Kitty is six hours ahead of us, and it was the weekend, so I agreed to make the call knowing she’s off work. Joseph sounded OK, and he comforted me for ages as I just sobbed down the phone. I was sobbing for everything – for Mum, for Dad and for the lost relationship between all of us. For not being an aunt to Joseph’s kids, for him not being an uncle to mine, but I also sobbed because I still had no idea why we had ever been adopted in the first place and right now, for some reason, I sobbed for the unknown more than ever before.
Kitty broke down when I told her. Her tears then followed for Mum, and Dad, and the fact that everything we had known as children had fallen apart. We cried together and she told me she would speak to her boss and arrange a flight home ASAP.
We have a funeral to plan for a man who had once been the perfect father, yet who we now no longer know. It all just feels so wrong.
Sunday
Kitty’s flight gets in on Tuesday. I’m going to meet her at the airport with Jamie; we have agreed to stay at Dad’s house together until Joseph gets in from tour on Thursday as it’s not far from Gatwick so it makes sense. He wasn’t due home for another seven weeks but the army have allowed him to leave this week so he can be home for Dad. We have to sort the funeral, the house, etc.
I feel like I’m still in a daze; I feel like a fraud – planning a funeral and sorting stuff for a man I have made no effort with for so long, but one who once gave up so much to give me a childhood that was the opposite, I imagine, to the one I could have had if we’d stayed in care. The guilt is unbearable.
I am, however, looking forward to seeing Joseph and Kitty, as shit as the situation is. The three of us haven’t been together for years as it’s been a case of ‘out of sight, out of mind’. Now, the thought of seeing them is nice – because once upon a time the three of us were the best of friends.
Tuesday
We’re leaving shortly to go and collect Kitty from the airport. Jamie is driving up. Pat is having the kids and has been her usual amazing self and just taken control of everything, not smothering me but just loving me enough to make me feel like this shit situation actually isn’t all my fault and it will get better.
Yes, I probably should have made contact with my dad way before sixteen years had passed, but I was a mum, prioritising my kids. I’d had a wanky husband who’d left me and these were all things fed back to my dad by my brother and sister, so he could just as easily have contacted me but he’d chosen not to.
As hard as it is, it’s utterly pointless re-living the ‘what ifs?’ and the things that we could have and should have done. Obviously that’s easier said than done, and right now all I’m doing is walking around feeling like the world’s worst daughter, the realisation has hit that my children will never know their grandad, who was once the most amazing dad.
Mark’s parents have lived in Spain since the kids were babies and his relationship with his parents was always odd, and distant, so other than Pat they’ve never experienced life with grandparents. I can’t help but wonder if they would have somehow turned Dad back into the ‘old him’ if they’d met him, the Dad we’d lost the day Mum died.
Belle is so reassuring, telling me repeatedly not to worry and that she will take care of the little ones and help Pat, and I know she will. She’s so good and I feel so lucky that I don’t have the typical stroppy teenager at times like this. I often wonder when that child will appear, but I hope it never will. I don’t ever want to lose the relationship we have now because even though she is just fifteen, there are times she makes sense of situations I just don’t understand and she helps me to see things in a different, more positive way.
CHAPTER TWENTY
Some Light in the Darkness
Saturday
Well, this week comes a close second to the most drained I have ever felt in my life since the aftermath of trying to cope when Mark left us.
My head is still spinning; I haven’t even been able to take in what we’ve been doing, seeing and reading, and I’m pretty sure Kitty and Joseph feel the same.
Jamie was amazing; he got on so well with both of them, and I feel utterly devastated at how much we’ve missed out on. Despite the shit circumstances that have brought us back together, we have had so much fun, spending our days laughing until we cried and crying until we laughed. Joseph is still as sarcastic as ever and his dry sense of humour made Kitty and me give each other numerous side smiles like we once did. I think we’ve all come away wondering why we lost contact; why we allowed the death of our amazing mum and the change in our dad to destroy the relationship that the three of us had, which was once so precious.
Seeing them has made me realise how much I miss the three of us hanging out, talking about memories only we have, and being in a home together for a few days that holds so many special memories – of the best parts of our entire childhoods.
Kitty has come back to stay with us in Cornwall for a few days until the funeral, and the kids already love her. She tells me her life abroad is lonely at times and she didn’t realise how lonely until she was surrounded by us. She is career minded, a grafter, but I think with Dad dying and spending time with me, Jamie and our family, she’s perhaps wondering if there’s more to life than what she has right now.
Kitty is sleeping in with Belle. I wondered if it would be awkward at first, and I had made up the spare room for her, but Belle embraces anyone and Kitty said she wanted to hang out with her niece rather than go to bed on her own early. Belle is intrigued by people’s stories, and Kitty and I are really alike – both in looks and personality. It’s 11pm now and I can see the night light is still on in Belle’s room and I can hear their whispered chats and giggles across the hall. It makes me feel both happy and sad that this ‘could’ be their relationship. I wish this was a permanent thing where Belle had a cool boho aunt she could tell her hopes and dreams to and find out more things about her mum that I’ve either locked away or forgotten, and I wish I had my sister here with me to remember a life I once had, before I became the me I am now.
