But I’m laughing now, remembering all the times I spotted him, this clearly rather inept detective.
Nothing to do with the past, with what I did. Nothing to do with that at all. The relief …
‘He was rubbish!’ I say. ‘I saw him dozens of times!’
She starts to laugh too.
‘Oh, Beth! I’m so sorry. It was just that, well, I didn’t really know where to start on my own. I’m not very techy, you know, internet and all that, and I’d saved up some money, so I thought it would just be easier, you know …’
She laughs again.
‘Trust me to pick ’em, eh?’
I roll my eyes and smile.
‘Don’t worry. At least I know now. That’s a huge weight off my mind, I can tell you.’
‘Well, I feel dreadful. He was one of the cheapest I could find, and I suppose you get what you pay for, but he did track you down so he wasn’t all bad. I’m not sure how he did it. To be honest, I didn’t ask. I just gave him all the details I had from the past – you and your dad’s names, your school, previous address, stuff like that, and somehow he tracked you down. Public records, I suppose. I don’t know. They have ways. Probably could have done it myself if I’d really tried, but you’d obviously changed your surname, so …’
She takes a breath and I stay quiet, listening, watching her face, still scarcely able to believe she’s really here. My mind is still racing.
My mother. Here in my living room. This is … this is insane.
‘… anyway, he said he was certain he’d found you, but I wanted to be absolutely positive, you know? So I asked him for photos. I knew I’d recognise you, even after all these years. You never forget your child’s face, do you? But he said you’re not on social media. Don’t blame you really …’
I’m not. I don’t want the kids to be either, although Eloise has been nagging for a while about an Instagram account, and I’ll probably have to give in at some point, but not yet. She’s only ten, after all.
‘… and there weren’t even any photos of you on your practice website or anything, nothing he could find online at all, so he said he’d have to take some himself, and that meant hanging around where you work and stuff. When I saw the pictures, well … I mean, I last saw you when you were a child, but I recognised you immediately, love. I did. Your eyes. Eyes never change, do they?’
Her voice breaks and she lets out a little sob. I instinctively rise from my chair, wanting to cross the room and comfort her, but she waves a hand and shakes her head.
‘I’m OK, just a bit emotional. I’m sorry …’
I nod and sit down again. I’m feeling a bit emotional myself.
I need to hear all this, and a lot more besides, but it can’t be easy for her …
I try to focus, realising she’s still talking.
‘The phone call last night just to check your maiden name … that was just belt and braces really,’ she’s saying. ‘You’re in the phone book, you see, and he found your address on the electoral roll so that last bit was easy. He told me about the kids, and your divorce – I was sorry to hear that, love – but anyway, I was so excited. I’d already packed my bag. As soon as he rang me to confirm that you really were formerly Beth Armstrong, I knew I just had to get on a train this morning and come up here.’
She pauses, dabbing at her eyes with the tissue again.
‘Train from where? Where do you live now? Did you … did you have any more children? Oh, gosh, sorry …’
I stop, feeling embarrassed at my eagerness, my neediness, and she smiles at the flurry of questions.
‘It’s OK. I get it. There’s so much to catch up on,’ she says. ‘So, what was the first question? Where do I live now? Cornwall. Been there for the past ten years or so. Little place not far from Bodmin. It’s so beautiful – the moor and everything. You been there?’
I shake my head. I’ve been to Cornwall a few times; Jacob and I used to take the kids for holidays. Padstow for the restaurants, Newquay for the beaches, but not to Bodmin or its famous moor.
‘Can we do the rest later?’ she says. ‘I want to tell you everything, I do. But I might need a little breather first. I’m kind of exhausted. It’s been a bit of a day. All this … and you …’
She waves a hand vaguely and leans back against the cushions with a little sigh.
‘Of course. I’m feeling a bit overwhelmed too,’ I say.
