by Shari Low
The intensity of the conversation was too much for Maisie, who broke into a grin. ‘Can I just check – you didn’t have a fling with a dark-haired beauty who looks like me approximately two years and two months before you met Hope’s mother?’ she asked hopefully.
Hope let her forehead fall on to the table, narrowly missing a bowl of vegetable pakora. ‘I can’t believe you just said that.’
‘What?’ Maisie feigned huffiness. ‘Can’t believe you don’t want to share Tim McGraw. It’s like the Christmas with one skateboard between us all over again.’
Aaron was laughing hard now, the colour restored to his face by food, laughter, and the easy banter that had flowed between them all since they sat down.
By the time they left the restaurant and climbed back into Maisie’s ancient old Mini, Hope could see that they liked each other and was surprised by how important that had suddenly become to her. Another connection in her new family. It felt good.
She climbed into the back, letting Aaron take the front passenger seat, so he could chat easily to Maisie. She didn’t want him to feel out of it in the back.
‘Okay, are we doing this?’ Maisie asked, hands on the steering wheel.
In the front seat, Aaron turned and Hope could see the doubt on his face. This had to be every bit as terrifying for him as it was for her. This was the woman who’d jilted him at the altar, left him, borne his child and told him nothing about it. It would be perfectly understandable if he had reservations about going anywhere near her.
‘I’m good, if you are,’ he replied with a certainty that Hope wasn’t feeling.
Woman up, she told herself. You’ve got this. It’s just a drive-by. ‘Yep, let’s do it.’
‘Eeeek!’ Maisie couldn’t contain her excitement. This was the kind of drama that she usually only found on stage or in scripts. ‘Can I get clarity on the plan, though? You know, as the official badass getaway driver. In the movies, it’s always the driver that gets killed or arrested. Just thought I’d mention that.’
Hope could see Aaron grinning again. He must be wondering what the hell he’d got himself into. A week ago, he was just a normal guy, living in LA, going about his life. Now he was in Glasgow, and he’d acquired a daughter and a getaway driver who was channelling Helena Bonham Carter. If he got the first flight back to LAX tomorrow morning, Hope wouldn’t blame him at all.
Hope put the address into her phone and put it on speaker, and Maisie took off, following the directions as barked out by the automated voice on her maps app. Hope knew where the café was, but using the satnav made it easier for her sister. Plus, it gave her time to think. Was she ready for this? Was she prepared to be this close to the woman who’d given birth to her?
All they were going to do tonight was drive past the café, see what was happening, get a feel for how it all looked. It wasn’t as if they were going to gatecrash the party and announce their arrival. That would be crazy. There were too many risks, too many pitfalls that could blow the whole relationship before they’d even given it a chance.
No, just a look. That was all. Then they’d go back to the hotel and work out a plan to contact Agnetha and then meet her when she was prepared for them. That was if she agreed to a meeting. There was every possibility that she wouldn’t. Hope was going to cross that bridge when they came to it.
She stared out the window for a while, watching Glasgow go by, before her eyes flicked to the satnav. Five more minutes. They were on Woodlands Road now, a street that she’d travelled more times than she could count, but that suddenly seemed daunting now that every turn of the tyres was taking her closer to the woman she’d wondered about her whole life.
‘You okay there?’ she asked Aaron.
‘Just taking in the view,’ he said, staring out of the window at the Victorian terraces that lined each side of the street. Even at this time of night, it was still daylight. In the winter, the city was plunged into darkness by three o’clock in the afternoon, but the reward was that summer evenings stayed light until after eleven.
There was a brief stop at a traffic light, then they carried on to Highburgh Road, then on to the gentle curve of Hyndland Road.
Hope checked the satnav screen. Two minutes to the destination.
‘We’re almost there. It’s just up here on the right hand side,’ she said, wondering if they could hear her over the noise of the steel band that was suddenly playing in her chest.
Aaron leaned forward, so that he could get a better view out of the front windscreen.
