by Tina Seskis
It was Camilla who spoke first.
‘So what are you going to do, Juliette?’
‘About what?’
‘You know.’
‘I don’t know.’
‘About getting better.’
‘I guess I just have to try to carry on, look after the kids, try to be a better mother, what else can I do?’
‘You need to get your head straight, that’s what. You owe it to the children, especially now you and Stephen have split up.’
Juliette sighed. ‘I’ve tried all that. I’ve read every therapy book under the sun over the years. I’ve even tried writing it down – that’s why I first went to Alistair, I never meant …’ She looked sheepish, and Camilla knew it was Natasha she regretted betraying, not Stephen now. ‘Nothing’s worked,’ Juliette continued. ‘I’m officially a nutcase. I yelled at Noah again this morning, just for slopping his drink. I just seem to have so much rage in me … He hates me, and I can’t say I blame him.’
Juliette’s eyes started to fill, and although Camilla had told her that of course he didn’t hate her, Juliette had hunched into herself and shaken her head and said, ‘Yes, he does, he does,’ and she’d confessed to what a hopeless mother she was, and how desperately she loved her children and didn’t want to be fucking up their little lives but just didn’t seem to know how not to, and she started crying really hard then, and Camilla hugged her until the weeping had stopped and then suggested, ever so gently, that maybe Juliette could get some help with her anger issues, and Juliette nodded, acknowledging it at last.
‘You do know why you’re so angry, don’t you?’ said Camilla. ‘It’s not just about the kids – or Stephen – or even Alistair.’ Juliette coloured again. ‘It’s not even about what happened to poor Siobhan, although of course that’s dreadful. It’s all that business with your mother.’
‘No it’s not,’ replied Juliette.
‘Yes it is, Juliette. I told Renée at the time not to rush you. We were all so worried about it, once you told us what you were doing. I mean, one minute you didn’t seem remotely interested in your birth mother, and the next you and Renée were dashing off to find her. It’s a huge deal doing something like that, especially before you’re ready. You just never had time to come to terms with it.’
‘No, it wasn’t even that.’ Juliette hesitated. She’d never told any of them the real story: what she’d found out twenty-five years ago, who Elisabeth Potts really was. It was humiliating somehow, the rejection (by a young married couple, not a desperate teenager) even worse than she’d imagined. She’d felt ashamed that no-one, not Cynthia, not her grandmother, had told her the truth. She found over time she didn’t blame them though, she’d known how hard they’d tried to get it right. No, she only blamed Elisabeth. The revelation of what Elisabeth had done, explained to her by her devastated adoptive parents in their sunny kitchen so long ago, had felt too painful, too overwhelming to take in, and so it had seemed easier to leave it all alone at first. It had been another few months before she’d tracked down and confronted Elisabeth, met her for the first time, and as Juliette thought back to that day, not long before the end of her first year at Bristol, she realised that it hadn’t helped at all. In fact it had made it all worse.
Her old friend looked at her in the watery sunshine.
‘Tell me what happened, Juliette, you need to talk about it.’
And so, for the first time ever, maybe because she’d hit rock bottom and had no-one else to turn to, Juliette did.
79
Berkshire
Juliette sat fiddling with her lace gloves, which she’d put back on, looking at Cynthia like she was mad. The yellow tulips between them were sickly in the sunlight. She finally spoke.
‘What d’you mean, your sister? That … that makes you my … my aunt.’ She thought of Cynthia’s small square hands, the same shape as hers. How had she never noticed? ‘… That makes Nana my real grandmother, for goodness sake. What on earth do you mean?’
Cynthia picked at one of the tiny pearly buttons on her cardigan. ‘Well, the thing is, darling, Elisabeth didn’t feel ready to have a child. She was still so young, hadn’t finished college …’
‘And who was Alan Potts then? He’s on my birth certificate too. It says he was my father. Was that her husband?’
Cynthia looked helplessly at Giles, and Giles looked distraught for a moment, and then he spoke.
‘Yes, Juliette, he was. They’d got married a few months earlier.’
‘But then why didn’t they want me? Why didn’t they keep me?’ She was shrieking now. ‘What was wrong with ME?’
‘Oh, Juliette, nothing was wrong with you. You were so beautiful.’ Cynthia started to cry, horrified that she was causing her daughter such anguish after having tried so hard to protect her for so many years. She continued, her voice wavering.
‘Elisabeth just felt too young to have a baby, darling. They didn’t have a house or anything, they were living with Nana …’
‘She was twenty-two,’ said Juliette. ‘That wasn’t that young in those days.’ Her face was fixed, grim within the halo of hair. No-one spoke.
Pots and pans: Nana’s house. That was where she’d heard the name. Of course. Elisabeth Potts was Nana’s daughter too.
‘So what happened to her? Where did she go?’
‘Well, when she said she wouldn’t keep the baby, none of us believed it at first. And then she seemed so deadly serious that your father and I discussed it and … and we offered to take you ourselves. You see, we … we had struggled to have our own child, and Nana was so furious with Elisabeth, so desperate not to lose you … it seemed to make sense on so many levels.’ Cynthia cleared her throat. ‘So we applied, and … and I’m afraid Elisabeth was so angry that she didn’t want to speak to us any more, and so she didn’t. We knew the baby, you I mean, had been born in Acton but we didn’t know where Elisabeth went after the adoption. So we lost contact.’
