‘Stephen hasn’t.’
‘This isn’t about Stephen, and it’s not about you. I’m not doing it to hurt you, I’m doing it because I want to – for me. I’m sorry if you’re upset.’ She could hear her voice shaking and hated herself for it, ‘but those are my papers and I want them back.’
‘Why?’ Marjorie asked. ‘I don’t understand why you have to drag it all up. Weren’t we good enough? We love you like our own…’ She couldn’t continue and Nina looked away.
‘I want to know, that’s all.’
‘She didn't want you,’ Marjorie said. ‘What is she going to feel like when you barge into her life?’
‘I don’t know.’ She hugged her arms tight to her body.
‘It’s downright selfish. You go trampling all over people's feelings, not a thought for anyone else. Well, I suggest you think about this very seriously before you carry on.’ He thrust the papers at her. ‘And I, for one, don’t want to hear another word about it. You are our daughter. We clothed you, fed you, taught you right from wrong, or tried to. This woman has never been a mother to you.’ He sighed, his face folding into weariness. ‘I don't know where we went wrong with you, Nina, but if you want to break your mother’s heart you’re going the right way about it.’
She closed her eyes. There didn’t seem to be any way to make them understand. None of this should have happened. If her mother hadn’t gone into her room, Nina on the bed and the papers ranged all around her. The distinctive colour of the birth certificate, the bold headings for the Catholic Rescue Society. Too late to try and scoop them up, her mother’s eyes had drunk them in, looked at Nina, wounded. She tried to explain. Marjorie had made a small sound of distress and had run stumbling into Robert, who had taken her downstairs. Nina had waited for the summons. She had collected the papers together and, when he called, taken them down. Thinking with some small, uninformed part of her mind that they might care to know something of her story. Stupid. They couldn’t see past their own injured feelings. They certainly weren’t interested in anything she thought or felt.
‘I’m sorry,’ she repeated quietly and left them. In her room she stretched out fully clothed on the bed and stared at the ceiling. She wished she could cry. To let the hot churning inside go, but she couldn’t. She had liked that about herself in the past: her resilience, the strength she had, but now it felt like she was choking, a chain around her heart.
I must get out of here, she thought. And soon. She lay there until the room grew dark and she climbed under the covers to get warm.
Megan
‘Is that Megan?’
‘Yes.’
‘This is Claire.’
‘Claire?’
‘I’m your daughter.’
‘What?’
‘You had a baby in 1960, May twenty-fourth. You called me Claire.’
A rush of images flickered through Megan’s mind – a matinee jacket, the prams in a row at the back of the house, the turrets on the building, her mother leaving her there, Joan and… the other girl, Caroline, the quiet one who tried to run away. Her own horrific labour, screaming for her mother, getting the photo…
‘No,’ she said, ‘no, I can’t. I’m sorry. There’s been a mistake.’ She put the phone down.
Her stomach clenched with spasms. She breathed in sharply. Dear God, what a mess! Oh, God! She half expected the phone to ring again but it didn’t. She heard the Neighbours theme tune start up. Time to get the tea on. Carry on as normal. Chicken and mushroom pies from the freezer, new potatoes, peas. Tea, wash-up, telly, bed. Just keep going. Pretend it never happened.
When Brendan woke later that night she was sitting in the chair in the corner of the bedroom, a blanket round her.
‘What’s up?’ He rolled over. He could only see her silhouetted against the window. The moon was up and it was lit up like a football pitch out there. ‘Too hot? Am I snoring again, or what?’
‘Brendan.’
Oh, God. He could hear the weight in her voice.
‘I was thinking about Claire.’
‘Ah,’ he said, waited.
‘If she ever tried to find us, what would we do?’
He breathed and released it slowly. What did she expect him to say? ‘Well, I suppose she’d have a right, wouldn’t she?’
‘And Francine and the boys?’
He sighed again. ‘It’d be awkward,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t fancy having to explain it to them.’ He paused. ‘Hell, Megan, we were only kids, we did what we did for the best.’
‘That’s what they all told us.’
‘What’s brought all this on?’
There was no reply.
‘Megan?’
‘She rang up.’
‘What?’ He sat up higher, turned the lamp on.
She turned her face, shielded her eyes with her hand. ‘Today. She rang here. It was such a shock. I thought I was going to collapse.’
‘What did she say? What happened? Are you sure it was her?’
‘She just said is that Megan, I’m Claire. Your daughter. She gave her date of birth.’
‘Good God!’ He ran his fingers through his thinning hair several times, looked at her. ‘Bloody hell!’ he said.
‘How did she find us?’
She shook her head, pulled her curls back and held them in her fist.
‘How did she get the number?’
She shook her head again, let her hair loose. His questions were irrelevant in the light of what she had yet to tell him.
‘Bloody hell,’ he repeated. ‘Why didn’t you say ’owt?’
She sighed. ‘It was such a shock, hearing like that, and I just kept saying no. I told her there was some mistake. I hung up.’ She looked across at him. ‘What if she never tries again? What if she does? I don’t know which’d be worse. Oh, Brendan, what have I done?’
Nina
She didn’t want to eat. Just looking at the food made her feel nauseous, brought a metallic wash into her mouth. She’d skipped lunch at work too. She hadn’t felt like it and then someone had come in and said there was a fire up at Woolworth’s. People had been trapped inside, banging on the windows. On the bus home they said ten people had died. You heard stuff like that, saw the building and everything and people expected the world to carry on as normal.
‘I’m not hungry.’ She pushed herself away from the table.
‘Nina…’ Robert started.
‘Leave her,’ Marjorie intervened.
In her room Nina sat on the floor, back against the bed. She was wiped out. She had intended to look at flats at the weekend but she couldn’t face it. Nothing mattered any more. Megan wouldn’t give her houseroom, denied she was even her mother. How could she do that? She’d always been a disappointment to Marjorie, it was mutual, but she never expected to be cut off like that. The rotten cow. Self-pity made her throat ache.
‘You should write,’ Chloe had said. ‘It must have been a shock for her, coming on the phone like that.’
‘She’d probably chuck them away if I did.’
‘You can’t give up now. I bet if you give it a bit of time then write a note…’
‘And what the fuck do you know about it?’ She rounded on her friend.
‘Pardon me for breathing!’ Chloe was stung. ‘I’ll come back when you’re fit company.’
That was rich coming from someone who spent ninety nine per cent of her time moaning and being moody.
Chloe had hesitated at the bedroom door. ‘Fancy the Ritz tomorrow night?’
Nina had shaken her head. She didn’t fancy anything.
She sighed and let her head fall back against the edge of the bed. How could she hang up on her like that? Maybe someone had been listening, making it impossible for her to talk? A flicker of hope.
She stirred herself and found pen and paper. After an hour she’d got nowhere. Everything she thought of sounded like some sloppy love song. How did you write? What did you write? Sod it. She flung down the pen. What did she want? To see her and to find out why. She could hardly write that, could she? Bound to get slapped back.