by Emma Davies
‘Is Mum really not coming back to yours?’ she asked.
Jules looked at her fiancé for guidance and Hattie could see the anxiety on her face, even in the dim light.
‘I know you need to do this, Hattie, but does it have to be tonight?’ She kept the smile on her face and her voice low.
‘Jules, you get married at the weekend – when else am I going to get the chance? I can’t come to your wedding and not have her talking to me; that would be awful… for all of us.’
Jules sighed. ‘I know she owes you an explanation, and she was wrong to take offence over what you said, but do you still think she’s wrong about the other thing too?’
‘Don’t you?’ Hattie countered. ‘Think what it might mean for us, Jules, and for any children you might have. Family is the most important thing in the world.’
‘I know. It is.’ Jules squeezed her hand and looked out into the night beyond the church door. ‘Go on, Hattie, go after her. I’ll make your excuses and we’ll still have a nice evening.’
Hattie flashed her a quick smile and hurried down the path from the church. Her mum and dad were just pulling away from the kerb, and as Hattie climbed into her own car, she prayed they were going straight home; it was just around the corner.
It was her dad who opened the front door, his initial smile of delight fading into sheepish understanding as he worked out why she was there.
‘It’s probably not a great time, love,’ he said. ‘Your mum’s not feeling too good.’
‘That’s rubbish, Dad, and we both know it. I know you’re sticking up for her, I wouldn’t expect anything less, but are you going to let me in, or what?’
‘Hattie, this is very hard on your mother – it’s very hard on all of us.’
‘But it’s not right, Dad,’ she protested.
Her father took a step backwards, an apology in his eyes. ‘I know,’ he said quietly. ‘Look, come in, but your mother doesn’t want to discuss it and I can’t force her to. We have to respect her decision, love.’
‘And I do, Dad. I understand how hard this must be for her, but she’s had five years to get used to the idea – I’ve only just found out. I will respect her decision when she’s discussed it with me like an adult instead of keeping me in the dark because she misunderstood some comments I made years ago. Comments which, I might add, I would never have made if she’d told me the truth at the time. That wasn’t fair. I should at least be able to explain now.’
‘It’s all right, Bob, let her in.’
Hattie stared down the hallway at the sound of her mother’s voice. Her head was just poking around the living room door.
‘Mum, I’m not here to make trouble, honestly.’
‘I know you’re not, love.’ She paused for a moment, looking at her feet. ‘Your dad had a word with me.’ Her mum took a step into the hallway. They could only have been home a couple of minutes and yet her mum had already kicked off her shoes and replaced them with fluffy slippers. They looked rather incongruous with the smart skirt she was wearing.
‘I was scared, Hattie,’ she said. ‘I didn’t know what to think about any of it at the time. I still don’t. It was all such a shock, and I know I reacted badly, but when you said those things, I, well…’
‘What, Mum?’ Hattie had moved past her dad and was now only a couple of feet away from her. She could see that she was trying to hold back tears.
‘I thought it meant you didn’t love me, too.’
Hattie covered the distance in seconds, pulling her mum to her as if she were the child. ‘Oh, Mum,’ she said, close to tears herself. ‘How can you think this is about not loving someone, when it’s exactly the opposite? Your mum loved you so much…’
She glanced back at her dad, who was still hovering by the front door.
‘I’ll go and put the kettle on,’ he said, and Hattie flashed him a grateful smile.
‘Come on, Mum,’ she said, holding her arm and guiding her back towards the living room. ‘Let’s go and sort this out once and for all.’
If a room could be said to reflect someone’s personality, then this one summed up her mum perfectly. Everything about it was uptight, striving for perfection, careful and measured, playing it safe. Where Hattie’s rooms were colourful and chaotic, alive with colour and texture, her mum had chosen muted shades of coffee and cream and everything matched. There were accents of gold, but no other colours, either in the soft furnishings or the few personal possessions that were allowed in the room. It was quite possibly this preference for order, thought Hattie, that was the reason why her mum had been knocked for six by recent events; every aspect of her life was planned and executed so carefully, she simply couldn’t cope when anything unexpected came along.
