The Forgotten Sister

by Caroline Bond

  Tom and Grace were both drawn to the room at least once, or twice, or five times a day, normally when the other was out or in the bath or at work. They’d push open the door and stand looking at the lined-up toys. Grace would adjust the curtains and Tom would pick up and refold the blanket on the end of the ‘cot/bed/sleep space’ they’d bought because it was adaptable for almost every eventuality – their acts of solitary observance that were fast becoming rituals. What else could they do, in the absence of an actual child? The room had been empty for eight years. It had been redecorated twice. Once, foolishly optimistically, when Grace first fell pregnant; then again, much more cautiously, towards the end of the adoption process. It was a pastel statement of intent and hope, but it was no guarantee. And the longer they waited, the more unlikely it seemed that the room would ever become a proper bedroom for a real child.

  The perpetual breath-holding was hard on both of them; it left very little oxygen for anything else, certainly not enough for ‘making the most of their time on their own’, which seemed to be the advice that most of their friends, especially the ones with children, pressed upon them.

  Then on Wednesday 18 February at 2.15 p.m., Grace and Tom received an email from Steph, asking one of them to call. That was it. No detail. Just to call as soon as they got her message. At 2.16 p.m. they rang each other and got an engaged signal, at 2.19 p.m. they simultaneously received a voicemail from each other.

  Grace got through to Tom at 2.23 p.m. ‘You’ve seen the email from Steph?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you want to ring her?’

  ‘No, it’s okay, you call her.’

  ‘I’ll ring you straight back afterwards.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘Okay.’

  Grace disconnected Tom’s call and sat with her phone nestled in her hand, the noise of the office drifting around her for a few moments, then she grabbed her bag and hurried out onto the landing, along to the recessed window that looked out across the city. The winter sun was warm through the glass. She tried to calm down, telling herself it could be nothing, but she knew it wasn’t.

  Steph answered on the second ring. The slight breathlessness in her voice confirmed it. ‘Hi, Grace. It’s good news. I think we may have found a little girl who could be a good fit for you and Tom. She’s just come onto the books. I’ve put initial feelers out to her social worker and they’re open to a possible match. I was wondering if you’d like me to come round and talk you through her profile?’

  Grace watched the cars on the overpass whizz by, flashes of silver and blue and white. ‘Of course.’

  ‘I was thinking sooner rather than later,’ Steph went on. ‘How are you fixed for tomorrow teatime? Would you and Tom be able to get off work a little bit earlier? Say, if I came to yours for four p.m.?’

  Grace was supposed to be in London; someone else would have to cover it.

  ‘Yes. That’s fine.’

  ‘I have a good feeling about this, Grace. Really I do.’ Steph sounded genuinely excited.

  Just before she rang off, Grace managed to ask, ‘How old is she?’

  ‘She’s two. Nearly three. Let’s talk tomorrow. I promise, Grace, I think you’re going love her.’ Steph rang off.

  For few seconds Grace didn’t move. She stood in the shaft of heat, feeling hope bloom and expand inside her. A little girl; not a baby, but a little girl. Could this really be the beginning? No name, no details, but a real child with their names pencilled in beside her. A possible match.

  She rang Tom and told him, though there was so little to say.

  ‘So tomorrow then?’

  ‘Yep, at four. She said she’d tell us all about her then.’

  ‘At last.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Good luck with getting any work done today.’

  She smiled. ‘You too.’

  Grace dropped her phone into her bag. The lift opened and voices filled the landing, but she didn’t turn round. She stared out over the city, wondering if their little girl was out there, somewhere.

  *

  After Grace ended the call, Tom stood up and walked away from his desk, down the stairs and out into the cold, sun-bleached car park. He kept walking until he reached the path alongside the canal and the bench that looked out over the oil-topped water. He sat down. The same spot. The same view. A blast of emotion hit him, strong and destabilising, bringing with it the echo of past pain. But this time the child was real, living, breathing, fully formed. Not their child – a child that had survived.

  Life had been too cruel to Tom and Grace to let his first thoughts be hopeful. Self-preservation dictated that the pessimist within him gained the upper hand. In his head he started drafting a ‘Memo to Self’. There was so much that could go wrong: legal barriers, objections from the birth family, a counter-offer from another social worker, never mind possible issues with the child itself – herself. A girl. What they wanted. What Grace so desperately wanted. No, he couldn’t think about that, not yet. All he knew was that she was two years ten months old. Young, but not days old, not months old; she was nearly a full three years old. Tom started concocting her probable past from the stew of grim information that was slopping around in his brain from the training sessions. He knew the facts about what alcohol and drugs did to a baby as it developed, and how common abuse was in households that had their children taken away. Cause and effect: a vicious circle. Damage in the womb, chaos outside it. What would Steph be able and willing to tell them about what this child had been born into and survived? How much did he want to know? What mark would those early experiences have left on the child? But survived she had, and she was being offered to them. All those months of theory and preparation, all the months of waiting and praying, hadn’t been for nothing; it had led them to this.

