But then, before she can think about it any more, it’s as though her body has taken over from her mind and her foot is through the doorway, into the narrow hall; the other one follows closely after and then the door is being closed behind her, and she’s there. She’s inside the house and there’s no going back. The walls seem to bulge towards her, and she presses her hand against the nearest one. She breathes deeply.
Suddenly she’s aware that Samuel’s looking at her quizzically, waiting for her to follow him. She lets her hair fall across her face and follows him down the hallway, one heavy, dread-laden step at a time. Her hand trails along the wall as she walks, the solidity of it giving her a false sense of security. She deliberately places one foot in front of the other, each step an effort, as though she’s walking to her own execution. And then, before she’s ready, she’s there, at the doorway to the small, slightly scruffy kitchen, and she’s looking at the back of her mother’s head, her hair grey now, no longer dark, and her heart hammers against her ribcage as she waits for her to turn around, to see her. She thinks she might fall over.
‘Mum, that lady’s back again. She’s come to see you.’ Sam’s words are slow and measured, as though he’s talking to a young child.
Kimberley doesn’t turn round straight away, but instead spends a few more agonizing seconds placing the tins she’s bought carefully in the cupboard, all neatly facing the front like soldiers. Each movement seems to take forever and Georgie wants to shout, ‘Oh, just hurry up and look at me!’ But she doesn’t; she stands quietly on the spot, waiting for her mother to turn round.
And then, finally, she does. It takes a few seconds for her to focus properly on Georgie, her eyes wandering quickly across her face, her hair, down across her coat, her shoes and back up to her face again, taking in the details. It’s clear she hasn’t recognized her straight away – why would she? – and so Georgie waits patiently to see how long it will take for realization to dawn. And then, at last, it does; it’s easy to see the moment as Kimberley’s face turns ashen and a small gasp emerges from her throat. She takes a couple of steps towards her as though to see her more closely, and Georgie steps back reflexively. She thinks she might throw up.
‘Louisa . . . ’ Kimberley’s voice cracks and she takes a rasping breath, her hand fluttering to her chest. She sits down heavily on the chair next to her.
‘Mum?’ Sam’s voice is confused, concerned.
Kimberley doesn’t speak, but just stares at Georgie. Georgie can only stare back at the face of this woman, almost forty years older than she was in the newspaper report, but so familiar all the same. Her face looks older than its fifty-four years, but it’s something about her eyes that breaks Georgie’s heart. They’re so full of pain, of suffering and desperation, that she just wants to reach out and hold her and tell her everything is going to be OK. Instead, though, she just stands there waiting for this poor, broken woman to take in the terrifying significance of the woman standing in front of her in her kitchen.
‘Mum. Mum, what the hell’s going on here?’ Samuel is looking from one woman to the other, a deep crevice carved between his eyes.
Kimberley looks at her son, and then back at Georgie. Her voice comes out as a hoarse whisper. ‘It’s her. It’s Louisa.’
Samuel looks at Georgie again, studying her more closely this time, and her face flames under his gaze. It doesn’t take him long.
‘Fuck. It can’t be.’
He stands still, his body rigid, his face as white as his mother’s.
For a minute or so there’s nothing but the odd bang from the central heating and the sound of the recently boiled kettle clicking as it cools. Nobody knows what to say. Georgie feels as though she ought to speak, to say something, anything, to break the tension in the room, to explain why and how she’s there, but the words won’t form so she continues to stand there, too warm in her heavy coat, clutching her bag tightly against her body. Her knuckles have turned white.
The silence is broken suddenly and loudly.
‘Why does everyone look like they’ve seen a ghost?’ An older woman – who must be Margaret – has walked past Georgie and shuffles slowly towards the table, where she sits down carefully, huffing and puffing as she does so. Her voice is raspy and hard, and if she weren’t so frail-looking Georgie would have felt afraid of this woman. Instead, she just watches her watching her, and waits for the penny to drop.
