[Laughs.]
Can I have a glass of water? Please?
[Drinks.]
Thank you. Sorry. You know what? I could even say I have three dead mothers, if you looked at it a certain way. Three! How many people get to say that? Or do you hear that a lot? Maybe I’m terribly, terribly normal. Boring, even. How amazing that would be.
Sorry. I know I have to explain. That’s the point, isn’t it? Explaining? And the act of explaining it is going to make everything fall into place, even without you making sense of it for me. Right? That’s what I’ve been led to expect.
[Clears throat.]
I was raised by my grandparents. I always thought they were my grandparents. Their daughter, my mother, had died. It was a drug overdose. (They didn’t tell me that, but I found it out myself later.)
They moved us all to Canada, for a “fresh start.” Our extended family rarely visited us, and we never went back to England. Knowing what I know now, I suspect that Mum and Dad were protecting their hold on me.
See, their daughter wasn’t actually my mother. They just said that she was, but really I had been adopted by them in their grief when she died. And that girl who’d really given birth to me, who like their daughter had been just a teenager, had, like their daughter, then also died, a year after I was born. She was murdered. I think my parents—June and Oscar, the ones who adopted me and said I was their daughter’s child—had been worried about my biological grandparents then wanting me back. Those grandparents had been glad to see me go when I was the ruin of their daughter’s chances at university, but when she was so suddenly dead, and she’d been their only child, well … They might have wanted me then, mightn’t they?
All four grandparents are dead now, from natural causes. I’m past forty years old. Lots of people have dead grandparents at my age. June, who raised me, died of breast cancer and Oscar died of a different cancer the next year. It was then that a cousin told me about my other grandparents, and my other dead mother. My cousin said that, with June and Oscar dead, she was the only one in the family who knew, and that it wasn’t fair to keep it from me in case anything happened to her. She said that I had a “right to know.”
But there wasn’t much to it besides just knowing. There was no one to reach out to. The dead girl’s parents were already dead themselves by then. They had died together on a ferry crossing the Baltic Sea. You probably heard about it in the news; fourteen people died. More than two hundred survived, which is good. I try to think about the survivors sometimes. When I find myself imagining my grandparents in the cold water, struggling, maybe one of them watching the other die first, I try to make myself switch: I think instead about the people who were rescued, and then hugged their families at the dock, or hospital, or wherever they were taken. Sometimes my imagination has helicopters and uniforms in it. Sometimes whole families, with babes in arms and wagging dogs, march down to the water’s edge and pull their loved ones out themselves. I know that’s not how it happened, but it captures the spirit of it, I think. It’s like when things are arranged in a painting not to represent what would have been caught if there had been a camera there, but to create a single, technically false, moment, that represents the truth of a busy event over time. Like putting all of the disciples in The Last Supper on one side of a long table. They do that in the theatre too, so that the audience can see everyone. It’s a necessary falsehood to make truth more accessible. That’s different from a lie. A lie has malice, or at least selfishness, behind it. Its purpose is to deceive. This kind of falsehood is generous. It wants to reveal, not hide. Besides, it’s aimed at no one but myself in my own head.
I’ve always been optimistic. I used to imagine my mother—June and Oscar’s daughter, because, remember, for most of my life that was all that I knew—as a popular, happy girl trying something naughty for the first time. It was a bad batch or lot or whatever you’d call it, and her friends did everything they could to help her. That’s what I assume happened. Why would I consider alternative scenarios? That’s a good one. I don’t need more.
Of course I’d still love her if things were really different from that. If she was an addict or even a dealer, if she stole the drugs or sold them to kids younger than her. I’d still love her. Even knowing she wasn’t really my mother. She … she’s my sister, I suppose. Her parents adopted me, so she’s my sister, even if we never knew each other. It’s part of loving someone that you put the best spin you can on the information you have. That’s love.
