Atlantic Shift

by Emily Barr

  I hope you get a chance to write back. I’m looking forward to your company again.

  With lots of love,

  Meg xxxxxxx

  I sit in the semi darkness and write her a brief and jaunty reply, filling her in on my successful day’s filming, my party, my fabulous hotel. I leave out the parts about forcing myself to keep going, about carrying myself through on coffee and alcohol, about being scared to stop and relax because of the fear that I would never be able to stand up again. I don’t mention the strange feeling I have been having, the one I have been desperately holding at bay, the feeling that I might be heading for a breakdown. Megan has no idea that I have a secret, that I am not what I seem, and I would like to keep it that way. Very few people have any idea, and that is extremely good.

  I don’t tell her that, when I reached Howard’s doorstep in Queens, I fell into his arms in tears the moment I saw his grizzly beard, now entirely grey. He understood, even though the last time I saw him was four years ago, at his wedding.

  ‘Little girl,’ he kept saying. ‘Evie, my sweetheart. Come. Come through. Sit down.’

  Howard and I look the same. He is tall and skinny and his hair is light brown, as mine should be. Despite appearances, I don’t really feel that he’s my father. Phil is a far more conventional father figure. I do feel an easy friendship with him, and right now, that’s probably better. I would be embarrassed to fall apart in front of Phil, but with Howard it is absolutely fine. I think this has something to do with the fact that, when I was fifteen, he told me all about his alcoholism. He hid nothing from me, and so it is easy to reciprocate.

  He sat me down, and my stepmother, Sonia, who clearly knows exactly why I was here in my teens, brought me a hot coffee and stroked my hair and left the room. Sonia is exactly the right woman for Howard. He should have married her first time round. She’s not a young trophy wife, but a rotund, dark-haired New Yorker of around his age, and, although this is only the second time I’ve met her, she is obviously deeply sensible. That is exactly what he needs. Sonia is also a recovering alcoholic. I can’t imagine either of them drunk. If I have any subconscious memories of Howard on an alcoholic rampage when I was two, they are deeply buried. He and Sonia met at their AA meetings, which they still go to with a religious fervour at least once a week, and often once a day.

  I will always love Howard for making those four months as good as they could possibly have been. He was limitlessly compassionate, and he never once demanded to know what irresponsible scumbag got his daughter into that sort of a mess in the first place. He must have been dying to ask. I would have been. He left plenty of openings for me to tell him, but I ignored them. Mark was never going to be a part of my life, and I wanted to forget that the whole ill-advised incident had ever happened.

  I hadn’t wanted to come to America, but no one could think of an alternative. It was a godsend that I had a parent in a country where I knew no one and no one knew me.

  ‘You’re sending me away?’ I asked Mum, aghast. That terrible morning, she’d looked at my stomach under my baggiest school jumper, and I had watched something finally click into place in her head.

  ‘Evie?’ she’d said, staring. ‘Are you all right?’

  That was all it had taken. I dissolved, relieved that at last she had noticed, that I hadn’t had to make the announcement I had practised every day since the dreadful moment, five months before, when I’d seen the blue lines on the pregnancy test that I had bought, dull with shame, at an unknown chemist miles from home. I had opened my mouth to make the announcement countless times, and had always closed it again, hoping against hope that I might be imagining it.

  ‘No,’ I told her. Then I said it. ‘I think I’m pregnant.’

  I had been waiting for months for a miracle, a miscarriage, but none had been forthcoming. Through Kate and Ian’s ordeals, I have been eaten up with the unfairness of it all, the fact that my tenacious child hung in there against my best efforts with spirits and crash diets and hot baths, while theirs has failed to materialise at all. Mum made me put on her big coat and took me straight to see the doctor, who estimated that I was twenty-nine weeks, and more than a month too late for an abortion. An emergency rush to the hospital for a scan immediately confirmed it.

  Mum called Phil home from work, and rang Howard.

  ‘But I can’t go to America!’ I wailed. ‘I don’t even know my dad.’