Just as with the others, it doesn’t take long. It’s as though this was what they’d all been waiting for, for the last thirty-seven years, as though it isn’t a huge surprise to them that their missing baby has just walked through the door all these years later, a grown woman – because they’d been expecting it all the time.
‘Oh my giddy aunt.’ An understatement if ever there was one, Georgie thinks. Margaret looks at her daughter, who’s still staring at Georgie. ‘You bloody well have seen a ghost.’
Samuel steps forward first, and pulls out a seat for Georgie. ‘Do you want to sit down? You look like you’re going to fall over.’
Georgie takes the four or five steps towards the table with shaking legs and sits down gratefully on the edge of the seat. Kimberley has torn her gaze away now and is staring at Samuel instead. Her whole body is shaking.
‘What . . . How—?’ She stops, swallows, starts again, looking at Georgie this time. ‘Is it – is it really you?’
Her eyes are wide, full of disbelief and hope, and Georgie gives a small nod. ‘Yes. I think so.’
‘Course it’s her. She looks just like Sam, look at her.’ Margaret’s leaning forward, her breath slightly wheezy as she lights a cigarette with shaking hands, her voice raspy.
Kimberley lowers her head into her hands and takes a couple of breaths. When she looks up again there are tears running down her face, pulling her black mascara down with them, giving her the look of a clown. She wipes her hand across her cheek and rubs it on her jeans.
‘I thought you were dead.’ She nods, as if having a conversation with herself, and stares at the trainers poking out from the bottom of her jeans. ‘I mean, not at first. I thought they’d find you and you’d come home and everything would be all right again, in the end. But after a while, when they found nothing, then – well, I thought you must be dead. Otherwise, how could they not have found you? How could I, your own mother, not have known where you’d gone?’
She stops and slumps back, as though the effort of getting all those words out has exhausted her. Her voice is flat, detached.
‘So, how are you here?’ It’s Samuel’s voice this time and for the first time Georgie looks him in the eye. He meets her gaze like a challenge. ‘I mean, what’s happened, right now, to make you be here, right now, in our house?’
Georgie clears her throat, her tongue parched. ‘I – I just found out about this. It’s only been, what, three days, since I found out that my mum wasn’t my mum. Since I found out – what she did. I needed to find you and – well. It seems I have, already.’ Her heart thumps so loudly she’s sure they can all hear it and she looks round at Kimberley, at Margaret, whose face, beneath all the wrinkles and lines, is pulled into an expression of pure anger.
‘Your mum?’ Margaret spits the words out, and they land on the table with a thud. ‘Your mum? You mean the woman who stole you from us? The woman who destroyed our lives, you mean? That “mum”?’
There’s so much venom in the older woman’s words that Georgie almost wants to push her chair back to get away from them.
‘Mum!’ Kimberley’s voice is more forceful than Georgie’s heard it before.
‘What? You think we should just nod and hug her and ignore the truth here?’
‘I think you should stop talking for a minute and let me think.’ Her words are a hiss and she stops to gather her thoughts. ‘I think that we should take this one step at a time. None of this is our fault, but it’s not Louisa’s either – ’ Georgie flinches at the name, a reminder of how little she knows this woman who gave her life
– ‘so let’s just stop for a minute, shall we? You’re not helping.’
Margaret pulls her mouth into a thin line and folds her arms across her chest as though she’s not used to being told what to do, but she doesn’t say another word and Georgie’s relieved and grateful.
‘I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have come here out of the blue like this. I just – I needed to find you. I needed to do something, when I found out.’
‘But how—’ Kimberley stops, unable to carry on. ‘How did you find out? Who you are, I mean?’
‘I found this.’ Georgie remembers the newspaper cutting she found in the library, that she’s been carrying round like a stone in her handbag ever since; the cutting that she’s used to break the news to so many people. She pulls it out from the folder at the bottom of her bag and unfolds it, smoothing down the creases as she passes it to Kimberley. Kimberley’s eyes move across the page, across the blurred image of her own much younger face, and she turns white again. She passes it back with shaking hands and Georgie feels the need to explain more.
