Because of You

by Dawn French

  Minnie clattered about in the kitchen while Hope watched her every move, trying to process all this surprising new information. How was Minnie’s life going to unfold now?

  ‘Tell you what, Mum, I’m going to have to register properly at the doctor’s now. I know you hate all that stuff, but seriously, I need to be under their care officially. Do you think you could have a look for my birth certificate, a proper look this time? Haven’t you got a file or something …? Or p’raps we can apply for a new one if you’ve lost that one …’ and on she prattled, while a seismic shift happened to the tectonic plates inside Hope.

  For this was the moment she’d prayed might never come.

  For so long, Hope had avoided taking Minnie anywhere that documents might be needed. She’d managed to convince the lady on reception at the local medical practice that she’d lost the red birth record book that she’d been given when Minnie was a newborn, so they issued her with another. It was relatively easy. No birth certificate was required, and she instantly had a kind of proof that was entirely convincing. A strong foundation on which to build a long-term lie.

  It was astonishing how often that little red book with all her inoculations, and measure of height, weight and development, did the job of proof of identity. On the rare occasions Hope was asked for a birth certificate, she fudged it entirely, claiming it was lost and a new one was being applied for. Or she ignored the request. She couldn’t believe how little it seemed to matter. She knew the day would come when it DID matter. Perhaps when Minnie wanted a driving licence, or to get married, or to register for national insurance …?

  Hope knew a moment like this was coming, but life got in the way and distracted her from considering it too much. Plus, the thing about denial is that once you have made a conscious decision to let your mind split into two parts – your now, everyday life, and that other part that’s too tricky to allow thinking time for – it’s amazing just how easily you can normalize the crazy, secret stuff. It just sits there, being a heavy weight, yes, but an increasingly bearable, manageable heavy weight, so on you go, dealing with it, living with it, letting it be, letting it lie, letting it, letting …

  Now, Minnie was slapping that letting across the face and waking it up. It’s not letting lie any more, it’s fighting to be known, this secret, it’s surfacing, gradually emerging, up and up from the depths, longing for breath. Hope could physically feel it creeping out of her.

  What? Here? Now?

  This evening, when Minnie had just told her something so immense? Surely not right now, she thought, trying to submerge the huge inevitability, trying to push it down and back into its old familiar cave deep inside her. It wasn’t going to go back, it was going to come up and out. It was stronger than her, this dreadful secret, and it was going to win, Hope knew that. She even knew why.

  It was going to prevail, because it was, it is the TRUTH.

  And the truth is king.

  Hope listened to Minnie blethering on about midwives and babies and hospitals and babies and babies. It was background noise but it was the soundtrack to a potent moment. Hope looked around the little flat from her place on the sofa. This was her normal, her happy, her safe place. This was where they’d raised each other, she and her beautiful daughter. Everything that really mattered to her was in this flat right now. In this exact moment. The minute before she told Minnie. Sat her down. Told her the whole story. Took her first honest breath for seventeen years.

  Minnie’s World Changes

  Lee wandered back into the living room when he heard Minnie’s raised voice. He came across a stand-off between mother and daughter. It looked serious. They often bickered, these two: that was their regular music. They could spar about anything – biscuits, telly, shoes, climate change – but it wasn’t ever a real worry. They read each other; they knew the battle rules: no biting, no scratching, nothing personal or permanently damaging, no cruelty. All quarrels were quick to resolve. It was over soon and easily. It took time for Lee to understand the row drill; it was so very different to his own home life, where a fight was rare, serious and unforgiven. In Hope and Minnie’s flat, you could say anything, and it wouldn’t be held against you or regarded as an eternal stain.

  This, however, looked, smelled and sounded like something entirely different, and it was. Minnie was standing up, eyes glued to Hope, arms aloft with her fingers splayed, in a gesture of complete WHAT THE FUCK.

  ‘Sit down, Twat, you gotta hear this,’ Minnie ordered him, eyes on fire.

  He didn’t argue. He sat. She continued, while Hope buried her head in her hands.

  ‘So. Who do you think that is sitting right there?’ She pointed at Hope.

