One Winter Morning

by Isabelle Broom

  ‘As far as I’m aware, Tui is one hundred per cent Bonnie’s real child.’

  I feel guilty for being so overwrought. It’s not David’s fault this has happened – he’s not to blame for Bonnie doing a disappearing act – but despite this, I can’t seem to shake off my sour temper.

  ‘It must have been very strange to suddenly be presented with a sister,’ he allows, and I nod into the handset, a sob rearing up in my throat.

  David then insists that I hang up to save my mobile-phone bill, and calls me back a few minutes later, when I’ve had time to compose myself. We talk for another half an hour or so, until he’s sure that I’ve calmed down. I tell him a bit about Kit, Tui and Queenstown – but neither of us mentions Anna. I don’t tell him how it felt to be so close to those horses today, either, because I know what he would say. He would tell me that it’s time to get back in the saddle. He would say that it wasn’t my fault I chose to go Christmas shopping that day instead of taking Suki out for a ride, and that it was in no way wrong of me to allow Anna to go in my place, as she so often had before. He would insist, as he had countless times over the past year, that I could not have foreseen my horse’s catastrophic reaction to the car backfiring while she and Anna were on the road, and that it would have made no difference who was up in the saddle that day. He would tell me that Suki was just an animal, and that animals can be unpredictable and skittish. Anna falling off and landing badly was the fault of nothing but bad luck – the same cruel twist of fate that caused Suki to bolt away afterwards into the path of another car, breaking two of her legs in the process. It was not fair, but it was done, and neither blame nor guilt could change the facts or bring either of them back. He had said it all before, and I had listened and nodded. But I had never believed. David did not know what happened the day before Anna left for the yard; he doesn’t know what I said, which I can now never take back. I would give anything to go back to that moment and shake some sense into myself. Anything.

  ‘I think you should stay where you are,’ David says eventually, answering the question I had asked him right at the start of our conversation.

  ‘Bonnie is bound to head home at some stage, back to New Zealand. If you come here now, the two of you risk overlapping again and you might miss her, but if you stay put, you’re guaranteed to find each other in the end.’

  ‘I suppose that makes sense,’ I allow. ‘But Kit told me she would be away for at least three weeks. That means I will definitely have to spend Christmas here, and potentially New Year’s Eve, too.’

  ‘Is that such a bad thing?’ he asks, and I think before I reply. It is true that the idea of being home for the festivities with David – but no Anna – filled me with enough dread to embark on this trip in the first place, but I am also unnerved by the prospect of being completely alone, too. Before I can say as much, though, David beats me to it.

  ‘We can Skype on the day,’ he suggests. ‘And afterwards you can sunbathe. Think of that!’

  ‘I never sunbathe,’ I remind him, but I appreciate his attempt at jollying. I only have to get through two potentially difficult and isolated days, really – and Queenstown is a party town. There are sure to be places open on Christmas Day, so drinking myself into oblivion is a viable – if foolhardy – option.

  ‘I can get through Christmas,’ I say determinedly. ‘But what am I going to do until then?’

  I curse the words almost as soon as I utter them, because I know what David will say. I wait for the indulgent chuckle that always pre-empts any utterance relating to his beloved storybook character, then clench my teeth together in anticipation.

  ‘Well, that’s easy,’ he says, all chirpy now. ‘You just have to ask yourself what Evangeline would do.’

  11

  Bonnie

  Exhausted from her long journey and soothed by half a bottle of very good red wine, Bonnie had forgotten to close the bedroom curtains before she got into bed the previous night, but it was not the light that woke her. A message had come through from Tui at around five a.m., saying that she loved and missed her – and that Beavis had chewed a big hole through the toe of one of her shoes, so could Bonnie bring her a new pair back from England. Bonnie had got her daughter a mobile in case of emergencies, and as far as she knew, Tui only had three phone numbers stored in there – her dad Simon’s, Bonnie’s and Kit’s. No doubt Kit was mainly subjected to lots of texts telling him to bring her a ‘surprise’ from the shop. He had been treating her to toys, chocolates and trinkets since she was a toddler, and the habit had stuck.

