‘Will I see you tonight?’
‘I said I’d spend it with Maggie. We’re going to go to that new Indian place at London Bridge.’
‘Right.’ Jim paused. ‘Can you eat that sort of stuff?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘All those funny foreign spices, perhaps they’re not good for the baby.’
Sylvia suppressed a sigh. Sit down and put your feet up. Can I make you a cup of tea? Are you eating enough? That was how their interactions went these days. Not office politics and Fleet Street gossip and juicy news stories. They had a new prime minister, for goodness sake, but all Jim wanted to talk about was which foods she should avoid. Maybe it was just the shock of it; maybe it wouldn’t last. It couldn’t, surely. She wasn’t suddenly fragile and weak – and she certainly didn’t intend to let him or anyone else treat her that way.
‘I’m sure it’s fine, Jim. Don’t fuss,’ she said again.
‘I just want to look after you both.’
‘I’m perfectly capable of doing that myself.’
They said their goodbyes and Sylvia returned the phone to the cradle. She looked back down at the papers in front of her. Letters. From Deirdre and Mary and Donna and Christine and other women from Tunbridge Wells, Gloucester, Stoke-on-Trent, Southend-on-Sea. She’d been surprised when Roger had presented her with a bundle of them a few days after her article was published.
‘Most of them are about your feature, so I thought you may as well edit the damn things,’ he’d said, adding, unnecessarily she thought, ‘Valerie doesn’t have time.’
So now she was letters’ editor – well, only for those intended for the women’s pages, but it was something. She wasn’t being sent to interview Peter Hall, as Max was about to (because of course he who called actors ‘a bunch of egotistical toffs’ was best served to interview the director of the National Theatre and not she, a regular and enthusiastic theatregoer thanks to Maggie’s access to discount tickets), but it was a definite vote of confidence in her from Roger, however small.
She’d tried to keep her face calm when the paper landed on her desk without ceremony last Friday; there it was, her piece on Switzerland over nearly a full page in the women’s section with several photos she’d taken at the rally.
SWISS SISTERS FIGHT FOR RIGHTS: FIVE YEARS AFTER GAINING THE VOTE, THE BATTLE CONTINUES
Her byline in bold below the headline. Her byline! Not only attached to a golden oldies interview (that was in there as well, of course: Fran and Percy from Golder’s Green, whose best piece of advice on marriage had been ‘don’t argue when you’re hungry’), but a serious news feature on a subject she felt passionate about, a feature she’d pitched and persuaded Roger to run.
She’d read it start to finish, even though she already knew it almost by heart. She noted Sam’s subbing changes – true to Valerie’s word, there were few, though to her mind the ones there were seemed clumsy – and felt the piece anew, as she always did when her writing was published. Somehow, seeing it in print made it concrete and gave it a gravitas it didn’t have when it rolled out of her typewriter on office A4, multiples of ‘x’ obscuring unwanted words.
‘Strong stuff, darling,’ Valerie had said when she walked past her desk, and Sylvia didn’t even think she was being sarcastic.
Max’s enthusiasm was less ambiguous – ‘Dog’s bollocks, that, Syl’ – but the boost she felt on hearing her colleagues’ praise quickly faded when Clive, passing through the office with a coffee in hand, looked over her shoulder at a close-up shot of Hanna, the reform school girl, and let out a low whistle.
‘What a stunner. Can you get me her number?’
Max had laughed. ‘I doubt she’s that desperate, old man.’
‘I don’t know.’ Ellis looked up from his typewriter, a grin on his face. ‘Offer her some cash for her life story and even a fat old bugger like you might get lucky.’
Sylvia had sighed and closed the paper. She thought of Evelyne and her friends.
Switzerland must seem like the most backwards place to you.
Hardly. But the men’s comments only propelled her onwards. Now she had one big feature in the bag, she needed to capitalise on her success by pitching some more. She’d stayed late every night this week searching for ideas, reading news-in-briefs, telephoning contacts, scouring the cuttings library.
