The Stranger In My Home: I thought she was my daughter. I was wrong.

by Parks, Adele

  ‘Why not? I’ve spent hours listening to her debate when she should let her children attend nursery, which orthodontist might be best for her daughter, whether her sons can manage both football and rugby as extracurricular activities or whether it would be better to give attention to just one.’

  ‘There’s no point in getting worked up.’

  ‘I am not getting worked up.’

  ‘I think you’re expecting too much from people.’

  He’s wrong about Rachel; I’m not unreasonable in expecting her to listen to me. It’s what mothers do; we talk about our offspring, way more than we’d ever talk about ourselves. It’s a fact that we discuss them to the point of being boring; we’re kind to each other and rarely point this out but instead indulge in the discussions, the debates and dilemmas about one another’s children and wait for our turn. Jeff still talks about himself more than he does Katherine. Jeff still has ambitions, deadlines, tight spots, research and remuneration issues none of which has anything whatsoever to do with Katherine. He has a career and a relationship with his daughter. My career is my relationship with my daughter. It’s an important difference. I simultaneously envy and resent the fact that he can be distracted.

  ‘I think I need to tell my family about what’s going on.’ I fling the suggestion out without thought. I guess I’m desperate.

  Jeff looks at me from over his glasses. His stare is at once bemused and censorious.

  ‘Why would you want to do that?’

  ‘My mother has a right to know.’

  ‘No, she hasn’t.’ I see Jeff’s gaze soften. ‘You’ll only be hurt, Alison.’

  ‘Not necessarily.’

  He picks up the newspaper and opens it wide to form a barrier between us. There’s silence for several minutes. When he does speak, he tries to move the conversation on; he wants us both to forget my crazy suggestion. ‘I think Katherine is doing tremendously well. She’s handling all this with great maturity.’ I suppose he’s trying to reassure me, even congratulate me on our magnificent and well-adjusted child; I am not cheered. I finger the condensation on my wine glass before I take a sip. I pretend to savour it, rather than answer. ‘We ought to be proud,’ he adds. I stare at him, mystified. I wonder how he manages to be confident in taking credit for Katherine’s excellence now. I wish I did. I feel removed from it. Before, I was in awe; now, I’m just outside. ‘I’m worried about Olivia, though,’ he adds.

  ‘She sounded happy enough today. I heard you laughing.’ I sound a bit petulant. I suppose I am feeling a bit petulant. With Katherine, Jeff has always firmly held the role of fun parent, whereas I’m the fussy, anxious one, and it’s already crystal clear that he has an easier relationship with Olivia, too. I haven’t got round to telling him about Olivia’s request to Tom to withhold her number from me, effectively barring any attempt at communication. It’s humiliating, shaming. A defeat before I’m off the blocks.

  ‘She’s got a sense of humour, that’s for certain. You know?’ Jeff looks to me for understanding, or at least acknowledgement. I can’t comment. ‘She’s cheeky, witty. Like you.’

  ‘Like me?’

  ‘Well. Like you were.’ I scowl at him. ‘The thing is, I’m not sure she is dealing with all of this as well as she would have us believe. I mean, how can she be? She lost her mother just five months ago and now she’s gained a sister, who she must see as a potential usurper.’

  ‘Did she talk about Katherine?’

  ‘No, it wasn’t that.’

  ‘Did she talk about Annabel?’

  ‘Only in passing, and it was heartbreaking – she slipped up, used the present tense. Do you remember my father did the same just after my mother died?’

  I feel for her. A deep pang. Jeff’s right; that is heartbreaking. ‘Poor thing. It is going to take a while to accept on any level something as awful as the death of her mother.’ I think of my own mother choosing to leave when I was about Amy’s age. It wasn’t the same but, still, the consequences were far-reaching. Like a stone being thrown into the centre of a calm lake, the ripples, I fear, are spreading even now. I feel sorrow and pity for all three children. What right-thinking woman wouldn’t?

  ‘We could do more.’ Jeff pauses. ‘You could do more.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘You know what I was thinking? Maybe the girls should have a joint sleepover party. Invite their respective friends. We could host it.’

  ‘Are you insane?’ I bang my wine glass down on the small table next to me with an intense clatter. It’s amazing it doesn’t smash; I don’t even care.

  ‘Alison.’ He’s mildly reproving.