  ‘What d’you mean? You couple of absolute units, whassup?’ he said, starting to be concerned.

  Minnie continued, breathless with shock and creeping rage, ‘I’m being serious, bae, who is that woman, sitting there right in front of your very eyes?’

  ‘Umm. It’s your mum, innit?’ answered Lee timidly.

  ‘You see. That’s what I thought. Yeah. That’s my mum. Well. Thing is, no, WRONG! I mean, I can understand why you might think that, given the fact that she’s been my mum since … well … forfuckinevva … but turns out it’s NOT my mum! It’s some weird … imposter … pretending to be my mum. Pretending to be a mum at all!’

  Minnie started to pace up and down the room, slapping her forehead in disbelief.

  Lee looked at Hope, her head bowed, and back at Minnie. ‘Stop it, Curls. What’s going on?’

  ‘Oh, nothin’ much. Only my whole life has fallen apart.’

  ‘Is this about the baby?’ said Lee.

  ‘Not our baby, no, although God knows who the GRAMMY is really gonna be. I guess it is about A baby, yes. Me. Baby me. This woman here has just told me that she took me from the hospital the day I was born. Took me from a different room. From different parents. My … real … parents. Just took me and brought me home. Like you might pick up a shell if you’re at the seaside, and bring it home and show your family, and, like, everyone says, Oooh, nice shell, you’ve been on the beach, result.’

  ‘No,’ murmured Hope quietly.

  ‘Except, instead, you picked up a baby, and brought it home, like, Hey everyone, look what I got in London! Get a T-shirt like everyone else – I’m not a souvenir.’

  ‘Hang on,’ interrupted Lee, standing up. He couldn’t quite process what he was hearing. ‘What do you actually mean? Is this right? Hope? Did you nick a baby back in the day? Did you nick her? Seriously, did you?’

  Hope still hung her head. She wished he wasn’t there. It was bad enough having to face the dreaded moment with Minnie, but this complicated things much more. Minnie didn’t wait for an answer; she was in full flow.

  ‘Nicked me. Just went in and stole me out of the cot. Bloody snatched me from right under their noses. Not yours to take. Know what you are, Mum? If I can still bloody call you that, whoever you are. YOU ARE A KIDNAPPER. That’s what you actually actually are. Like in olden days ’n’ stuff! Like pirates or something. What’s your next crime going to be? Maybe you can sell my baby when it arrives?’

  ‘Stop it, Min.’ Hope looked up. ‘It wasn’t like that. If you can let me explain—’

  ‘Nothing you can say can make this all right, Hope, nothing.’ Minnie hurled Hope’s name at her like a grenade. She had never before called her by her first name like this. Hope felt savaged by it, by her own name, by the sheer lack of mum-ness.

  Minnie continued, ‘I feel like absolutely everything is upside down. Everything I know, I don’t know. Y’know, like, who am I then? Who … am I from? Not from you, clearly, but, like, who are those people? My actual parents? Where are they? Have they been looking for me? Do they know I’m even alive? You don’t just help yourself to a baby. Who does that? If I heard about it, I’d think it must be a nutter. I didn’t know you were a nutter. I thought you were normal. I’ve trusted you my whole life. Who are you, actually? You’re a steaming great
liar, that’s what.

  I can’t believe it.

  I don’t want to believe it.

  Fuck, Lee, who am I?’

  And she fell into his arms, sobbing.

  ‘Calm down, Curls. Come on. You’re in shock, I think. It’s not good for you or the baby. Come and sit down,’ he said, encouraging her.

  She was dumbfounded, and she moved as if to sit, but stood upright again, clasping her head as each fresh question, each horrific new thought occurred to her. They were swirling and tumbling through her mind, like fast-flowing water, each more troubling than the last.

  ‘What is my name?’ Minnie demanded.

  ‘Your name is Minnie,’ Hope reassured her with tears in her eyes.

  ‘Is it? Is that what they called me? Or what you called me?’

  ‘That is your name.’

  ‘Answer me, Hope! Be honest with me for the first time. Try it. Go on. What’s my name?’