‘That’s it, there,’ Hope pointed ahead, through the gap between the two front seats, ‘The one with the tables and chairs outside.’
They were about eighty metres away now. Seventy. Sixty.
‘Slow down a bit, Maisie.’
Her sister’s knuckles were white on the wheel. ‘Oh my God, this is nerve-wracking. I may be the first getaway driver ever to pee my pants. I’m just putting that out there.’
‘Thank you and noted,’ Hope deadpanned, but her attention was immediately grabbed elsewhere. Eyes trained on the bright frontage of The Ginger Sponge, about fifty metres ahead now, she gasped as she saw a man and woman exit the door. The woman turned and began to walk in the opposite direction, but the man… Hang on, there was another woman there too. She was leaning against the front window of the café, as if she was waiting for something or someone, and now she was watching their car as it approached her.
Forty metres. She had red hair that fell in curls past her shoulders.
Thirty metres. She was wearing a dress that was silver on the top and black on the bottom. Now she’d stepped forward on the pavement and was watching them, smiling, as if she was expecting someone.
Twenty metres. She was staring right at them and Maisie was so entranced that she had taken her foot off the accelerator and they were slowing down with every second that passed.
‘Oh my God,’ Aaron whispered. ‘That’s her. That’s Agnetha.’
The woman’s expression suddenly turned from a smile to puzzlement.
Five metres. The woman’s gaze went to the driver of the vehicle, then the passenger. Her eyes locked on Aaron’s face and her hand flew to her mouth.
Before Hope could panic, or faint, or yell at Maisie to keep going, the car rolled to a stop right in front of her mother.
10 p.m. – Midnight
29
Agnetha
Aggs froze, the synapses of her brain shutting down, no longer able to send signals to any part of her, except her heart, which was somehow continuing to beat.
It had been over twenty years since she’d seen his face, yet even now, there was no mistaking it. But it couldn’t be him. Not here. Not now.
The passenger door of the car opened and he climbed out, stood just a few feet in front of her. A million times she’d pictured this moment, wondered how they would react, and now she knew – the two of them would slip into some other world, where time would stand still and they would stare at each other for what felt like a lifetime. And while the world stopped turning, inside her body she’d feel an explosion of every emotion she’d ever shared with this man: love, excitement, happiness, sadness, devastation, and a punch of loss and regret so painful that it felt like a physical blow.
‘Aaron?’ she whispered.
He didn’t reply and it seemed like his words were failing him, until slowly, like a black and white movie playing at the wrong speed, she saw the smile she’d played back in her memory so many times and listened to the voice she’d only heard in that twilight time between waking and sleeping. ‘Good to see you, Agnetha.’
A pause while she waited for her reactions to catch up and then, in an instant, colour flooded her vision again and suddenly his arms flew open as she moved towards him and then she was cocooned in a place that felt so familiar she could have been there only a moment ago.
They hugged for too long and not long enough. It felt right and it felt wrong. She wanted to run and she wanted to stay there forev
er. To cheer with joy and to sob with sorrow.
Aggs was first to break the spell. ‘I think I need to sit down before my legs give way.’ She took a few steps back to one of the tables outside the café, glad that the gang who’d been sitting there earlier had now moved inside. ‘Please…’ she gestured to an empty chair next to her, then watched as he walked towards it. He still moved in exactly the same way as before. Even if she hadn’t seen his face, she would have known it was him. Her voice was hoarse as she spoke. ‘Is this… real?’
‘Definitely real.’ That smile. The line of his jaw. Age had barely touched him. ‘I can’t believe we found you. I have so many questions, so many things I need to say, but first, I need you to meet someone.’
Aggs’ gaze followed his, as he turned to the two women in the car and beckoned them to join them.
They opened the doors and, straight away, Aggs guessed that they were in their early twenties. The driver with the ebony hair bounded towards them and Aggs immediately fell in love with her look, a kaleidoscope of styles that were definitely a throwback to some vintage time. The other girl’s hesitation was obvious, as she slowly climbed out of the back.