  ‘How would we explain that to everyone?’ I wish this hadn’t been my first thought, because Jeff has just asked me to be kinder to a girl who has lost her mum and I know I should be. I just don’t know how to be. I’m ashamed that I’m struggling so much with it. ‘They don’t have any friends in common. They don’t even like each other.’ He doesn’t bother to deny this, so I know he must have noticed as much. ‘Why would you push them to have a sleepover?’

  ‘I don’t know. I thought it was a good idea.’

  ‘Well, it isn’t.’ It’s my turn to pick up the newspaper and pretend to start reading it, although even stories about the latest war-torn lands and various political and Hollywood scandals can’t keep me gripped. I know Jeff is staring at me, waiting to say something more.

  I wish I had obliged when he says, ‘You rather like Tom, don’t you?’ It’s the way he doesn’t look at me but instead picks at the label on the wine bottle that warns me. I feel accused, and annoyed to be so. Jeff has been the one insisting we invite the Trubys into our lives, that we involve them. He was the one who said, ‘Let’s see what happens.’ Do I? Do I rather like Tom? The thought embarrasses me. It doesn’t seem as innocent as it should be. It’s not straightforward; there is a shadow of something. Jeff carries on, leaving the beat of the suggestion in the air for us both to contemplate and yet avoid. ‘It was just an idea about the sleepover party. I just thought it might be a nice thing to do for Olivia. Don’t dismiss it out of hand. I know you want to pretend she doesn’t exist.’

  ‘That’s not true. I just have to stay focused on Katherine.’

  ‘Situation normal for you, then.’ I glare at him but don’t trust myself to speak. I’m stung. The problem for me is that I don’t know where Olivia fits. Tears brim into my eyes again. I will them not to fall, but Jeff must notice them anyway. ‘You have a big heart, Alison. Isn’t there room for Olivia?’

  ‘Jeff, Katherine might have the mutated gene. Katherine might get cancer.’ I have no satisfaction playing that particular trump card. I see something close to disgust climb across his face. He mutters that he has some work to do. I doubt he’s at his creative best in the evenings, with a glass of wine in his hand, but even so I’m glad that he wanders into his study, closes the door behind him. I feel hot and angry. Alone. No one understands the colossal scale of disruption this revelation has caused.

  Except Tom. Perhaps.

  I think of how he talked to me today, focused on me with his almost hypnotic patience. I can practically feel his ardent sincerity as though he were actually present and by my side. He understands my position, more than anyone else. More than my in-laws, more than Rachel – more than Jeff.

  17

  I can’t fight it: something inherent, involuntary, makes me believe I should tell my mother what’s going on. I know Jeff is right. It makes no sense that I feel any sort of duty towards her, as she has never been the archetypal mother or shown any maternal obligation towards me, yet I find myself on the train to Liverpool.

  ‘How come you didn’t notice?’ Her eyes flick over me in disgust. I feel like an idiot, as though I’ve done something terrible to her. This is an extra layer of complexity. I’ve felt weighed down by the brutal fear that I’m at fault here since the moment Tom walked into our lives. I’ve done something terrible to Katherine, Olivia – Jeff? It’s been a black hole o
f unfocused guilt. I resent the fact that my mother soaks it all up as though she is the victim. ‘How could such a thing happen? How could you let it happen?’

  I try not to take it personally, but it’s unfair that she always thinks I’m the disaster. I’m to blame. But she always has and always will. It’s an unalterable fact of my life. Her conclusion takes grip, becomes my reality. I know I have made mistakes.

  One mistake, really.

  But the baby swap wasn’t my fault. I hate myself for justifying it to her but do so anyway.

  ‘Well, you know what it’s like in hospital after you’ve given birth. It’s confusing. It was all so new to me.’ Her eyes bore into me. Condemning.

  ‘Not that new.’

  ‘I only saw her for a few hours – straight after the birth, before they took her to the nursery.’ My mother continues to stare at me: hard, unflinching, disappointed. ‘Then I slept. When I woke up they handed me the baby. I didn’t think they’d have got her mixed up. Who would think that?’

  ‘I’d have known. I’m sure I would.’