‘I was looking for something, my birth certificate, actually, up in Mum’s loft. I’d never really been up there before but – well, Mum’s not very well, and I didn’t want to ask her where it was so I went up when she was out. I didn’t find it, in the end, but – well, I did find my sister’s birth certificate and her baby wristband, from the hospital. But there was no sign of mine and I thought it was odd.’ She stops, clears her throat. ‘I suppose deep down I’d always been expecting something like this. Not – this exactly, but . . . Well, some sort of sordid secret to be let out of the bag. So anyway I – I went to the library. And I found this, and loads more—’ She stops, clenching her hands together tightly. ‘And there was no birth certificate for me anywhere there either. I didn’t exist, according to the records. I did find a record of Samuel’s birth, though, and – well, Louisa’s. Or mine, as it turns out. To be honest, it didn’t take me long to work it out, after that.’
‘Oh my God, how horrendous.’
‘For me?’
Kimberley nods.
‘Yes, it was, it is. But it must have been so much worse for you. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you since I found out, about what you must have gone through when you realized I was gone.’ She looks up at the woman who gave birth to her and meets her eye. ‘I’ve got a daughter of my own and I don’t think I could have carried on, if I’d lost her. I couldn’t bear it.’
‘I had no choice.’ Her voice is soft and Georgie has to strain to hear her words. ‘I had Sam to think about too, I had to carry on.’ She glances at Samuel and gives him a weak smile. ‘I just got through each day one at a time.’
‘Hardly.’ Margaret’s face is like thunder. ‘You didn’t get through each day. You struggled through every day, you wanted to kill yourself several times – sorry, Sam, but you know what it’s been like, growing up in this house.’ Her voice is dripping with long-pent-up fury.
‘Mum, stop it.’
‘No, I won’t stop it. I won’t sit here and listen to you pretending that you muddled along OK, that you coped. The girl needs to know the truth, to know the damage her so-called mother – that woman – caused.’ She stops, struggling to catch her breath. The air pulses with anger.
Kimberley turns back to Georgie. ‘I’m sorry, Loui—’ She stops and gasps. ‘Oh my God, I . . . I don’t even know whether you’re still called Louisa. Are you?’
Georgie shakes her head and hates herself as the woman’s shoulders slump. ‘No. I’m Georgina. Georgie.’
‘Georgie.’ Kimberley tries it out on her tongue and shakes her head. ‘No, it’s all wrong. All wrong.’ She seems agitated and Georgie reaches out her hand to hold Kimberley’s, but she snatches it away as though she’s been burnt and hugs her hand to her chest.
‘Sorry. It’s just – this has been a bit of a shock.’
‘Understatement of the century.’ Samuel’s voice comes out as a laugh without any mirth in it.
Georgie doesn’t speak for a moment, she doesn’t dare. The air has changed; it’s charged with tension and she doesn’t want to say the wrong thing.
Samuel stands, eventually. ‘I think we should stop now. This has been a massive shock for all of us, and I think Mum – we all – need time to think about it. To get our heads round it, what this means.’
Georgie nods and stands too, almost matching his height. ‘You’re right. I’m sorry to have come here, like this, out of the blue. I just didn’t know what else to do. I – I hope you’ll let me see you all again?’
She looks at the closed faces round the table and gets nothing. Samuel places his hand on her shoulder and starts to guide her towards the door. When they get to the front door he turns to face her.
‘I don’t know how Mum’s going to cope with this. She’s not the most stable of people, even at the best of times. And this definitely isn’t the best of times. I don’t know how any of us are going to cope, to be honest. You’re going to have to give us some time to get used to the idea that you’re still alive. That you’re here.’
Georgie nods. ‘When can I come back?’
