She did not put her address on the letter itself, panicked at the thought of Theresa turning up on the doorstep unannounced, but she attached a note of it for the society to keep on file so they could forward any communications to her. When her letter reached Manchester the clerk opening the mail was interrupted by a phone call. When she returned to sorting the mail she failed to notice the slip of paper that had got separated from Caroline’s sealed envelope and was among the pile of discarded envelopes. She placed the letter in Caroline’s file in the big filing cabinets, threw away the envelopes and began to sort through her correspondence for the day.
For weeks afterwards Caroline scanned the mail for unexpected postmarks or anything from the society in Manchester, aware that she was desperate to hear and terribly fearful in equal measure. Summer turned to winter then spring and her anticipation faded.
When she went to mark the May birthday, at the beach, she wondered if she would ever hear. Will I die not knowing? Will she write in ten years, thirty, forty? The uncertainty was cruel, like a slow water torture, dripping away, hope calcifying into resignation. She watched the waves break against the rocks, the pattern of foam eddying in the gullies. Heard the shriek of a cormorant. I’ve been suspended in time, she thought. My whole life since I had her, it’s one long wait and the rest of it: Paul, the boys, everything, is like a dream and it’ll never be real, never be enough until I can wake up and find out the truth. Like Sleeping Beauty waiting for a prince, for a kiss, for release.
Kay
They had half-a-dozen visits to the marriage-guidance clinic. It was deadly. Bitterness and confusion dragged out of each of them until the state of their relationship was displayed in tatters in front of them. The counsellor hadn’t been at all judgmental but they had both made up for that. She came away from each session heavy with dismay, sickened by the depth of her anger. Worst of all was having to talk about the baby, Julie’s baby, his baby. How she hated him for that. More than anything. And she grieved for the baby she had never had and felt an awful disloyalty to Theresa and Dominic and the twins.
She could never bring herself to voice the awful thoughts that haunted her, how she had wished Adam’s love child dead, hoped that Julie would miscarry. Evil, unchristian. Adam wept his crocodile tears and said a million sorrys and talked of mistakes and being weak and a fool. He said she had withdrawn from him, been critical, grouchy, he talked about the tranquilisers and how sleepy they had made her. A hundred excuses.
The counsellor made them consider the future, what they wanted for themselves, from each other, what they could give. She asked them to consider separation as well as staying together. Kay panicked. She would not condemn the children to a broken marriage whatever the cost to her. She could not. But she could not forgive Adam either. It was a stalemate.
‘Picture yourselves in five years time.’ The counsellor had smiled lightly. ‘Think of three words to describe your marriage as it might be then.’
Adam huffed and puffed and eventually came up with stable, loving and safe. ‘Faithful,’ Kay said crisply, ‘settled, friendly.’ It was the best she could do and even those modest aims seemed completely unattainable to her.
Adam had promised her he would never stray again and begged her to believe him.
‘I can’t,’ she said simply. ‘I tried before and look where it got me. You want my trust. You can’t have it. There isn’t any.’
He sighed as though she was being obtuse or unreasonable.
The marriage became a convenient arrangement for raising the children. Julie had the baby, a girl, and Adam arranged to pay maintenance. He never saw his daughter. Theresa and the others knew nothing about their half-sister.
Once the twins started college Kay planned to take up training in information technology. Her independence was just around the corner. She was determined to build a new life for herself. And when she was sure of her footing she would leave Adam.
Theresa
‘You may turn over your papers now.’
The last exam. Her eyes skimmed the paper, snatching at the key words of the four questions to see if her revision had covered all the items. Yes, more or less. The world-trade one would be the hardest, she’d have to waffle a bit, but the rest were items she’d gone over and over till she was sick to death of them. Three hours and it would be done. Freedom.
She began to write, her mind working more quickly than her fingers could. She finished fifteen minutes ahead of time and tried to read over her work, but by then she was exhausted, concentration spent, unable to think straight anymore.
She capped her pen, closed her eyes and sat back in her chair. Summer beckoned. Two weeks family holiday on the Costa Brava and then university. If she got her grades. Surely she would. She had worked so hard. The teachers thought she’d sail through. She needed a B and two Cs for Exeter, the course in geology.
‘Couldn’t you have found somewhere further away?’ Her father had joked and her mother had gone all soppy and said, ‘I can’t imagine you not being here. Oh, I know it’ll be wonderful for you and everything, but I keep thinking how did you grow up so quickly?’
‘It’s only three years, Mum. I’ll probably be dying to get back to Manchester by the end of it.’
‘I doubt it,’ her mother snorted.
Theresa tried not to think too much about the actual move. It was exciting but a bit scary too. She was going into student halls of residence for her first year. After that she could move out to a place of her own, or get somewhere with friends. It would be brilliant. Her own place, own key. She’d had a silver key on her eighteenth-birthday cake. Key of the door. It used to be twenty-one but now you were grown up at eighteen. They still kept to twenty-one at the Bingo place. She’d been with her mum once. To the Mecca. A fundraiser for the Catholic Rescue Society. Most of the people knew all the lines and they’d shout them out with the caller, and when there was a saucy reference the whole place would make a big ‘w-h-o-o-o’ sound. Theresa and her mum nearly wet themselves at some of the quips, and the characters.
The night before her eighteenth birthday she’d been helping her mum make vol-au-vents and her mum had spoken in that halting tone that Theresa knew as her important voice.
‘Now, you’re eighteen, if you ever want to trace your family, we wouldn’t mind, Daddy and I. We’d understand.’
‘I don’t,’ Theresa said, faintly embarrassed. ‘I don’t see any point.’
‘It’s just that we wouldn’t want any of you to feel… well, that you couldn’t find your natural parents, that we’d be upset. If it mattered to you, if it does in the future, then we’d be behind you.’
‘Yeah, OK,’ she said gracelessly and changed the subject. She hadn’t wanted to before, why should she feel any different now?
‘Stop writing now,’ Mrs Evans called out. ‘Pens down. Please remain at your desks while papers are collected.’
Outside in the glaring sunshine, Theresa joined her friends, swapping anecdotes from the exam. They wandered to the sixth-form common room and made coffee to go with their cigarettes.
‘Voila!’ Letty produced a bottle of martini and plastic cups. ‘A little light refreshment.’
Oh, yes please! It was the last exam. It was all over. Theresa took a big swig. Someone put Stevie Wonder on full blast. ‘Don’t You Worry Bout A Thing.’ Theresa finished her cigarette, drained her martini and felt a bubble of elation rise inside her.
‘C’mon.’ She pulled Letty to her feet and began to dance. Life starts here.
Kay