The Healing Place

by Clare Nonhebel

CHAPTER 31

  Rachel was so excited at the prospect of seeing the O’Connell family again that she wanted to go straight there.

  ‘You’ve had nothing to eat,’ Franz protested. ‘Aren’t you hungry? I am!’

  ‘No, I just really want to see them,’ Rachel admitted.

  ‘How about if we drop you off there? Spend some time with them, phone Tina, and Ella and I will see you later.’

  ‘Sure. Great.’

  ‘We’ll just come in with you, then we’ll go off for a meal somewhere. You’re sure?’

  ‘Yes, that’s what I’d like.’

  As they drew up in front of the house, before they got out of the car, Rachel leaned over from the back seat and said suddenly, ‘You know what he said to me when we went for that test thing at the clinic?’

  ‘No,’ Franz said. ‘What?’

  ‘Just before we went in – we’d registered and everything and were sitting waiting to be called – he said, “I want you to know you couldn’t be more dear to me if you were my own daughter.”’

  Franz and Ella waited.

  Rachel cleared her throat. ‘I knew then,’ she said, ‘that he hadn’t been lying to me; my mother had. I wasn’t his. And I’d put him in this position, making him go to some clinic that he'd most likely visited and where people would know who he was, and I suddenly realized what it would do to him – that even if the test came out negative he was going to look guilty.

  ‘Everyone would think that if he’d had to go for a test to find out if he was my father or not, then he must have slept with Yolande, even if she hadn’t got pregnant by him. You must have known that’s how it would look, didn’t you?’ she said to Franz. ‘That’s why you tried to stop me.’

  He nodded.

  ‘Well, it didn’t occur to me until that moment. I must have been really stupid.’

  ‘Or young,’ Franz said. ‘You only got the idea about paternity tests because there was something on television at the time about it – some soap or something, wasn’t it?’

  ‘Yes. A girl didn’t know if her dad was the real one so she faked some accident and made him cut his hand so she could send off a blood sample to be analyzed. Something like that. Only I didn't know where you would send it. I just knew you could get it done at that clinic, locally.’

  ‘At least you didn't try to do it without him knowing,’ said Ella, who was piecing together the story now. ‘You told him you wanted him to do the test.’

  ‘Yes, but I thought he’d just give a sample of blood or something, or go to the hospital on another day from me, then maybe no one would get to know about it. But when I told him I wanted to do the test, he said he was coming with me.’

  ‘Why?’ Ella asked.

  Her voice shook. ‘He said he didn’t want me going through that on my own. If I wanted to do it, we’d go together, he said. Then, when he said that thing in the waiting room, that he couldn’t love me more if I was his daughter, I knew he was doing this test to prove he cared about me; there was never any possibility that I was his. I wanted to go home then but I didn’t know how to say it. My pride got in the way.’

  ‘Or embarrassment,’ Ella suggested.

  ‘I was embarrassed,’ Rachel agreed.

  ‘I think being in your teens is the worst time for not knowing who your father is,’ Ella said. ‘It was for me.’

  ‘Didn’t you know either?’ There was hope in Rachel’s voice.

  ‘My mother narrowed it down to a shortlist of five,’ Ella told her.

  ‘Was your mother a prostitute?’

  Again, Ella thought, amused, there was that childlike directness.

  ‘No, she wasn’t. She was a hippy, and carried on being one long after it had gone out of fashion. I was conceived at a love-in, which was a polite word for an orgy with soft music and soft drugs.'

  ‘Oh.’ Rachel thought about this. ‘So did she keep going off with other men, once you were born?’

  ‘She often didn’t come home at nights so I didn’t know where she was. Or she brought people home, so I’d get up in the morning and meet some strange man in the kitchen. Or in her bedroom. Or mine.’

  ‘Did they come after you?’

  The question was too quick. Franz flinched.

  ‘Once or twice. I was the bolshie type. I put up a fight.’

  ‘So did I.’

  ‘Rachel!’ said Franz. The name was wrenched out of him, like a groan of pain.

  ‘You did well, then,’ Ella said quickly. ‘But Rachel, promise me – don’t ever get in that situation again. Tell me, tell Franz, tell somebody – promise.’

  ‘All right, I will. Here’s Mary and Tom!’

  She flung herself out of the car and into Tom’s waiting bearhug, followed by Mary’s.

  ‘She’ll be all right,’ Ella said quietly.

  ‘What did she go through?’ Franz said. ‘What isn’t she telling now, if she didn’t tell me any of that at the time?’

  ‘Don’t make her go back over it. She’s moved on, Franz.’

  ‘She’s very young still. Inside, she’s no more than a child,’ he said.

  ‘In some ways. In others, she’s as old as the hills. That’s what you get from a dysfunctional childhood – take it from one who knows.’ Ella smiled.

  He was watching Rachel with the O’Connells. She was standing back from them now, smiling, answering questions. They turned to go into the house and she slipped an arm around Mary’s waist, not like a child leaning on its mother but as an equal.

  ‘She’s strong,’ Ella said. ‘And she has a lot to give. It won’t get taken from her against her will.’

  ‘I hope you’re right.’

  ‘You have to take the risk,’ Ella said. ‘Or let her take her own risks.’

  At the door Rachel turned, as if suddenly remembering them. She ran back to the car, ducked her head through the window and kissed Franz, then went round and did the same with Ella.

  ‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘See you later. Have a good evening – I’m going to!’