerchief again. I took and clamped it in my hand.
“Can I sit?” he asked. He was being cautious, wary of me, looking at me with concern. So much for not worrying him, I thought.
I nodded and dabbed my eyes trying to stop the flow.
We sat for a beat, each of us staring out at the murky pond water.
“How did you find me?” I started, and sneaked a glance at his side profile. He gave a slight wince.
“Honestly? I tracked you.”
“I don’t underst—”
“After I thought I nearly lost you again, I put an app on your phone so I could find you anywhere at anytime. I actually created it myself; I designed it so it could even be traced while the phone is off.”
I felt him move. It was his turn to look at me.
“Are you mad?” he asked.
Considering his question, I shook my head. “No. If I had your skills and been through what you had, I probably would’ve done the same thing.”
Loving my Billionaire Stepbrother's Baby Page 11