There is so much paperwork to go through, so much still to sort.
We have agreed the house will go on the market. Dad had a lot of savings and everything will be split equally between the three of us. It’s an odd feeling – knowing that financially I will always be OK now with the house sale from Mark and now Dad’s death; despite the reasons for being financially secure, I still feel lucky – some people never get a break like this.
The funeral is on Tuesday and Kitty is trying to speak to as many people as she can to let them know the details, but Mum and Dad didn’t have many friends and I have a feeling Dad hasn’t seen anyone they knew together since she died. The neighbours told Joseph he would go out every morning at 9am, for an hour, returning with his daily paper and a bag of grocery shopping, but other than that he was always home, alone.
The house is exactly the same as when Mum left, although not up to her immaculate standard anymore. It was just the house of a man, with a broken heart, who’d spent the last decades of his life not living, but surviving, so keeping his once family home clean was probably the last thing on his mind. How devastating is that …?
While Jamie and I were there, we made a promise to one another that if the worst was to happen, we would always try our best to ‘carry on’ as best we could for the sake of those around us and if we felt we couldn’t we would then try our best to seek help, to engage with our kids, to be focused and to keep plodding. I also know that now, going forward, I will make more time for people struggling. I could have, I SHOULD HAVE done far more to support Dad, to make him better, to force my children into his life to try to make him smile again – he was never going to find himself again without our support and that’s something we now have to live with. Mum would have never wanted Dad to spend the last seventeen years like he did. My only consolation is a hope that they’re reunited again, back together – smiling and laughing and cooking curries, pottering in the garden and looking at new cars
. I hope that in him going from here he’s back to being happy with Mum …
What we did find when we were sorting and bagging and cleaning the contents of our once-beloved home, is bundles of paperwork from when we were adopted. Kitty went to the post office and made two copies on their printer. Joseph gave his to his wife and said he wasn’t interested in reading it. Kitty has read a bit of the paperwork and warned me that if I do read it to be prepared, as some of it makes for a devastating find.
I’m not sure if I will; for now, it’s hidden at the bottom of my chest of drawers in my bedroom. Part of me is desperate to sit and read through it all; to find out who I am, where I came from and what happened in the short time I had with my biological parents and brother and sister before I was adopted, but then the other part of me feels a huge guilt towards my adoptive parents for wanting to know. And I also worry that, once I know, it will have such a huge effect on me that I will wish I didn’t know. Jamie told me just to ‘sit on it’, to take some time to think about it all, but it’s a total head fuck.
Joseph has promised to come and stay with his wife and kids and we have all promised, the three of us, that we will stay in touch more. We have set up a WhatsApp group where we will message each other – no excuses! Our children are cousins yet strangers, and there is no decent reason for this. The last death we went through made us absent from one another, so I am going to ensure that this one does nothing but bring us back together.
Sunday
We took Kitty out to explore the Cornish coast today. The weather was glorious, so we picnicked on the local beach and took the kids out on a peddle-boat, before we went home where we sipped gin cocktails and Jamie did a BBQ.
A day like today could convince anyone that they’re happy, but I wanted to check on my sister so I just came out and asked her.
‘Would you say you’re happy, Kit? Overall?’
She does what no one ever does, and she pauses and really considers the question. No hurried off ‘fine, thanks’ for my sister.
‘Do you know what? On balance, I’d say that I am. Of course there are good days and there are bad days, but taking everything into consideration, I am. Yes, I’m happy.’
She asks me the same question and I try to give it as much thought as she did and start counting my blessings. I can tell, as dysfunctional as our family is, that she’s proud of what I’ve made here. And actually, her being with us has made me proud of us too, if that’s the right word. When someone is visiting or staying with us and I see how kind and loving all our children are towards them, how much we laugh and mess about and how genuinely, truly happy we all are, it really does make me proud.
Pat made a reference to her and Digby going back to Canterbury over the dishes tonight.
‘Washing up will be a much quicker job when we get home, just the two of us, hey Digs?’
I felt like I’d been punched in the stomach and within seconds tears pricked my eyes. I have loved having her here, being around Pat makes me happy. I wonder if she feels now that Kitty is here, that she needs to get out of the way, or whether she felt it would be easier for her to sneak back unmissed. Either way, from my reaction that I blatantly couldn’t hide, she now knows that her going home is not something I want. I feel wracked with guilt at my selfish response, but I really couldn’t hold it in. I’m aware I can’t hold her hostage here forever, but I’m not ready to let her go quite yet.
I spoke to Jamie about it just now in the bedroom. He’s so non-committal. He’s happy if she stays, happy if she goes. ‘We’ll manage,’ he says, when I have a meltdown about trying to cope without her. ‘They’ll be fine,’ is his response when I tell him how much the kids will miss her. I feel like I won’t cope though, without her voice of reason, her loving hugs and the way she is just there, making things better for all of us whenever we need her, which of late has been more often than not.
