The Forgotten Sister

by Caroline Bond

  Cassie picked up the second photo and studied it closely. Her mother. She didn’t look like an addict. She looked…normal. The photo didn’t fit with the portrait that Grace and Tom had painted. The woman was white, slim, light-brown hair with the hint of a curl. She looked about twenty. She was wearing some make-up, but not loads, and was dressed, as far as Cassie could make out, in a T-shirt and jeans. She looked – bland; that’s what she looked, blandly anonymous. Nothing like Cassie, not like ‘a mother’, but not like an apology for a human being, either. Cassie looked at the background of the photo for clues, but found few. The edges of a patterned blanket or throw, a plain wall, the corner of an ugly, fussy mirror. It could have been anywhere. It didn’t look like anywhere particularly grim, just somewhere very far away. Cassie felt a strange kind of hollowness when she looked at the image. She should, surely, feel anger or pain, but she didn’t. She felt nothing.

  She’d not looked at the other photo in years, either. Why would she want to look at the woman who had fostered her? She couldn’t even remember her name. She’d merely been a stepping stone on the way to Tom and Grace. Cassie stared at the photo and felt even less.

  Both of the photos were as irrelevant to her as images on someone else’s timeline, a glimpse into someone else’s life; two unknown women, one who did a little girl harm and one who kept her safe. That she was the little girl was hard to grasp. It was frustrating, and pointless. She pushed the photos away.

  Cassie suddenly felt a rush of anger, at herself. She was being pathetic and self-indulgent. This was her past. This was her life. She needed to reclaim control over it. She fetched her phone and set about trying to find some answers for herself.

  By the time she heard Erin come in from school, Cassie was feeling better, or at least less useless. Erin’s footsteps drifted around downstairs and Cassie waited, impatiently, willing her upstairs. After what felt like an age, Erin finally knocked on Cassie’s bedroom door and wandered in, dreamy as ever, still in her school uniform. She was carrying two mugs of coffee and had a packet of Crunch Creams wedged under her arm. She passed one of the mugs to Cassie.

  ‘Feeling any better?’ Cassie nodded. ‘Thought you might be up for a biscuit.’ Erin caught the tail of the wrapper opening with her nail and undid the end of the packet. She passed the first two biscuits to Cassie, then reached for two more. ‘What’s really up with you? This “feeling a bit delicate” is getting a bit old.’ Erin used air quotes.

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘So you are faking it?’ Erin prodded.

  ‘No, I just didn’t feel like going into college,’ Cassie countered.

  ‘Is it Ryan?’ For a quiet mouse, Erin could be surprisingly persistent.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Okay. But you’re not really a closet anorexic, are you? Bulimia, that I’d maybe believe – at a pinch…’ Erin said, watching Cassie dunk her biscuit, ‘but self-imposed starvation, I’m not buying it. You do know that Mum and Dad are really, seriously worrying about it, don’t you? I bet Mum’s already been online looking up the best approach to dealing with it.’

  Cassie smiled. ‘Yeah, I know. It’s not anything like that.’ She scraped the cream off the biscuit with her teeth. ‘Can you make sure they know I’m not doing anything stupid? Though, let’s be honest, I hardly look like I’m wasting away.’

  Erin nodded, but didn’t move. They slurped their coffee and demolished more biscuits. Cassie felt happy having Erin there in her room, sitting on her bed with her thin hands and her flat chest. Perhaps it was that sense of peace that made Cassie blurt out, ‘I’ve decided I want to find my other mum.’ She looked at Erin, waiting to see her flinch or look horrified, or at least register shock, but Erin’s expression merely flickered for a nanosecond, as if her emotions were buffering.

  She went for a straight question, pushing down the pulse of panic that had flashed through her, at the mention of Cassie’s original family. ‘Right. What brought that on?’

  ‘I don’t really know,’ Cassie lied. Erin didn’t need to know all the details. ‘I just think it’s time I knew a bit more about her.’

  Erin picked a few biscuit crumbs off the duvet and ground them together between her fingers. ‘Right. Have you spoken to Mum and Dad about it?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Right,’ she said, for want of anything else to say.

