by Lola Jaye
“Mum…” she said, just as the door was about to be closed.
Kneeling beside Lara’s bed, Mum pulled back the yellow cover. “What is it?”
Above Mum’s head and stuck to the wall with Blu-Tack was an old poster from Mum’s singing days; she had a massive blond perm, covered by a huge leather cap fashionably tilted to slightly cover her left eye, and wore an abundance of overpowering blue eye shadow. Mum looked beautiful in that poster and still did now, even if she did sometimes tie her hair up in an elastic band.
“I hope you’re not trying to stay up late, Lara,” she said, fixing the sheet around her shoulders again. It was a trick Lara had tried before, but no, this time there was definitely something on her mind. Something important. This time she needed to know what Ryan had meant and why. Because for the duration of their time in Blackpool and ever since, Lara hadn’t failed to notice stares from strangers as she and her mum and dad browsed shops for souvenirs and ice cream. She had seen how some people seemed to stop midconversation as the three of them walked hand in hand along the busy beachfront, the sun shining down on their faces, seagulls singing around them. Lara also noticed a strangeness occur on home turf, too; in the butchers, the supermarkets, anyplace outside of the sanctuary of their house. Looks, stares, whispers—things she hadn’t noticed before.
“You’ve got two minutes to ask me this question of yours or else! You have got to get some sleep!”
Mum’s sweet-smelling lavender perfume instantly surrounded Lara’s nostrils, enveloping her in a warm hug, allowing her to feel secure again and perhaps no longer in need of asking the question.
Lara yawned heartily. “It’s okay, Mum. I’ll go to sleep now.” She tightly squeezed her eyelids together and thought nothing more, until morning when the thoughts all started up again, this time carefully hidden behind a barrage of questions perhaps not unusual to seven-year-olds.
“How can pigeons hear without ears?”
“Where do the stars in the sky live when it’s the afternoon?”
“Why am I … different?”
The day Lara chose that particular question was during the family’s dinnertime, at the table with a plate of mashed potatoes, sausage, and beans and an episode of Mum’s favorite show, Dallas, in the background. Just before the evening ritual of playfully kicking her feet under the dining table, as Mum fetched drinks and Dad sat in “Dad’s armchair” facing the telly with a hot plate resting on his lap on top of a TV Times, Lara asked:
“Why am I different?”
The mashed potato in Dad’s mouth suddenly lodged in his throat, and Mum dropped the jug of “healthy and nutritious water” she was about to force them all to drink.
Silence.
Mum went to fetch the dustpan and brush from the kitchen as the atmosphere remained still, save for the impolite ramblings of Sue Ellen.
Lara turned to her dad desperately, anxious for him to offer a reasonable enough explanation so that she could tuck into her food even though she suddenly wasn’t that hungry.
So she repeated the question, this time with added oomph and a sprinkle of exaggeration. But, still, the silence that followed remained intense, threatening to swallow her up whole, leading her to take a chance on something she’d only ever call on during desperate times. Like when Mrs. Kershaw, her teacher, asked who’d thrown a felt-tip pen across the classroom as her back was turned. Everyone knew it was Connie, but Lara had simply nodded her head and said she hadn’t seen a thing.
Lara would have to lie again.
“Ryan said you must have found me in the street one day and taken me home. Is that true?” she asked, turning to Dad.
“You’re being silly!” said Mum, stooping to sweep shards of broken glass into the green dustpan.
Something, a thought or a feeling or a memory, kept whispering to Lara that this was potentially serious; and she longed to jump into Doc Brown’s traveling machine, punch in random buttons, and find herself back fifteen minutes ago, no, make that three weeks, so she could ignorantly lark about happily on Blackpool beach, her only care being whether she’d collected enough shells or not.
She just longed to be herself again. Lara from Entwistle Way, somewhere in Essex. But her brain, unable to process the early contents of the Pandora’s box she’d just unlocked, decided to respond in the only way that made any sort of sense to her at that moment.
