Horribly hurt and disillusioned, she set herself against men altogether for a while, and did a series of hugely demanding hospital jobs, finally settling on geriatrics and a consultancy at the Royal Bayswater Hospital.
“It may sound depressing, but actually it’s not. Old people are so much more courteous than most patients and so grateful when you can do something to help,” she said whenever people expressed surprise at this most unglamorous of choices.
It was at a medical conference on geriatrics that she met Jeremy again; he was a consultant at the Duke of Kent Hospital in Guildford and lecturing on orthopaedic surgery in the elderly, and they were placed next to each other at dinner.
“So, are you married?” he asked, after half an hour of careful chitchat; and, “No,” she said, “absolutely not, what about you?”
“Absolutely not, either. I never found anyone who came anywhere close to you.”
Recognising this as the smooth chat-up line that it was, Clio still found it impossible not to be charmed by it; she was in bed with him twenty-four hours later.
A year later they were engaged; now they were a few weeks from being married. And she was generally very happy, but at times filled with a lurking unease. As she was now.
“Look,” she said, resting her hand gently on his, “I’m really, really sorry. I never thought it would matter to you so much.” (Liar, Clio, liar; it was an unexpected talent of hers, lying.) “Let me do the job for six months. If it’s still bothering you after that I’ll leave. I promise. How’s that?”
He was silent for a moment, clearly still genuinely hurt.
“I just don’t understand why you want to do it,” he said finally. “You could have such an easy life, do a couple of geriatric clinics at the local hospital, or even a family planning clinic—”
“I hate gynae,” said Clio quickly, “as you very well know. And I don’t want an easy life. Let me give it a go, Jeremy. I promise it won’t interfere with your job. Promise!”
“All right,” he said finally, “but I really don’t expect to like it. Now can we please order? I’m desperately hungry. I’ve done three hips and four knees this afternoon. One of them really complicated—”
“Tell me about them,” she said, summoning the waiter. There was no swifter way to ease Jeremy into a good mood than listening to him intently while he talked about his work.
“Well,” he said, sitting back in his chair, having ordered a large fillet steak and a bottle of claret, and clucked as always over her grilled sole, telling her she starved herself, “the first one, the first hip that is, was very moth-eaten, so I had to—”
Clio tried to concentrate on what he was saying; a couple had settled down at the next table, both obviously backpackers, sun-bleached and skinny…just as they had all been. She hadn’t been skinny, of course: not at first anyway. But later…She often found herself thinking of the three of them at this point in the year, when London was filled with backpackers, about what the other two might be doing and how well they might get along together now. Probably not well at all; and even more probably they would never find out.
Chapter 2
“She would have let me go! I know she would. My real mother. She’d want me to have a good time, not keep me locked up at home like some kind of nun. I just wish she knew how you try and spoil everything for me. And I’m going anyway, you can’t stop me.”
Helen looked at the flushed, furious face, at the hatred in the dark eyes, and felt sick. This was the only thing she found almost unbearable, when Kate used the fact that she wasn’t really her mother against her. She knew it was only her age; she had been warned about it by social workers, by Adoption Support, and by the adoption agency all those years ago, that there was bound to be trouble sometime and it would probably come when Kate hit adolescence. “They have to have something to kick against,” Jan had said, “and she’ll have that ready to hand. She’ll idealise her birth mother, turn her into everything you’re not. Just try not to let it get to you. She won’t mean it.”
Not let it get to her? How could you not, when this was someone you loved so much, lashing out at you, wanting to hurt you, turning from you? Someone you’d cared for all her life—unlike her birth mother!—someone you’d sat up feeding what seemed like all night, nursed through endless childhood ailments, someone you’d comforted, petted, soothed, someone you’d wept over, rejoiced with, been proud of. Someone you’d loved so much…
Helen felt the searing sense of injustice in her throat. The urge to say something childish, like “I hate you too,” or even “Your real mother hasn’t shown much interest in you so far,” was violent. “Don’t be silly, Kate,” she said smoothly. “I don’t keep you locked up and I don’t want to spoil everything for you. You know that. I just think you’re too young to go to the Clothes Show on your own, that’s all.”
“I’m not going on my own,” said Kate. “I’m going with Sarah. And I am going. I know why you don’t want me to go, you don’t like Sarah. You never have. You’d like me to be going round with someone like Rachel, some stupid boff who likes classical music and speaks what you call properly and wears what looks like her mother’s clothes. Don’t deny it, you know it’s true. And don’t bother calling me for supper because I’m going up to my room and I don’t want any. All right?”
“Fine,” said Helen, “absolutely fine.”
Adoption Support would have been proud of her, she thought. It wasn’t a lot of comfort.
Later, after supper, when Kate had appeared to make a piece of toast with the maximum amount of noise and mess and gone back to her room, all without a word, Helen had asked Jim if perhaps they were being rather too restrictive.
“She is fourteen and a lot of her friends are going.”
“Well, she’s not,” said Jim, picking up the paper, leaving Helen to clear away. “She’s too young and that’s that. Maybe next year, tell her. That’ll calm her down. Thanks for a nice supper.”