  ‘Can you stop saying “right”,’ Cassie snapped. She didn’t want to delve too deeply into Erin’s reserve, but she could tell by the way her sister held herself that she was trying really hard not to give anything away.

  Erin met her sister’s gaze and corrected herself. ‘All right.’ Sarcasm as a defence, but at least it broke the tension.

  Cassie thumped her on the arm. ‘I can’t really explain it, but I just feel I need to know about her. That I should know.’

  ‘I get that,’ said Erin, ‘and you’re worried about how Mum and Dad are going to react.’

  In all honesty, Cassie hadn’t really thought about their feelings, she’d been too focused on why she was so suddenly, so absolutely certain that she couldn’t go on, unless she knew what her alternative could have been. ‘Yeah,’ she lied. ‘Do you think they’ll freak?’

  Erin risked a joke. ‘Not freak – that’s more your department. They’ll be a bit rattled, I guess, but I think they’ll understand.’

  Again Cassie felt a swell of love for her nerdy little sister. ‘So, how do I bring it up with them?’

  Erin gave it some proper thought. At last she said, ‘I’ve no idea’, and, for the first time in days, Cassie laughed.

  Chapter 10

  AT WORK Tom applied himself conscientiously to his tasks, but the concern about what was troubling his eldest daughter hummed beneath the surface of his day.

  Cassie had taken to her bed, once he’d got her home from the shops. They’d ‘tucked her in’ like they used to when she was little, with water and tea and toast, and plenty of affection, but they could tell their attentions were unwelcome. He was sure he heard her sigh with relief when they eventually backed out of her room. Tom wasn’t a complete fool; Cassie’s casual dismissal of her fainting episode as simply skipping breakfast didn’t ring true. His daughter was unhappy, and that was as unusual as it was unsettling. He was worried that bloody Ryan Newsome was at the root of it. Tom suspected that he’d completely misread the importance of Cassie’s relationship with that lanky, tattooed waste of space, thinking it was nothing more than a flexing of hormones. But maybe, for Cassie, it was love; the painful, illogical, teenage kind that he’d been praying both his daughters would bypass. If Ryan was messing his daughter around, he’d – well, he’d… To be honest, he didn’t know precisely what he’d do.

  Tom’s inability to think of anything to improve his relationship with his eldest daughter drove him out of the office at lunchtime. He set off at a fast pace, dodging the ambling shoppers and zigzagging between the gridlocked cars. He hurried past two passably pretty city-centre parks and at least twenty perfectly sit-on-able benches, on his quest to reach his ‘go to’ thinking place. The canal. Two job moves had taken Tom further away from his original haven, but he still returned to it occasionally, especially when life became too knotted to be unravelled by red wine and a conversation with Grace. ‘His’ bench was, thankfully, empty.

  Tom sat down and inhaled the nearly fresh air. He gave himself a mental shake. Cassie was down, that was all. Teenage hormones probably. She was also beginning to discover that the opposite sex was a nightmare. It was a painful life lesson, but one they’d all been through. Yes, that was probably all that was troubling her. He was getting it out of proportion. And if Cassie was sleeping with Ryan (he forced his mind to swerve around the question of where, for God’s sake, they were doing it), then at least she’d been sensible and taken precautions. Or at least he hoped like hell she had. The lack of control over your children as they grew up was the worst thing about parenthood, and yet it was the thing that no one ever seemed to talk
about. He stared out across the canal, looking up from the wet litter to the glass-and-steel cityscape. The view was starkly impressive, as long as you kept your eyes focused on the horizon. Perspective – that’s what the canal gave him.

  He took another deep breath. He reached inside his jacket pocket and took out the bulky square of paper that he’d been carrying around for the last couple of days like a talisman – though what he was trying to ward off, he couldn’t really say. He unfolded the paper, smoothing it as flat as it would go on his knee. It had been a long, long time since he’d looked at it properly. There’d been no need. Today there was. He held the creased, tatty sheet. It was made up of pieces of paper taped together to form a ragged jigsaw. Tom looked at it, realigning the fantasy with the reality.

  The image of Cassie stared back.

