by Heidi Perks
Kathryn stopped at the clifftop, where she intended to call him back. Hopefully the girls wouldn’t see her, but even if they did then she could tell them a story: that she was still on her way to Morrie’s.
Dipping into her pocket, she realised she had left her mobile phone on the bed. Damn, she didn’t want to go back for it but what if he called again and one of the girls answered? Reluctantly, she turned round and walked back to the cottage.
The girls must have left, it was so quiet when she went in. Kathryn dropped her keys on the hallway table and began to climb the stairs. But as she neared the top she heard a rustling from her bedroom, and when she reached her door and slowly pushed it open she saw Hannah crouched on the floor, beside her bed.
The sight threw her.
‘Hannah?’
Kathryn looked at Hannah and then at the drawer of her bedside table, half out, and then back to her daughter before her eyes settled on the newspaper cutting in her hand: the news the hospital had leaked to the local press, that Eleanor had thankfully never seen. The cutting she had kept all about the first baby of the New Year because it was the only piece of truth she had.
Hannah turned slowly. Colour had drained from her face. Kathryn’s fingers gripped the doorframe tightly, steadying her as she swayed towards it, and her eyes bulged as they flicked from Hannah to the newspaper and then back to Hannah. Her mouth opened into an ‘O’ and then clamped shut again.
This was it, the moment she had dreaded for the whole of the girls’ lives.
‘What are you doing?’ Kathryn eventually asked, the words little more than a hoarse whisper.
‘What does this mean?’ Hannah asked, holding up the newspaper. ‘It doesn’t make any sense, Mum. I don’t get it.’
‘It’s, erm …’ Kathryn’s brow furrowed. She was thinking hard, but no words came out.
‘I mean, it’s my name, isn’t it? Which means it must be me, right? But yet it can’t be, can it, Mum? What about Lauren? What about the date? That’s not even my birthday.’ Hannah tapped her finger against the paper. ‘And I don’t get why it says I was born in Leeds when I thought it was London. So is it someone else?’
Kathryn continued to stare at Hannah.
‘Are you going to say anything?’ Hannah shouted. ‘Just tell me what this is, Mum. Just be honest with me. Please.’
‘Ohhh,’ the noise Kathryn heard coming out of her own mouth was a groaning sound, like an animal in pain. She threw her hands to her head, her fingers splayed as their tips dug into her scalp, and she saw Hannah watch in horror as she sank to her knees onto the carpet.
‘No, no, no!’ she mumbled through her sobs. ‘Ohhhh, God!’ The words stretched out interminably.
Her world was falling apart and none of it had been her doing in the first place.
– Twenty-Four –
‘Mum …’ Hannah’s voice shook. ‘Please just tell me what it is. I can handle it, it can’t be that bad.’
She had seen her mum like this before. The day they had taken Grandma to Elms Home her mother had stood in the hallway of Lordavale House and howled like a wolf.
‘It’s OK, girls,’ a nurse had told them. ‘It’s just the shock. She’ll be right as rain in a moment, you both go and wait in the other room.’
But this time Hannah couldn’t walk away and let someone else deal with the hysterical state her mum was getting into and it was beginning to frighten her.
‘It’s OK,’ Hannah tried to sound calm. ‘Just tell me what it is. You’ll feel better once you do.’
‘I never wanted you to find out, Hannah,’ Kathryn cried out.
‘Find out what, Mum?’
‘What happened,’ she said, grabbing the sleeve of Hannah’s top and twisting it into a tight ball. ‘I was doing it for you. For you and Lauren.’
‘Doing what for me?’ Hannah shook her arm free. ‘Mum? What did you do?’
‘I’m not—’ she started. ‘I’m not—’
‘Not what?’ Hannah cried. ‘You’re not what? Just say it.’ Although she was beginning to realise she probably knew the answer.
Kathryn’s head was shaking back and forth as if she had lost all control.
‘Are you my real mum?’
‘Oh God!’ Kathryn murmured, clutching at her throat with one hand. ‘I’m so sorry, Hannah. I’m so sorry. You should never have found out.’
‘Who—’ Hannah paused, her voice cracking. ‘Who is my mum?’
