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

by Parks, Adele

  The train arrives and as the passengers disembark I scan the crowds for faces I might recognise, but there are none, even though the type is familiar. Older women waddle off the train, carrying shopping bags. They look like the older women from my childhood, although they can’t be; they have to be the daughters of those I knew. Regardless, they wear the same look: harried and fretful. Many of the women are with their friends and sisters. I overhear snatches of conversations about errant husbands, unruly children and worrying health problems. They sympathise with one another, click their tongues then laugh and reassure. Generation after generation, the concerns are the same. Although not the same as mine. There are only two other parents in the world who have my particular problem; no other woman. I call Jeff but go straight through to voicemail. I leave him a message telling him which train I’m boarding and promising to text once I make the connection in London. It’s a perfunctory call. He said this visit would only upset me further; I’m not prepared to give him the satisfaction of being right. Then I call Tom.

  ‘Hello, it’s Alison.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘You’re in my phone.’

  Of course I’m in his phone. He’s in mine. It doesn’t mean anything. A pause. A breath. ‘I’ve just told my mother about – well, the swap.’

  ‘How did she take it?’

  ‘Like she takes everything. She blamed me.’

  ‘That’s harsh.’

  ‘She is harsh.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ It is the sort of ‘sorry’ that not only relieves but relaxes, like fresh air entering a stuffy room. My train pulls up and I realise I should hang up; I’ve told him what I wanted to tell him. He’s done what I hoped – sympathised with me, made me feel a tiny bit better – but then he says, ‘What about your dad?’

  ‘My dad?’

  ‘How did he take it?’

  I board the train and find a window seat without hanging up. His voice is calming. I put my handbag on the seat next to me, selfishly discouraging anyone to sit there. ‘I haven’t told him. We are not in regular contact.’ That’s skimming the truth. I sigh, and then admit, ‘He hasn’t even met Katherine. My parents divorced when I was eight.’

  ‘He left you?’ I rather like the outrage I hear in Tom’s voice.

  ‘Actually, she left me. I stayed with him until I was sixteen.’

  ‘Then?’

  I hesitate. ‘It just made sense for me to move back in with my mother. He had a need to start again. He moved to South Africa.’

  ‘Wow.’

  ‘Yes. He remarried and had two more children. Girls.’ I turn to look out the window; the train slowly pulls away and I breathe a sigh of relief. I got away. Again. Each time, I fear I won’t. Illogically, I feel I’ll be pulled back into it all. Crazy, when you think the evidence is that they can never wait to be rid of me. Who do I imagine might try to keep me here?

  ‘South Africa is a long way away.’ It’s a gentle understatement that elicits more from me.

  ‘I visited once, in my twenties. Everyone was very polite to me, though not exactly welcoming, a shade below that, but certainly convivial. Dad had changed.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘He was, I don’t know, just different. He hugged his daughters a lot, he called barbecues braais, commented that the air conditioning took some getting used to and, when anyone was late, he indulgently said that they were “running on African time”.’ Tom makes a sound that is somehow sympathetic towards me and dismissive of my father. It is mollifying and encouraging. ‘However, it soon became apparent that my stepmother had not mentioned her husband’s first family to her numerous coiffured, barbecuing – sorry, braai-ing, friends. She asked me whether I’d call him Terry rather than Dad.’

  ‘Ouch.’

  ‘Yes. He just looked at his sandals when she made this request, didn’t say a word. I noticed that he still wore socks under his sandals, even if everything else had changed.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  Again, the ‘sorry’ eases things. ‘Thanks.’ We fall silent, but there’s no suggestion that the conversation is over, that I should hang up.

  After a while he says, carefully, ‘Do you think that’s why you’re so ferocious about Katherine?’

  ‘Am I ferocious about Katherine?’

  I hear him make a sound down the phone, a sort of laugh. ‘You are about protecting her, looking after her. Was it because your parents didn’t really look after you?’

