When the counsellor returned, Nina tried to hide her rage but it was too big for that, clambering all over her.
‘I want to punch her,’ she blurted out. ‘That sounds stupid doesn’t it?’
The counsellor talked about anger and emotions and how she might feel lots of different things and try to accept them. She gave her leaflets and a magazine. She told her to take things at her own pace and to come back any time if she wanted to. She talked about the importance of using a go-between if she tried to find her mother, an intermediary she called it. Less threatening all round. Nina nodded to show she was listening but already her thoughts were racing ahead. She’d find her, see what she had to say for herself.
‘Some people wait a long time, years and years, before they are ready to start tracing, some don’t go further than this, it’s enough for them.’
Not for me, Nina thought. Can’t stop now. It was the only thing she could think of. She had to do it, the sooner the better. Whatever it was like.
Marjorie
‘We don’t know where to turn, Father. It’s affected the whole family. I’m only glad Stephen doesn’t have to put up with it.’
‘He’s gone to Birmingham, is that right?’
‘Yes, he’s doing really well. But Nina, this constant depression. Moodiness. I can’t remember the last time there was any joy in the house. It’s like walking on eggshells.’
‘Adolescence is a tricky time,’ he agreed, ‘hormones all over the place, identity crisis, the rest of the world all seem to be against you. But it will pass.’
‘Will it? I don’t know, I think it’s more than just the usual teenage ups and downs.’
‘You’re not the first parent to sit here and say that. When you’re in the middle of it, it seems never ending. Talk to your husband, try and share this, support each other.’
If only, she thought. Robert had completely withdrawn from any attempt to be a father to Nina. He endured her presence at mealtimes and that was it. Marjorie felt as if they were all actors pretending to be a family but with no conviction.
None of them ever referred to the night in France. Marjorie had tried to talk to Nina about it. Just the once. ‘I’m sorry,’ she had said the following morning as the two of them sat on the verandah eating bread and apricot preserve and drinking coffee. The sight of Nina’s face sickened her. ‘Nina, I’m sure he never really . . .’
‘It wasn’t you,’ Nina said. ‘You don’t need to be sorry. I don’t want to talk about it, anyway.’
It was like a boulder of shame rolling round the house, like a leg iron they each wore, silent and invisible but dragging the life from them. She could never tell the priest about it. That would be disloyal. And Nina had been difficult before then.
She knew Nina continued to drink too much, probably meddled with drugs as well but she no longer flaunted her abandonment for the family to see. She spent a lot of time at her friend Chloe’s. She had become secretive, withdrawn and uncommunicative. The fight had gone from her and now she was sullen instead.
‘I don’t know how to help her, Father. There doesn’t seem to be anything I can do.’
The priest nodded. ‘Listen,’ he said. ‘That’s all you can do. Be there for her and listen.’
What to, she thought, the sound of silence?
Nina
‘Have you no regard for your mother’s feelings?’ Robert thundered, his face dark with rage.
‘I never asked you to,’ Nina retorted and then, sensing rather than seeing her mother flinch, she reined in her temper. ‘I wasn’t going to tell you, I knew you’d be upset. I’ve a right to find out about my own background. Lots of adopted people do it.’
‘Stephen hasn’t.’
‘This isn’t about Stephen, and it’s not about you. I’m not doing it to hurt you, I’m doing it because I want to – for me. I’m sorry if you’re upset.’ She could hear her voice shaking and hated herself for it, ‘but those are my papers and I want them back.’
‘Why?’ Marjorie asked. ‘I don’t understand why you have to drag it all up. Weren’t we good enough? We love you like our own . . .’ She couldn’t continue and Nina looked away.
‘I want to know, that’s all.’
‘She didn't want you,’ Marjorie said. ‘What is she going to feel like when you barge into her life?’
‘I don’t know.’ She hugged her arms tight to her body.