Helen started to unload the dishwasher, and think—as she always did on such occasions—about Kate’s mother. She supposed she would have let Kate go to the Clothes Show. She would have been that sort of person. Liberal. Fun. And, of course, totally irresponsible…
She probably wouldn’t have got landed with the washing up, either.
Much, much later, after she had gone to bed, she heard Kate crying. She waited for a while, hoping it would stop. It didn’t.
She eased herself out of bed, very carefully so that Jim wouldn’t wake, and went quietly along the corridor. She knocked on the door.
“Can I come in?”
There was a pause; that was a good sign. If Kate shouted “No” at her, a conversation was out of the question. Helen waited. Finally: “Come in.”
She was lying facedown, her tangle of blond hair spread on the pillow. She didn’t move. “Sweetheart, please don’t cry. Want a drink? Some cocoa or something?”
“No thanks.” The “thanks” was a good sign too.
“Well, want a chat then?”
Another silence; then: “Don’t care, really.” That meant she did.
Helen sat down on the bed, very carefully. “I’m sorry, sweetheart. About the Clothes Show. Dad and I did talk about it again.”
“And?” Kate’s voice was hopeful.
“I’m sorry. Next year, maybe.”
“The others won’t even want to go next year. They’ll be doing something else. Mum, I’m fourteen. Not four. There’ll be loads of people there my age. God, Dad is such a dinosaur!”
“Not really,” said Helen, struggling to be loyal. “We both feel the same. I’m sorry. Look, how would you like it if we went shopping tomorrow? Spent Granny’s birthday money?”
“What, and bought some nice white socks or something? No thanks.” There was a silence. Then Kate said, “Mum…”
“Yes?”
“I don’t really hate you.”
“I know you don’t, sweetheart. I didn’t think you did.”
; “Good. I just feel so—so angry sometimes.”
“Most people of your age do,” said Helen. “It’s part of growing up.”
“No. I don’t mean that. Of course I get angry with you. You’re so”—her lips twitched—“so annoying.”
“Thanks.”
“That’s OK. But I mean—angry with her. With my…my mother. If I knew why she did it, it might help. How could she have done that? How could she? I might have died, I might—”
“Lovely, I’m sure she made sure someone had found you. Before she—she went away.”
There was a long silence, then Kate said, “I want to know about her so much. So, so much.”
“Of course you do.”
“She must have had her reasons, mustn’t she?”
“Of course she must. Very good ones.”
“I mean her life must have been very difficult.”
“Very difficult. Impossible.”
“It must hurt to have a baby. So—to do that all by yourself, not tell anyone—she must have been very brave.” Helen nodded. “I wonder sometimes how I’m like her. In what ways. But I don’t think I’m that brave. I mean, I wouldn’t have a filling without an injection for instance. Having a baby must hurt much more than that.”
“Yes, I think I would say it does. But Kate, you don’t know what you can do till you have to.”
“I s’pose so. And then I think, what else do I know about her? Hardly anything. Except that she was terribly irresponsible. Is that what worries you about me? Does it make you extra fussy, do you think I’m going to go off and sleep around and get pregnant? I suppose it does.”
“Kate, of course it doesn’t. Don’t be ridiculous. We would never think that.”
“Well, why are you so old-fashioned and strict then?”
“We just want to take care of you, that’s all. It’s—”
“I know, I know, it’s a wicked world out there, crazed drug dealers and white slave traffickers on every corner. Especially at the Clothes Show.”
“Kate—” Helen looked at her and saw she was half smiling.
“It’s all right, Mum. You can’t help being senile.”
“No, I can’t. Sorry. You all right now?”
“Sort of. Yes. Thanks for coming in.”
Helen had reached the door when Kate said, “Mum. What would you think about me trying to find her?”
“Your birth mother? Absolutely fine, sweetheart. Of course, if that’s what you want.”
“It is. Yeah.”
“Right then, of course you must.” She hesitated, then: “If there’s any way I can help—”
“No, it’s OK.” The small face had closed up again. “I’d rather do it on my own, thanks.”
Thank God for the darkness, Helen thought, closing the door quickly; otherwise Kate would have seen her crying.
Sometimes, she thought, as she drank the sweet black coffee she always turned to in times of crisis, sometimes she wished she’d ignored all the conventional wisdom and not told Kate the truth. Not, of course, said that she was her natural mother, but that her own mother had died and she had adopted her because of that. It would have been so much easier for a child to cope with. How could a small person of seven—which was the age Kate had been when she had actually framed the question, “What happened to my other mummy?”—possibly digest the news that her other mummy, her real mummy, had abandoned her in a cleaning cupboard at Heathrow airport, leaving her without even a nappy, wrapped in a blanket, and not so much as a note? Helen had dressed it up, of course, had said she was all tucked up in a blanket, nice and warm and snug, and that her birth mother had made quite, quite sure she had been safely discovered before going away. At the time Kate had appeared to accept it, had listened very intently and then skipped off to play in the garden with her sister. Later she had come in and said, “I’ve decided I probably am a princess.”
