The Other Daughter

by Caroline Bishop

  I wipe my eyes, feeling humiliation wash over me. I’ve fucked all this up. My new start, my Swiss cure, I’ve ruined it.

  She indicates and pulls into a service station that has a big picture of a St Bernard dog smiling out at us. I glare at it. She turns off the engine and faces me. ‘I’m not perfect,’ she says, and I hear her voice waiver. ‘You have found that out. I’m terrible at motherhood. I can’t bear children’s parties, even if it’s for my own kids. I get bored reading them stories for longer than five minutes. I can’t bake a cake even from ready mix. The house is only so clean because we have Maria. There’s no way I could do all the housework on top of my job and Michel doesn’t even try.’ She shakes her head. ‘And Michel and I fight all the time at the moment. Not helped by the fact he thinks you’re so amazing.’ She laughs. ‘I’m jealous of you.’

  I look at her in surprise. ‘What?’

  ‘I’m jealous because you’re so good with the kids. Léa adores you. Michel keeps telling me how you’ve got your priorities right by having a career break and some time abroad. He wants us to do that, keeps telling me we should travel with the kids, while they’re young. But I can’t think of anything worse. I think it would drive me crazy to be with them 24/7. Yes, it’s a busy time at work but it’s not just that. I need it, Jess. I need to work. I need to be out of the house during the day, because being a mother is not enough. I had children because Michel wanted them, because my friends were having them, because it’s what you do. But motherhood bores me, I think. And believe me, I’ve tried. After Luca was born it didn’t make sense for me to continue to work and pay a huge sum for both kids to go to la garderie, so after maternity leave – which is only fourteen weeks here – I left my job to stay home with them.’ She sighs, gives a small shake of her head. ‘I really tried. But I was so bored and frustrated. It made me so miserable to spend my day at playgroups and the park, while my former co-workers were working on such exciting events. I couldn’t do it, so after a year, when a similar position at my old company came up, I went back.’

  She looks at me.

  ‘Don’t misunderstand me, Jess, I love my kids. I love them so much. But I can’t do what you do. So yes, I’ve been jealous.’

  I’m so shocked I don’t know what to say. All this time I felt so inferior, so small, compared to her. But she was envious of me? My brain flits back to an argument I once heard between Maggie and Mum when I was a teenager: You don’t know how lucky you are to have her. And Mum, replying, I do, I do, but that doesn’t make it easy.

  Do we always want what we don’t have?

  ‘Michel…’ I pause, not sure if I should say it. ‘Michel said you work so hard because you had a tough upbringing,’ I say. ‘Because your mother struggled.’

  Julia shakes her head and lets out a laugh laced with cynicism. ‘Did he? Well, Michel likes his theories. But it’s simpler than that, Jess. I want to work because I enjoy it, because I want a fulfilling career, just as Michel does. Am I not allowed to want that because I’m the mother?’

  I open my mouth to say something, but she cuts me off.

  ‘You know, Michel wouldn’t have liked to stay home with the kids full time either, but we never even discussed that because it clearly couldn’t be him, financially. And yet when I want to go back to work, when I need to go back to work, to have some sense of purpose in life, just as he does, I’m the one left feeling guilty.’

  She shakes her head and I see the stress drawing lines on her face.

  ‘I would have gone back part time, but that wasn’t an option. And it’s been so hard since then, to earn back the respect I used to have. A co-worker got the promotion that should have been mine, and I’ve had to work twice as hard as anyone else to prove to my manager that I’m dedicated to this job, that I’m not going to leave the office to rescue my sick child from nursery at an important moment, or worse, become pregnant again.’

  We’re quiet for a moment and I feel an unfamiliar surge of sympathy for this woman, whose life may be so different to my own but isn’t, as I’ve long assumed, so perfect after all.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I say. ‘I’m sorry for snooping and for breaking the necklace and throwing away the package. I’ve acted terribly. It’s not like me. It’s no excuse, but I haven’t been myself because of…’

  She pinches the bridge of her nose, rubs her eyes, says in a tired voice, ‘Because of what?’