Juliette struggled to keep up with what Cynthia was saying. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ she said finally, and her voice had an edge to it that Cynthia hadn’t heard before.
‘Oh, Juliette, we wanted to, but if you have your baby adopted you have the right to anonymity until the child turns eighteen. It’s only then that you would have been allowed to trace her.’
‘So why didn’t you tell me when I turned eighteen?’
‘We were planning to. But we weren’t sure how you would take it … and you never asked, never seemed interested, so we assumed you weren’t ready.’ Cynthia paused, recalling the time she had snapped at her eight-year-old daughter, ‘I’m your real mummy now,’ and it seemed she still hadn’t forgiven herself. ‘And then you were going off to university, and we didn’t want to unsettle you, it’s such a big step, and then the time just never felt right after that. We did our best to get it right, but sometimes we didn’t. I’m so sorry, darling.’
Juliette ignored the apology. She knew she was furious, she wasn’t quite sure who with yet.
‘And what about Nana? Did she ever see her?’
‘I’m not sure. I think sometimes, up in London. We didn’t really talk about it.’
‘So Nana would know where she is now?’
Cynthia looked into the bottom of her mug, where the dregs lay.
‘Yes, I suppose she would, Juliette. I suppose she would.’
80
Wandsworth
The sun had gone behind a cloud, one of those flighty ones that keeps changing shape, and the temperature dropped sharply. Both women shivered.
‘Bloody hell,’ said Camilla. ‘Why would she want to give her own baby away, if she was happily married?’
‘Oh, it gets worse,’ said Juliette. ‘D’you know what she did then? Got pregnant almost immediately. And then she kept that baby, another girl. Now why would she do that? Abandon me and then keep the next one? It’s evil.’
‘Is she still with your father?’
‘No, they split up year
s ago. Apparently it was all her who wanted to get rid of me, he couldn’t understand it either. I think he resented it in the end. That’s what my grandmother told me anyway.’
‘So, she had a new husband, you were born in wedlock, she had another child straight after … There must have been something really devastating, it doesn’t make sense otherwise.’
‘Maybe it was my ghastly hair,’ said Juliette, and as they tried to laugh they looked at each other and it came to them both at the exact same time, and Juliette couldn’t believe she hadn’t ever thought of it before.
81
Elisabeth
Cynthia was always the more serious daughter in the Simmons household, a typical firstborn really. Elisabeth was the pretty, fun one, seven years younger, with long wavy hair and laughter streaking through her soul. The sisters had adored each other, despite their different temperaments, the difficult age gap – Penelope had done well on that count, ensuring she handed out her love evenly between her daughters, minimising resentments. They’d even shared a room until Cynthia left home to get married to a nice young engineer called Giles. Elisabeth had been bridesmaid of course, and she had been pretty as a picture, everyone kept saying, but Elisabeth had shushed them, not wanting to upstage the bride.
Elisabeth had missed her sister after Cynthia left home, but she was happy enough – she did well at school, went on to nursing college, had loads of friends, plenty of boyfriends, and then when she was twenty she’d met a lovely boy at a dance, and she’d known he was the one, from the minute he’d asked her to Rock Around The Clock, and she’d been relieved that she’d saved herself, for him.
Marrying Alan turned out to be the happiest day of her life, although the wedding night had been something of a let-down – she’d been scared stiff and it had been awkward and painful and altogether embarrassing. They’d sat up afterwards, smoking in bed, unable to sleep, both wondering what the fuss was about. But the next day they’d driven to Dorset and had stayed in a beautiful little cottage just a short walk up the cliffs from the beach and they’d practised like crazy until they’d really got the hang of it; several times a day for a whole week seemed to sort it. The weather was balmy and the sea was clear and lovely and warm for swimming. Life couldn’t get better for Elisabeth. It could only get worse, and it did.
82
Cleveland
Renée was on the kitchen floor, Volume Two of Tyler’s Educational Handbooks open next to her face, its pages bent at the biology section, the radio blaring the usual dismal news in an inappropriately cheerful tone. The man was heavier than he looked and she couldn’t move, was fully pinned down, stripes forming on the undersides of her thighs from the edges of the tiles beneath her.
‘Get off me, you bastard,’ Renée screamed as she struggled against him, but that seemed to provoke him, arouse him further, and he brought one hand down from her neck to maul roughly at her top, and then he tried to pull at her shorts, but they were denim and belted and he couldn’t get them off.
Even through her panic Renée knew this was serious, she could see the madness in his eyes. She’d read something somewhere and it came to her then, so she stopped struggling and went limp as the man pawed at her, and at first he didn’t know what to do, he had nothing to fight against – and then she started moaning, as if she were even enjoying herself, and that seemed to really confuse him, put him right off his stride. He loosened his hold on her throat, just a little, while he undid his belt, tried to get his trousers off, and she managed to move enough to get her hand down there and he let her although he didn’t much like it, it was all rather odd, he preferred it when they were scared shitless, and soon her hand was free enough for her to take hold of him, and she caressed him, as if he were precious, and he released his grip still further – and then when her hand had just enough freedom she started to twist, hard, until he was screaming in agony, and she twisted further and harder, with both hands now, and once he was in too much pain to be able to stop her she got to her feet and kicked him between the legs, repeatedly, like she was kicking a door in, and then she grabbed her book bag and fled from the house.