  ‘You’ll get to know him. He’s a good man, he swears he’s sober now, and he’s going to look after you. I know it’s hard, and I’m going to fly over with you because I can’t bear you to make that journey on your own, and I need to check that he really isn’t drinking. There is no other option.’ I looked at her face, and I knew I couldn’t argue. ‘You have got to have the baby, I’m afraid. Now, we’ve all discussed you keeping it,’ I shook my head vehemently, ‘and we know you’re only fifteen, and although Phil and I could bring it up as our own . . .’ I shook my head again and sobbed. ‘So, you’ll have the baby in America, and someone will take it away, and it will go to a good home where it’ll be cared for, OK? It will have a wonderful start in life.’

  I nodded weakly. It wasn’t as if I had an alternative plan.

  Straight away, I grew a huge bump. It was as if the moment that Mum noticed it, it leapt a foot out in front of me, delighted not to have to hide any more. I skulked indoors while they booked my flight. Mum went to Dorothy Perkins and bought me some maternity jeans and T-shirts, and a couple of big jumpers. I literally didn’t leave the house until, at a quarter to six one April morning, I was bundled into the back of the car by Mum and Phil, and driven to Heathrow. Both Mum and I were paranoid about being spotted at the airport, or sitting next to someone we knew on the plane, but it didn’t happen. People gave me funny looks - I was fifteen, but I was young and naive, and could have passed for two or three years younger - and Mum held my hand and whispered to me to ignore them.

  Howard met us, with a huge hug, at the airport, and took us back to his apartment. I had never been out of Europe before. Mum stayed for two days, which must have been weird for them both, then flew home, checking again that I was sure I didn’t want her to look after the baby for me. Now, when I look back, I don’t know why she didn’t insist. Every time I see Tessa, I wonder how I would feel if she was my secret daughter. It would be fine. It would be wonderful. I wish Mum had imposed that decision on me, so I could have followed my child’s progress, influenced her, been a force in her life. Then I wouldn’t have had to wonder, all the time, what she was like, and to know that she might find me one day, and to hope she doesn’t hate me too much. I might not have to keep wondering whether my miscarriage strategies had harmed her.

  I barely saw my baby. I had her at thirty-eight weeks. Dad booked me into a good hospital, where I had a Caesarean because I was terrified of going through labour only to see the child who had been kicking and hiccuping inside me snatched away. Everyone agreed a section would be better (America, happily for me, even then saw Caesarean deliveries almost as the norm), and I had it under a general anaesthetic because I didn’t want to see, or to feel, the baby being lifted out of me. I thought if I didn’t see her emerge into the world, I wouldn’t feel a connection with her.

  I remember coming round after the operation, and forgetting, for a few blissful moments, where I was and why I was there. Then I remembered.

  ‘It’s a girl,’ they told me, when I asked. ‘Would you like to spend a few minutes with her?’

  The second that I saw her, my breasts filled up with colostrum. She was tiny - just under six pounds - and red-faced, and for those brief moments, she was mine. She stared up into my eyes and I stared back. She had been inside me all those months, and I knew her. I recognised her. It was a homecoming.

  ‘It’s you,’ I told her. She seemed to be saying the same to me. It was like meeting someone you’ve known for a lifetime. She was a stranger, yet I knew her better than anyone in the world.

  She had a little
bit of brown hair, and her eyes were light blue. Her hands were tiny, and I picked one up. She gripped my finger. Her nails were the most perfect things I have seen in my life.

  Then they took her away. I shouted ‘Sorry!’ as they left the room. I cried and screamed and begged to be allowed five more minutes with her. They said a lovely couple were going to adopt her and that she would have a happy life. I never asked anything about the couple. I didn’t want to know then. Howard handled that side of it for me.

  My milk came in three days later, and my breasts were hard and enormous. I had to squeeze out the white liquid to stop the pain. I tasted it. It was warm and sweet. This was my daughter’s milk. I was sorry she was being bottle-fed. I wanted to pull her back and give her everything I had. I knew, however, that the lovely couple was the best thing I could do for her.