‘It’s downright selfish. You go trampling all over people's feelings, not a thought for anyone else. Well, I suggest you think about this very seriously before you carry on.’ He thrust the papers at her. ‘And I, for one, don’t want to hear another word about it. You are our daughter. We clothed you, fed you, taught you right from wrong, or tried to. This woman has never been a mother to you.’ He sighed, his face folding into weariness. ‘I don't know where we went wrong with you, Nina, but if you want to break your mother’s heart you’re going the right way about it.’
She closed her eyes. There didn’t seem to be any way to make them understand. None of this should have happened. If her mother hadn’t gone into her room, Nina on the bed and the papers ranged all around her. The distinctive colour of the birth certificate, the bold headings for the Catholic Rescue Society. Too late to try and scoop them up, her mother’s eyes had drunk them in, looked at Nina, wounded. She tried to explain. Marjorie had made a small sound of distress and had run stumbling into Robert, who had taken her downstairs. Nina had waited for the summons. She had collected the papers together and, when he called, taken them down. Thinking with some small, uninformed part of her mind that they might care to know something of her story. Stupid. They couldn’t see past their own injured feelings. They certainly weren’t interested in anything she thought or felt.
‘I’m sorry,’ she repeated quietly and left them. In her room she stretched out fully clothed on the bed and stared at the ceiling. She wished she could cry. To let the hot churning inside go, but she couldn’t. She had liked that about herself in the past: her resilience, the strength she had, but now it felt like she was choking, a chain around her heart.
I must get out of here, she thought. And soon. She lay there until the room grew dark and she climbed under the covers to get warm.
Megan
‘Is that Megan?’
‘Yes.’
‘This is Claire.’
‘Claire?’
‘I’m your daughter.’
‘What?’
‘You had a baby in 1960, May twenty-fourth. You called me Claire.’
A rush of images flickered through Megan’s mind – a matinee jacket, the prams in a row at the back of the house, the turrets on the building, her mother leaving her there, Joan and . . . the other girl, Caroline, the quiet one who tried to run away. Her own horrific labour, screaming for her mother, getting the photo . . .
‘No,’ she said, ‘no, I can’t. I’m sorry. There’s been a mistake.’ She put the phone down.
Her stomach clenched with spasms. She breathed in sharply. Dear God, what a mess! Oh, God! She half expected the phone to ring again but it didn’t. She heard the Neighbours theme tune start up. Time to get the tea on. Carry on as normal. Chicken and mushroom pies from the freezer, new potatoes, peas. Tea, wash-up, telly, bed. Just keep going. Pretend it never happened.
When Brendan woke later that night she was sitting in the chair in the corner of the bedroom, a blanket round her.
‘What’s up?’ He rolled over. He could only see her silhouetted against the window. The moon was up and it was lit up like a football pitch out there. ‘Too hot? Am I snoring again, or what?’
‘Brendan.’
Oh, God. He could hear the weight in her voice.
‘I was thinking about Claire.’
‘Ah,’ he said, waited.
‘If she ever tried to find us, what would we do?’
He breathed and released it slowly. What did she expect him to say? ‘Well, I suppose she’d have a right, wouldn’t she?’
&
nbsp; ‘And Francine and the boys?’
He sighed again. ‘It’d be awkward,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t fancy having to explain it to them.’ He paused. ‘Hell, Megan, we were only kids, we did what we did for the best.’
‘That’s what they all told us.’
‘What’s brought all this on?’
There was no reply.
‘Megan?’
‘She rang up.’
‘What?’ He sat up higher, turned the lamp on.
She turned her face, shielded her eyes with her hand. ‘Today. She rang here. It was such a shock. I thought I was going to collapse.’
‘What did she say? What happened? Are you sure it was her?’
‘She just said is that Megan, I’m Claire. Your daughter. She gave her date of birth.’
‘Good God!’ He ran his fingers through his thinning hair several times, looked at her. ‘Bloody hell!’ he said.
‘How did she find us?’