Ever since the clinic, it had become a compulsion because all she saw now was an egg-timer, the sand flowing fast, running down, urging her to do more, work harder, get those features in before it was too late. It felt like she was playing a game of snakes and ladders and, if she wasn’t careful, in around six months’ time she’d have no choice but to slide down the longest ladder in the game and end up right back at the bottom again.
JUNE 2016 Montreux, Switzerland
JESS
From
Darling Jess,
My heart just about burst to see the photo you messaged me. I’m so glad that woman, Nina, let you have it. How young your mum looks – and how fashionable, with her Afghan coat and flares! I suppose we were all that young, once. It’s so long ago I can hardly remember looking that fresh-faced. Although, I always think you don’t change much on the inside. Sometimes I still think I’m 25, and then what an awful shock I get when I look in the mirror!
I’m so delighted you’ve started to do some investigating. I know you’re still unsure about it, but I really do think it’s the right course of action. You’ve been so brave about it all, Jess, even though you might not feel it. I know it’s been so hard, but you’re at the beginning of the end of the tough times now, I know it. You’re going to get through this and come out the other side.
Keep me updated with your next steps and know that I’m here whenever you want to talk.
Lots of love,
Maggie xx
It’s a good few days before I can find the time to do anything about searching for Daniel Buchs. But one late afternoon, with the kids wiped out after a day at the outdoor pool and collapsed in front of Finding Dory (they’ve been speaking English all day, so I’ve let them watch the French language version, and I feel a pleasing sense of defiance to imagine what Julia might say about that), I sit outside on the terrace with my mobile. First I search the online phone book and find an incredible eighty-nine listings under the name Daniel Buchs.
My heart sinks. I don’t think I can bear to call eighty-nine numbers, most of them in German-speaking Switzerland, and try to explain what I want over the phone.
I try Google instead and get 133,000 results. I scan down the webpage: LinkedIn profiles, Facebook profiles, various websites in French and German that I don’t understand. Though the number of results is overwhelming, excitement prickles my skin. Daniel Buchs could be out there, breathing, living. I just have to find him.
But how?
He could be any of these people or none of them. I need more to go on, to narrow things down a bit. I debate just messaging some of them through their social media profiles, but I don’t know what to say. Hello, you might have once had a sister who knew my mother around the time she gave birth in a Lausanne hospital in 1976 and possibly might have known what went wrong. It’s ridiculous – but maybe it’s the only way.
I open a document and start copying links to the social media profiles of all the Daniel Buchs I can find. I scour Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, hoping my Daniel Buchs isn’t so technologically inept that he doesn’t use such things; he must be at least sixty now, after all. But even if he doesn’t, someone else might have mentioned him online. No one is completely untouched by the internet, surely. Although Brigitte Mela seems to be, I remind myself.
After an hour’s work I have a substantial list to work through. Some I can tell immediately are probably too young, but I list them anyway. Perhaps he’s one of those people who names their son after themselves, so the son might lead me to the father. Others could be duplicates, it’s hard to tell. Some are just a brief mention – on
e on a website for a sailing club in Zug, another in the caption on a group photo of hikers from a walking club in Reichenbach im Kandertal, wherever that is. I track down email addresses for the administrators of both and add them to the list.
I reopen the first on my list, a LinkedIn profile of a middle-aged executive of a software firm in the canton of Zurich. A thrill seeps into me as my fingers start to compose a message, but then they stop in their tracks when I think of Dad. Don’t do this Jess, you don’t know where it could lead. I push his voice aside, hearing Maggie instead. Darling girl, what about you? Don’t think, just do it.
I start to type, hoping he speaks enough English to understand.
I’m sorry to contact you out of the blue, but I’m looking for a man named Daniel Buchs who I believe is the brother of the late Evelyne Buchs, an acquaintance of my mother’s. It’s regarding my own personal situation…
I pause. Maybe it’s best not to say too much right now. It probably won’t be him. And I don’t want to tell every Daniel Buchs in the country about my sorry life.