  I’d had some names in my head before she was born. Louise and I had discussed them, and she’d agreed with me that the best names were Poppy for a girl and William for a boy. In the event, though, I called her Elizabeth, because it suited her. I don’t know what name her new parents gave her. I have a photo of her on the day she was born, the last day that she was mine. I have only ever shown it to my parents. She was my little girl, and I never fed her. I never got up to her in the night, never comforted her, never changed her nappy. I was never her mother. She has learned to walk and talk without me, has been potty-trained and started school. She has grown up without knowing anything about me.

  Jack traced the scar with his fingertips when we first met, and asked me where it came from. I told him I’d had my appendix out. Then I prayed every day that I would never get appendicitis. I suppose it doesn’t matter, any more, if I do.

  One of my biggest setbacks came three years after I had her, when Mum told me, very gently and nervously, that she and Phil were expecting a baby. Throughout her pregnancy I was determined that she would have a boy, but as soon as Phil said those three terrible words - ‘It’s a girl’ - I had to make an enormous effort to be nice. In fact, I had to get ragingly drunk. If I hadn’t spent those months with Howard, talking to him about everything, this would have been the point at which I developed a problem with alcohol. Instead, I dyed my hair blonde, bought some sexy clothes, and reinvented myself as a femme fatale. I was unbelievably lucky that my elastic teenage skin didn’t bear any stretch marks. I visited Bristol only rarely until Tessa was two, and not a baby any more. I always see, next to her, the spirit of Elizabeth, three years older, her unknown niece. And I have just about kept in control of alcohol, although sometimes my longing for a drink, at stressful moments, scares me to death.

  So Howard knows exactly what is wrong with me, and he knows how to make me feel a little better. He and Sonia buy me wine, despite their teetotalism, and take me out to delis and diners for meals. They take me to parks and on the F train into Manhattan for some old-fashioned sightseeing. One night, we go to a diner called Googie’s, that I liked when I was fifteen. I am as relaxed as I have been for days, and I order a burger with curly fries and a side salad and a glass of sauvignon.

  ‘Evie,’ says Howard, looking at Sonia, who nods.

  ‘Mmm?’ I say, cramming my mouth with fries. I am wearing jeans and a cream jumper, and I have scraped my hair back into a ponytail. I hope I don’t run into Alexis. He would be horrified by the sight of me in no make-up at all, rather than a pretence of no make-up. He would be still more horrified to see the fries poking incriminatingly from the corner of my mouth. Alexis, luckily, would never come here. It is the sort of place that must have Dr Atkins spinning in his grave.

  ‘I know we’ve talked about baby Elizabeth a bit since you’ve been here,’ he says gently. ‘And I know that being here is stirring up a lot of memories for you.’

  I pause, mid chew, and stare at him. ‘Mmmm,’ I agree through the carbohydrates.

  ‘But have you thought that in three and a half years, when Elizabeth will be eighteen, she might want to look for you? Have you thought about leaving your details on the Adoption Registry on that date?’

  I execute a huge swallow. I was not expecting this. ‘Of course I have,’ I say, looking from Howard to Sonia and back again. ‘And I will. I think about it all the time. In a way I hope she doesn’t get in touch because I’m so scared she’ll be angry with me. But at the same time, I’ll be waiting to hear from her every day.’

  ‘Have you considered, though,’ says Sonia, softly, ‘how it would impact on your life? None of your friends know about her. Your husband doesn’t know. And Kate and Ian, for example. How will it affect your friendship with them if suddenly, out of the blue, you have a daughter you’ve never mentioned?’

  ‘They should have their own child by then. Children.’

  ‘They sure should,’ she agrees, popping a dainty piece of cucumber into her mouth. ‘Life doesn’t always run to schedule. All of us round this table can testify to that. They might or they might not have their own children, and even if they have, it’s going to impact pretty heavily on your relationship.’

  I look at her. I’ve been trying not to think about this. ‘I’ve always been scared that Kate would find out,’ I tell her. ‘Or Jack. Jack doesn’t matter so much now, but Kate does.’ I think about it for a moment. I have pushed it to the back of my mind, because I am uncomfortable knowing how much it would hurt her. ‘I didn’t tell her when I met her because I’d vowed never to tell anyone again. Since then, it’s built up into a huge secret. She’s said loads of times how happy she is that Jack and I haven’t got any kids. She always says that would make it worse for her than it already is. It’s unfair, isn’t it? There’s me having a child completely by accident, and getting rid of it, and there’s her. . .’