I wish I didn’t know so much about my birth mother. There are even books about her, though I’ve never read one. I read some magazine articles, and things online. I look like her. When I first saw her picture, I felt sick. I cut my long hair short with paper scissors that night, which wasn’t easy. I hacked my hair into a ragged bob and got my hairdresser to fix it later. I’m not ashamed to look like her, but it was scary. That school photo of her, looking right at the camera, with headlines underneath it like “Remains Discovered” and “Sex Crimes of the Seventies.”
I’ve never looked for my father. My parents—June and Oscar—they always said that he didn’t matter. All he did was fuck her, right? It’s not like Jenny—that’s June and Oscar’s daughter—or Annalise even had steady boyfriends, at least to public knowledge. It’s not like they were halves of an acknowledged couple. They were just themselves, and, apparently, slept with someone, and had a baby—well, Annalise did. Jenny was never pregnant, I don’t think, though it’s hard for me to undo years of assuming she’d been pregnant with me. The person my mother spent an hour with nine months before I was born doesn’t seem particularly important.
I do want children, but it’s probably too late to do it the usual way. I could get pregnant, I suppose. I haven’t got my hot flushes and freedom from the tampon industry yet. I think I’ve always pictured myself adopting one day, when I finally feel settled, but that feeling hasn’t happened yet. And, yes, I am aware that adoption laws frown on “older mothers.” Honestly, honestly, this whole “someday” thing is probably just my way of avoiding saying out loud that, while I like the idea of raising children, the reality is not actually a priority. There, I’ve admitted something that I haven’t told anyone else before: I’ll probably never be a mother. Well done, Doctor. Is this kind of revelation the usual goal?
Fine. I’m here because since the museum was robbed I’ve been having panic attacks. It’s ridiculous. No one was hurt during the robbery. The men have been caught. But the jades haven’t been recovered. That’s what was stolen: Chinese jades. It’s that loss that triggers me. Everything was the same in the gallery, except these empty places where things just weren’t any more. Someone’s got them, hoarded and hidden. We’ve since rearranged things so that there aren’t empty spaces now, but that’s almost worse. The emptiness at least acknowledged that the jades had been there, and existed, and mattered. Now it’s as if they’ve gone on holiday, or are just in the store room waiting their turn on rotation. But they’re not. They’re gone. They’re gone and it’s as if it doesn’t matter that they were ever there …
[Cries quietly.]
All right. I see it myself; you don’t have to say it. All these deaths are catching up with me. All these parents. June and Oscar, Jenny, Annalise, and her parents who might have wanted to steal me back after she died. All of them are gone. Most of my friends still have both of their parents. I had, what, up to six? And I’ve lost them all. How careless of me. [Laughs.]
[Cries again.]
It’s not that I care more about artefacts than people. You know that isn’t true. That would be monstrous. It just seems so much easier to grieve these small things than the big ones. I’m so angry that someone forced their way inside the museum and just took things, they took them. It’s like they ripped them away. It makes me … Look, I’m shaking. This is what happens at work sometimes. It just overwhelms me, and I have to duck into the disabled toilet for privacy. One time I was in there, quivering, literally quivering, and some
one in a wheelchair knocked. He just kept knocking, and when I finally got myself enough under control to get out, he swore at me when he saw that I wasn’t limping, I guess, or maybe he would have preferred me to crawl. He asked me if I was done “pissing and putting my lipstick on.” My colleague Liz heard him talk to me like that, and when she saw my face she assumed I was upset because of him. She said I could have her office to get myself together in.
Sometimes I feel like I can’t breathe. I don’t actually think I’ll stop breathing; I know that would be stupid; but I feel like I might. Annalise was smothered, did you know that? I didn’t want to know that, but it was in all of the articles. He pressed so hard down on her face that her nose broke.
Thank you. [Blows nose.] Sorry. See, this is what I’m trying to change. Trying to get control of. I can’t change anything by falling apart. The museum was right to replace the jade display, and I’m right to move on in life. I’m right to do it. What’s the alternative? What does it accomplish to cry to you and say that Annalise’s nose was broken? That she struggled but he wouldn’t let her breathe? That she was my mum? She was my mum, and someone hurt her. I can’t fix that. I can’t do anything with that. I look just like her and that is terrifying. Sometimes I think about scarring my face just to make it my face, not hers. Jesus Christ.