“JUST TELL ME WHAT HE MEANT!” she yelled, finally, feeling a strange release, as a fuzzy redness became her vision, her heart racing with a sudden surge of injustice. She needed the truth and was going to get it. Today, this minute, this second!
But not one sound from anyone followed—just an unintentional burp from Dad as Mum continued to sweep up the last of the broken glass, eyes fixed on the ground.
Dad turned to Mum with a worried look. Mum stared blankly at the wall as she stood to her full height.
“Don’t worry yourself about it,” said Mum almost robotically. Lara opened her mouth in preparation for petulant protest, just as Dad, perhaps sensing her on Standby for Full Tantrum Mode, spoke. But it was to say three words that surprised, annoyed, and continued to confuse her all at once.
“It’s not time.”
So, there was something.
Even the next day in the local paper shop, where Lara regularly used her £1 a week pocket money to purchase sweets and comics, the atmosphere suddenly felt colored with “grown-up” seriousness. A woman with a huge hat stared at Lara and Dad as she pretended (badly) to be interested in the newspaper headlines of the day. Her eyes stalked them as Lara browsed the teen magazines longingly and Dad, as usual, joked with Mr. Maharajah, the newsagent, as he secretly eyed the rows of cigarettes sitting on the back shelf.
Clues previously hidden behind fluffy clouds of ignorance now began to magnify all around Lara, and gradually, the staunch belief that people just liked to look at her once-famous mum sadly began to ebb away. The lady with the hat wasn’t even pretending anymore as her beady eyes studied Lara, making her feel like a specimen in a lab—not that she knew what that felt like (Lara had simply been dozing on Dad’s lap as he avidly watched a documentary about it). So yes, she was now a specimen.
When a policeman walked in, the lady in the hat didn’t even try to hide her nosiness.
“Hello there,” said the policeman to Dad as they stood in line to pay for the newspaper, cigarettes, and the bag of secret sweets costing well over a pound, which Lara promised not to tell Mum about.
Dad nodded cautiously back to the policeman, who turned his attention to Lara.
“Are you okay, lass?” asked the officer, who Lara realized had a funny accent. She wanted to laugh but was overcome with a tinge of fear since the only time she’d ever spoken to a real-life policeman was during a visit to her school by the local constabulary regarding “stranger danger.”
She looked to Dad for help or guidance and he simply turned to the policeman and said, “Why are you asking my daughter questions?”
“Your daughter?” The policeman stared at her—from her hair right down to the tips of her scuffed white plimsolls—with a blank look on his face. Lara wondered if he was going to make an arrest right there and then in the sweetshop. The woman with the hat slid in closer for a better view.
“Dad, I want to go home,” said Lara, feeling a sudden urgency but determined not to cry.
“She looks very distressed,” said the policeman with the funny accent.
“Of course she’s distressed!” said Dad. Lara noticed how red his face was turning. She’d never seen him like this. Well, not since the sunburn incident in Blackpool.
Mr. Maharajah finished serving a customer and joined Dad and the policeman as Lara placed her face in her hands, shoulders shaking slightly. She wanted her mum. She wanted to take Dad’s hand and lead him out of the shop. Were they about to be arrested?
Lara managed to slip in and out of the adult’s conversation: Mr. Maharajah said something about “vouching for them”; Dad s
aid something about a “complaints procedure.” The woman in the hat looked on as if banana-flavored ice cream had just fallen from the sky.
Lara stayed put, but nervously shifted her weight to each foot impatiently, while the grown-ups whispered in the corner by the milk and cheese. It went on for ages—at least five minutes—ending with Mr. Maharajah shaking his head as he patted Dad on the back.
With his face the color of one of Mum’s tomatoes, Dad grabbed Lara’s hand and they walked out of the shop. She was so relieved to be on her way home, Lara decided not to ask about what had gone on, her mind a jumble—she even managed to forget about the lonely pack of sweets nestling on top of Mr. Maharajah’s shop counter.
