The Long Way Home: A moving saga of lost family

by Whitmee, Jeanne

  Then all at once in the darkness she felt the first faint but unmistakable stirring of the new life within her. She stiffened at the strangeness of the new sensation and her hands moved to her stomach in a gesture of instinctive protectiveness. The sudden realisation that it was a new human being she carried inside her sobered her. Was this yet another person waiting to have a say in how she lived her life? She reminded herself that she wasn’t — and probably never would be completely free now.

  But free or not, she could take charge of her own destiny and that of her child. With a sigh she turned over and closed her eyes. The future held nothing but problems, yet suddenly she felt light and relaxed. She had made a decision; the first she had ever made without consulting someone else. Suddenly, for the first time in her life, she knew who she was.

  Chapter 13

  When Leah arrived back from The Mermaid the following Friday night she found Terry’s 2CV standing in the courtyard. Her heart lifted as she hurried across the yard. He was in the kitchen, a teatowel tucked into the waistband of his jeans, making spaghetti Bolognese.

  ‘Hi.’ He looked over his shoulder. ‘I’ve got supper all ready. How’s that for service?’

  ‘Oh, Tel, I’m so glad to see you.’ She threw her arms around his neck and hugged him hard.

  ‘What a welcome. I’ve only been gone three weeks.’ He held her away from him. ‘It’s good to know I’ve been missed. I thought you’d be too …’ He broke off as he saw that her eyes were bright with tears. ‘Hey, what’s all this?’

  She turned away, brushing at the wetness on her cheeks with the back of one hand. ‘It’s nothing. I’ve been lonely, that’s all.’

  Frowning, he cupped her chin, searching her eyes. ‘Are you sure that’s all?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Is it your job at the pub? Did something go wrong?’

  ‘No, that’s fine. I’m enjoying it. But you can be lonely in a crowd sometimes, you know.’

  Still unconvinced, he turned back to the cooker and began to dish out two generous portions of spaghetti.

  ‘Well, whatever it is, I hope it hasn’t put you off your nosh. Here, get your chops round this and I’ll tell you all my news.’ He reached across to where his rucksacks hung on the hook behind the door and pulled out a bottle of chianti. ‘Find me the corkscrew, will you?’

  She found it and handed it to him. ‘Does this mean we have something to celebrate?’

  ‘You could say that.’ He uncorked the bottle and set it in the middle of the table between them. ‘Will the signorina be seated?’ He pulled out her chair with a flourish.

  ‘Si.’ She took her seat and smiled up at him. ‘Grazie, signore.’

  The spaghetti was good and they ate in silence for a few minutes.

  ‘Well?’ she said at last. ‘Are you going to tell me this news or do I have to play Trivial Pursuit?’

  Terry picked up his glass and leaned back in his chair. ‘While I was here I wrote those features for the Clarion — right?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘What I didn’t tell you at the time was that I was doing something else too: a freelance article about corruption in local councils.’

  ‘Wow.’ She looked up at him with wide eyes. ‘Controversial stuff, eh?’

  ‘I offered it to one of the national dailies and I knew that if they took it I could forget my job on the Nenebridge Clarion.’

  She smiled wryly. ‘That goes without saying. But if it was such a gamble, why did you do it?’

  ‘I’ve been getting restless lately — felt I was stuck in a blind alley. I got so sick of all the manipulation — all the cover-ups and the wasted money. Most of all I was sick of the way the local press was gagged by people with influence.’

  ‘Good for you. Quite a crusade.’ Leah helped herself to wine and looked at him enquiringly. ‘So — was your article accepted?’

  Terry’s eyes sparkled as he took a slip of paper from his wallet and held it up for her to see. It was a cheque headed by the name of a well-known newspaper, made out to Terry for quite a generous amount of money.

  ‘It’ll be published next week and carrying my by-line. And that’s not all. They’ve offered me a permanent job on the staff. Only a very junior job to begin with, but the prospects are good.’

  ‘Tel, that’s wonderful!’ She paused to consider all the implications. ‘But surely that means you’ll have to move to London?’

  ‘I hardly think my face’ll be welcome around Nenebridge after next week.’

  ‘Then what about your new flat?’

  He laid down his fork and looked at her thoughtfully. ‘I wondered if you’d like it?’

  ‘Me?’ She stared at him incredulously. ‘I’m never going back to Nenebridge again. Surely you know that.’

  He sighed. ‘I think you should at least let your parents know where you are, Leah. They’re bound to be worried.’

  Her mouth set in a stubborn line and she avoided his eyes. ‘They’re not my parents. And you wouldn’t say they’d be worrying if you’d heard some of the things they said.’

  ‘That was all in the heat of the moment. By now they’re probably frantic with worry. Look, suppose they report you to the police as a missing person?’

  She looked up at him, her eyes alarmed. ‘They wouldn’t, would they? I’m over age after all. Would the police come looking for me?’

  He shrugged. ‘They might, if the Dobsons laid it on thick enough. After all, Jack does have some influence.’

  ‘I’ll send them a postcard. Will that do?’