  ‘Steady, Curls …’ Lee tried to placate her, but she was having none of it and turned to confront Hope. She moved closer and leant down so her angry face was uncomfortably close to Hope’s, and she hissed:

  ‘What. Is. My. Name?

  You owe me that, if you think I have any worth at all as a human being. I deserve to know my own name. My real name.’

  Another grenade.

  ‘They … called you … Florence.’

  ‘FLORENCE? Oh my holy God. Florence. What, are they posh or something?’ She turned to Lee and put her hand out. ‘How d’you do, I’m Florence. Still want to have a baby with me? Even though I’m a total wanker?’

  ‘Umm, yes. Please. Florence. I sort of like it, I’ve always had a soft spot for a bit of classy skirt.’ He sniggered nervously.

  ‘It’s so not funny, Lee, you twat.’

  ‘I know, I know,’ he said. ‘But you made it funny, to be fair.’

  ‘This nightmare, it seems, is my actual life, what’s happening here. Goes to prove that it’s true, everything you do comes back to you in the end, doesn’t it?’ And with that, she flumped down on to the sofa with him. They sat in shocked silence together for a few moments, all three of them.

  Hope had no idea what to say, and yet there was so much. She felt a warped kind of relief, but it was not anything she could appreciate. The weight of the actual untruth was lifted to a certain extent, but her horror was in the dawning realization that she’d dumped it all on Minnie at probably the worst possible time. So, where the agony of the kept secret had lived inside her, there was now a cold gaping hole, rapidly filling up with hot shame. Yes, everything comes back to you.

  ‘I want to, um, tell you …’ Hope was faltering. ‘… how sorry I am.’

  ‘Right,’ said Minnie curtly.

  Hope pushed on: ‘But I can’t, Min, because I’m not, I’m just not. If this hadn’t happened, there wouldn’t be you. Us.’

  ‘OK,’ said Minnie, ‘does your heart not feel or something?’

  ‘Oh, it feels, all right. It’s broken right now.’

  ‘And what about the heart of my mother? Do you think that’s broken? How d’you think she has managed to live without her baby? After you tore her life apart? And now, you’ve done the same to me. Today, when I told you about MY baby? You certainly know how to brutally kill the joy. Gotta hand it to you. It’s savage. This should’ve been beautiful.’

  ‘I know,’ said Hope.

  ‘What the hell have you done?’

  ‘I’ve loved you. And whatever you think of me, I always will.’

  ‘Yeah, well …’ Minnie trailed off.

  More silence. More shock. The tension in the room was sufficiently palpable to taste. Tin on the tongue.

  Lee was the first to find it intolerable. ‘Tea?’ he offered, and escaped into the kitchen to complete what Minnie had started a few minutes ago, before her world collapsed.

  Minnie was hurt. And furious. And insulted. Ordinarily, if she felt any of those awful feelings, she would rush to her mum to share it, but not this time. Realizing that fact only made her feel even more desolate. She was sitting in her home, where she was usually safe and cherished, with the two people she loved the most in the whole world, carrying another person who would mean everything, yet she’d never felt so lonely. She felt abandoned by everything she’d thought she understood. Her relationship with her own world was tipped up on its axis, and had, in a flash, become nothing she knew. ‘Who else knows about it? Does Nanna Doris know? Or Aunty Glory?’ demanded Minnie.

  ‘No one knows. I came home with you. They knew I was pregnant.’

  ‘So they think, to this day, I am – I was that baby?’

  ‘Yes. They’ve never questioned it.’

  Minnie lashed out. ‘You’re such a liar. Like a queen liar, like the mother of all liars. Keeping it going this long, it’s unbelievable.’

  Hope doubted whether she should say what she felt compelled to say next, but there was no returning from this moment of truth. There was an inevitable pull towards it.

  She’d only been consumed by an irresistible impulse as potent as this once before in her life. And that had led to this.

  Despite the potential can of worms she might be opening, and contrary to her big promise which she’d faithfully upheld until this moment, Hope knew that full disclosure was her only option now. She HAD to tell Minnie the whole truth.

  ‘Look, Min,’ she started gulping, ‘there is one other person who knows about what happened. Isaac. Your father.’