It certainly wasn’t a room for lounging in, and by the time her mum had perched on one end of the stiffly upholstered sofa, Hattie could see that her guard was back in place, shutters raised against any potential unpleasantness. It made Hattie want to shake her.
‘Why didn’t you tell me you were adopted?’ she began straight away. ‘You told Jules, why not me?’
Her mother pursed her lips. ‘Because of all that silly business with your wedding. It wasn’t the right time.’
Hattie could feel her shoulders begin to tense. ‘That “silly business”, as you put it, was the night I caught my fiancé with someone else. The night my heart was broken into a thousand tiny pieces. Was I supposed to just ignore it?’
‘I didn’t say that,’ replied her mum, chin jutting out, ‘but it was quite hard to talk to you – you were in such a state.’
The anger hit Hattie with full force. Her mouth dropped open as she stared at her mother’s impassive face. ‘Is it any wonder?’ Her words were like little chips of ice. ‘I thought I was the luckiest girl alive the night of our engagement party; I certainly felt like the happiest. My whole life was ahead of me, all my hopes and dreams were about to come true. And instead of it being the start of our lives together, the man I loved with all my heart, and who I thought loved me, swapped our future for a mindless fuck.’
Her mother’s hand shot to her face. ‘Hattie!’ she exclaimed.
‘What? That’s what it was. His very words, if I remember rightly. Then days later, when I’m still reeling from the shock, I find out I’m pregnant. The fact it wasn’t planned isn’t something I’m particularly proud of, but it was still something that should have been one of the happiest times in my life, full of wonder and love, and he even took that from me.’ She wiped away a sudden tear angrily. ‘Except that he didn’t, not really, because you know what I discovered? That even when my whole life had fallen apart and I thought I’d been left with nothing, I found something so strong, so powerful, that it gave me the strength to go on. I thought you, of all people, would understand how special the love you have for a child is, and that nothing can come between it.’
‘I thought I did too,’ her mum replied, bitterly. ‘But how wrong could I have been? My mother was a coward – my real mother that is. She never even bothered to fight for me.’
‘You don’t know that! Things were different back then. I was lucky, I had a choice, but maybe she didn’t. Maybe she spent every day of her life thinking about you, hating that she’d had to give you up.’
‘Don’t you think I haven’t thought about that, Hattie? Every day since I found out I was adopted – and just when I thought I was beginning to understand things, you open your mouth and rub my nose in it!’
Hattie swallowed back the bile that filled her mouth. She wanted to scream how unfair it all was, but she knew she had to take some of the responsibility for her words too. She softened her voice.
‘Mum, I would never have said those things if I knew you were adopted. I was an emotional mess too, you know. Finding out I was pregnant sent my emotions through the roof, and then Grandma died only a couple of months afterwards. I never meant to hurt you – how could I, when I didn’t know? I said those things because I suddenly realised tha
t the little life growing inside of me was depending on me for everything and I was determined not to let her down.’
‘You told me that adoption was a hideous thing to do!’
Hattie hung her head. ‘Yes, I did, Mum,’ she said wearily, ‘because I had a choice. Because I was lucky and had a loving family around me who I knew would support me – were supporting me. Under those circumstances giving my baby up for adoption would have been the wrong thing to do, that’s all I meant. I could have got rid of her; sometimes during the really tough times I even wondered whether I made the right decision, but Mum, Poppy is the best thing that’s ever happened to me, and she’s only here because of you… and Dad and Jules. For the first time in my life, I realised what it was to be totally responsible for another life. That the tiny person growing inside of me only ever had me to fight for her, to care for her, to love her. How could I refuse her that?’ Her voice caught in her throat. ‘Mum, everything I felt then was because of how you’d brought me up and loved me. You taught me what was right from wrong. I only turned down adoption because I could, don’t you see that? I could never have coped all those months if it hadn’t been for you, looking after me, standing up for me. I felt loved and although my world had fallen apart, you made me feel like everything was going to be okay, just as you always had. I said those things to show you how grateful I was, how lucky I felt to have you all around me, not the other way around.