83
Wood Green, North London
Juliette was shocked when her mother opened the door. She looked so old these days, but, Juliette reasoned, she was in her mid-sixties now, what did she expect? Elisabeth had that pinched look to her face, of someone who has suffered, and the lines around her mouth were like a hangdog’s, largely thanks to the packet a day habit she still hadn’t conquered.
‘Oh,’ said Elisabeth. ‘Goodness. I wasn’t expecting you. Why didn’t you ring? Now’s not convenient.’
‘It never is, is it, Elisabeth?’ said Juliette, but she sounded less hurt, less bitter than usual. Today she just felt sadness to the moon and back for her mother. The hatred had gone elsewhere.
‘When can I come back?’
‘Well … Oh, you might as well come in now you’re here, but you can’t stay long, I have to go out. What d’you want to drink?’
‘Nothing, thanks,’ said Juliette. She moved inside the cramped cluttered hallway, and she could smell damp faintly, wet washing perhaps. Elisabeth ushered her through to the kitchen, which was small and dark, and one of the cupboard doors was hanging at slightly the wrong angle, like it might fall off, and the work surfaces were scratched and stained. There was a gleam of grease covering the once-white walls, and paint was peeling in one corner. The washing-up had been done – a single bowl and plate and mug – and the ancient-looking dishcloth was hung over the tap to dry. My God, this place is depressing, thought Juliette.
Juliette sat at the tiny table, which was still wet from wiping. A copy of the Daily Mirror was lying folded next to an unhappy-looking spider plant, open at the crossword. It was half done.
‘What d’you want, Juliette?’ said Elisabeth. She stood with her back to the sink, arms folded. Her jumper was navy, acrylic, worn-out. ‘Do we have to go through it all over again?’
Juliette didn’t know what to say. She had literally got in her car, dropped Camilla back home in Chelsea and driven straight over to Wood Green, ignoring Camilla’s protestations. She hadn’t been thinking.
She looked at her mother, at the grief etched into her skin like knife wounds, and she started crying.
‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ said Elisabeth.
‘I know why you gave me away,’ said Juliette, snivelling.
‘What do you mean? Of course you do, I’ve told you enough times over the years.’
‘No, I know the real reason.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘You know,’ said Juliette.
84
Dorset
On the last day of their honeymoon, the one with no clouds and sky blue as china, Elisabeth was on the beach devouring an Agatha Christie, her second of the holiday. She was smooth peanut-brown, the darkest her pale skin would turn in the sun, and she wore a red polka-dot swimsuit with a white frilled skirt that kept flapping up in the breeze, revealing the perfect curve of her behind. Alan stood towelling himself after his swim, and as he looked down at his young wife lying on her stomach, legs kicking, back arching so that she could read, dark hair loose in the sunshine, he thought again what a total smasher she was, and he felt the desire build in him yet again, was there no end to his ardour?
‘Shall we go in a minute, pet?’ he said. He paused. ‘We might have time for a quick lie down before dinner.’
Elisabeth looked up over her shoulder. ‘You randy bugger,’ she laughed. ‘I need to finish my book, I’m just about to find out whodunnit.’
‘I’m all clean now, love,’ he said. ‘I don’t want to get all sandy again. Shall I go ahead then, take everything up, get the kettle on for a brew?’
‘Yes, fine, I’ll only be ten minutes. D’you mind?’
‘Of course I don’t.’ He leaned down and put one hand into the sand as he kissed her, tried to put his tongue in her mouth.
‘Stop that,’ she giggled.
‘There are children about.’
He looked at her green eyes, her flowing hair, her breasts squashed together by her position, and he wanted to reach out and touch her right there, hold her, make love to her, bury himself into her. My God, he had to stand up, before it was obvious.
‘All right,’ he said. He moved reluctantly away from her and packed everything up, the picnic, the Thermos, the beach ball, the frisbee, and when it was safe he folded up his towel, put on his shorts and shirt, and left her sundress and sandals neatly beside her.
‘I’ll see you soon, my darling.’
Elisabeth looked up quickly from her book, she’d just found out the murderer was Vera, she needed to know how it ended.
‘Bye, love,’ she said, and blew him a kiss full of promise.
When Elisabeth finished her book just twelve minutes later, there were only two family parties left on the beach. The children were still running squealing in and out of the sea, and as it was such a perfect evening none of the adults seemed inclined to move, although it was gone six o’clock. As Elisabeth put on her dress she noticed one particular little girl, laughing and naked, and she felt a tiny pull of joy that perhaps she might have one of those herself soon; she wouldn’t be surprised if they had a honeymoon baby after the week they’d had. She smiled to herself. Yes, she’d be quite happy with that.