  And so I tell her why I came to Switzerland. About what happened to Mum and going to give blood with Dad and the subsequent DNA tests and the conversations with the hospital in Lausanne and Maggie telling me that I really needed to just go to Switzerland and figure it out for myself.

  ‘I’m sorry I didn’t tell you before. I just couldn’t. I could barely believe it myself. And it just all sounds so crazy, you would have probably turfed me out or called a psychiatrist.’

  Julia looks utterly shocked. The skin on her forehead is clammy and a piece of hair is stuck to her temple. She shakes her head. ‘That’s terrible.’

  I acknowledge her words with a nod. I feel lightheaded. A bit like I did that day, after donating blood. The tears come fast down my face and I don’t wipe them away. I shake with emotion but I don’t try and stop; I can’t. I just sit there, purging myself of everything I’ve held on to for so long, until I feel her hand on my shoulder. She reaches over and pulls me into a hug and I cry some more, breathing in her familiar floral scent as she holds me tight.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ she says. ‘I’m so sorry for what you’ve gone through.’

  I don’t know how long we sit there. But eventually my tears turn into ugly heaving shudders and then subside, and all I’m left with is embarrassment. I’ve been a madwoman. But she doesn’t tell me so. Instead she smiles and says, ‘Come on, let’s go and get a coffee.’

  We get out of the car and walk past the giant beaming dog into the service station. It has red chairs and white plastic tables and Swiss flags strung across the ceiling. I sit down at a table and Julia goes to the self-service area and brings back two coffees.

  ‘I want to help you,’ she says. ‘Perhaps I can do something. Help you look.’

  I pause. She’s being so nice to me, after I was so awful. Where once I wanted to throw my discovery at her, to shatter her life as mine was, now my instinct is to keep it from her, to protect her. But I know I can’t. There have been enough lies in the past six weeks.

  ‘I have to tell you something else,’ I say. ‘When I was in your room, snooping…’ I don’t know how to say it. ‘I found a letter.’

  Her face hardens but I keep going. I have to get this out now.

  ‘I’m sorry I looked, I really am. But this letter, it was from someone called Anna Meier.’ I pause. She looks confused. ‘And that’s the name of my probable mother. Well, the hospital told me her name was Brigitte Mela, but then someone else told me she’d changed it to Anna Meier, I don’t know why. And so I’ve been thinking… I’ve been wondering… I’ve been obsessed with the idea quite frankly, that she is your… and you might be…’

  Julia sits back in her chair. She shakes her head, stares at me. ‘I don’t know anyone called Anna Meier.’

  ‘You don’t? But your maiden name was Meier.’

  She shakes her head again, says in a voice you might use to a small child, ‘Jess, Meier is one of the most common surnames in Switzerland.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Angela,’ Julia says suddenly. ‘Could you have misread it? I don’t remember any particular letter, but it could be that I kept one from Angela Meier, my aunt.’

  I think back. I picture myself in the bedroom sitting on the duvet, pulling the folder out of the drawer. Did it actually say Anna Meier? No, of course it didn’t. Nowhere on that letter did it say Anna. Only A. I knew that, I always knew that, but somewhere in the mess of my injured, hurting head, I’d forgotten I did.

  SEPTEMBER 1976 Lausanne, Switzerland

  SYLVIA

  Sylvia had thought her French
was good enough to cope in most situations, but not, as it turned out, in this one. Never had she had the need for medical vocabulary before, and giving birth in a French-speaking city wasn’t exactly something she’d anticipated.

  ‘What the hell are they talking about?’

  ‘Something’s broken, I think. But I don’t really understand medical stuff,’ Evelyne said. ‘I’m so sorry. I’ve asked them to go and find someone who speaks English. I know they have some people here who do.’

  Sylvia nodded. She was trying to keep calm, despite the shock of the warm blood that had soaked her dress and the pain in her abdomen. She thought of Jim, back home in London, without a clue of what was happening to her here. She saw his face when she told him she was going to Switzerland again, would sneak it in before she turned thirty-six weeks and couldn’t fly; how he bit his lip and tried so hard not to say anything. Guilt travelled through her body to the pit of her stomach. She’d call him when she knew more.