  Their perfect daughter. A fantasy sketched out of hope and wishful thinking all those years ago, in that barren hall full of desperation and desire.

  Up until a few weeks ago, Tom had believed that their dreams had come true. Cassie had been as close to perfect as any real, breathing, thinking, passionate, funny, stubborn daughter could be. She’d grown from being a lovable toddler into a loving little girl into a lovely teenager; one who was capable of empathy and kindness, with a maturity that was way in advance of her years.

  Tom looked at his drawing and felt a wave of sadness – with it came a very clear memory of his mother’s funeral. A terrible day, that was made bearable by Cassie.

  The morning they buried Sheila, it poured down. The incessant rain made the whole experience harder and more mournful than was fair or humane.

  As they gathered in front of the crematorium, the wind picked up and took on an edge of pure spite, ripping and gusting around the clumps of mourners. The sight of one of the ushers struggling to hold a huge black umbrella over Erin and Cassie pulled Tom up short in the midst of a whispered, last-minute conversation with the funeral director. In that moment the swirl of slick, wet overcoats and sombre faces faded away and Tom was left standing in the driving rain, trapped on the wrong side of the hearse, unable to reach his daughters.

  Erin looked terrified, dwarfed by the occasion and the sea of adults milling around her. Her hands fluttered from the buttons on her new coat to her throat and back again in a restless, repetitive cycle. Cassie stood close to her little sister, sheltering her from the worst of the rain. She was doing what she always did when she was stressed and out of her depth – she was faking it. At thirteen, she was conjuring up a better impersonation of composure than any of the assembled adults: straight back, chin up, eyes forward, defying the situation.

  His daughters.

  Sheila’s cherished granddaughters.

  They shouldn’t be alone.

  Tom looked around for Grace, but she had her hands full. She was over by one of the cars in the cortège talking to his dad, trying gently, but firmly, to guide him into the chapel, out of the downpour. The back door of the hearse swung open and the pall-bearers positioned themselves, ready for Sheila’s last journey. The funeral director indicated to Tom that he should take his place – but he couldn’t.

  Erin’s eyes were huge. She was staring, unblinking but not uncomprehending, at the casket. Her first experience of death. Conflicting loyalties raged through Tom. The funeral director gestured again for him to step up. His mother or his girls?

  Just as Tom was about to abandon his post, he saw Cassie bend down and say something to Erin. She turned towards her older sister, a naked expression of panic on her small face, and again Cassie whispered something to her. Then she took hold of Erin’s hand and tucked it into the pocket of her own coat, pulling her little sister close to her and away from the coffin. They stayed that way, welded together, as the coffin slid out of the hearse and was hoisted up onto the pall-bearers’ shoulders.

  The service, when it finally began, was insipidly routine; as lacking in warmth as Sheila had been full of it. The ‘celebrant’ could not have been more inaccurately named. He read from his notes with as much passion as a bored teacher. He mangled the pronunciation of Aunt Aisling’s name and, despite being asked repeatedly by Tom, failed to even mention Sheila’s best and stalwart friend of thirty-six years, Kathleen. By the time it was Tom’s turn to give the eulogy, he was more incensed than sad.

  His mum had only been sixty-seven.

  She shouldn’t be dead.

  He stepped up to the lectern and looked out at the rows of family and friends. The sound of his own blood thudding in his ears was deafening. Sheila had been well liked. It was a good turnout. She would have been pleased to see so many there. What a stupid saying that was. What comfort could his mum have – ever again? She was dead. Tom looked out at their faces, all turned in expectation towards him, and froze. He couldn’t do it. His mum really was dead. Gone – for ever. People shuffled in their seats and glanced at each other, waiting. The knowledge that he was expected to perform, expected to give a heart-warming, suitably respectful light-and-shade speech, with a few gentle jokes thrown in to make the congregation feel better, made him want to scream. That’s what raw grief was, a howl – not a polite, pre-prepared eulogy. In that moment Tom’s dominant emotion was impotent rage.

  He looked down at the front row, seeking solace in his family.

