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

by Parks, Adele

  ‘Bella never got stressed at Christmas.’

  ‘Never?’ I splutter hot Americano. Really? Never? What was she, Superwoman?

  Tom looks completely sincere. ‘No. She loved Christmas. Especially the parties. We threw one every year. The Saturday before Christmas, whatever date that happened to fall. She’d bake mince pies and serve little savoury snacks.’ Bake? No nipping to M&S and heating up pre-prepared vol-au-vents? ‘She served cookies and brownies in the shape of Santa and Rudolf and had endless bowls of red and green sweets lying about everywhere; nothing showy, just fun. She spent ages sorting out Smarties, Fruit Pastilles and Skittles. The kids loved eating up the left-over other colours she rejected.’

  ‘How lovely.’ I tell myself that no one in their right mind worries about E numbers or additives at Christmas. I need to let go a bit.

  ‘Yes, I’m not being braggy, but we threw good parties. Lots of alcohol is the key. For the guests and the hosts. It would be stacked in the kitchen sink and in the bath, ice skittering in the water; one year there was actual snow on the ground at the right time so Bella chilled the beers and Prosecco by half-burying the bottles in it in the garden. It was magical.’

  ‘I imagine she was the sort of woman to have a lot of friends,’ I say, trying to bring the conversation around to the reason I wanted to meet up.

  ‘Oh yes. I never knew who she’d invite. It got bigger every year. Throughout December she’d fling out invitations like confetti. Friends, neighbours, new acquaintances, stalwarts and newbies side by side. People talked about our parties well into January.’ He’s smiling at the memory. It’s a wide, peaceful grin, then it collapses and he breaks eye contact. Looks at his coffee. ‘This year, no one will know what to do with themselves the Saturday before Christmas. It will be like the whole street is in mourning.’

  I reach out and take hold of his hand. I can’t think what to say so I simply squeeze his fingers. He nods, understanding.

  ‘It’s good she had so many friends. I mean, that must be a great help and comfort now.’ I take a deep breath. He looks up at me, confused. ‘I know that Callum didn’t stay in with Amy and Mozart last night. I saw him at the bonfire.’

  ‘You saw him.’ Tom looks aghast, so shocked I feel sorry for him.

  ‘Don’t worry, I totally understand. I’ve joined the dots.’

  ‘You have?’ He looks grave.

  ‘I see that Annabel has friends who want to take care of the children, who want to help. It’s a good thing. I’m glad you are not as alone as I feared.’ I realise I’m still holding his hand and abruptly let go, lean back in my chair. ‘The children didn’t want to come out with us, did they?’

  Tom turns red. ‘Oh, I wouldn’t say—’ I meet his eye and he falls silent.

  ‘It’s OK. It’s understandable.’ I had half-hoped he’d insist I’d got it wrong, that certainly the children liked spending time with us, but he doesn’t. ‘I guess they’ve grown up with Annabel’s friends. Their children must be your children’s friends.’

  ‘Yes,’ he admits.

  ‘We’re still strangers by comparison. It was really good of you still to join us. I can’t imagine that was an easy choice.’

  ‘I like spending time with Katherine.’

  ‘I know.’ I guess Katherine must remind him of Annabel, in ways I don’t know about and never will. Maybe she has her physical features, although, as she looks so much like Tom, I imagine it’s more likely to be expressions, but, inevitably, there will be something.

  ‘And you have that rule about standing by the first invite you accept.’ I smile. ‘Besides, if I’m honest, I couldn’t quite face the whole crew en masse,’ he explains.

  ‘Understandable.’

  ‘They mean well, but—’

  ‘They remind you of what you’ve lost.’

  ‘Precisely.’ I want to take hold of his hand again, but I fight the impulse. It would perhaps be too much. Tom excuses himself, says he has to go to the loo. When he comes back he looks a little more together.

  ‘Shall we stay for lunch?’

  ‘Don’t you have to get back to the office?’

  ‘I’ll stay late this evening.’