  ‘Madame Tallis.’ The doctor – she presumed he was a doctor – approached the bed. He looked at her from over the top of his glasses and she was reminded of the haughty glance of her own doctor, Greenham, back in London when she’d asked for an abortion. So long ago. ‘Your placenta has likely suffered an abruption. I don’t think it’s severe, but it may worsen so we should deliver right away, by caesarean section.’

  Sylvia shook her head. ‘But it’s too early.’

  ‘You’re thirty-five weeks? Yes, it’s a bit early, but the baby is viable and I don’t want to risk him going into distress.’

  She nodded. ‘My husband, he’s in England. Can we wait until he gets here?’

  ‘I’m afraid not. We want to prepare you straight away. Nurse Marty will get your husband’s number and make a call, but we mustn’t delay.’

  He asked her to sign something and then left her bedside.

  She blew out a long breath. ‘This is my fault,’ she said to Evelyne.

  ‘What are you talking about? Of course it’s not.’

  ‘I haven’t taken care of myself, or the baby. I’ve been too bloody selfish.’ She thought of the missed midwife appointments. The travelling. The insatiable desire to pack in everything while she could. ‘Maybe this wouldn’t have happened if I’d done what I was meant to. If I’d listened to Jim and calmed down a bit.’

  ‘Don’t you think like that. These things happen, however careful you are. You don’t have to treat yourself with kid gloves just because you’re pregnant. My friend Fabienne was working right up until the day her child was born and the baby was just fine.’

  Sylvia smiled, squeezed Evelyne’s hand. ‘Thank you.’

  She looked down at her belly. Soon, the baby would be here. A living, breathing little person. She wasn’t ready. She still had her regulars to write and the golden oldies column to do for next week’s paper and this big feature to get in the bag before Diane stepped so competently into her shoes. This wasn’t meant to be happening yet, it wasn’t meant to be happening at all, and she didn’t know how in hell she was going to cope when it did. But she knew she couldn’t pretend any longer.

  The time had come. She was going to be a mother.

  * * *

  Sylvia was being wheeled down the corridor in a bed, Evelyne at her side, when they saw her.

  ‘Anna?’ Evelyne said.

  She was lying on a bed in a large ward, one hand on her stomach, her face wet with tears.

  ‘Please stop,’ Sylvia asked the nurse pushing her. ‘What’s she doing here?’ she said to Evelyne.

  ‘I don’t know.’ She left Sylvia’s side and went to Anna.

  ‘She said her name was Brigitte,’ the nurse said, and Sylvia felt her stomach lurch. Brigitte. Anna’s pseudonym, to avoid the authorities knowing who she was. Sylvia realised then, that whatever had happened to bring Anna to the hospital, it wasn’t her intention. Evelyne had told her she planned to have the baby at home in that tiny flat, on her own, despite she and Daniel imploring her not to. But it was true they had no health insurance, no money to pay hospital bills, and Anna was so scared of being found that she’d refused to countenance hospital. So to be here now, Sylvia realised, something serious must have happened – and Anna must be petrified.

  ‘Yes, her name is Brigitte,’ Sylvia said to the nurse. ‘But her friends call her by her middle name.’

  Evelyne walked back over to Sylvia, tension in her face. ‘After we left her flat, she went out to get some groceries and was knocked down by a car – on a pedestrian crossing, for God’s sake.’

  Sylvia felt the colour drain from her face. ‘What? Is she okay?’

  ‘The car wasn’t going fast but she fell – and some passer-by called an ambulance. Apparently she’s okay, but the accident has triggered labour.’

  Sylvia looked over at Anna and the younger girl met her eyes, fear evident in her expression. Sylvia smiled, trying to convey her sympathy. She hoped that seeing her here too would bring her some comfort. It suddenly seemed right that they’d be going through this together, on the same day. Ever since they’d met, she’d felt some connection to the girl, despite their vastly different experiences, so perhaps Sylvia was meant to be here today, giving birth in Switzerland. She was almost glad, if it could bring some reassurance to Anna.