However, I am aware that she has her own life, her own home and friendship group, and I have kept her from that for too long. So, we agree that she will leave on Friday, after we get back from Dad’s funeral. We confirm the plans and she pulls me into her sweet-smelling warm neck and wipes my tears off my cheeks whispering, ‘Come on, my sweet girl,’ in that posh accent of hers that makes me smile even through my sobs.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Goodbye Dad
Monday
Lou left the café as I got in today. Her eldest son was unwell at home so she couldn’t stay long and she looked massively stressed out – still as glamorous as ever though, back to her old self – wearing huge Prada sunnies, her mass of wild red hair and nautical clothing to match the weather and the café. As she ran out the door, she said she would message me.
Kitty came down to the café and hung out with me. She drank coffee, ate Pat’s carrot cake and left her dirty dishes scattered about for me to pick up after her, but her company is epic and she made me giggle constantly with her stories, and I realised being around her makes me feel like me again, the me that I was before kids, before I became an adult and before I put everyone else before myself. Being around her makes me miss that me.
She also sat with Oscar for hours and listened to him talk about his wife, his son and daughter. She studied him as he recounted all the memories of them growing up and the highs and lows that came with it. It was heart-warming to see. I wondered if it made her think of Dad. He reminds me so much of the dad we had when Mum was here.
Jen popped in just before lunch and I introduced her to Kitty. They got on well, but Jen could see the café was busy, so she shoved her bag and coat in the back room, popped on a pinny and helped me with the rush hour. She made it more fun being there and was smiley and happy and interacted with the customers with confidence and ease. A natural. I imagined having a baby delivered by her would make the process a darn sight easier.
Jamie is driving us all back up to London as I write this. The funeral is tomorrow and this afternoon we are meeting Joseph to go to the solicitor’s and sign all the paperwork for Dad’s estate. I had no clue what paperwork, but I am told this is the ‘normal’ thing that we need to do. The house has to go through probate and will be split between us all.
I feel like I am in a bit of a blur. Am I now an orphan? I don’t know. What if my biological parents are still alive? What if they’ve resolved the issues they had when we were removed from their care and could now play a positive part in our lives? But they can’t be decent people because of the comment Kitty made about the adoption papers – and surely, they would have reached out to try to contact us by now?
Then I think I am a mum myself, a fully-grown woman, in my thirties, and I have managed without the input of any kind of parenting for over fifteen years – emotionally, financially or physically – yet all of a sudden, the thought of not having anyone parent me is really frightening. Maybe that’s why I’m trying to cling on to Pat so desperately?
We meet up with Joseph and I immediately feel safer. I forgot how safe my big brother always made me feel. He has a way of just caring for Kitty and me without actually seeing that’s what he’s doing. I wonder if Kitty sees it too? I wonder if she feels safer because he just copes with stuff, without getting stressed out, and he has an understanding of things we don’t – and if he doesn’t have an understanding, he isn’t afraid to ask questions to find out, whereas Kitty and I have never done that – we have always just looked at each other and pulled faces as if to say ‘What the fuck …?’ and continued to plod on. Joseph isn’t a plodder; he’s a ‘doer’ who needs to understand the ins and outs of everything to be able to make choices and decisions, and being back in his company has made me see he was always there doing that for me and Kitty as we grew up. I miss that role he played with us and I wonder how far things would have got with Mark if I had kept Joseph close to me. Not very, I imagine. Hindsight – such a wonderful, devastating thing.
Wednesday
We’re home now, and I can’t even describe my feelings.
Obvio
usly I was at the funeral, but I didn’t feel like I was really there, if you know what I mean. People I vaguely recognised told stories I vaguely remember hearing before, but mostly, things just happened around me today.
Joseph had stood up at the front of the church and said in a strong confident voice that belied what I knew was going on beneath his surface, ‘Thanks Dad. Thanks for giving the three of us a life, together, that we wouldn’t have had without you and Mum.’ It made me wonder if he had read the adoption paperwork, or if he knew something about our ‘life before’ with our biological parents.
Either way he was right. Because of our parents we got to stay together, to be raised as siblings in a home where we were met with nothing but love and care. We had no guarantees of ever having this without them and as much as it all went to shit after Mum died, we were raised as babies, into our adult lives, being loved, cared for and protected and that makes me see how badly we had all failed Dad after Mum died.
A few neighbours came to the funeral, Dad’s old work colleagues and a couple of faces none of us could place, they left straight after the ceremony with nothing but a sympathetic nod or handshake, but that was it.
Kitty didn’t know who else to inform. Mum’s green address book that she was forever pulling out when she was alive was nowhere to be found, and as far as we could tell, our dad had disassociated himself with everyone and everything for almost twenty years.
It was sad to see only a row and a half of seats taken in the church to say their goodbyes to him. At Mum’s funeral, people were having to stand at the back it was so busy. It made me see how people have the ability to totally stop being who they once were because of grief and heartache and because of that they lose everyone around them, and it’s frightening. Frightening and sad, because it should never have been like that for Dad. It wasn’t him.
A Different Kind of Happy Page 15