  I don’t make a jibe that I bet she wishes she had swapped me, because she wouldn’t deny it and I’d be the instigator of my own pain. I want to point out that my child was swapped by accident when she was less than a few hours old; my mother left me on purpose when I was eight years old. Insult to injury, she took my three younger brothers with her. Surely her crime is bigger, more vicious and more profound. I search her face for guilt, regret or repentance, as I often have; it’s never there. Instead, I see icy indifference. I’m sitting on my hands so that I don’t lurch towards her and wring her neck. Jeff was right: I was a fool to come and hope to find any comfort. Why haven’t I defeated that instinct yet? Will I ever? She makes me feel like a total failure. By contrast, she’s keen on the children she bore who have a Y chromosome.

  Davey is her favourite. She repeatedly mentions that he’s an entrepreneur and has made a stack of money attending the University of Life. By scrimping and saving, my mother helped him buy a scruffy two-bedroom flat over twenty years ago. Davey charged his two best friends rent that more than covered the mortgage; he’s bought and sold repeatedly ever since. He has a gift for reading the market, buying during the crashes, selling at the peaks; he now owns seventeen properties. Undeniably, he’s done well for himself. He bought my mother her council house and, on her sixtieth birthday, he paid for her to go on a world cruise; every now and then she gets out the photo album to remind me. Good luck to him. I’m not jealous, I’m just saying, he didn’t invent anything, he isn’t working on a cure for Alzheimer’s – he doesn’t even decorate the properties he buys; he gets Eastern Europeans to do it for him. I know: I sound bitter.

  My mother is also quick to point out that my middle brother, Neil, has given her five grandchildren. True enough. She’ll omit to mention that these children were born to three different women and he doesn’t live with any of them. Details, details. Then there’s my youngest brother, Mark. In his late teens and early twenties he did a lot of drugs. She might vaguely allude to his ‘difficult time at university’, but only in the context of how he was the only one of us to get to university; he was under a lot of pressure, so needed a valve.

  She will tell anyone who listens that I was an accident. She had flu and vomited up her contraceptive pill.

  She does love Katherine, though. She’s proud of her. A little intimidated, even. Katherine, Mum will grudgingly admit, is my greatest – actually, only – achievement. And now I’ve mucked that up.

  ‘She’s not ours?’ She looks shocked, wounded.

  ‘Well, of course she is. Nothing’s changed.’

  ‘Everything has changed.’ The most annoying thing about my mother is that she articulates the things I’d hate ever to say but, yes, she’s right, everything has changed.

  ‘She is ours,’ I insist.

  ‘Not really.’ She pours herself a mug of tea and then, grudgingly, one for me, too. She slides it across the kitchen table. She never invites me into the front room. She says it’s for guests, for best. I don’t qualify on either count.

  ‘How can you say that?’

  ‘I’m not suggesting you swap them back. I see you have to keep her. I’m just saying she’s not ours. I always thought she was too good to be true.’

  ‘Too good for me, you mean.’ She doesn’t answer but simply stares at me. Confirming.

  ‘Well, I’m sorry for you,’ says Frank. Frank is my stepfather, and a good man. Arguably, too good for my mother. He tries to smooth things over between us as much as he can, but I don’t think he knows the half. Hasn’t a clue what he’s up against. For example, I doubt he knows she left me when I was a child. I bet she’s given him a sterilized version of her past. And mine. She must have. She’d be too ashamed of me to tell him the truth. And, I’d like to think, too ashamed of herself as well. She met Frank ten years ago in the laundrette. Her washing machine was on the blink. They married eighteen months after that. She said that she ‘held no truck with those living in sin or fornicating’. I joked with Jeff that, while my mother had said some harsh things to me in her time, this was perhaps the most scarring. The image of her and Frank ‘fornicating’, as she put it, burnt on to my mind. I’d have had a lobotomy if I could have. I realised that their marriage, like that of Davey and Mark, and all of Neil’s, was an opportunity for her to tell me how depraved and disappointing I am for not marrying Jeff. Why couldn’t I persuade him? she asked. ‘What’s wrong with you?’

  My only saving grace was Katherine. But now …

  ‘How’s she taking it?’ My mother dunks a biscuit into her tea. She seems to be concentrating on not losing the mushy part more than she’s concentrating on me. Frank takes the packet of biscuits and puts half a dozen on a plate, then offers them to me. I don’t want to eat her food but I take one because of his thoughtfulness.

  ‘Quite well.’

  ‘She’s a sensible girl. What’s the other family like?’

  ‘Nice. Sadly, the mother is dead.’

  ‘Well, that’s a good thing.’