‘Abigail.’ She had to strain to hear her mother’s words. ‘Abigail is your real mother.’
‘Who the— But that’s who Grandma called me the other day.’ She wanted to reach out and grab her so-called mother by the hair and scream at her to shut up and stop telling her sick lies. Beg her to tell her she was making it all up, was confused as she sometimes got. She wanted to slap her with such force that Kathryn would stop blubbering on the bedroom floor and spit out whatever it was she had to say. But Hannah’s body was paralysed, her arms heavy at her sides.
‘Who is Abigail?’ Hannah’s voice was barely a whisper.
Kathryn placed her hands on her knees to steady herself and appeared to be calming a little.
‘Abigail’s my daughter,’ she said eventually. ‘And your mother. I adopted you. She was too young and she could never have raised you.’ She shook her head again. ‘I wanted to bring you up as twins and—’
‘Lauren?’ Hannah asked. ‘Tell me you adopted both of us, didn’t you? Not just me?’
But Kathryn squeezed her eyes tight, covering them with her hands.
‘Mum,’ Hannah shrieked, ‘tell me Lauren’s my sister!’
Kathryn’s head barely moved but gave a glimmer of a shake, so small but enough to tell Hannah what she really didn’t want to know.
‘Lauren is mine,’ she whispered.
‘Oh God!’ Hannah shouted, feeling as though she was about to be sick. She pushed Kathryn aside and ran into the bathroom.
‘Hannah, wait!’
‘Where’s Abigail now?’ she screamed, clutching the bathroom sink. Kathryn had followed her and was leaning against the door, pulling at her cardigan as if she were about to rip it off.
‘She’s—’ Kathryn looked up at the ceiling, letting her eyes roll back. Hannah had never seen her mother look like this before. It was disturbing to watch yet she had to know. ‘She’s … I don’t know,’ Kathryn said eventually, shaking her head.
‘You don’t know? What do you mean, you don’t know?’
‘We lost touch when we came here.’
‘Lost touch? How do you lose touch with your own daughter? None of this is making sense, Mum,’ Hannah cried out. ‘Or whoever you are,’ she added. ‘Oh, my God, you’re my grandmother!’
‘Hannah …’ Kathryn reached out to touch her, but she pulled away sharply.
‘Get off me!’ she screamed. ‘So what happened? Did she run away from you?’
Kathryn was crying again, shaking her head and covering her face with her hands.
‘Tell me the truth.’
‘We had to get away,’ Kathryn cried out. ‘We had to go. We had to … I had to.’
‘You left your own daughter?’
Hannah really thought she was going to throw up there and then. She had to get out, to get away from this hideous liar; she couldn’t take any more. Her mother was sinking to the floor, curling up into a ball. Hannah felt an urge to kick her, to get the whole truth out of her, but she also needed to get out, to get away from her. There was a whole army of questions twisting her thoughts until she couldn’t think at all. Questions she would soon be desperate to ask, but right then all she could think of was getting away from the person she had believed was her mother.
Hannah’s whole life was a lie. She had been betrayed by the one person who was supposed to be there for her, no matter what; the person who had taken her away from ever knowing her real mother.
*****
Within minutes, Hannah was at the clifftop. She had tried calling L
auren and then Dom but neither had answered their phones, and somehow she had to get to Lauren. She spotted Dom in the sea, flat out on his surfboard, arms dangling either side of it and engrossed in conversation with Cal. The water would be cold. Despite how much had already happened that morning, it was still only nine o’clock and the sun hadn’t had time to warm it up. The wind was picking up and she knew that meant Dom would spend most of the morning surfing. Running down to the shore, she called out his name. He looked up and held up his hand in a wave, then turned back to Cal.
Hannah cupped her hands around her mouth and called again, waving at him to come in. This time he grinned and gave her a thumbs-up, then pointed out to sea and turned away as he and Cal started paddling away from her.