There’s silence for a moment. Outside, the earlier threat of rain has passed and the sun has come out. A few dandelions are already flashing yellow on the small patch of lawn outside the patio doors.
‘Will you stay? For a few days? Stay here, I mean?’ The words emerge in a rush, unplanned. I just know suddenly that I don’t want her to leave again; that now she’s back, finally here, sitting just feet away from me, that she can’t go, she can’t leave. I won’t let her. And then, just as suddenly, my chest tightens, my heartbeat speeds up, and a little voice whispers a warning from far, far away.
Why did you suggest that? She’ll say no, of course she will. She’ll leave you again … You don’t deserve this. You don’t deserve something this good to happen, not after what you did …
But she’s nodding, smiling, replying instantly, delight in her voice.
‘Of … of course! Love, I didn’t expect … I was going to check into a hotel, but if you’re sure … I mean, that would be wonderful, amazing. We could catch up properly, get to know each other again … Really? I can stay here?’
I take a breath and the tension in my chest dissipates as quickly as it arrived.
‘Of course. I’ve got a spare room. You’re more than welcome, of course you are. Come on, I’ll show you up now if you like. I’ll give you a tour on the way.’
‘I’d love that, Beth. Your house looks … well, it’s beautiful.’
She stands up, takes a step towards me, and reaches for my hand. I feel a surge of happiness. But even as I lead her from the room I start to worry again, my brain beginning to process what I’ve just learned. Processing the fact that my mother used a private detective to find me. Mike, a man who must surely, by now, know an awful lot about me. Does he know what I did, all those years ago?
And has he told her? If he doesn’t, and hasn’t, I have to stop her ever finding out, don’t I? Because if she does, I’ll lose her again. There’s absolutely no doubt about that.
Chapter 9
Her name was Lucy Allen. We were in the same class at secondary school, but for the first year I barely noticed her. Our school, Fairbridge High in Bristol, was a big one, each year having about sixty pupils divided into two streams. Lucy and I were in different streams, so for that first year we were only together for morning assembly and annual events like sports day and the Christmas concert. It was only when we went back after the summer holidays to start Year 9 that she came to my attention, and even now, so many years later, I’m still not sure how it all started. The timetable was different that year; the two streams merged for some lessons, and the two of us ended up in the same Maths, History, and Biology classes.
Lucy was one of those quiet girls, clever and studious, mouse-like in her demeanour. She did have friends though; I remember a small group of similar girls, five or six of them, girls who spent their lunchbreaks at chess club instead of out by the tuckshop flirting with the boys like me and my mates. We had little in common. Before my mother walked out, three years prior to me going into Year 9, I’d been a hard worker at school too, but bit by bit all that had changed. Dad, struggling to juggle his job and me and housework and everything else, trusted me to keep my grades up with little intervention from him. At first, wanting to please him and terrified that he’d leave me too if I didn’t, I obliged. But gradually, the anger and sadness inside me grew and by the time I was thirteen and hormones came into the mix too, I’d pretty much stopped caring.
When my body began to change, when my periods started one dreadful day in the school changing rooms and I thought I was bleeding t
o death until the kindly school nurse explained what was happening, the pain of the loss of my mother became even more acute. I loved my dad, of course I did, but how does a thirteen-year-old girl talk to her father about needing a bra, about buying sanitary towels? Friends’ mothers were always offering to help, but it got to the point that year when I couldn’t even bear to visit their houses anymore, to see those mothers fussing and cooking and hugging and just … just being there. It hurt too much. And that was when it all started. I suppose, in retrospect, I was searching for a way to handle the pain. If only – dangerous though it might have been – I’d gone down the route that so many young people go down: alcohol, drugs, substances to take the edge off, to lessen the constant, aching sorrow. If only, if only.
But I didn’t.
I didn’t choose alcohol, or drugs, or even underage sex.
I chose something else.
And it all started the day I first sat next to Lucy Allen in Maths class.
I wish, so much now, that I hadn’t.