  ‘The absent African? Huh! He’s about as much my dad as you are my mum! He’s no bloody use to me.’

  To Hope’s ears, these words were the cruellest. She had made the decision all those years ago; she was the one who had abducted the baby, not Isaac. His only crime had been to protect Hope and to love her enough to keep the secret. For the good of everyone, he’d had to leave. His honour had been his sacrifice and his sin. So, it was hard to hear Minnie, whom he had wanted so much and whom he loved so much, be so very dismissive about him. Hope could even feel violent about the depth of her love and therefore her defensiveness. Those words of Minnie’s stung, and Hope’s instinct was to slap her, to slap that rudeness out of her mouth, but of course she would never do that. Hope had never once been physical with Minnie. Hope wouldn’t hurt a fly, unless that fly was hurting her daughter. In this moment, while Minnie was indeed hurting, Hope knew what she had to do.

  Hope stood up and went into her bedroom, and opened the wardrobe. She reached in for the box.

  When she presented the box to Minnie on the sofa, she said, ‘I’m sorry you think Isaac wasn’t here for you these last seventeen years. When you open this, you’ll see that he was. He’s been here all along. I just couldn’t tell you.’

  Anna

  The therapist’s office was in a basement near Gloucester Avenue, but it was surprisingly light. Anna sat on a comfortable low sofa. Maddy, the systemic psychotherapist, sat across from her on a well-stuffed armchair. There was a coffee table between them with a large book of black and white landscape photos of Dartmoor and a box of tissues. Anna saw the tissues and resolved not to need them. She was determined that this session would be practical and useful, rather than emotional.

  ‘So, OK, it was Grace who recommend that you come and see me?’

  ‘Yes. She said you were a huge help. And Grace is … well … you know full well how resistant Grace would be to something like this.’

  ‘Right. So, Anna, what can I do to help?’

  ‘Good question. To be honest, I don’t think, really, you can do anything, I just need to … say some things. To someone who isn’t in my family.’

  ‘Great reason to be here. Ready, steady, go.’

  ‘Ummm. Right. God, hard to know where to start really. I suppose I should tell you straight off, that I have always wanted to kill my ex-husband.’

  ‘He drives you nuts?’

  ‘Well, yes, but that’s the least of it. It’s been a long time since we were married, but this feeling has
been bubbling. Recently, I’ve actually fantasized about the different ways I could do it. Properly, really, actually do it. End him. And that gives me great pleasure. And satisfaction. And relief. I absolutely could do it. Any day now. I know it’s wrong, but I am starting to think that whatever punishment would be worth it, so y’know, the benefit would outweigh the cost.’

  ‘You strike me as someone who knows the difference between right and wrong?’

  ‘Yes, of course. Absolutely. I’ve worked out where I could get a gun and I know the exact trajectory of the bullet that would finish him instantly. Most people think it’s up through the roof of the mouth or side of the head, but a surprising amount of people survive those blasts. It’s far, far better to shoot directly into the heart, assuming the person actually HAS a heart, that is. Pretty much guaranteed to work. And I like the metaphor.’

  ‘Are you set on this?’

  ‘I absolutely will not do it. I just needed someone to know that I really WANT to. That’s all. Thanks. So, I’m probably finished then, I’ll just make a move. Don’t want to keep you. There are people in a genuine pickle needing your time, I’m sure.’

  Anna stood up, looping her Hermès satchel over her arm.

  ‘Sit down, Anna. There are fifty-five remaining minutes that I think could be useful …? You will certainly pay for them, so you might as well use them.’

  Anna thought for a moment, and then sat down again.

  ‘Great. Anything else you think I should be aware of?’

  ‘Let me think … Someone stole my baby seventeen years ago, and I haven’t been able to live since. I’m here, I know that, I exist, I can see I’m conscious in the mirror, but I’m not living. I’m just waiting …’

  ‘I see.’

  The Box

  Minnie waited until she heard the front door slam, then sat on the floor and looked at the box in front of her. Lee took a packet of crisps and a banana, and retreated to the bedroom so as to be near enough, but not in her space.