If you are this Daniel Buchs, I would love to have the chance to ask you a few questions about your sister’s time in Lausanne in 1976, as I believe it may shed some light on circumstances within my own personal life. I would be very grateful if you could message me back…
I read it over. It’s strange, seeing the words glowing from the screen. During the past two years I’ve achieved so little in my search. I’ve floundered, not knowing what to do or where to go for help after the hospital came up with nothing but dead ends. Unsure, even, if I wanted to pursue it. And now I’m sitting here doing something active, something that could lead me to them.
I remember how Dad and I left things, the day I went to his house to tell him I’d got the job over here, after I’d convinced myself – with Maggie’s encouragement – to do something proactive instead of ‘wallowing in misery’, as Patrick had so kindly put it before he moved out.
‘I don’t see why you can’t just carry on as before,’ Dad had said. ‘Let’s just forget those stupid tests and put it behind us.’ He’d been making tea in the kitchen and didn’t even look at me.
‘I don’t think I can, Dad.’
‘If you go out there, you might not like what you find, it might just upset you further. Please just leave it, Jess. You’re still the person your mother and I brought you up to be. You’re still you.’
When he finally looked up, the pain on his face was so raw that I nearly gave in to the guilt. But I couldn’t let myself. Everything had fallen apart, and I didn’t know how to put it back together again until I had the answer to the question that hung over me.
‘Dad, you’re a journalist, you must understand that I need to know the truth. I can’t explain why, I just do. I can’t move on otherwise.’
‘Well, I don’t want to know, Jess. I just don’t want to know.’
I stare at the screen on my tablet. Was he afraid? Afraid that our relationship might change? It’s possible. The DNA tests may have erased the foundations of my identity, but they haven’t altered how much I love my parents, and I can’t imagine they ever will. But maybe Dad’s worried he’ll feel differently about me if I find what I’m looking for.
I take a deep breath, trying to quell the fear that’s held me back these past months – the fear that I’ll lose him too.
I read the message again, take a breath, my finger hesitating. And then I hit send.
* * *
To distract myself from my emails, the next day I decide to take the kids to a free afternoon concert at Montreux Jazz Festival, which has just kicked off for two weeks, filling the lakeshore with laughter and music that sometimes, with the wind in the right direction, floats up to the house. Michel and Julia both warned me off, moaning of crowds and high prices, but I think they both knew I’d go. I can’t pass up the opportunity to visit the most famous jazz festival in the world, right on my doorstep. And today’s a beautiful day for sitting in the park watching music. I just hope the kids won’t get bored.
I raid the fridge and cobble together a picnic lunch. I grab sunscreen, hats and a picnic blanket and order Léa and Luca into some semblance of ready. When we reach the festival site it’s busy, but not unbearably so. The air hums with laughter, music and the hiss of hot grills from the line-up of food stalls along the waterfront promenade. I drag Luca past the ice-cream vans with a promise he can have his pick later on, after our picnic. There are already quite a few people sitting in the park where the stage is set up, waiting for the band to come on. The programme says it’s a South African vocal harmony group.
‘Je veux une glace,’ Luca says for the second time. I feign ignorance, even though I know exactly what he means.
‘In English, Luca,’ I say.
‘Ice cream,’ he says.
‘Later.’
He starts to cry, but stops again abruptly when the singers take to the stage. Luca’s little face fixates on them, eyes wide, mouth open, as they begin to sing in rich, deep, perfectly blended harmonies. I lean back and close my eyes, trying to switch off thoughts of Daniel Buchs and Nina and Dad. I haven’t slept well since I’ve been here, often waking in the early hours and tussling with the thoughts dancing round my head as light gradually seeps in through the slits in the shutters. But now the rhythms and sonorous voices of the singers on stage fill up my head until there’s no room for anything else. Just music, and the warmth of the sun on my skin and the cool grass under my legs.