  Leaving Tui behind in New Zealand to come here to England was the hardest thing that Bonnie had ever had to do. Well, she countered internally – the second hardest. She had been absolutely fine, right up until the point when the plane began to taxi to the runway, and then she’d started to panic. A cold sweat had crept over her in seconds, and her hands had begun to shake so violently that the man in the seat next to her, presumably thinking that she had a severe fear of flying, offered her a sip of brandy from a hip flask in his inside pocket.

  She had not expected to feel suddenly nineteen again, sitting on a different plane, but with the same overwhelming feelings of dread and regret. She knew it was instinct kicking in, and that it was only natural that she should feel nervous about leaving Tui – especially as she’d never done so before – but she could not shake the sense of wrongness that came with it. It had felt wrong to leave London all those years ago, and now it felt wrong to leave New Zealand.

  Bonnie had replied to Tui’s message immediately, reassuring her that yes, of course she would bring her some new shoes, but that it might be an idea to keep her existing pairs in a cupboard, or up on a shelf. Beavis the puppy had been a birthday present earlier in the year – one that Tui had begged and begged for until Bonnie gave in.

  With a yard to run, lessons to teach and Tui to look after, the last thing she really needed was a tiny tearaway chewing up her house, but the change in Tui since having her own dog to look after had been remarkable. She took on the role of ‘mummy’ from the very first day, for once not minding when Bonnie chided her gently for being heavy-handed, and displaying a soft, nurturing side that Bonnie had not seen in her before. She quickly went from never letting the pair of them out of her sight to actively chasing them out to play unsupervised in the garden or the yard. Tui had friends, both at the stables and at school, but none of them expressed as much unbridled joy to be around her as Beavis did. Plus, being a dog, he was mercifully free from the pity or judgement that Tui, with her myriad difficulties, often faced from the humans she came into contact with. Beavis accepted and adored Tui just as she was, and Bonnie now wished that she hadn’t waited so long to get him.

  She had been left in the house alone today, as her host had errands to run, so Bonnie moved from the upstairs bedroom to the kitchen table, and once again read through what she had written the day before. The sooner she had everything written down and clear in her mind, the sooner she’d be able to embark upon what she really came to England to do. She wished she had come up with the idea of writing down her story before leaving New Zealand, rather than as an antidote to the crushing panic she’d experienced when she arrived in England. If she had, she would not only have been better prepared to face Evangeline, but she also wouldn’t have had to spend so much time away from Tui.

  With one final fortifying gulp of the coffee sitting on the table beside her, a re-energised Bonnie once again picked up her pen.

  The first thing that struck me about London was how little space there seemed to be. In New Zealand, where I grew up, people tend to build outwards when constructing their homes, but in your capital city, everything felt to me as if it had been shoved one on top of the other. There were so many people, too, and so much bloody traffic. I wasn’t so naive that I expected London to be quiet, but I still found the whole place a bit much, and that feeling never really left me, I suppose. I was in the country for over a year in the end, but it still felt alien
to me by the time I left. I was like the odd piece of a jigsaw puzzle that has somehow ended up in the wrong box, so as much as I tried to fit myself in, there were always gaps around my edges.

  I found a bed at a hostel on Euston Road and a job five minutes’ walk from there at a little place called Sunrise Café. The owner, Tracey, asked me two questions – could I make a decent cuppa, and could I start straight away? When the answer to both was a resounding ‘yes’, she gave me the job on the spot. I had all these grand ideas about exploring the city on my days off, but in the end, I spent most of those first few weeks either out with my friends from the hostel, or picking up extra shifts. I enjoyed having a purpose, you see, and I loved spending time with Tracey, too. She quickly became like a mother to me, even though she couldn’t have been more different to my own mum back home – she was twenty years younger than her for a start.