‘Give me your number. I’ll ring you.’ He pulls out his phone and types Georgie’s number in, checking it carefully. ‘I’m not just trying to get rid of you, I promise. I just think – well, give us a bit of time and maybe we can talk some more. I’d like to get to know you.’ He stops and shakes his head. ‘My mysterious, missing sister.’ He reaches out his hand to touch her cheek and his hand feels warm to the touch. ‘So many times I wished you’d never been taken, that our lives had gone just like they were meant to. But then there were other times, when things were really bad, that I just wished more than anything else that you’d never been born. Because then I would have mattered so much more.’ He pulls his hand away and opens the door for Georgie to leave. ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispers, then she turns and walks away, her back burning under his gaze, unsure whether she’ll ever see this man, her brother, again.
She climbs into the car and sits for a moment, head tilted back, eyes closed, not daring to look back at the house in case she sees someone watching her. Instead she starts the engine and drives, through the lighter midday traffic, towards home. The house is empty when she gets there and she’s grateful to have peace and quiet for once.
It’s not until she sits down to process what’s just happened that she remembers what happened yesterday with Kate. There hasn’t been any word from her sister since she walked out of their mother’s house the day before, and the lack of communication speaks volumes. She feels an overwhelming urge to ring Kate, to pick over the details of her day one by one, to tell her what the people she’s just met were like, about the strange connection she feels with her brother.
Picking up her phone, she starts to type out a message, an apology for her behaviour. But then she stops. Kate’s made it clear she wants nothing to do with this search, and after yesterday she doubts her sister will be very open to hearing from her. So instead she switches her phone off and lies down flat on the sofa. Only then do the tears come: tears for herself, for the family she missed, for her childhood that feels like a lie, and for Kimberley, the sad, broken woman who gave her life.
14
Early November 2016
It’s almost a week before Georgie gets the phone call she’s been waiting for, and by then she’s starting to believe it’s never going to come; that she’s lost Kate, her mother, everyone, for nothing. She hasn’t been able to think about anything else since the moment she walked into that house and saw her mother and her brother for the first time. She hasn’t got the space in her head.
The shrill tone slices through the air as she’s sitting in a cafe round the corner from the library in her lunch break, and she snatches her phone up and presses it to her ear. It’s a number she doesn’t recognize and her heart hammers wildly, her breath coming in short bursts.
‘Hello?’
There’s a moment of silence on
the other end, a beat of time when Georgie thinks she might have got it wrong, that this is nothing more than a wrong number. But then she hears an intake of breath and an already-familiar voice fills the silence.
‘Georgie? It’s me. Sam.’
‘Sam.’ She breathes out heavily, letting the name slip down the phone line. ‘Thank you for ringing me.’
‘I’m sorry it’s taken so long. It’s been a tough few days.’
‘I can imagine. I’m sorry.’ She takes a sip of water, then presses her free hand to her ear to try and block out the hum of the cafe around her. She doesn’t want to miss a word. ‘So. Um. How are you?’ It’s a ridiculous question but she doesn’t have anything else right now.
‘OK.’ Samuel sniffs and swallows loudly. ‘I wondered – we wondered – if you wanted to come round again? Or we could meet somewhere else, if you feel more comfortable.’
Georgie shakes her head. ‘No, no, I’d love to come round again. When?’
‘Can you make tonight?’
‘Yes, tonight’s good.’
‘OK. So, we’ll see you about seven, then, shall we? After tea?’
‘Great. Thank you, Sam.’
‘See you later, then. And Georgie?’
‘Yes?’
‘Don’t worry about Gran. Her bark is worse than her bite. She doesn’t mean any harm.’
And then the line goes dead. Georgie puts the phone down on the plastic table. She hadn’t realized how much her hands were shaking until now. She stares at the half-eaten sandwich in front of her. She doesn’t want it now. She stands and puts her phone back in her bag, throws the sandwich in the bin and makes her way out of the cafe into the cold, bright day. The sky is a bright, explosive blue but the sun is giving off little heat and she shivers as she walks briskly back to the library. She has no idea how she’s going to concentrate for the rest of the day, but perhaps work will be a welcome distraction until the clock crawls round to seven o’clock.
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