  I sigh. ‘I don’t think we can say that.’ My mother glares at me. It’s the strangest thing, but I realise she is trying to be loyal. A dead mum is less of a threat to me than a live one. Delight at a stranger’s demise is as close to support as I am likely to get. ‘The husband seems pleasant. Reasonable.’ I look at my shoes. She stares at me intently. Despite giving me up for eight years, it always seems as though she knows me better than I know myself. She recognises the worst bits of me. The shameful half-formed thoughts and the regrets. I think of Jeff’s words – ‘You rather like Tom, don’t you?’ – and I think of Tom’s attentiveness, which is appealing, and his vulnerability, which is more so. I know it is best that I don’t look at her when I mention Tom’s name. I don’t want her to speculate on that relationship. It’s too complex, too delicate for her brutal judgement, for her dark mind. I rush on. ‘And there are two other children besides Olivia – Olivia being our birth child.’

  ‘Katherine has siblings.’ Mum looks happy. My biggest fault is that I’ve failed to supply more grandchildren. That I’ve burdened my child with being a lonely only. God, if only that was all I’d burdened her with.

  ‘Yes, an older boy, Callum – he’s very sporty, plays ice hockey – and a younger daughter, Amy. She’s terribly sweet.’

  ‘Well, siblings are nice.’ Then, ‘I doubt you’ll be able to hold on to her.’

  ‘What makes you say that?’ How can you be so cruel?

  ‘Well, what have you got to offer her that equals siblings?’

  I drain my tea, say I have to go.

  ‘Well, it’s been nice seeing you. I no longer expect much beyond those bloody awful Christmas letters you send out. Hardly even personalised.’ She snorts; a dismissive, sarcastic laugh. Many people are rude about Christmas missives. More often than not, they are cynically dismissed as middle-class bragging tools. I don’t see them that way, I accept that it’s hard to
stay in touch with a lot of people so these letters are simply efficient, although admittedly with my mother, the letters are more of an avoidance technique. I rather like hearing that Ron and Karen went on a safari to Botswana, that Henry and Sue’s daughter has got a place at RADA. It’s simply an old-fashioned version of Facebook. Lives set out with purpose, showing order and meaning and progress.

  My mother starts to shake theatrically, as though she’s convulsed with laughter, but I know her well enough to realise she’s never really moved by joy.

  ‘Can you imagine their Christmas letter this year?’ she asks, through gasps.

  ‘Well, I don’t imagine they are the sort to send one,’ I reply stiffly.

  ‘But if they did. “We’re sad to tell you the missus is dead and Olivia isn’t ours. On the brighter side, Callum is doing very nicely with his ice-hockey team.” Yours won’t be much better.’

  I glare at her. ‘We won’t be sending one.’ I don’t tell her about the mutated gene. What’s the point?

  Frank offers to give me a lift to the station.

  18

  It’s only when I stand on the platform, anticipating the train that will take me the long, juddering distance into London, where I’ll have to change and get another one home, do I realise that she never asked a thing about Olivia. Ignored her existence. I feel a flush of shame creep over my scalp and a shiver down my spine. I’m disgusted with myself because maybe we resemble one another in this. Am I pretending Olivia is nothing to do with me? I don’t want to have anything in common with my mother – a woman who can abandon a child. Was I too easily put off when Olivia refused to give me her mobile number? I’m the adult here. I should try another way to reach her. I pull out my phone and quickly send her a Facebook friend request.

  The valiant autumnal sun, fragile but defiant, shines and sends some warmth through my tights, whispering breath on to my legs as I imagine an infatuated lover might. It’s an odd thought for me to have. Somehow all the more scandalous and incredible to have here, in the vicinity of my mother’s bleak sphere. I blame lack of sleep. A local train pulls up at the platform, I hear the names of the village stations I recognise from my childhood blare out over the tannoy, but I am waiting for the fast train, the one that will get me out of here, take me in the opposite direction. My friends talk about the halcyon days of childhoods past; the freedom of being able to ride a bike anywhere, never having to worry about Twitter trolling and the fact that kids still believed in the magic of Christmas. I don’t look back through a soft focus, my childhood was sad, oppressed and limited, yet for a moment I feel an illogical longing, something like homesickness, but then the sun dips, lost behind a cloud, and I feel relieved to be leaving. It’s never been here, my home. I’m sick for what’s never been. That’s all.