  ‘Evie,’ says Sonia, firmly, ‘life isn’t fair. You can’t beat yourself up about what happened. Your fertility doesn’t make you a bad person. Lots of people have trouble conceiving and if it does come out then Kate will get over it. She is a reasonable, compassionate human being. It will be no surprise to her to learn that other people have babies. It’s you we’re concerned about. Your daddy and I think you need to be prepared for Elizabeth, if and when she comes back into your life.’

  I smile. ‘Do you really think she will?’

  Howard shakes his head. ‘You can’t make any assumptions, honey. She might. She might not. Who knows if they’ve even told her she’s adopted?’

  ‘Mmm.’

  I can’t think of anything else to say, and we all carry on eating in silence. I drink six glasses of wine, one by one, which is normally something I’d feel shy about doing in the company of two recovering alcoholics.

  I sometimes wonder what Howard and Sonia would be like if they got drunk. Would they rampage around shouting? Become maudlin and self-pitying? Would a drop of wine passing their lips send them into a frenzy of brandy and tequila? Or would they just be like me, ordering drink after drink, kidding themselves that each one was the last?

  In the middle of the night, I wake up abruptly. I haven’t consciously been thinking about Megan’s email, but suddenly all her talk of Guy and his questions about me and his false assertions that I don’t tell anything to Mum and Phil point me to one, drunken conclusion.

  Guy might be my stalker.

  chapter eleven

  March

  ‘Mum?’

  ‘Darling! How was New York?’

  I look out of the window, across the rooftops of Kensington. It is a typical early March day. The cloud is so thick that it seems to be compressing London beneath it. All the fumes are trapped. Children are breathing foul air. Exhaust and effluent are circulating, in an ever-decreasing space, unable to disperse. London is filthy. Sometimes you have to leave your home to see it clearly, and now that I am back, I know where I want to be. I imagine the crisp blue spring of New York, and wonder how easy it would be, in fact, for me to move there.

  ‘Great,’ I tell her, listlessly. ‘You know, New York, including the Boroughs, is probably the same size as London, ish
, but because it’s on the edge of a huge continent that’s far less densely populated, it doesn’t seem to have the pollution that we do here. Though LA does, because it’s in a basin. But London’s awful. I’m looking at it now, Mum. It’s horrible.’

  Mum sounds nonplussed. ‘Right. And how was the advert? When can we see it?’

  ‘It all went fine. They seemed to like me. At least they said they did. They’d never in a million years have said if they didn’t. But I met lots of people, smiled a lot, played OK, I think. I didn’t butcher “The Swan”, at least.’

  She sounds artificially bright. ‘Great! Well done, darling. Will you get a video then? Can we watch it?’

  ‘They’re going to email it to me. I’ll send it on to you. Taylor can download it for you and play it to you on the computer.’

  ‘Really? Are you sure? So what about the rest of it?’

  I sigh. There’s no point pretending, with Mum. ‘Bit hard, actually,’ I tell her, sitting down on the floor and playing with the phone cord. ‘You know I haven’t been there in years. But I had a great time with Howard and Sonia, and I feel OK about it now.’ I pause. I check again that Megan has not come home quietly. ‘Actually,’ I tell her, ‘I’m trying not to obsess, but I can’t stop wondering what would happen if she tracks me down. When she’s eighteen. We talked about it quite a bit and now I can’t stop imagining. What do you think she looks like, Mum?’

  I hear Mum’s hesitation. ‘It’s hard. It’s easy for me to say this, but thinking like that isn’t going to make life any more straightforward for you. We don’t know what she looks like. Can you put those feelings on hold for a few more years?’

  I laugh, but mirthlessly, and put my shield back up. ‘Of course. I’ve lived with it for this long. I can do it a bit longer. You know, she’s nearly as old now as I was when I had her.’ I realise something. ‘She could get pregnant! I could become a grandmother in a couple of years!’