I wish I’d never met her.
Chapter 10
‘What a pretty churchyard. It’s so nice here, Beth.’
‘It is. I love it.’
I squeeze the hand Mum’s looped through my arm. We’ve come out for a Sunday stroll around the village, stopping at the little shop on the High Street for a bag of mints and then wandering across the road to cut through the graveyard. The honey-coloured stone walls of the thirteenth-century church glow softly in the afternoon sunshine and a grey squirrel scampers across the gravel in front of us as we follow the path that winds its way among the headstones, pausing for a moment to admire the stained glass in the east window. As we walk on in companionable silence, I marvel once again at how bizarre all this is.
I’m walking around Prestbury with my mother. If anyone had told me yesterday, when I was up on Cleeve Hill with Ruth and Deborah, that I’d be doing this today I’d have laughed my head off. My mother …
There’s a bouquet resting on one of the new graves, blush-pink tulips and sunshine-yellow daffodils bound together with a blue ribbon, the colours vivid against the dark earth. The flowers and their bright hues bring back a memory: me and Mum walking in a park – Brandon Hill, maybe, near where we lived in Bristol? I can’t remember – when I was about five years old. I remember buttercups, vast swathes of them in the grass. Mum crouching down to pick handfuls and then skilfully weaving them into a necklace, draping it around my neck, keeping one tiny bloom aside to hold under my chin and telling me I definitely liked butter.
‘Look at that glow!’ she laughed, and I’d laughed back, loving being with her, my beautiful mother. Loving that today, she was happy. Aware, even at such a young age, that Mummy wasn’t always happy. Learning to make the most of the good days.
I glance sideways at her now. I see the contented expression on her face and feel the gentle pressure of her fingers on my forearm. Such little things that seem so utterly remarkable when you’ve lived without them for thirty years.
Wow. Just wow.
I can’t stop looking at her. Yesterday, after I’d shown her round the house and settled her in the guest bedroom, we’d returned to the lounge and chatted for hours. I’d forced myself to put aside my fears about how much she knew about my life in the years since we’d last been together. There was, after all, nothing I could do to change the past, and if she did know what had happened after she’d left, it hadn’t stopped her wanting to find me now, had it? And if she didn’t, well … nobody else had ever found out, had they? My friends, my colleagues … That realisation brought me some comfort, and so I vowed to put it out of my mind for now at least. There was so much – so much – to catch up on; three decades of life was impossible to sum up in the space of a few hours, and we had so many things to talk about, so many things to learn about each other. And to my great joy, just hours after our reunion, I already feel I have some understanding, some sense, of the sort of person my mother really was back then, and of who she is now.
Now, she works in a small art gallery near Bodmin, organising exhibitions and giving talks to visitors and school groups. Her face lights up when she talks about her work. The most recent exhibition – her ‘favourite EVER’ – was an extravaganza of blown glasswork, stone sculptures, and huge unframed canvasses. She’s taken a sabbatical to come and find me.
‘I can take up to six months, if I want to. Unpaid, of course, but I’ve put a bit aside over the years. They’ll keep the job open for me until September, but until then …’
She’d grinned, her eyes shining, and I’d grinned back. Six months! Does that mean she might stay here, in Cheltenham, for six months? The idea of it made me feel a little breathless with joy.
She likes to do yoga, and walks a lot, I learned. Maybe that partly explains her calmness now, her composure, so different from the younger version of herself, the one whose moods swung from elation to despair at a moment’s notice. She’s had boyfriends, relationships, over the years, some long term, others not, but she’s never married again. How could she? She’s still legally married to Dad, of course.
We talked about him, but only a little. He’s had other relationships too, but nothing serious, and nobody ever moved in. I don’t think he could do it, don’t think he could let himself take a chance on opening up his home, his heart, to someone else, not after her. When I was a child, Mum’s name was never spoken in our house. As I grew up I’d try, now and again, to make him talk about her, about what went wrong, about why she left. I’d wanted details, wanted the story, but I always got the same brief answer, his expression blank as he spoke.