[Breathing.]
I don’t really consider doing that. I think about it, but I would never do it. I would never cut myself anywhere.
You’re not going to report me for self-harm, are you? “Suicidal ideation”? I have never hurt myself, and I never will. It’s just an abstract thought. You’ll note that, won’t you? I’m fine. I just need to keep up at work. The feelings catch up with me at unpredictable, odd times. I was leading a school group through the museum’s armour room, and the weapons just … They were made to hurt people. That’s their only purpose. It just hit me, the idea of creating something explicitly to hurt people. I never want to hurt anyone, and no one’s ever tried to hurt me. I said that to myself over and over, in my head: I never want to hurt anyone, and no one’s ever tried to hurt me. I forgot what I was supposed to say, about the armour and swords and guns in there. I just forgot. I handed out drawing things and one little boy, at least one, drew someone stabbing someone else. I had to sit down.
I prefer guiding through the upstairs galleries. There’s one full of Dutch flower paintings, one still life after another, showing off each artist’s skill with precision and detail. They’re cheery. One little girl miscalled them “still alives” because, she said, in the paintings the flowers stay alive forever. You see? And it sounds sweet, but it was actually terrifying to me, the idea of being frozen in one moment, nothing happening ever again. Just forever being alive but being only that one brief piece of oneself, stuck in that one moment with no new ones coming. That’s not really alive, is it? Is it? Jesus, I can make even flowers depressing.
I’m never afraid for myself. I walk home at night, all the way home, for exercise, and no one has ever hassled me. I simply don’t see myself at the centre of any of these danger scenarios. Liz, my coworker who let me use her office? Her husband picks her up in front of the museum if she has to leave after dark. She never walks alone at night. She thinks I’m crazy when I do it, and tries to give me a lift, but I won’t let her. She gave me that self-defence book The Gift of Fear, which was a horrible, horrible thing for her to do. I threw it away. I don’t want to be afraid. It’s bad enough picturing Annalise like that, and her parents in the water, and my parents in the hospital, and Jenny choking on her own vomit. It’s bad enough picturing all of my parents dead; why should I start picturing myself dead? If someone wants to kill me, they’ll kill me. I won’t hand my life over to the idea in little pieces, afraid to do this or that, giving up this or that. I won’t give up any of my life. If someone’s going to take it, they’ll have to take all of it at once. I’ll think about them when they’re right in front of me, and not a moment before. They don’t get any of me in advance.
Can you explain the goal here? I feel worse than when I arrived, so I don’t really see how talking about any of this is supposed to help. I’m supposed to be at work in an hour. I’m not sure I’m going to be able to do that. I should have signed up for meditation or breathing exercises, something practical instead of talk therapy. I need yoga. Or sex. Something to relieve the stress.
I’ve started seeing someone. His name is Henry. We haven’t progressed to that level yet. I’m lonely. I don’t know who I’m going to spend Christmas with. It’s ages away but I worry about it, I honestly worry about it. His family runs a hotel out of a stately home in Shropshire and I picture us there for the holidays, but I can’t ask him yet. We haven’t even slept together. I have no right to expectations. But he has all this family, and I feel like I have none, which isn’t true. I have cousins, two of them. Sandy and Sadie. Sandy’s the one who told me that Annalise was my real mother. She said that was where my name, Hannah, came from, as a secret form of Anna, and that she’s been jealous of that all her life. But I’ve always been jealous that they were sisters. You know what I mean? They have each other, and who do I have?
God, listen to me. I’m alive. What’s fair about that? People die every day. I know all about that. People die, and it hasn’t been me yet. Who am I to complain about fair? Life’s been pretty generous to me so far. I’m still here and better people aren’t.
Loved people die all the time. Needed people die. If I died, no one would be affected, not really. No one’s life would change, except, I suppose, someone who needed a job would get mine. Henry might miss me, but we haven’t even planned for Christmas. It’s not like we’ve planned “a future.” I would marry him. Honest to God, I would marry him just to have someone who has to miss me when I die.