‘Jess!’
I feel a tap on my shoulder and open my eyes, squinting into the sun. My head feels groggy and there’s a bitter taste in my mouth.
‘Jess,’ Léa says again. ‘Where’s Luca?’
I look up and see he’s not there with us. During the time we’ve been in the park the grass has filled up with people and I start to panic. How long was I asleep? And where the hell has Luca gone?
‘You didn’t see him wander off?’
Léa shakes her head.
‘Promise me you’ll stay right here and don’t move at all.’
The tone of my voice shakes her face into a frown and she nods meekly. ‘I promise.’
I leave Léa on the picnic rug and pick my way through the crowd to the edge of the park, past the portaloos and onto the waterfront promenade. My heart’s hammering and nausea rolls through me. I can’t lose Julia and Michel’s son. I stop and look around me, trying to take deep breaths. He can’t have gone far. Think logically. But my head feels thick with sleep, and my eyes are streaming from the sun because I left my sunglasses on the rug with Léa. And now I’m thinking I shouldn’t have left Léa on her own and what kind of a bloody nanny am I anyway?
Maybe he’s near the ice-cream stands. That must be it. My panic eases a little as I weave my way through the crowds with a purpose now, heading to the stand where Luca had stopped me and pulled on my hand, pleading for strawberry cheesecake flavour. But he’s not there.
I turn around, heading back down the line of stalls, scanning the crowds. Hot tears press against the backs of my eyes. What if he’s been abducted? Or fallen into the lake and drowned, or wandered onto the main road and been hit by a car? Perhaps this was why I wasn’t meant to have kids of my own, because they’d come to harm under my care. That must be it. It was for their own safety because I’m a bad person who falls asleep when I’m meant to be looking after children.
I’m running through scenarios of how to break the news to Michel and Julia when my heart just about stops at the sight of him. He’s standing near the lake wall eating an ice cream that’s melting in the sun and dribbling all down his hand. He’s looking up at someone and smiling a food-smeared grin, but the man’s back is turned to me and I can’t see who it is. I get closer and realise I’ve never seen the guy before and my stomach lurches in fear. I run the last few metres to the bench and sweep Luca into a bear hug so he squeals.
‘Thank God,’ I mutter into his shoulder. He starts to wail and I realise I’ve squashed
his ice-cream cone into my hair.
The man says something in French. I turn and see him staring at me with a questioning look. He takes his sunglasses off and looks at me.
‘I don’t speak French.’ I disentangle myself from Luca and pick my hair from his ice cream.
‘I said, what are you doing?’ His American twang is similar to Michel’s.
‘I could ask the same of you.’ I stare at him, hands on hips.
‘I found him wandering on his own.’
I bristle. My brain’s whirring with what ifs. He clearly bought Luca the ice cream. Why would a stranger do that unless…
‘Okay, well, I’ve found him now so—’
‘Wait,’ he says as I pull Luca away. ‘Who are you?’
‘His nanny.’
He nods and frowns as if in realisation of something he already knew. ‘Right. Mum said they’d hired one. An English teacher, aren’t you? Well, I hope you’re better at teaching them than you are at looking after them.’
My mouth drops open at the gall of this stranger just as my head’s processing the earlier part of his sentence. ‘What are you talking about? What’s your mother got to do with it?’
‘Maria,’ he says. ‘You’ve met her, right? I’m her son. Jorge.’ He sticks out his hand.
‘Oh.’ My cheeks burn, indignation crumbling into embarrassment. I look at his hand and then shake it. ‘I just took my eyes off him for a second and he wandered off.’ I want the lake to swallow me up so I never have to see this man again.
‘It happens,’ he says finally, and I dare to look at him. There’s a smile struggling to impose itself on his mouth. It finally succeeds and I see his eyes crinkling at the corners as he starts to laugh. ‘You should see your face!’
The Other Daughter Page 10