‘Dom!’ she called out again. ‘Come back, I need to speak to you.’ But she knew it was useless: he hadn’t heard her and they were moving further away. Hannah wiped away tears with the back of her hand; she had no idea what to do next. She needed him, wanted him to take her to Lauren, and now the wind was blowing stronger and she was shivering in only a thin T-shirt and shorts. But she couldn’t go home, she hadn’t brought the keys to the beach hut and Morrie would be fishing. She really didn’t know where to go and she desperately wanted Lauren.
Running over to the pile of clothes the boys had discarded on the sand, she picked up Dom’s sweatshirt, held it briefly against her face to breathe in his familiar, comforting smell and then put it on. She could feel keys in the pocket and looked back up at the clifftop. She hadn’t noticed before that his dad’s car was parked at the top. Still shivering, she decided to wait for him in the car – she would be able to see when they came out of the water. Tapping out a text to him, she told him that she urgently needed him to take her to Lauren at the shopping centre. That she had just found something out about her mum. Then Hannah left the beach and walked back up the steps.
She sat in the driver’s seat so she could put the key in the ignition to start the heater. Leaning her head against the window she closed her eyes. ‘My mum isn’t my mum,’ she tested the thought aloud. ‘That’s someone called Abigail. And that isn’t even the worst bit,’ she cried, tears now spilling down her cheeks and falling onto her bare legs. ‘No, do you want to know what the worst bit is?’ she called out to no one. ‘She only gave birth to me. Not Lauren, just me. So Lauren isn’t even my sister. And the really screwed-up bit, the bit that would make bloody great TV, is that Abigail is actually my mum’s daughter,’ Hannah started to laugh hysterically. ‘My mum is my grandmother!’ she shouted. ‘What kind of freak show family are we?’
The depth of Kathryn’s deceit was so great. Their whole lives were stacked with lie upon lie and Hannah had no idea if she would ever know which parts were true. Did Lauren know any of it? Surely not, she thought, although who could she trust now? Nothing her mother said would matter to her again. Nothing she herself did mattered. She could run and run, and whose business was it to ask where she was going or to tell her that she couldn’t do it? No one’s – that was who. Her whole life Kathryn had told her not to do this, not to go there, not to stay out too late … For Hannah to tell her every single thing she was doing or thinking, or planning. For as long as she could remember, Kathryn had gripped onto her so tightly – and for what? To protect the web of lies she had created? And she had stopped her from ever knowing Abigail, her mother – Kathryn’s own daughter. What kind of sick person would do all that, and why?
Hannah grabbed hold of the steering wheel, both hands gripped so tightly she would have felt the pain if she hadn’t been crying so hard.
‘God!’ she called. ‘And you, Dom, why the hell aren’t you with me?’ she added, looking out to sea. He was still paddling around, he and Cal circling each other like sharks waiting for a kill. Hannah screamed until she felt some of the tension leave her body, but it was no good, she couldn’t sit there any longer. She needed to get out of the Bay, find Lauren, talk to the only person who would have any idea what pain she was feeling at that moment. But also she had to find out if Lauren already knew. The need to get to her sister was beginning to drive her crazy.
Picking up her mobile she tried calling Lauren again but once more it went straight to answerphone. She was angry with everyone now. Angry with Lauren for having her phone switched off, and angry with Dom for mucking about in the sea when she needed him. And then her phone started to buzz. Home flashed up on the screen.
She had no desire to speak to her mum, but a tiny part of her, and something she didn’t like to admit, was nervous about what Kathryn might do. And with the small possibility it could be Lauren, Hannah pressed the green button and tentatively answered, ‘Hello?’
‘Darling?’
‘I don’t want to speak to you,’ she cried.
‘Hannah, please come home. We need to talk. Is Lauren with you?’
‘Oh, that’s it, isn’t it?’ Hannah let out a strangled laugh. ‘You just want to make sure I don’t get to Lauren first!’ she shouted.
‘No,’ Kathryn said slowly. ‘No, that’s not it, but—’
‘Oh my God, yes, it is!’ Hannah cried out and hung up, tossing her phone onto the passenger seat and banging her hands against the steering wheel. ‘Oh my God, what do I do?’