  I don’t know how to answer. I feel as I always do now when I speak to Tom – flattered. His intense scrutiny is pleasing. Jeff makes me feel a bit foolish and insinuates I’m simply – boringly – overprotective, even though he, more than anyone, must know why I can’t stop myself. Tom seems to understand, maybe even admires me for it. I love Katherine with such intensity because, how could I not? But, on some level, my style of mothering is a rejoinder. It’s entirely possible that I am self-sacrificing, orderly, supportive and polite because my mother was selfish, chaotic, irresponsible and cruel. ‘Maybe. Almost certainly,’ I admit. ‘I’d do anything for her.’

  ‘Naturally.’

  ‘Literally, anything.’ I sound more intense than is wise; I guess I’m feeling particularly emotional because I’ve just visited my mother. ‘Do you understand?’

  ‘Yes, I do.’ I hear it in his voice. He does. ‘I would, too,’ he adds.

  I blink – once, twice – to try to help me through the depth of the moment. I can hear his breathing, and it’s almost as if he’s invited me to elaborate. ‘It’s true to say my childhood was a bit seat-of-the-pants. Experimental.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘In a book or a film a story about an absent mother would, no doubt, have a scene where the deserted girl might endearingly clamber up on to a stool, reach to retrieve an old cookery book.’ I sigh. ‘She’d turn the dusty pages and trace her finger over the recipes written down by her grandmother. She’d learn to cook, faltering at first, but eventually she’d produce delicious, hearty dishes. Maybe even make a career out of it. In real life, I practically starved.’

  ‘That’s why it’s all organic this, that and the other now.’

  ‘Well, yes, I guess so.’

  ‘I don’t suppose you went to private school?’

  ‘God, no. We never had much money. The concept is strange now, as I always have enough money to buy anything I could reasonably want. I can buy a cup of coffee for over three pounds and even resist silently calculating how much less it would have cost simply to spoon a heap of instant in a mug and drink it black.’ I don’t know why I’m telling him all this. I’ve spent the last thirty years of my life trying not to let a hint of my ghastly past leak into my shiny present. I suppose the truth of it is that it never goes away. ‘It took me a long time to get here. To a place where I take financial security as a given.’

  ‘Now, you don’t even have to work.’

  He’s only stating the obvious, but I feel a bit stung. Reduced. ‘I do all the housework,’ I say. He obviously hears my defensiveness.

  ‘Oh, I’m not criticising. I think it’s wonderful if mothers can and want to stay home to bring up their kids. Who needs the aggro of having to explain the importance of attending sports days to their bosses?’

  I imagine he’s had quite a bit of aggro being Mum and Dad to three children, so it’s extremely generous of him to say as much. ‘It has been wonderful. I’m not good at blowing my own trumpet, but I do believe I’ve been the best mother I could be to Katherine. Or at least I believe that most of the time,’ I add candidly.

  ‘No doubt about it.’ It means a lot to hear his enthusiastic endorsement, especially on the back of a visit to my mother’s. I was what others called ‘a natural’. Katherine’s toddler tyranny didn’t faze me. Urges, impulses, fads, appetites and energy were all just challenges which I joyfully rose to. Some women resent it. ‘Some of my friends talked about losing themselves. I was grateful to be swallowed whole.’
/>   ‘Happy to lose what had gone before?’ His question frightens me. It’s so perceptive. I daren’t answer directly. He seems to know me better than I know myself. I almost tell him. I almost tell him everything. I stop myself just in time.

  ‘I was happy to rush around with rice cakes and baby wipes. I was the one who knew where we kept the nail scissors, what exactly had to be packed in her ballet kit. I liked being indispensable.’ Cleaning up messes made me feel useful and purposeful. Whole. Katherine gave me meaning. Women rarely admit that now. It’s so old-fashioned to say you are happy to live to look after your child, achieve through your child, but I am. My friends used to say, ‘How have I been reduced to this?’ But I felt elevated. Being Katherine’s mother elevated me. I liked it all: shopping, washing, chopping, puréeing, wiping, reading, bending, playing, singing, dancing, pushing, rocking. All the things that add up to being a parent held me enthralled. Still do, but it’s more complex now. I don’t know how I’ll ever come to terms with the fact that I’ve only ever been a good mother to Katherine. Is that enough?

  Can I forgive myself?