  A shadow slid over Tom, bringing with it a further drop in temperature and a weird, whooshing noise. From out of nowhere, a swan crash-landed onto the canal in front of him, an inelegant sprawl of white muscle and feathered wing. He watched it skid heavily to a halt as if the flat grey water was asphalt. The ripples spread wide, a sudden disturbance of the stillness. Once it came to a stop, the swan stretched out its regal neck and wings, as if checking for whiplash. It glanced over at Tom, then folded itself, origami-like, back into a perfectly elegant shape, before gliding silently away.

  A little girl.

  Beneath the weight of worry and caution, and lessons learnt the hard way, Tom felt excitement stir and stretch.

  By the time Steph finally rang the doorbell the following day, they were both high on pent-up anticipation. Breathing was difficult, talking normally a lost skill; their future as a family rested on what Steph was about tell them. She sat quite calmly with the file on her knee and smiled at them. ‘I’m really hopeful about this. I know you’ve always said that you wanted as young a child as possible, so this little girl is a bit of a find. Like I said, she’s a new referral. She’s been with her foster family for three months, but she’s only just come up for adoption. She’s called Cassidie. I visited her a few days ago. She is, genuinely, a lovely, bright, happy little girl. Something of a find really.’

  It struck Tom as a little odd that Steph felt it necessary to do a sales pitch on a child, but he chided himself for being suspicious and concentrated on what she was saying – she was, after all, describing a child who could become their daughter. The look on Grace’s face was so hopeful, it was painful.

  ‘Would you like to see a picture?’ Steph asked. It was such a bizarre question. Of course they wanted to see her.

  ‘Yes,’ they said simultaneously.

  Steph opened the file, took out the photograph and passed it to them. They both reached out, but Tom let Grace take it. She sat back beside him, their shoulders touching, the picture held out in front of them. The moment stilled. Steph kept talking.

  A little girl. Dark, almost black eyes. A halo of hair. Round checks. A pointy chin. Chubby hands gripping the handles of a toy buggy.
A broad, easy smile. She could’ve been their daughter.

  Grace said, ‘Oh’ softly, and felt something that she’d later describe as love flood through her and wash away her doubts; well, most of them.

  Steph beamed. ‘I know. It’s uncanny, isn’t it? It’s an out-of-area match. She’s in Stockport at the moment.’

  Tom couldn’t stop looking at the photo. The wanting and waiting, the failure and the despair had become such a way of life that this tangible evidence of a little girl who might become theirs was almost too much.

  Steph smiled, seeing how reverentially they were holding Cassidie’s picture, and said, ‘So can I take it that you’re interested?’ They both nodded. ‘Good. Because I want to talk you through her situation and get your take on the options available to us, before we proceed. It’s not straightforward, I’m afraid, but there again, it never is.’

  Grace blinked and Tom steeled himself, and they forced themselves to lift their eyes from the image of their perfect match and listen to the reality of Cassidie’s wholly imperfect beginning.

  Chapter 13

  GRACE PRAYED that Tom was right about Cassie being satisfied with what they’d told her about her biological mother, but she had little faith that she would.

  Even as a toddler, Cassie had been stubborn, relentless in the pursuit of what she wanted, so very different from Erin. If they were honest with themselves, they’d encouraged Cassie’s wilfulness, believing that she was going to need the extra resilience and self-belief as she grew up. They never directly discussed it, but Grace knew they were both trying to ensure that their love, and parenting, were powerful enough to smother any shades of the past that lingered within her. Nature versus nurture? They’d stacked the scales heavily in favour of nurture.

  But deep down, in the darker recesses of her heart, Grace had been waiting for Cassie’s adoption to have an impact on their family. They’d been too lucky. It had all gone too smoothly. Cassie had become their daughter and her past hadn’t seemed to make an iota of difference. That was too good to be true.

  This latest upheaval was some sort of reckoning.

  Just how much of one, Grace had no idea.

  She sat in front of her laptop in her office, with the door closed, and considered whether they had been right to lie to their daughter, and whether she could bear to keep lying to her. Grace couldn’t escape the feeling that their dishonesty was more unforgivable in the face of Cassie’s new interest in her roots. Grace knew that Tom didn’t see what they’d done, and were still doing, as ‘lying’ and he would have argued with her if she had used the word, but in her own estimation, omission was as good, or as bad, as deceit. And they had omitted some very significant facts – to protect Cassie, it was true, but also to protect themselves. A parent’s first responsibility is to safeguard their child. Tom and Grace had done that all those years ago and they were continuing to do it now, but Grace’s beliefs, her basic coding as a human being, also valued honesty, highly, and there was no way round it – they were not being honest.

  Grace stared at the file, wishing it away and at the same time glad that it existed.