  I don’t often go out for lunch, even though Jeff regularly refers to me as a ‘lady who lunches’. If he’s working from home, rather than the library, I fix us soup, salad or a sandwich. Before Rachel emigrated we’d sometimes drop into one another’s home and enjoy a slice of quiche or a bowl of pasta. Having lunch in a lovely bistro with Tom seems too appealing to resist.

  Once we’ve agreed that we are staying, we seem to accept that we want to indulge. We order starters and mains. Tom even persuades me to have a Bloody Mary. ‘You’re not driving.’

  ‘Well, you are.’

  ‘No, I walked here from the office and, by the time I leave the office this evening, I’ll have metabolised a Bloody Mary. What time do you have to pick up Katherine?’

  ‘She’s training, so not until six.’

  ‘There you go, then.’

  ‘And what time do you have to pick up Amy?’

  ‘Callum collects her from after-school club.’ He orders doubles. It seems very daring to be drinking at lunchtime, and fun.

  The food is delicious, locally sourced and down-to-earth. I order cauliflower soup, which I never make at home because Jeff retches at just the thought of cauliflower; it’s also the cheapest starter on the menu. For my main I order fishcakes; there’s a special deal on them.

  ‘Do you always order the cheapest thing on the menu?’ asks Tom.

  I’m taken aback he’s noticed and so simply stutter a truthful response. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Habit, I suppose.’

  ‘But you know you can afford anything on the menu, have been able to for a long time. None of it is expensive and, anyway, I’m picking up the tab today.’

  ‘You are not,’ I say firmly.

  He smiles blithely, making it clear that’s a point we’ll deal with when it’s time to leave. ‘It’s a self-esteem issue, Alison. Similar to not spending much on the clothes you wear. You should think about it.’

  I don’t know what to say. His perception knocks me off balance; I’m at once mortified at having been called up on it and pleased because he cares enough to work me out. I decide to pick a pudding without looking at what they cost. That’s if Tom wants a pudding. I won’t eat one if he doesn’t. I don’t want to look greedy, especially if he does end up picking up the bill.

  Keen to change the subject, I say, ‘So you said there was something you wanted to talk to me about.’

  ‘Yes. There’s something I’ve been meaning to tell you.’ He puts down his knife and fork, looks unsure but then decides to go for it. ‘I think the mix-up might have been Bel’s fault. I’m pretty certain.’

  This is so mammoth I hardly dare breathe. Quietly, as though trying not to scare off a timid animal, I ask, ‘Why do you say that?’

  Tom’s face is a complex assembly of emotion. He looks weary. Ashamed and disloyal. Unhappy at being so. ‘I’ve been thinking about it, and it was something she once said. Just once.’ His face tightens. He looks away, unable to meet my eyes. He lowers his voice and speaks to the wall. I lean towards him, to catch every word. ‘We had been expecting twins.’ I gasp. Katherine was a twin? It seems so incredible, so wonderful. There might have been double her magnificence. ‘We lost one twin during pregnancy, at five months.’ Not magnificent then, tragic.

  ‘How did Annabel take that?’

  ‘Stoically.’ Of course. Of course she did. Annabel was perfect, you see. Not neurotic or irrational, not indulgent – like me. She was perfect: she was Katherine’s mother. He is looking at the table now, carelessly playing with his food, no intention of eating it. I can’t swallow either. ‘Just once she told me something, sort of as a joke. You see, Olivia doesn’t look like our other two, and this one time Bel made a comment that we’d brought the wrong baby home from the hospital.’

/>   ‘Not much of a joke.’

  ‘Well, no, as things turn out. No. But people say that sort of thing all the time, don’t they? My mother used to wonder where I got my creative side from. Dad made jokes that I was the decorator’s son. No one thought he was being serious.’

  ‘I suppose,’ I admit churlishly. I just can’t laugh about this.