Cursing Dom, she looked out to sea again but she knew he wouldn’t be coming out any time soon. And so she weighed up her options, which whittled down to taking a bus or calling a taxi. But in her rush to get out of the house she had left without any money, so she considered one final option as she ran her fingers over the keys dangling from the ignition. It wasn’t one she should even entertain and had she not been so hell bent on getting to Lauren that nothing else mattered, she wouldn’t have given it any more thought.
Turning the key a notch further, she held her breath as the engine rumbled. The only thing against this crazy idea, other than the fact she was essentially stealing, was that she’d never learnt to drive. Not properly anyway. Morrie had taken her out in his own car on many occasions. A couple of times he’d driven to a large open parking area that was always desolate in winter and let both girls have a go behind the wheel.
‘You take to it well,’ he once told Hannah. ‘I think you’re a natural. Now just don’t tell your mother what we’re doing,’ he added, laughing.
Without giving the idea any more thought, she thrust the gearstick to Drive, gave one more cursory glance towards Dom’s figure bobbing in the sea, and drove off, across the gravel and onto the road.
The car sped off through the roads leading out of the Bay far too quickly. Her manoeuvres were jerky, her braking too hard and often too late. She didn’t feel in control but then she wasn’t anymore, and unsurprisingly none of it mattered.
The main road was ahead and Hannah attempted to indicate right but instead of reaching the indicators she had flicked on the windscreen wipers, which began swiping furiously at the screen in front of her, obscuring her vision. The sound of a lorry’s horn, loud and constant, aggressively sounded out and Hannah realised she must have cut right in front of it without seeing it coming.
‘Concentrate, Hannah,’ she told herself. ‘Just get yourself to Lauren.’
Her phone started to buzz on the passenger seat and she looked down to see Dom’s name appear on the screen. ‘No,’ she murmured as she reached for the phone and tapped the red button to cancel the call before throwing it back onto the seat. Her eyes flicked back to the road and then back to the phone as she waited to see if he would call back. A beep indicated he’d left a message.
Hannah reached for the phone again and pressed the voicemail button, taking her eyes off the road for a second too long, unaware of the red braking lights of the cars in front that had come to a sudden halt.
– Twenty-Five –
Kathryn hung her head over the toilet and threw up for a third time. Standing up to wipe her mouth, she stared at the reflection gaping back at her. She no longer recognised the woman in the mirror. That woman was pale, with such dark ri
ngs beneath her eyes they suggested utter exhaustion with life. The whites of her eyes were now red, making her look like a wild animal.
‘What have you done, you stupid woman?’ Kathryn asked. ‘You stupid, stupid old woman! What do we do now?’
She clutched the sink and continued to stare, waiting for a response.
She had never been good at discovering answers for herself. Eleanor had always been on hand to provide those. At the slightest suggestion of something going wrong Kathryn was on the phone to her mother, asking her, begging her to tell her what to do. Now everything was falling apart and she had no idea how to stick it back together again.
‘You should learn to stand on your own two feet!’ Peter once snarled at her. That could have been on any one of a number of occasions, all of them blurred into one long tragic life. ‘She rules you, Kathryn, but the saddest thing is you let her.’
‘Yes,’ she told the ghost in the mirror. ‘Well, you were right, Peter. And don’t you worry because I’m paying the price now.’
She’d seen the disgust in his eyes as he spat out the words at her. He might have been a useless father and abandoned his daughters, but she was worse. She was a mother – no mother should do that.
‘Why do you have to be so weak?’ Abigail once said to her. ‘Why can’t you stand up to her, put me first for a change?’ When had that been? Kathryn searched her memories. Not that it mattered. None of it mattered, but she wanted to remember. It was when Robert died. No, Abigail was too young. It was when she fell pregnant. Yes, that was probably it. Abigail had needed Kathryn, and Kathryn in turn had found herself a cupboard and hidden herself away.
‘The girls will never know the truth,’ her mother had said.
Kathryn started to laugh. How adamant Eleanor had been, that it was right to leave.
‘But they do, Mother,’ she shouted at the mirror. ‘And where are you now when I need you to tell me what to do about it? That’s right, now the shit’s hit the fan you’ve checked yourself out. But you created this mess, not me. You did this.’