  ‘Does Daniel know?’

  Evelyne shook her head. ‘I’ll call him, but he’s working – and they need the money, I doubt he can leave his shift.’

  ‘Stay with her,’ Sylvia said. ‘I’ll be okay. Just stay with her – she needs someone.’

  Evelyne nodded, squeezed her hand. ‘Okay. Good luck.’

  * * *

  ‘Do you want some music?’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘Music. You can choose from what we have.’ The obstetrician pointed to a record player in the corner of the operating theatre. ‘It’s nice to have some music playing while we operate, and we like to ask the mothers to choose. What do we have today, Amélie?’

  The nurse flicked through the stack of records and read out names. ‘Jacques Brel, Johnny Hallyday. Or how about Abba – Mamma Mia!’ She laughed and Sylvia couldn’t help but respond in kind. This was surreal. How did she come to be giving birth to her child in a Swiss hospital? Her baby wouldn’t be Swiss – she knew the country’s citizenship laws didn’t provide for that – but it would be born on Swiss soil. Because she persuaded Roger to send her here. Because she met Anna. Because – she’d finally worked out – the pill must have failed when she’d had food poisoning after a meal at a Chinese restaurant in January.

  ‘Do you have any Elton John?’ she said, thinking of that hot summer’s day in Hyde Park, Jim’s smile, his eagerness to have her back.

  Whatever it takes to make this work, he’d said. We can make this okay, Syl. We can make this a wonderful thing.

  She hoped he was right.

  ‘Lie on your left side please,’ said the anaesthetist, and she winced in pain as the sharp jab of a needle in her spine took her breath away. A rush of fear flooded her veins along with the anaesthetic, worst-case scenarios running through her head.

  What if it wasn’t okay? As she lay back on the bed and a screen was placed in front of her face, her thoughts drifted back to Anna. She wished she was here beside her, that she could reach out and take the girl’s hand, tell her that she was scared too.

  She heard the angry cry just before the baby was held aloft by the surgeon.

  ‘Congratulations, you have a baby daughter.’

  The nurse wrapped the child in a white towel and placed her in an incubator and wheeled it to Sylvia. She gasped when she saw this creature, this miniature person she had grown inside her, and reached over and touched the child’s tiny red fingers.

  ‘Hello you,’ she said, and then, more to make herself realise it than for the baby’s sake: ‘I’m your mother.’

  AUGUST 2016 Montreux, Switzerland

  JESS

  I never made it to the exhibition.

  Michel�
�s questioning eyebrows don’t get a response when we get back to the house. Julia says something to him quietly before taking my arm and leading me into the garden.

  ‘On y va, les enfants!’ Michel claps his hands, and I figure she’s told him to take them out somewhere.

  I sit down on a garden chair and Julia stands looking at me, hands on her hips. She’s always appeared so sorted, so composed, it’s strange to see her looking confused and lost. It makes her seem more human somehow, more like me.

  ‘I don’t know what to do now,’ she says.

  ‘Me neither.’

  ‘We need a drink.’

  She disappears into the house and returns with a bottle of wine and two glasses and a photo in a frame that, I remember with a jolt to my stomach, I’d seen sitting on the chest of drawers in her bedroom during one of my snooping episodes. It’s a photo of two women, probably not a lot older than I am now, sitting on a park bench by a lake eating ice cream. Looking at the clothes and hairstyles, I’d put it at mid-nineties.

  ‘This is Karin, my mother,’ she points to the woman on the left, in a long red skirt, gold hoop earrings visible beneath her voluminous mass of curly brown hair. ‘And this,’ she moves her finger, ‘is Angela, my aunt.’

  I take the photo from her and stare at their faces. What strikes me most is the joy they exude. Both women are smiling, relaxed, happy, their natural closeness obvious.

  ‘You’ve never mentioned your family.’

  ‘Mum died ten years ago. She didn’t have a very easy life. And I never really knew my father. He left when I was little.’ She takes the photo from me and looks at it. ‘So I like this photo, because it reminds me that she did have some happiness, some good times.’