  Tom tuts sadly. ‘I’m sorry about your mother and father. You seem very alone.’ I’m left breathless at that comment. I have Katherine, I have Jeff, I have friends. Not bosom buddies, perhaps, but a dinner-party circuit, people I wave to when I go to my Pilates class. Although, I have to admit, the distance between Rachel and I is now not only physical. She didn’t believe me when I said that the Skype connection had been lost, but then neither did she care enough to call me on it. We’re currently confining ourselves to WhatsApp messages. Tom’s right. I do sometimes feel very alone. Did it take another lonely person to see that?

  ‘I don’t feel alone now,’ I confess.

  ‘You’re not.’ The warmth of his words sneaks through my ear into my head and my heart. They settle, sending a glow through my body. I feel his sympathy and understanding and it’s almost a little too heavy to bear. I want to say something as important back to him, but I have to be careful. Are we friends now? Are we more? The boundaries are blurred and I feel I’m smudging them further.

  ‘What about you?’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘You never mention your parents.’

  ‘They live in Spain. They bought a holiday home in Alicante in the early nineties and retired there about four years ago.’

  ‘You must miss them.’

  ‘They have a good life there. Lots of friends.’ He hasn’t answered the question.

  ‘You must miss Annabel terribly.’ It’s a woefully inadequate comment, but it’s a start. Since the first time he came to our house, Tom has not allowed himself to speak about Annabel. I understand that he doesn’t want to be morbid around the children but I think he needs to talk to someone.

  ‘Yes. Every morning I wake up and for a fraction of a moment I forget she’s gone. I reach out for her but my arm falls flat against the cool sheet. My grief assaults me anew. Every morning.’

  I gasp. What to say in the face of such loss?

  A man with a trolley selling tea, sandwiches, crisps and Twix bars shuffles by. I shake my head at him. I have no appetite. I feel the motion of the train through my body. I feel Tom’s pain, too. The worst thing is, there are so many hurdles to get over. He never talks about Callum and Amy taking the test to detect the mutated gene. I suppose he must be blanking it. I think about what that gene will mean for Katherine all the time. I guess he’s reached a saturation point in terms of what he can deal with. Tentatively, I moot the idea, ‘Tom, have you given any thought to when Callum and Amy might take the BRCA1 and 2 test?’

  ‘They both did, shortly after Olivia took herself off to have it behind my back.’

  ‘Oh.’ I’m stunned. I don’t know what to say.

  ‘They’re clear. Didn’t I ever tell you that? I can’t believe I never told you that. I suppose I forgot to mention it the first time we met. I’m so sorry. You must have been worrying all this time.’

  Yes! However, I don’t want to pile any more grief or guilt on to Tom, so I say, ‘Well, you had a lot of information to convey.’

  ‘Indeed.’

  ‘And this is good news. Great news!’

  ‘For Callum and Amy, undoubtedly, but I’m so sorry, Alison, their results don’t have any bearing on Katherine’s. This doesn’t mean the gene has skipped a generation or anything like that. Each child has a fifty per cent chance of inheriting it.’

  Each child’s odds is separate and unrelated to their siblings’, and yet – yet. The cold grasp of panic tightens around my neck. Could they all three be lucky? Is that likely?

  I need to change the subject now.

  ‘Jeff thinks we should throw the girls a joint sleepover party.’ I don’t know why I am saying this. It’s certainly not what I want. I wonder whether I’m testing Tom.

  ‘That’s a bloody awful idea. They barely make eye contact – we can’t fling them together. They’re not ready for that.’ He passes with flying colours.

  ‘I agree.’ Hesitantly, I ask, ‘Has Olivia talked to you much about the situation? About how she feels?’

  ‘No. She’s being very closed. You know teenagers.’

  ‘That I do.’

  ‘I’ll ask her again, if you like, about you having her mobile number – or maybe we should arrange for you to meet up with her without all the others, even without Katherine.’

  ‘Possibly.’ I’m not sure. I don’t know which way to turn. Would that be disloyal to Katherine? Would Olivia even be interested? I think of Tom’s loneliness and I want to offer him something. ‘We’re thinking of going to the fireworks at Elizabeth Park on Thursday. The council always puts on a good display. Would you like to join us?’ I throw out the invite before I change my mind, before I even consider that Katherine hasn’t actually committed to the family outing. I’ve suggested the idea, and she’s murmured, ‘Maybe.’ I know she’s also been invited to a friend’s private fireworks party, a party where they will be toasting marshmallows and serving hot chocolate.