Sorry, can I have another tissue? Thanks.
[Laughs.] I always imagined that you marry someone who’s your soul mate, your best friend, and you can tell them anything. I can’t even tell him that I want to spend Christmas with his family! I don’t want to scare him off. He tells me that I’m beautiful. He laughs at my jokes. He asks me about my day. I told him that my parents are dead, but that’s all. He doesn’t know about my complications. He lives near London, and works all over, so our getting together has been erratic. There hasn’t been a chance for him to “walk me home” and for me to “invite him up for a drink,” or however it’s supposed to work. He’s in Florida on business this week, and I’m seriously considering phone sex. You know, “This is what I’d do if you were here with me” sort of thing. But he might find it awkward. That would be embarrassing.
No, this is good. I’m starting to get the point of you saying nothing except a prod here and there, making me just keep going. I said that there’s nothing to be done about my losses, but I think there is. I want a family. Not children, a family. I want to get married. Maybe to Henry, maybe someone else. I need to own that. If my interest pushes him away, then he’s not the right man. Best to find that out and move on early. I won’t do the phone sex, but I will invite him to spend a weekend with me. There’s a really nice spa hotel in Bury St. Edmunds. I’ll suggest it and see what he says. Then I’ll know how he feels. Well, how he feels about sleeping with me. Then, after a weekend, I can ask about Christmas. Then, after Christmas, the future. Come New Year’s Eve, we could be engaged. My whole life could change for the better in that short a time. And, if not with him, maybe someone else. The world is full of people. I only need one. More than one person together, even just one more than one … well, that makes a family.
Thank you, Doctor. I think I’d like to go now. I’ll tell you next time what he says about the weekend away. If he says no, you can help me pick up the pieces. [Laughs.]
Hannah-Claire had emailed me a few days after that session, saying that Henry had said “yes.” She hadn’t clarified what the “yes” had been to, precisely: Sex? Christmas? Marriage? But whatever it was had been enough that she’d felt she didn’t need to come and see me agai
n. She’d said that she was happy.
I hadn’t replied. It’s not appropriate to engage with clients outside of sessions. But I was glad that she’d told me.
I removed my headphones and discovered that my mobile had rung while I was listening. Somehow Simon hadn’t stirred; once he decides he’s asleep that’s it for the night. Blake had finally phoned, apologised. I heard a feminine giggle in the background. I wondered if he was in a group or on a date. Either would be good for him. Standing me up for a friend or girlfriend could be the best thing in the world for him.
It reminded me of Hannah’s laugh, the last sound on her recording. I hoped for her. I hoped for Blake, for his sister, Clara, and all of us.
I shivered again.
Pyjamas tomorrow night, I chided myself, setting my computer aside, tucking my bare shoulders in tank-top straps under the duvet.
Chapter 5
Chloe Frohmann
I’D PHONED FIRST, with the baby wailing in the background. How professional.
It was a receptionist who’d answered. They tend to come in two types: chatty, and judgemental. This one was chatty. She asked if the baby needed something. I said, “Sorry about that. Crowded office. She has an inattentive mother,” while bouncing her up and down on my chest in my living room.
The Cathy we were looking for—Annalise’s old friend and Charlie’s ex-wife—was still near Lilling, working as a paralegal for her husband’s small law firm. He appeared to be an upgrade from Charlie: successful, exuding confidence and good posture in his website photo. His receptionist told me that Cathy would be in and out today, and that I could leave a message. I suggested that I could pop in. She—her name was Rosalie, I was informed though I hadn’t asked, and both of her children are in primary school—offered to make an appointment. They’re twins, by the way, Rosalie’s girls. Six years old. And Cathy doesn’t like surprises, so we settled on one P.M. Cathy might not be in at exactly then, but, if she was, my visit would be officially on the schedule. Rosalie seemed to be comforted by this. I wondered how often Cathy told her off for things that other people did.
Look for Her Page 5