She shook her head, pulled her curls back and held them in her fist.
‘How did she get the number?’
She shook her head again, let her hair loose. His questions were irrelevant in the light of what she had yet to tell him.
‘Bloody hell,’ he repeated. ‘Why didn’t you say ’owt?’
She sighed. ‘It was such a shock, hearing like that, and I just kept saying no. I told her there was some mistake. I hung up.’ She looked across at him. ‘What if she never tries again? What if she does? I don’t know which’d be worse. Oh, Brendan, what have I done?’
Nina
She didn’t want to eat. Just looking at the food made her feel nauseous, brought a metallic wash into her mouth. She’d skipped lunch at work too. She hadn’t felt like it and then someone had come in and said there was a fire up at Woolworth’s. People had been trapped inside, banging on the windows. On the bus home they said ten people had died. You heard stuff like that, saw the building and everything and people expected the world to carry on as normal.
‘I’m not hungry.’ She pushed herself away from the table.
‘Nina . . .’ Robert started.
‘Leave her,’ Marjorie intervened.
In her room Nina sat on the floor, back against the bed. She was wiped out. She had intended to look at flats at the weekend but she couldn’t face it. Nothing mattered any more. Megan wouldn’t give her houseroom, denied she was even her mother. How could she do that? She’d always been a disappointment to Marjorie, it was mutual, but she never expected to be cut off like that. The rotten cow. Self-pity made her throat ache.
‘You should write,’ Chloe had said. ‘It must have been a shock for her, coming on the phone like that.’
‘She’d probably chuck them away if I did.’
‘You can’t give up now. I bet if you give it a bit of time then write a note . . .’
‘And what the fuck do you know about it?’ She rounded on her friend.
‘Pardon me for breathing!’ Chloe was stung. ‘I’ll come back when you’re fit company.’
That was rich coming from someone who spent ninety nine per cent of her time moaning and being moody.
Chloe had hesitated at the bedroom door. ‘Fancy the Ritz tomorrow night?’
Nina had shaken her head. She didn’t fancy anything.
She sighed and let her head fall back against the edge of the bed. How could she hang up on her like that? Maybe someone had been listening, making it impossible for her to talk? A flicker of hope.
She stirred herself and found pen and paper. After an hour she’d got nowhere. Everything she thought of sounded like some sloppy love song. How did you write? What did you write? Sod it. She flung down the pen. What did she want? To see her and to find out why. She could hardly write that, could she? Bound to get slapped back.
She felt her anxiety rise, peeling up her back, knotting her stomach. She began to rock. It was getting worse. She’d had to leave work early on Thursday, claiming she felt sick. She’d been dressing the homewares window and had felt a powerful impulse to smash the glass, to watch it shatter and scream through it to the passing crowds. She was going mental. She must go to the doctor, see if he could give her something. But each time when the horrible feelings had gone she hoped that was the end of it.
She heard Marjorie coming upstairs and kept still and quiet. She heard the timid knock. ‘Nina, are you all right?’
‘I’m going to sleep.’ She couldn’t face her now.
‘Would you like some toast or a drink or anything?’
‘No, thanks.’ Food turned to shit in her mouth, it was dirty. She couldn’t bear the feel of it.
But she didn’t sleep. She spent the night with the light on, hugging her knees, rocking and waiting for the dawn. Sick and tired and fearful of the demons inside her – nameless, faceless and getting larger by the day.
Marjorie
She hated ironing though it wasn’t a chore she could get out of. She put the radio on and began on the shirts. Nina looked like death warmed up these days. She’d not eaten anything at breakfast, though she had pretended to and then slunk back to bed. The doctor had got her on sleeping pills but only for a limited period. There was a crash from upstairs and the sound of something breaking. Marjorie set the iron down and hurried upstairs.
‘Nina?’ She opened the door without knocking. The bedside lamp was on the floor, Nina was on the bed, eyes closed. There was the sharp smell of vomit. ‘Nina?’ The bottle of pills was beside her, the lid on the floor. Oh my god. She rang an ambulance, her heart thudding in her chest, praying frantically.