  ‘Bel giggled and said it was possible. That she had held two babies in the hospital. I remember her telling the story. She looked playful at first but then her eyes dimmed for a second. It struck me as odd so I asked her about it that night when we were in bed together. What did she mean she’d held two babies?’ He glances at me to check I am with him. Certainly, I am with him. I’m hanging off his every word. ‘Have I ever told you that Olivia’s –’ he hesitates – ‘Katherine’s birth was long and hard?’ We don’t know how to refer to the babies at this stage in their lives, when they had Katherine but called her Olivia, and Jeff and I had Olivia but thought of her as Katherine. I nod him on, not wanting him to get side-tracked by this matter of names but instead to tell me when exactly he thought the switch might have happened. ‘The hospital wanted to perform a Caesarean, since we’d already lost the twin, but Annabel wouldn’t hear of it. She tore, they had to use forceps in the end; it was a nightmare. I hated every moment. I was actually quite angry with her.’ I can’t hide my surprise. Weren’t they a faultless couple? Isn’t Tom sanguine and adoring? How could he be confessing to being angry with his wife during labour? Then he explains, ‘You know how anger surfaces when you are in fact terrified or when you care too much.’ I think of how much yelling and snapping Jeff and I are doing of late. Oh yes. I know that. ‘I didn’t think she had to suffer so. I thought she was punishing herself. Irrationally.’

  ‘Punishing herself for what?’

  ‘For losing the twin.’

  My stomach slips, defying gravity, as an enormous wave of pity floods through my body. Poor Annabel. Poor, terrified, dead Annabel. Suddenly, and rightly, I pity her. I have not allowed any room for that. I’ve been so resentful that her mutated gene is threatening Katherine and so furious that we are left managing the children’s emotions that I haven’t allowed myself to think about her properly. Something inside me opens up a fraction and, for the first time since I heard her name, I feel deep grief for the loss of Annabel. For the lack of Annabel. She didn’t have an easy ride in her short life.

  The waitress comes to our table. She eyes our barely touched meals wearily. ‘Everything all right?’ she asks.

  ‘Delicious,’ I assure her firmly, but then confuse her by putting my knife and fork together and telling her she can take my plate away. Tom continues.

  ‘She lost a lot of blood, needed a transfusion. As I said, it was traumatic. Even when Katherine was finally delivered she didn’t become any more rational. I know all mothers of newborns are somewhat overprotective but she was unreasonable. She refused to stay in bed, was constantly agitated and insisted on hobbling around while she was still attached to the drip. She went into the nursery whenever she heard a baby cry. She always thought it was our baby.’

  He pauses and pinches the bridge of his nose, then uses his thumb to massage his forehead. I breathe slowly and deeply, resisting hurrying him on, even though all I want is for him to finish his story. I need every detail. It matters to me, so very much. I need to know when I became Katherine’s mother. I know it was not at eleven fifteen on the morning of 27th March, as we’ve always thought, but sometime within the next twenty-four hours. In real terms, it doesn’t matter, it’s just a question of hours. Yet nothing else matters as much, right now.

  ‘She was so tired, she wasn’t sure what she was doing.’ He is trying to explain and excuse. I am touched by his loyalty. ‘She told me that in the middle of the night she’d wandered into the nursery. It was dark and quiet. The duty nurse had nipped to the loo. Annabel just had this urge to pick up another baby while she had ours in her arms. You know, just to see. A sort of fantasy. If everything had worked out with the twin, could she have managed two? That was all she was thinking. She never meant to cause any harm. She’d had an emergency Caesarean, she was pumped with drugs. Dazed. You know?’ His eyes are pleading for understanding. ‘She told me that the nurse came in and scolded her. Said she was endangering both babies since she wasn’t particularly steady on her feet. The nurse snatched the babies off her one at a time and put them back in their bassinets.’

  ‘That’s when it happened?’

  ‘Possibly.’ His expression, normally so benign, is clamped and rigid. ‘Probably. Yes. The night Bel told me about the incident, she said she was joking, as I say, but somehow she wasn’t. I never thought anything of it until – well, until after she died. After the tests.’

  I imagine the moment. I can see it vividly. The skinny, frail woman attached to a drip celebrating the birth of one baby, still grieving for the other. I see the nurse, efficient, well-meaning but a touch too officious and, after all, not quite as efficient as she believed herself to be. How could it have happened? Why weren’t the babies tagged better? Yet if they had been, I wouldn’t have had Katherine. But I would have had Olivia. I have not allowed myself to think about how differently things could have turned out.