‘We just weren’t compatible in the end, Beth. We loved each other once, but sometimes love isn’t enough. She was too young, and she tried, but we were on different pages when it came to the book of life, as it were. She wasn’t ready for any of it, being a wife, being a mother. So she moved on. Simple as.’
I stopped mentioning her to him eventually. I could see how much it hurt him. But when Eloise was born, when Dad came to the hospital to see us, his eyes wet as he cradled his first grandchild in his arms, I made the mistake of whispering: ‘I wish Mum could be here, Dad. I wish my daughter could know her grandmother.’
Something had flashed in his eyes then.
‘No. She’s better off without her,’ he said. ‘I can forgive your mother for walking out on me, Beth. That is what it is. But forgive her for walking out on you? Never.’
I told my mother none of this last night, of course, and she didn’t ask. No questions about how he was these days, or if he’d found love again. When finally, with a nervous flutter in my stomach, I began to ask her what had happened between them, she gave the same vague sort of answer he’d always given me.
‘He was so much older, love. We were just … just such different people, you know? I knew that if I stayed, it wouldn’t be good for any of us, not for him or for me and certainly not for you. Growing up with two parents who hated each other? No child needs that. I know I hurt you so much, Beth. I know it must be so hard for you to understand, but I knew I couldn’t be the kind of mother you deserved, and that’s why I had to go. I’m so, so sorry. The shame of being a mother who abandoned her child … it’s never left me. I’ll regret it for ever …’
Her eyes had filled with tears again then and I’d wrapped my arms around her, telling her that it was fine, that I did understand. The past was the past.
She’s here now. That’s what’s important, I told myself. It’s what happens from here on that matters. We’ve both suffered pain because of what she did. I can see it in her eyes. What’s the point in dwelling on it now, after so many years?
I did have one more question though.
‘Why now, Mum? Why now, this year, today? Why did you come back now? What changed?’
She shrugged.
‘I’d thought about it for such a long time, but I was scared, you know? And then I realised, well, I’m turning sixty soon, and who knows what might happen?
Who knows how much time I might have left? I couldn’t put it off any longer, Beth, scared or not. It was time. And I’m so glad I plucked up the courage. I’m so glad, so grateful. You could have slammed the door in my face and nobody would have blamed you for that, least of all me. But you didn’t. Can I … can I just ask one question too?’
‘Of course.’
‘Did he … did he look for me? Did he try to come after me when I left?’
I hesitated for a moment, wondering what to say, and then decided to simply tell her the truth.
‘He didn’t. Not really. He never saw the point … You left a note, after all, didn’t you? Telling him you were leaving and that you wouldn’t be coming back? At first I think he thought you’d change your mind after a few weeks or months, but even when you didn’t, well … it was your choice, wasn’t it? And when friends would worry that maybe something had happened to you, I remember him always shaking his head. He always said he was a hundred per cent sure you were still alive out there somewhere. He did report it to the police eventually, but only because so many people nagged him about it. But he never thought anything bad had happened to you, and nor did the police, as far as I know. That’s why they never instigated a search for you. It was one of those things … well, she’s an adult, she’s free to go where she likes …’
I left it there, realising she was nodding, shifting uncomfortably on her chair as if she’d heard enough. And then I forgot about it all together because a few minutes later she told me something that made my mouth drop open.
‘You have a sister, Beth. Well, a half-sister, of course. Olivia. Liv. Her dad isn’t on the scene. He was an artist. I met him when I lived in Newcastle for a bit, but he buggered off when I told him I was pregnant. Didn’t bother me. I’d grown up so much by then. I was well into my thirties and I decided to do it properly this time. Be a mum, you know? Do it on my own. Oh God, Beth, I’m so sorry. That sounds awful …’
The Happy Family Page 5