Marjorie was at the hospital all night while they pumped her daughter’s stomach and monitored her. Robert came too but when it was clear Nina was out of danger Marjorie sent him home. She could feel the irritation smouldering underneath his concern. His presence just added to the tension.
The following morning Nina was pale, withdrawn, submissive. For a moment Marjorie missed the turbulent, prickly young woman whose anger was so much healthier than this apathy.
After rounds they told Marjorie that Nina was being discharged; she was on antidepressants and had an outpatient appointment for the psychiatric unit.
‘Gave us all a nasty scare but she should respond well to the drugs. Any worries, contact your GP.’
Robert couldn’t cope with it, had no idea how to respond. Gave Nina a stiff little hug when they got back from the hospital.
Marjorie was more forthright. ‘You scared the life out of me. I love you, Nina. I hate to see you like this. If you’d just talk to me.’
Nina was tired and unresponsive. The tablets coated her reactions like polystyrene. She was muffled, dopey.
Time passed, she returned to work. Slowly, steadily, she came back. But not the old Nina. It was as if the light had gone out inside her.
Megan
Her stomach lurched and she stepped into the nearest shop doorway. Panic made her want to run so the girl wouldn’t see her but she told herself to ‘get a bloody grip Megan’ and she stepped out again. She could still see her, back view, fifty yards away, in a green coat. The hair was exactly the right shade, the same as Francine’s, the same as hers. She was tall though, tall as Brendan. She followed the girl along Market Street and into Littlewood’s. Megan pretended to examine leather coats by the door, bomber jackets, like Francine was angling for. She kept one eye on the red hair. Then the girl turned to leave and with a swoop of relief Megan saw she was much too old, late twenties at least.
The same sort of thing had happened half a dozen times in the months since Claire’s phone call. It always caught her unawares and she felt so daft. She was being haunted: not by a ghost but by half the redheads in Manchester.
There’d been no more phone calls. The memory of the girl’s voice, Claire’s voice, and her own denial cut at her. She shouldn’t have said no. If she’d only had more time, it had been such a shock. She thought of Claire ringing again with a mix of hope and fear. She longed to put things right but she didn’t
like to think of telling her other children about her. Perhaps it would never come to that.
A weight of disappointment settled on her and she felt like getting straight on the next bus home. But she’d only have to come in again next week to finish her Christmas shopping. She’d got sweets for her nephews and nieces, she’d exchanged most of her books of Green Shield stamps for a cassette player for Chris, who at thirteen had discovered punk rock. Bloody awful noise. He walked around looking a right sight with ripped black clothes, zips here and there, head practically shaved and a safety pin in his ear. It was all show with Chris, though. Little lamb, he was. Not like Aidan.
Maybe it was best Claire had not tried again, after all, Aidan wasn’t exactly an advert for happy family life. He wouldn’t be home for Christmas. He wouldn’t be home for another eighteen months and how long he’d manage to stay out of trouble then was anybody’s guess. When she visited him she could see the place was only making him worse. Not borstal but good as.
He’d been scared at first, she’d seen it in those first few visits: licking his lips, his knee twitching, signs a mother recognised. She was devastated. She’d still no idea why it had all gone wrong. She wanted to cuddle him better but he was a gawky fifteen-year-old and when she put her arms about him he wriggled free. As the weeks went by he started playing the hard man, growing a skin of disaffection.
The last time she’d been, his first words were, How many fags did you bring us? Not Hi, Mam or Thanks for coming. She wanted to shake him, to tell him that how he dealt with this place, and what he did after, would set the course for the rest of his life, that there weren’t any more chances. She could give him love and help but you couldn’t give a thing to someone who was turning away from you. She told him, without the shaking, and he sighed and shuffled on his chair and gave her a dead look with his eyes.
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