‘Aggs, this is Maisie.’
The dark-haired girl’s hand shot out, and Aggs shook it, not quite able to decide what questions she wanted to ask first. Was this his family? Was he here touring Scotland, as he used to say he wanted to do, and he’d just decided to look her up? And where the hell had he been for the last twenty years?
As always, Aggs found a way to calm her racing mind and focus on the moment. There would be time. They’d get to that.
‘Pleased to meet you, Maisie,’ Aggs greeted her.
‘You too,’ Maisie said, as she reclined into one of the other free seats at the table.
The other young woman reached them, and Aaron stood up, took her hand. ‘And this is Hope.’
Aggs gasped. The resemblance was unmistakable. The same eyes. The same colouring. This could only be…
‘Hope is my daughter.’ His voice was loaded with emotion, but Aggs didn’t think to wonder why, too busy focusing on taking this in and holding it together. Aaron Ward. The love of her life. Even a ten year marriage to Mitchell hadn’t erased the memory of the pain she’d felt after she came back from America, leaving him behind. The truth was that she’d loved Mitchell, but even in their best moments, he didn’t have all her heart, because a tiny part of it had broken off the day she left Vegas. The love she’d felt for Aaron had never been matched.
‘I could see that immediately. You look so alike. It’s lovely to meet you.’
His daughter. Oh God, his daughter. Aggs slipped her shaking hands under the table, truly hoping that they didn’t realise the effect that the introduction was having on her. His daughter…
Hope responded with a smile that was almost nervous.
Must be shy, Aggs thought, as Aaron pulled the last chair at the table out for his girl, then sat down again. Aggs noticed Hope slipping her hand into his, and it warmed her heart. She used to think he’d make a great dad. Given the loving way he was treating Hope, it seemed she was right.
‘I’m so sorry to ambush you like this,’ Aaron began. ‘We didn’t plan it. We just managed to track you down today and we thought we’d drive by to see if we had the right place. We were going to call you first, or get a message to you…’
Trying to relax, Aggs let out a throaty chuckle. ‘The shock has probably aged me a few years, but I’m so, so glad you’re here. I can’t believe it though. It all seems so surreal. Are you on holiday? Travelling?’
‘No, I’m…’ As he paused, it was obvious to Aggs that he was struggling with the words.
She sensed something else too. A confusion. A feeling that there was a weight, an anxiety there. Something he didn’t quite know how to say. Was he still upset at their break-up? Did he still bear some kind of a grudge? If so, that was totally unreasonable, because he’d been to blame too. And why did her gaze keep returning, as if being pulled by an invisible force, to the young woman at his side? The grey eyed girl who had just nodded her encouragement to him and whose stare now felt like it was burning a hole through to Aggs’ soul?
‘Agnetha,’ he began again, ‘I’m just going to unload all this and I’m sorry if it doesn’t come out right…’
‘That’s okay,’ she tried to reassure him.
‘I arrived in Scotland this morning and that’s when I met Hope for the first time.’
What? That didn’t make sense. That couldn’t be right. Had she misunderstood him?
Hope spoke her first words since she’d got out of the car. ‘I did a DNA test. That’s how I tracked him down.’
The accent. Aaron’s revelation that he just met his daughter. That’s when the penny dropped. ‘Wait a minute… you’re Scottish? I’m sorry, I assumed you were American. I don’t understand.’ None of this was adding up at all.
‘Yes, I’m Scottish,’ Hope confirmed. ‘I grew up in Glasgow.’
Aggs realised that she must be wearing exactly the same confused expression that everyone else at the table seemed to have too.
‘I feel like I’m missing something and I don’t know what it is. Help me out here, Aaron.’
Even in the dimming light, Aggs could see that the colour was draining from his face.
‘Aggs, I…’ he began, but Hope cut him off.