  What she felt was ill-prepared, and that worried her. Despite all the courses she and Tom had attended, very little had ever been said about the possible delayed consequences of the decisions they would have to make as adoptive parents. The sessions had primarily focused on how to accept, love and raise a child who was not your own. That they’d done – easily, naturally, or so Grace thought. The challenges of how to explain the realities of adoption to a child had also been covered; well, as it turned out. The mantra had been: Keep it simple, reassure the child, answer truthfully when asked a question, but in an age-appropriate manner. And again they had done as instructed… well, very nearly. And it had all gone to plan. But nothing had been said about dealing with that child when he or she became a young adult and started to question the story that you’d so lovingly and carefully told them. No, they had not been warned that the past would be silently accumulating beneath the surface of their lives, and that it would eventually leach up through the layers of love and time and stain their future.

  Grace traced her finger across the trackpad, and the cursor hovered over the file. She didn’t open it. She didn’t need to; she knew what the file contained and what it represented. It was the link to the Cassie’s birth family that Grace had never wanted to forge, but which, once started, she had felt compelled to maintain.

  At three years old and three feet tall, Cassie was thriving. And that day, like most days, she was full of it, roaming around the house with a glittery-eyed destructive zeal, looking for trouble. Being cooped up inside wasn’t helping. Grace had discovered very early on that Cassie hated being confined. It seemed to make her go a little crazy. Unfortunately, it was yet another wet day, in what was turning out to be a washout of a summer. The prospect of going back to work after her parental leave glowed more temptingly with each week that went by. Was that bad of her? Or normal? Surely normal was good, and they had made it to ‘normal’. That was a testament to their success. Cassie was their child. They were her parents. The novelty of having a new grandchild, niece, cousin had all but worn off. They were a normal family and she was just another mum with a bored child.

  There was no option other than to go into indoor-fun mode. They did some baking, putting green food colouring into the pastry to make the jam tarts look like Play-Doh ones, (God help Tom, when he got home), then they danced to the radio, played Snap! for half an hour and built an obstacle course in the lounge, using all the sofa cushions. All without any noticeable effect on Cassie’s fizzing energy levels. It seemed to take for ever to get to 11.45 a.m., the earliest time at which lunch was acceptable, in Grace’s mental manual of good parenting. Settled at the kitchen table, Cassie finally quietened down. She ate happily and steadily, concentrating on her food with an intensity that reminded Grace of her Grandma Joyce, a big woman who used to eat with a ferocious commitment and a roving eye for anyone else’s leftovers. After lunch, weighed down by hummus, breadsticks, cucumber, cheese and two yogurts, Cassie accepted being put down for a nap, without much of a fight. Again, very much like Grandma Joyce.

  As Grace poured herself a proper cup of coffee amidst the carnage in the kitchen, she made a decision to do something she’d been putting off. She took her drink through to the bomb-struck lounge, pushed a couple of cushions back into the gaping maw of the sofa and balanced her laptop on her knee. She opened up a new blank document and stared at the white screen.

  A couple of weeks after the final hearing and the issuing of the adoption order, Grace had received a call from Steph. She’d assumed it was a routine follow-up and burbled on about everyday nonsense until Steph politely, and somewhat awkwardly, interjected. ‘That’s great, Grace, but I was actually calling about something else. I’ve been asked to approach you with a request, on Leah’s behalf.’

  Grace’s pulse stuttered. The order should have been the end of the process. Finally, a done deal. A closed adoption. All links with the birth family broken.

  Steph carried on talking. ‘There’s been another case review and it’s been mooted that some form of update – just something brief – might be useful.’ Grace didn’t respond, didn’t trust herself to. Steph ploughed on. ‘There’s a system called Letterbox. It’s a secure way of passing information back to birth families; quite a few of our adoptive families use it. It’s tried and tested, been up and running for years. There’s no risk of personal identifying information being released.’ Steph paused and cleared her throat, sensing Grace’s reluctance. ‘You are, of course, under no obligation, but there’s still a lot of anger there and her behaviour is causing some concern. Her social worker thought some reassurance that Cassie has settled with you, and is doing well, might help to ease some of her distress.’ There was another long pause, which Grace did not fill. Steph was forced to ask, ‘Grace, are you still there?’

  ‘Yes,’ Grace said. She was too thrown to be more
articulate.

  Steph persevered. ‘Is it something you think you might be able to consider? I appreciate that you’ll want to discuss it with Tom, see how he feels about it?’

  ‘Yes. I’ll need to talk to Tom,’ Grace agreed, though she shrank from the thought of it.

  ‘Okay. Thank you. I really want to stress that you’re under no obligation at all, and I do understand you having reservations, but I said I’d pass the request along. Shall I wait to hear back from you then, after you’ve had a bit of time to think about it?’

  ‘Yes.’ Grace felt better sticking to monosyllables.

  ‘Great. Thanks again. Any questions, you know where I am. Give my love to Cassie.’ And with that, Steph rang off, having parked her monkey squarely on Grace’s back.

  Grace stared at her phone. No obligation – Steph had said it twice. They had a choice; they were under no compunction to comply with the request, other than a moral one, of course.

  When Grace told Tom about the call, his reaction was, as she’d expected, not good. ‘So much for that being it. I thought we were through with all this. They’ve no right to ask.’

  ‘No “right” – no,’ Grace agreed, ‘but Steph said they thought it might help her to move on, if she knew that Cassie was doing well.’