‘Your real mum may never have had that choice, however much she wanted to. Don’t hate her for that, just because her circumstances may have been different from mine… And don’t hate me because you misunderstood what I said, because you’d just given me the greatest gift a mother could ever have: you allowed me to love my daughter just the way you loved me.’ And with that, she burst into tears.
It had felt like years since her mum’s arms had encircled her, but the moment they did, it was as if those years had never been.
‘Hattie, I’m so sorry… I didn’t realise. I never thought…’
‘I’m sorry, too…’
Hattie wasn’t sure how long they clung to one another, as their tears of both sorrow and happiness turned their noses and faces red, and made their shoulders damp. At some point the seat beside Hattie dipped as her father came to join them, his arms lending strength to them both.
‘I thought your grandma was a coward too,’ her mum confessed. ‘For all these years I felt like she’d taken away something from our relationship but now I realise why she did what she did.’
‘Grandma knew she was dying, didn’t she?’ Hattie guessed.
‘She did, and I blamed her for all the times when she could have told me but didn’t, her death robbing me of the chance to talk to her about it, but now I think I see why.’
Hattie nodded. ‘She loved you so much, Mum. It didn’t matter to her that she’d adopted you – she rightly thought of herself as your mum, and the idea of that ever changing was too awful to contemplate. She wanted to remain your mum the whole time she was alive and not suddenly become something else in your eyes. Some people might think that’s selfish, denying you the knowledge all those years, but I can see why to her it made perfect sense. She wanted to protect you – like only a mother could. By leaving you that letter in her will, she ran the risk of spoiling your memories of her forever… But I think she trusted that you’d come to the right conclusion; that you’d know that she’d only ever done what she did out of love.’
‘And it took you to show me that.’ She smiled at Hattie, her carefully styled blonde hair now tousled. ‘I’ve been so stupid,’ she added with a rueful smile. ‘You’d think I’d know better at my age.’
‘Mum, we’re all capable of making mistakes, however old we are. The trick is in recognising them and doing something about them before they wreck our lives any further.’ She gave her mum’s hand an encouraging squeeze. ‘Have you thought any more about what you might do now?’
She could see the look that passed between her parents over her head.
‘About the letter from the adoption agency?’ her mum said. ‘Is that what you mean?’
‘I’m sorry, Mum. Jules told me, only because I—’
‘I know. I’ve been horrible to you these last few weeks since the agency contacted me, and I shouldn’t have tried to colour Jules’s judgement too. You don’t need to apologise, sweetheart. I should have told you all about this years ago – when Grandma first died, in fact, but… well, it was just the timing of it all… And then, somehow, the years just went by and I was able to forget the things you said and move on. It’s only since the whole issue of adoption got stirred up again recently that those old feelings resurfaced. If I’d have acted properly back then, things wouldn’t have festered like they have… I’m so sorry, Hattie. And now one of the biggest decisions of my life is facing me and I even kept that from you, when what I should have done was share it.’
She sat up a little straighter, her hands smoothing her hair and rubbing at her face. ‘Now I know that this isn’t a decision for me to take on my own after all. These are my parents, Hattie, but they’re also your and Jules’s grandparents. I think we should talk about this together, like a proper family.’
Hattie broke into a smile. ‘Mum, I think that’s a brilliant idea.’
Chapter Thirty-Two
‘Give me twenty minutes,’ whispered Jules. ‘I’ve been trying to get rid of Ryan’s parents for the last half hour. I’ve done coffee and mints, even made hints about having to get up early in the morning, but they don’t seem to be in a hurry to get back to the hotel.’