The weekend after the shop incident, Mum and Dad refused an invitation from Agnes and Brian even though they knew how much she enjoyed spending time with her cousins, especially Jason—as well as their beautiful Labrador named Goldie; not to mention there was a fully stocked toy shop nestling in the next street, which they’d often venture into just to “look around,” always leaving with a gift from Brian.
So of course this exclusion felt like a punishment. Lara quickly began to suspect Mum and Dad had said no for other reasons. She wasn’t stupid. She was almost eight after all.
It was time.
She sat on the edge of the sofa, hands resting on her lap, heart full of expectation. Dad had been up in the attic, and as he carefully climbed down the thin ladder, dust in his light brown/gray hair, Lara noticed a dirty blue file box under his arm. He handed the box to Mum, who wiped it free of dust before giving it to Lara like a “pass the parcel” game.
Lara unclipped the file box. Inside was an envelope containing yellowing newspaper cuttings and, beneath that, photos.
“Star Patricia Reid Adopts a Baby!” screeched a headline. Lara glanced at it, feeling slightly shocked that Mum had once been in a newspaper. Lara imagined how she would tell her friends at school, what she would say. She’d always known about Mum gracing the covers of old music magazines and a few posters—but in a newspaper? Like Princess Diana. Wow!
“Sweet pea, listen carefully,” said Mum, sounding agitated.
“Singer Patricia ‘Trish’ Reid, 32, who had a top ten hit with ‘Do You Want This?,’ has adopted a baby! Husband Barry, 42, flew over to Nigeria, returning last night with three-year-old Lara. The family were reunited in emotional scenes at the airport. Of their new daughter, a beaming Trish said; ‘Lara is beautiful and all we’ve ever wanted!’ and judging from the way Barry is gazing at his new daughter, he feels so, too.” Mum’s hands appeared to be shaking as she read from the cuttings.
And another one.
“African baby for Trish!”
“Pop star Trish has done something rather unusual—she’s adopted a little girl from a flea-bitten, rat-infested orphanage in a remote African village. Trish a.k.a. Patricia Reid took delivery of the three-year-old on Tuesday and was beaming as she held on to the little girl’s hand. ‘Isn’t she gorgeous?’ said Trish. Her husband, Barry, added: ‘We can’t wait to introduce her to our loved ones. Our family is now complete!’”
There were lots more cuttings, ancient and yellowing, but suddenly, Lara didn’t want to look at them anymore.
“I know we told you some time ago that you were adopted.... But we’ve never really spoken about how we came to have you,” said Mum.
Lara turned to her dad, needing and wanting him to say something this time, anything, but the look he returned didn’t say an awful lot.
“You … you said I was special…” said Lara, her face contorted into confusion.
“You are, sweet pea,” said Mum with a pained looked on her face. “But we thought it was time you saw these, so we could answer any questions you may have.”
Lara wondered what Mum meant by the word but.
Does that mean I’m not special anymore?
Dad reached into the box and pulled out two pictures, which he handed to Mum, who then handed them over to Lara.
“Can I go now?” she said quickly. Her parents glanced at each other before Mum nodded her okay, leaving Lara to walk slowly to her room feeling as if they’d just spoken to her in French and she now had to go and find a dictionary to decipher every single one of their words.
Lara sat on her bed, switched on the steel gray lamp, and placed the two pictures beside her Sindy doll on her bed.
One of the pictures was of her as a young child—around three years old. Lara could be sure of this as there was an abundance of similar pictures neatly dotted around the house—but she never looked like this in any of them. Tight plaits resembling worms stuck out of her head, and she was dressed in clothes totally unfamiliar and cut into a really unusual shape. Plus she had no shoes on! How silly did she look?
Lara studied the picture some more, quickly noticing something like a handkerchief in her hand. The walls in the picture were a dull green, which was strange because none of their walls in that little house in Entwistle Way had ever been painted green. It was an ugly green, too. She placed the photo to one side and studied the second picture. It contained a really old and dirty-looking shack with a sign on the front that read THE MOTHERLESS CHILDREN’S HOME, and beside it grew a tall and luscious tree that to Lara resembled a huge pineapple. She carefully placed both pictures beside the gray lamp and sat Sindy on her lap, gently stroking the doll’s long blond hair as the realization that she’d now stepped over some imaginary line began to dawn on her. She’d clearly ventured into a realm that was unfamiliar, scary, and more important, permanent.