  My mum was forty-five when she had me, which is the same age as I am now, and she and my dad had long before given up any hope of me coming along. They had done all the tests, been poked and prodded and all that, but nobody could find any medical reason why a baby was not forthcoming. When my mum did fall pregnant, my dad was so terrified that she would miscarry that he refused to let her work, which I’m sure drove her around the bloody bend. I know it would have me, but then I was never that much like my parents. Not at eighteen, anyway. They were content never to travel beyond the boundaries of New Zealand, whereas I always craved adventure, and wanted to see as much of the world as I could. My plan was to begin in England, then travel through Europe and perhaps even America. Now, however, when I look back and try to remember why I wanted to do it so much, all I can conclude is that I didn’t even know myself at that stage – not really. Now that I’m older (and maybe even a tiny bit wiser, although I am reluctant to roll out that ancient cliché), I know that I am somebody who prefers the security and comfort of home, and of things and people that I know and understand. Change scares me now, but when I was eighteen, it was what I wanted more than anything else.

  I’ve gone off on a bloody tangent again, haven’t I? That is typical of me, I’m afraid. Let’s get back to the story.

  So, it was while working at Sunrise Café that I met the two people who were destined to change my life forever. One was called Seth, and the other—

  Bonnie jumped as the back door into the kitchen opened, her pen skidding across the page and drawing a line through the final few words she had just written.

  ‘All right there, duck?’

  Tracey beamed across at Bonnie as she unwound her pink scarf. It looked as if the wind that was howling its way around the house had left a bright spot of colour on each of her cheeks, but as Tracey ventured further into the room, Bonnie realised that it was, in fact, a double helping of blusher. Tracey always had been a fan of the more-is-more approach to make-up and now, at the very respectable age of seventy, she still looked just as glamorous as she had all those years ago. The majority of the clientele at Sunrise Café had been workmen and engineers who came in for breakfast after their long night shifts, and Tracey used to joke that it was her duty to provide them with a pretty face to enjoy alongside their mugs of tea and bacon butties.

  Bonnie held up her palms in a gesture of defeat.

  ‘I’m getting there,’ she said. ‘But I think it’s going to take longer than I expected. I keep losing track of the story I’m trying to tell.’

  Tracey plonked a carrier bag down on the worktop and extracted first some milk, then a punnet of red grapes, which she put down in front of Bonnie.

  ‘A treat,’ she explained. ‘Go on – they’re good for you.’

  Bonnie popped one into her mouth.

  ‘Thanks. And thanks again for letting me stay. You didn’t have to say yes, you know.’

  Tracey gave her a look.

  ‘I wasn’t about to let you roam the streets now, was I?’ she chided, and Bonnie chuckled.

  ‘I would have gone to a hotel – I’m not bloody destitute.’

  ‘Pah.’ Tracey waved a perfectly manicured hand in the air as she put a packet of salmon fillets into the fridge.

  ‘I was going to get steak, but my teeth aren’t up to that any more,’ she said regretfully. ‘Honestly, love, I’m telling you now, never get old – it’s a trap.’

  Bonnie felt her smile falter, and plucked off another grape.

  ‘I’m scared, Tracey,’ she said in a small voice. ‘I’m scared that I’ve come all this way, and she won’t agree to see me.’

  Tracey abandoned the shopping and pulled out a chair. Bonnie could see the foundation that had settled in the creases around her mouth – lines no doubt left there from that twenty-a-day smoking habit she’d had back in the nineties.

  ‘Oh, pet.’ Tracey placed a hand over hers. ‘I’m sure she will. I would be willing to bet that she’s every bit as interested in you as you are in her – how could she not be?’

  ‘She probably hates me.’ Bonnie let out a long sigh. ‘I wouldn’t blame her if she did.’