  Erin was sandwiched between Grace and Cassie. She had her head bowed, one hand holding onto her sister, the other gripping her mother. As Tom watched, Grace tightened her grip on their youngest daughter, pulling her close into her body for protection and comfort. Grace looked at Tom across the top of Erin’s head, questioning, kind, concerned. Tom swallowed, but the anger blocking his throat wouldn’t shift. There was more shuffling and a smattering of coughs. He had to say something. But he couldn’t. He was choked by the solemnity of the occasion and by the sheer wrongness of his mother’s brutally swift decline and painful death. He couldn’t do it. He was going to let his mum down. The blood rushed and roared in his head.

  Then Tom saw a movement in the front row. Cassie. She gently eased her hand free from Erin’s grip, stood up and walked, very calmly, across the front of the chapel. She skirted the coffin, climbed the steps onto the dais and came to stand next to him. Once by his side, she leant across him, her hand briefly brushing his, and straightened the pages of his notes – not that they needed rearranging. Then she smiled and whispered, ‘It’s okay, Dad.’

  And somehow, after that, it was.

  A cyclist whizzed along the towpath, startling Tom back into the present. The back-draught tugged the picture away. He snatched it back.

  Not a perfect daughter, perhaps, but Cassie came pretty damn close.

  Chapter 11

  THE GIRLS did it that night. Erin was Cassie’s wingman. It was all pre-planned.

  Cassie made a real effort during the meal, reassuring Tom and Grace that she felt much better, clearing her plate to prove that she wasn’t on the cusp of an eating disorder, and being very chatty. She felt guilty to see her parents relax and smile, knowing what she was about to throw at them. As her dad stretched and made to start stacking the plates she said, ‘Can you leave that a minute, Dad? I want to talk to you both about something.’

  He sat down, clattering the plates onto the table. Grace straightened her back.

  Cassie ploughed on. ‘I’ve been thinking about asking you something for quite a while now, but I didn’t want to upset either of you.’

  ‘Okay,’ her mum prompted.

  ‘It’s about my adoption.’ Cassie couldn’t be sure, but she thought she saw her dad actually relax a little.

  ‘Of course. Anything. You can ask us anything, you know that.’

  Cassie looked at Erin, who nodded her encouragement. ‘Well, it’s just that I feel I want to know a bit more about it.’

  ‘About what?’ Always Mr Specific, her dad.

  ‘Well, about my birth mum.’ Cassie watched her parents glance at each other.

  Her dad ceded control to her mum. ‘Of course we’re always ha
ppy to talk to you about it, but they never provided us with that much detail.’

  ‘Yes, but there must be more than you’ve told me.’

  Grace looked thoughtful. ‘There isn’t – not really. All we knew was what we were told by the social workers and what was in your file.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Well, as you know, she struggled to cope – your birth mum – that’s why they made the decision to take you away from her.’

  Cassie felt a ripple of frustration. She’d heard this before, and while previously it had been enough, now it wasn’t. ‘But that’s so vague. We haven’t talked about it in years. What you told me when I was little, that can’t be the whole truth. I want the adult version.’

  Tom couldn’t help himself. ‘Why?’

  Cassie bridled. ‘Do I need a reason?’

  ‘Well, no, what I meant is – why now? What’s triggered this now?’

  ‘Does it matter?’

  Grace stepped in swiftly. ‘No, of course it doesn’t. What do you want to know?’

  Cassie stalled. What did she want to know? Just more. She wasn’t naïve enough to think there was some fairy-story version of her biological mother and her adoption; she knew it was probably going to be bad. But whatever the truth was, it was hers. And… and she needed the facts, to compare with her dreams. A miserable start in life didn’t chime with the fleeting but very real moments of happiness that she was ‘remembering’. ‘Well, for a start, when you say she couldn’t cope… what does that mean?’ Cassie hadn’t been able to forget the doctor’s softly spoken questions about family illnesses and mental frailties – her unknown genetic inheritance.

  ‘Just that. She didn’t have the skills. She was struggling to look after herself, never mind anyone else. She wasn’t feeding you properly. And we were told the house was in a poor state. Not very clean. Cold. Not a good place for a small child. For any child.’ Grace spoke slowly, carefully.