And at almost eight years old, Lara realized her life would never feel the same again.
Chapter 2
Now
The week of Lara’s thirtieth birthday started off with a rain-filled morning blanketed by a dull and murky sky. Lara sifted through the bills and offers to make her rich, her excitement level rising steadily as she plucked out birthday cards from a mound of junk mail. Sandi’s X-rated efforts contrasted effortlessly with Mum and Dad’s pastel-colored sweetness. And by the time she’d placed each card on the mantelpiece beside the family of Peruvian statues, Lara had managed to convince herself the buildup was actually worse than the actual day.
Thirty didn’t have to be a fast track to Oldsville, but an age full of fresh possibilities and opportunity. The future was hers, and she felt determined to use every opportunity to work hard and enjoy her success while trying her best to be a good person. Wasn’t that what life was all about?
As was tradition every birthday, her mind erupted like the clouds overhead as it turned to thoughts of her, followed by a brief fantasy of what it would possibly feel like to rip open an envelope sealed by that person. To read words written by that person. To gaze at a card she had selected with her own fingers. Would it be a modern design or a traditional floral number? Indeed, Lara wondered if she even realized the significance of the day. How could Lara even be sure of her actual birth date anyway?
The downpour continued. Lara ran into work where her personal assistant, Jean, presented her with a large bouquet of thirty pink roses. Each business meeting concluded with a badly sung rendition of “Happy Birthday” along with the customary congratulatory handshake. Thoughts of her were buried until next year, and Lara allowed herself to feel heady and happy, suspecting that despite the rain, the day would turn out well.
“Thanks so much for the flowers. They must have cost a fortune!” she complained playfully to Jean.
“It’s not every day you turn twenty-one, Lara!”
“For that, in about half an hour, you can take the rest of the day off.”
“Really?” he beamed. It was only one P.M. but the fact remained that Jean would regularly work late if a deadline loomed and this dedication wasn’t lost on Lara. She appreciated him, perhaps more than he thought. Lara wasn’t one to give in to too much emotion. Especially at work. The bare minimum was all that was needed.
Buoyed by fresh optimism, Lara stared out the office window as yet ano
ther “Happy Birthday” text appeared on the screen of her phone. She smiled to herself, noticing the patches of blue poking through the gray sky, remembering how thrilling it felt to have finally achieved an office with a view, and her name on the door, as well as the satisfaction of knowing all her hard work had paid off. She recalled that feeling of having “arrived” shadowing her every move, her every thought; governing how she conducted herself. Some may have translated her tough exterior as arrogance, but she knew it was more to do with relief, mixed in with a quiet fear that it could all be taken away from her at any given time. Nothing was forever after all. She placed strands of her slickly bobbed hair behind her ear and began to tap the middle finger of her right hand on the table. Four times.
As far back as she could remember, Lara had always dreamed of becoming a success, reaching a place where no one could ever touch her, and that no one in the Reid family had ever attained.
In fact, she and her best friend, Sandy (soon to be “Sandi” in later years), had hatched that plan as teenagers, in the corner of the school yard somewhere, sometime far back in the past, when they favored chewing gum for breakfast and regularly argued over who was the best band—Nirvana (Sandy) or Public Enemy (Lara).
“Bloody stinks being poor!” complained Sandy, kicking a clump of dirt on the ground with her scuffed trainers.
“We’re not that poor!” said Lara.
“You may be okay, what with your pop star mum, but me … blimey, that family they put me with last night don’t have a pot to piss in. Stuff all over the place, dirty. Even the dog did a runner. The so-called ‘dad’ just spends most of his time in a bar drinking while she doesn’t say a word to me. Don’t social services do any checks before they place kids these days? I’m better off in the kids’ home and that’s saying something. What a crap hole that was!”