‘I’ve got this,’ she told him gently, before taking the lead. ‘I know this must be a massive shock for you and I understand that you might have blocked out a lot of what happened for whatever reason. Please believe me when I say that I’m not judging you for that.’
Hope took a deep breath, and Aggs desperately wanted to ask more questions, but she was too perplexed, and she didn’t want to interrupt something that Hope was obviously finding extremely emotional to say.
‘I was born on the twentieth of March 1998, in a hospital in Edinburgh and adopted by a couple from Glasgow. I’ve had a lovely life, with great parents, and a fabulous sister…’
‘That bit is definitely true.’ The woman Aaron had introduced as Maisie threw that in, making Hope and Aaron smile.
Aggs didn’t have the same reaction, too busy trying to grasp all the fragments of the story.
Hope carried on, ‘But I have a health condition and that’s why I decided to track down my biological parents.’
Aggs was now desperately trying to do the calculations. Nine months before… Oh God. Oh God. In some outlandish way, this was starting to make sense and she couldn’t believe she was only realising it now.
‘As I said, I found Aaron through my DNA test and we met this morning and he told me all about your time together. And how… it ended.’
Wow. That hit Aggs straight in the solar plexus. How it ended? How she had come home to look after her sick father? How he’d refused to take her calls afterwards? How she’d waited every single day for months for him to appear on her doorstep and he never came?
‘And I’m so sorry that we’re hijacking your night like this – I know the timing is terrible, but I needed to find my mother and Aaron agreed to help me, so here we are. As I said, I’m not judging you for putting me up for adoption and I promise I don’t want to disrupt your life or spill your secrets, but I just needed to know who you were. If you don’t want a relationship with me, I promise you I will accept that. And so will Aaron.’
Aggs could see that Hope was watching her with glistening eyes full of the most extraordinary combination of bravery and fear and Aggs wanted to wrap her arms around her and protect her with every single fibre of her being from what was about to happen, but she couldn’t.
Suppressing every negative feeling she was suddenly experiencing towards Aaron – anger, betrayal, disbelief – Aggs focussed on what mattered most right here and now. She leaned forward and offered her hand to the young woman.
With only a split second of hesitation, Hope took it, a single tear running down her face.
‘Hope, I am so,
so sorry…’ She choked, devastated to be dealing another blow to someone who had obviously been through so much already. This was something this poor girl was going to have to process. And it’s something that Aaron should have prepared her for. The story had been laid out in front of her – everything but the final chapter that revealed secrets, explained twists, and came with a sledgehammer shock. ‘… and I can’t tell you how much I would love to tell you what you want to hear, but I didn’t give birth in 1998, and I’ve never put a child up for adoption. I’m not your mother.’
For a moment, Aggs thought Hope was going to argue back, to challenge what she was saying, but she didn’t say a word, just turned her gaze to the father, her voice so low it was almost a whisper.
‘Aaron? I don’t understand. If Agnetha isn’t my mother, then who is?’
30
Mitchell
Mitchell almost bumped into the back of Celeste when she stopped suddenly in the street and turned to see who had just got out of the car in front of the café.
‘Is that a taxi?’ she spat, peering back the forty metres or so to where Aggs was standing, before answering her own question. ‘Nope, it’s a shitty little car. Look, Mitch, stop fucking following me. I’m perfectly capable of getting home on my own. Go back in there to your perfect bloody family and their tuna fucking vol-au-vents.’
Mitchell wasn’t going to point out that he hadn’t seen a vol-au-vent all night. Seemed pretty irrelevant on the scale of tonight’s events so far. What a day. He really needed for it to be over.
‘I’m not going anywhere except home with you, Celeste. We need to talk and we need to…’ His words trailed off as he saw that Celeste wasn’t listening. Instead, she was staring over his shoulder, watching the man who had just got out of the car and stepped onto the pavement in front of Aggs. In almost twenty years of knowing her, and ten years of marriage, Mitchell had never seen his wife speechless. Until now. Nothing. Not a word. Just an astonished, horrified expression. ‘Celeste?’