‘Take it as a compliment,’ replied Hattie, smiling at the exasperation in her sister’s voice. ‘At least they’re not making snide remarks about having their son come back home so he can have some “proper” food.’
Jules laughed. ‘I’m almost beginning to wish they would,’ she said. ‘They’ll be wanting to move in at this rate.’
‘Just tip us the wink when the coast is clear. As long as you’re sure it’s not too late.’
Hattie could hear the smile in her sister’s voice as she answered. ‘No way, I’ve been waiting a long time for this.’
She clicked off the call and turned to face her mum, who was waiting anxiously behind her. ‘All sorted,’ she said. ‘We can go in about half an hour. And, Mum… stop fussing, your hair looks lovely.’
Now that the reality of what they were about to discuss was beginning to sink in, Hattie could see her mum’s nerves begin to flower. She was adrift; for the first time in quite a few years she wasn’t fully in control and she was unsure how to deal with this new sensation.
Hattie couldn’t imagine what it must be like to face the decision her mum was about to make. Of all the people in your life, your family were the ones you took for granted – and whether you got on with them or not, parents were parents. Of course, she wasn’t naïve enough to think that everyone had this luxury – she was well aware that some folks didn’t have the great start in life she’d had – but for the majority of people it was something they never thought about.
It also made her realise what a happy childhood she’d had. Things had got a bit emotional with her mum back there for a few minutes, but everything she had said was true. She had always known that she was loved, and though the last few years had felt a little rocky, she’d been aware even then that her mum and dad would have been there for her if she really needed them.
What must it be like to question that love? She wasn’t sure how she felt about the fact that her grandma wasn’t her real grandmother – but then again, she absolutely was in every way that mattered. How strange to think that now there was another person out there who, with one word from them, was waiting hopefully to fulfil that role. If Hattie’s head was buzzing, what on earth must her mum be feeling?
She turned to her dad and took the coat he was holding out, helping her mum shrug her arms into the sleeves. Whatever else happened in the next couple of hours, they must help her mum find a w
ay through the chaos and confusion, which surely was filling her head right now. Her safety net had gone, and it was up to them to help her back down to the ground.
* * *
Half an hour later it was clear that Jules’s guests had only just left. The coffee table in the living room was littered with glasses and a couple of mugs, and virtually every surface in the kitchen held serving dishes, platters or stacks of plates and bowls. Hattie realised with a rush of saliva to her mouth that she had not yet eaten, and with a look behind her swiped a profiterole off one of the platters and shoved it into her mouth whole. A satisfying squirt of crème pâtissière filled her cheeks as she chewed.
She was about to start clearing things away when she realised that someone was standing behind her. She swallowed hastily.
‘I thought I’d give Mum and Jules a bit of time together,’ she said to Ryan, not quite meeting his eyes. ‘And I don’t know how long we’re going to be, but you and Jules won’t want to tackle this lot when we’re gone, will you? Can I help tidy up?’
Ryan grinned. ‘You must be starving,’ he said, causing colour to flood Hattie’s cheeks. ‘Bugger the washing up – I’d stay and polish this lot off if I were you.’ He picked up his own profiterole, winking at her as he too popped one in his mouth.
‘I’m so hungry,’ she admitted. ‘Sorry. But these are gorgeous. Did Jules make them herself?’
Ryan sidled past her to the sink. ‘Don’t tell anyone, but she found a chap locally that makes them for parties and whatnot. They’re really good, aren’t they? Only trouble is, I think Jules catered for twice the number she needed.’
‘Well, the three of us not turning up at the last minute didn’t help, did it?’
Hattie found herself being scrutinised. ‘Understandable,’ said Ryan. ‘Did you and your mum get things sorted?’
‘I think so,’ she replied. ‘It’s early days but I feel better than I have done in a long while.’