  ‘That would be wonderful, but doesn’t Katherine have a music lesson and then debating society on Thursdays?’

  I’m impressed he remembers. And also a little daunted. Is he teasing me? Throwing back in my face the obstacles I recently presented to him? ‘She can miss the debating society this once. Meet at the south gate, at, say, six fifteen?’

  ‘Great.’ I can almost feel his smile through the mobile. He has so many milestones in front of him to get through: Halloween, Bonfire Night, Christmas, birthdays, anniversaries. Days that used to be joyful celebrations will simply have to be endured. If I can do anything to ease that burden for him and his family, then I want to.

  ‘I’ll look forward to it,’ I say, and I’m surprised to find that’s the truth.

  ‘Me, too.’ He pauses and then lets out a big breath, the sort that always heralds an announcement. ‘Look, Alison, I want you to know I’m your friend. I’ve come to—’ He falters, then goes for it. ‘I’ve come to care about you, a great deal. If you ever need a chat, you’re welcome to come over. It doesn’t have to be a scheduled visit. You can just drop in.’

  I feel sweat on the back of my knees. ‘Thank you, Tom.’

  ‘And as for your family and your background and such. I think you should be kinder on yourself. None of us can undo or even disentangle our pasts. They are knotted. And why should we wish to? Our pasts are the ingredients of who we turn out to be. From what I know of you, you’ve turned out fine. Everyone has a tendency to want to smooth over the awkward or discomfiting parts and present a respectable, shiny version to the outside world, but it’s not necessary. Not for me. I mean, we are practically family.’

  For the first time, that idea didn’t make me want to recoil.

  19

  Having made the arrangement, I still wasn’t sure whether Katherine would agree to attend the firework display. I’m pretty sure if it had been with just me and her dad she would have declined, insisting that she was
too old for toffee apples and sparklers. She’s done Bonfire Night often enough with us, and her excited squeals have, over the years, given way to a quiet dissatisfaction with what the evening ultimately delivers; familiarity can do that. However, she’s lured in by the promise of the wider chaos siblings represent. I get it: a big family offers buoyancy and fluidity; seven people can gather and then pair off, then regroup; that sort of number defuses any intensity. Our tight unit of three offers loyalty and stability, but that’s very close to predictability: one step from ‘tedious’ for a teenager.

  We decide to walk to the event, there’s no point in taking the car; it’s impossible to secure a parking spot within a mile of the activities, unless you park the day before. It’s chilly and drizzling, but I’ve done this in drilling rain before; bad weather is traditional. As we walk towards the park Katherine thrills me by linking her arm in mine. We point out the fireworks that occasionally flash in the sky. Sparkle then disappear.

  ‘When I was a little girl I thought fireworks were spells, wonderful little blasts of magic exploding into the air,’ I say.

  She squeezes my arm. ‘Oh, Mum, you are really sweet. I know that. You tell me every year.’ She’s in a good mood. It’s funny, but the fact I’m noticing as much highlights the fact that she really hasn’t been, not very often, in the past few weeks. Who could be, given what she’s dealing with? As we walk, Katherine chatters about the auditions for a music contest at school she’s thinking of entering and how she has been conned out of a mark in a physics test because the teacher said she couldn’t read her handwriting. I find it tricky to concentrate on what she’s saying and leave it to Jeff to interject the appropriate comments in the appropriate place. I am battling with strange and confusing feelings. As usual, there is the dread that I carry about almost constantly, yet there’s something else, too. If I didn’t know better, I’d say I have a small but definite sense of excitement, of anticipation. But that can’t be right, not under the circumstances. I can hardly be eager to see the firework display; like Katherine, I’ve come to know what to expect from the council’s fireworks. I keep thinking about Tom. About him dropping his coat around my shoulders at the ice rink, about his keen interest in my stories on our walk, about his gentle pledge to be my friend when I called him from the station. It’s unsettling.