  This birth story is such a stark contrast to my own easy one. I’m floored with pity for the woman and the baby. What a terrible, heart-rending struggle. I think of the baby I brought home, unaware she had already lost her twin and had endured such a tricky start.

  For the first time, I really acknowledge that I gave birth to Olivia. Obviously, until a couple of months ago, I thought the story with the mini-bottle of champers and the chatty nurses belonged to Katherine, but it belongs to Olivia. Birthing Olivia was easy. It is something she has; we have. That, and the pregnancy. My bump so tight I thought the skin would tear. The baby – Olivia – throwing out her elbows, her knees and heels, purposefully, as if she were trying to reach me. Propping myself up to watch TV, never being able to find a comfy position to sleep in, Jeff having to help me out of my chair. Sometimes I’d ask him to tie my shoelaces; he’d grumble that I was being lazy but he’d tie them anyway. ‘At least you’re not an African elephant – count your blessings. They carry their babies for twenty-two months before giving birth.’ I remember stocking up on white Babygros, vests, socks (the size of my thumb!) and mittens. White, because that would work no matter if it was a boy or a girl. I always believed it was a girl, hoped it would be. I felt that would be easier. I bought the diminutive garments for Olivia, I understand that now. They became Katherine’s.

  We are where we are. It is what it is. Katherine is my baby.

  ‘Didn’t Annabel notice that the babies had been returned to the wrong bassinets?’

  I don’t want to sound accusatory but I think I must because Tom snaps a little. ‘I said: she was on lots of heavy painkillers, she hadn’t slept. Those early days are a fog.’

  ‘But she must have noticed.’ I know my frustration is leaking out.

  ‘Didn’t you, when they brought you the wrong baby for her next feed?’

  I am silenced. I have asked myself this question over and over. How did I fail to notice? What sort of mother was I that I didn’t know? When I held that hot, firm, snuffling baby in my arms on the second day, I loved the baby they gave me even more than I had the night before, but that wasn’t because I preferred one baby to the other. I didn’t love Katherine more than Olivia or Olivia more than Katherine. It wasn’t a choice. How would that be the case? I didn’t even know there were two. It is simply that I’ve loved my child more every single day of her life. As, no doubt, Annabel loved Olivia.

  I loved her when she curled into me, smudging our existences together, and when she flailed with fury as her teeth broke through her gums. I loved her even when my back and my shoulders ached with holding her. I loved her though I never finished a meal or had a full night’s sleep for months. I did. I was, and am, imprisoned by that love. You think you love them so
much you’ll burst, that there isn’t any space left at all to produce or give more love, but then the next day, you do have more capacity.

  This pattern continues until they are teenagers.

  Joking. Obviously.

  My love for Katherine is greater in this moment than it has ever been. Until tomorrow, when I shall love her more still.

  22

  There was never any question that anyone other than I would take Katherine to her counselling sessions, at least not in my mind. I’m the one who takes her to all her lacrosse games and training, to her music lessons, to her French-conversation tutor, to sleepovers at her friends’. I’m the one who picks her up from all of those activities, too. It’s my job. Jeff offered to drive her to counselling once but I shot him down.

  ‘Why does it matter who takes me?’ asked Katherine. ‘I go into the sessions alone.’

  ‘I like being there in the waiting room to support you, Katherine. I want you to know that I’m just the other side of the door.’ I also hope that the journeys might provide an opportunity to talk. They don’t. After every session I ask her how things went. She replies with an unconvincing, not especially revealing, ‘Fine.’

  ‘Well, I hope you don’t wear that expression the whole time you are there supporting her,’ mumbled Jeff when Katherine was out of earshot. He lay a particular emphasis on the word ‘supporting’, implying that he seriously doubted I was at all.

  ‘What expression?’

  ‘The one where you pull your face into a tight, sad look. That’s no sort of help – you’re more likely to make her want to run away.’

  I checked in the mirror, but I couldn’t catch the particular expression he was talking about; there are a number of horrified and dismayed expressions to choose from. I made a mental note to smile more.