“You are my princess,” Jim had said, having been warned that the dreaded conversation had finally taken place, and Kate had smiled at him radiantly and said, “Well, you can be my prince. I’d like to marry you anyway.”
Life had been so simple then.
But of course you couldn’t lie to them because as they grew older more and more questions would be asked. If the birth mother had died, where was her family, where were Kate’s grandparents, surely they’d want to know her, and her father for that matter? And did she have any brothers and sisters, and—No, it would have been impossible to sustain as an explanation. The truth had to be told.
They had several friends with adopted children, made through all the counselling and support groups. Adoption was a fact of Kate’s life; indeed when she was very small she had asked everybody if they were adopted. Told that she was special, that she had been chosen by her parents rather than just been born to them, like her sister, Juliet (arriving to her parents’ enormous surprise and pleasure just two years after they had adopted Kate), she had for a while been entirely happy about it, had never seemed to give it a great deal of thought; until one terrible day when she had come home from school, aged nine, crying and saying that one of the girls had been teasing her about being adopted.
“She said if my other mum had loved me she wouldn’t have left me.”
“Now, Kate, that isn’t true,” said Helen, panic rising in her as she recognised the beginning of the real problems that faced them all. “I’ve told you, she wanted a happier home for you than she could give you, she wanted you to go to people who could care for you properly. She couldn’t—I’ve explained that to you lots of times.”
Kate had appeared to accept that at the time, but as she grew older and sharper and the truth became balder and uglier, it troubled her more and more. She stopped talking about her other mother, as she called her, pretended to any new friends that Helen and Jim were her real parents, and then a little later, constructed elaborate lies about a mother who had died in childbirth and entrusted her to Helen, her oldest and dearest friend.
Which was fine until other friends, who knew what had really happened, had revealed it. And so in the end, there was no more pretending. And she had to learn to live with the ugly truth.
Helen’s mother had been very supportive as Kate grew increasingly difficult; having said that she had feared it would happen all along, ever since Helen had told her they were adopting a foundling (as they were still called), she then also told Helen that she wouldn’t say it again. Which she didn’t and moreover proceeded to do all she could to help. This mostly consisted of slipping Kate ten-pound notes, taking her on shopping expeditions—“Of course I know what she’ll like, Helen, I’m in the fashion business, aren’t I?”—and treating her to expensive lunches at smart restaurants. Jim disapproved of the whole relationship, but as Helen pointed out, her mother was a safety valve, someone Kate could talk to if she felt she needed it.
“Why can’t she talk to us, for God’s sake?”
“Jim, I sometimes despair of you. The whole point is there are things she can’t talk to us about. Things she thinks will upset us, things she won’t want to tell us. Better my mother, who she sees as someone rather raffish and naughty, than that dreadful Sarah.”
Jim didn’t argue. Helen knew there was another reason he didn’t like her mother: she favoured Kate over Juliet. Which was on the face of it illogical, since Juliet was Helen’s own child; but she was also Jim’s, and had many of Jim’s characteristics. She was a very sweet child, and extremely clever and musically gifted, but she was quiet and shy, with none of Kate’s quicksilver charm, and she found Jilly Bradford rather daunting.
It had been one of the most glorious days in Helen’s life—her wedding day and that of Juliet’s birth being the others—when Mrs. Forster from the adoption agency had telephoned to say that there was a baby who they might like to consider adopting. “She’s a foundling,” Mrs. Forster had said, “so there could be no question of her ever going back to her birth family.” Helen had actually been reading about the baby in the pap
ers—she had made front-page news, as such babies always did—and there had been photographs of her being held by a phalanx of nurses at the South Middlesex Hospital, her small face almost invisible within the folds of a blanket.
BABY BIANCA the caption had said. “So called by the nurses because she was found in a cleaning cupboard at Heathrow airport (Bianca is Italian for ‘white’), now five days old.” It went on to say that the social services were hoping to contact her mother who might be in need of medical attention, and appealed for anyone who had noticed anything untoward at terminal three at Heathrow airport, on the night of August 16, to contact their nearest police station.
“How could anyone do that?” Helen had said to Jim, and when Baby Bianca was finally handed to her by the foster mother, Helen felt that, to a degree, she already knew her.
Helen had been very nervous, driving to meet Bianca for the first time; what if she didn’t feel anything for her? What if the baby started screaming the minute she saw her, sensing her complete inexperience and incompetence? What if she just proved to be totally unmaternal? But it was love at first sight; Bianca (shortly to become Kate) opened large blue eyes (shortly to become deep, dark brown) and stared up at her, waving one tiny, frondlike fist, making little pouting shapes with her small mouth, and Helen knew, quite simply, that she wanted to spend the rest of her life with her.
Today had not been one of the happiest days of her life, though. She poured herself a second cup of coffee and tried to face the reality of that small, dependent creature, who had become in some strange way as surely her own flesh and blood as her natural daughter, seeking out the woman who had actually given birth to her and perceiving her as her mother.
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