  ‘Thoughts like that will get you nowhere,’ Tracey said. ‘Fact is, you’re here now. You came for a reason, and you’re going to see this thing through, even if I have to march you to that girl’s door myself. And don’t think that I won’t.’

  Bonnie had to smile at that.

  ‘I know you would,’ she agreed. ‘Hopefully, after she reads this,’ she added, motioning towards the sheaf of papers on the table, ‘then it will help her to understand.’

  ‘You were so young when it all happened,’ soothed Tracey, letting go of Bonnie’s hand and standing up. ‘I’m sure she’ll be sympathetic when she hears what you went through.’

  Bonnie nodded, but the gesture belied the truth. Because how could she realistically expect her lost daughter to understand the reasons why she had given her up, when she, Bonnie, had yet to figure all of them out for herself?

  12

  I can’t remember a time that I didn’t think about who my real mother might be, but it was during my teenage years that I obsessed about her the most. I would sit at my dressing table and stare at myself in the mirror, trying to guess which of my features I had inherited from her. Did she have the same bright blue eyes as me? The same thick, dark hair? Was her Cupid’s bow slightly asymmetric? Did she squint when she was concentrating? Was there a cluster of moles behind her right ear? Did she have to pencil in the middle part of each eyebrow, where they thinned inexplicably?

  Whenever I lost my temper over silly things as an adolescent, I would pile the blame for my behaviour at my absent mother’s feet. If I was being unreasonable, then it was because she had passed on the trait; if I was rejected by a boy that I had a crush on at school, it was her attributes that had put him off. It was easier to hang all the things I didn’t like about myself on the shoulders of a stranger than to consider that they were down to me. It was my way of staying angry with this person, this unknown, shadowy figure who just happened to be my mother. Even when the hormones calmed down a fraction and I began to grow up and accept responsibility for my own actions, the ashes of that disgruntlement, once such a hot and furious furnace, continued to smoulder.

  My head told me repeatedly that I didn’t need to know anything about this woman – that I shouldn’t want to know anything about her. But my heart … Well, that was a different matter. David and Anna admitted that my mother was young when she gave birth to me, but they knew far more about her than just that. They knew her name, for starters, so at any given time, I could simply have typed it into Google – although I am still yet to do so. They also knew that she lived in New Zealand – another fact that would have set me on my way towards finding her. David has assured me that the reason they never told me any details was because Bonnie had made them promise they would not – but I’m not so sure that’s the whole story. I know how much I meant to the two of them – especially Anna – and it’s not that much of a stretch to imagine that the desire to keep Bonnie and me apart could have come from her. But e
ven if that was the case, it doesn’t explain why Bonnie herself didn’t come to find me. Why has it been left up to me to do the chasing?

  What would Anna say if she could see me now, here in New Zealand, hunting for the woman whose daughter she had raised as her own? Would she understand my reasons for needing to do so, or condemn me for them? David has encouraged me to be here, it’s true, but ultimately, the decision was mine and mine alone. I wanted to come; I can’t deny that.

  Deciding to try my best to push these thoughts to the back of my mind, I concentrate on getting ready for my second full day in New Zealand. I start by applying copious layers of high-factor sun cream, then laboriously twist my hair into a low bun and reach for my straw trilby. Despite covering up carefully yesterday, I still managed to burn both my nose and the tips of my ears – the heat here is like nothing I have ever experienced before. I feel like a jacket potato in a microwave.

  I left my number with Kit, who promised to drop me a covert text if Bonnie turns up sooner than expected, so my plan for today is a simple one: locate a bench in the shade of a tree and read the novel I bought back at Heathrow Airport. I am determined to do something that takes my mind off Bonnie, off Anna, off everything that is causing my emotions to flounder, and getting lost amidst the pages of a good book feels like my best bet. There is a lot more of Queenstown I have yet to explore, but I figure that can wait another day or so. After all, it doesn’t look as if I’m going anywhere anytime soon.