  ‘I wish you’d go back, Leah,’ he said. ‘I’d know you were safe there.’

  ‘I’m not going back, Terry.’ She looked up at him accusingly. ‘What you’re saying is you don’t want to have to feel responsible for me any more,’ she said. ‘Well, you needn’t. I’m quite capable of fending for myself. You can go off to your new job and forget all about me. I’ll be fine.’ She looked at him. ‘I suppose life’s been too exciting for you to bother finding anything out for me?’

  He sighed. ‘Well, as you say — life has been pretty hectic.’

  ‘I thought so.’ She stood up and began to gather the used dishes together. ‘I knew it was too much to hope for. After all, when you have such an exciting future of your own to look forward to, why should you concern yourself with my problems? I can see now why you want to dump me back in Nenebridge.’

  He reached out and grabbed her arm as she passed him. ‘Leah, before you fly off the handle sit down and listen a minute, will you? I was saving that bit of news up till last.’

  Slightly mollified, she sat down again, looking at him intently across the table. ‘All right then, what did you find out?’

  He took her birth certificate out of his wallet and laid it on the table between them. ‘I went along to this remand home place. I told them I was a friend of yours and that I was helping you look for your mother. At first they didn’t want to tell me anything, but eventually they grudgingly looked up their records and let me have the name of the children’s home you were taken to soon after birth.’

  ‘And?’ She waited for him to go on. ‘Is that all?’

  ‘That’s all they’d tell me, I’m afraid,’ he said. ‘But if you were to go yourself, with proof of your identity, they’d probably tell you more.’

  ‘I see.’

  Her disappointed face tugged at his heart and he heard himself saying: ‘I did go to the children’s home though.’

  ‘You did?’ Her face brightened. ‘Did they tell you anything there?’

  ‘Not a lot, but more than at the remand home.’

  She waited. ‘Well, go on. What did they tell you?’ He chewed his lip. He hadn’t meant to tell her. He’d meant to let her find it all out for herself. ‘I think you’d better prepare yourself for a surprise, Leah.’

  ‘Oh, do go on, Tel. Why must you keep me in suspense like this?’

  ‘It seems that there were two babies born to Marie O’Connor, not
just one. You have a twin sister, Leah.’

  She stared at him, her brown eyes incredulous. ‘That can’t be true. I’d remember. I don’t remember any sister. There was only me at the home.’

  ‘Your sister was named Sarah, and she was adopted at a few weeks old. That’s why you don’t remember her.’

  ‘You mean they — these people took her and not me? That’s wicked. Twins shouldn’t be parted.’

  He reached across the table to touch her hand. ‘I daresay that in cases like that it’s better for one baby to get a good home than for two to be left.’

  ‘I was left. Did they think that didn’t matter?’ She got up from the table and stood with her back to him, staring out of the window at the empty cottage opposite. ‘All my life people have rejected me,’ she said, half to herself. ‘Now it seems they’ve been doing it right from birth. Is there something the matter with me, Terry?’

  ‘Of course there isn’t.’ He got up and stood behind her, wrapping his arms around her. ‘It’s just bad luck, love. Damned bad luck.’ He held her close, feeling the tension in her body, sensing the turmoil inside her — wishing there was something he could do to heal the deeply ingrained hurt he knew she felt.

  ‘Okay, so I’ve got a twin sister,’ she said at last. ‘Sarah.’ She said the name experimentally, feeling the shape and texture of it on her tongue, trying to imagine it as the name of the person closest to her, and failing totally. She turned to look at him. ‘I want to find her. Where do I begin, Tel?’

  ‘Now wait.’ He looked down into her eyes. ‘Finding your mother is one thing. Finding your sister is something else.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Well, to start with I’m not sure that you’re even entitled to. Your mother yes, but …’

  ‘Surely my twin sister? Why should I not be entitled to look for her? After all, we’re both adults now.’

  He sighed. ‘It mightn’t be a good idea.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘All sorts of reasons. She might not know she’s adopted. Even if she does she might not know she had a sister. You didn’t. And her parents might not want her to know. Leah. Something like this could disrupt a whole family.’

  ‘What about me though? My whole life has been disrupted. No one seems to care a damn about that. I just want to find someone who is close to me, Tel. I just need to find a place to fit.’

  ‘It’s hard for you, I know.’

  ‘No, you don’t,’ she challenged. ‘You just think I’m an impulsive, immature kid.’

  ‘No, I don’t. It’s just that it’s not always easy to see these things with a clear eye, Leah. Just go easy on it, that’s all I’m saying. You do tend to — well, jump into things without thinking them through.’

  ‘Maybe they won’t tell me where she is anyway,’ she said despondently.

  Terry paused in an agony of indecision. Should he tell her? ‘Look, I did get one more piece of information out of them — the name of the social worker who was working on the case at the time.’ Leah’s eyes lit up with a naked hope that he could hardly bear to look at. ‘Could I find her, do you think?’

  He shrugged. ‘I don’t know. It’s a long time ago. She could be anywhere now. Anything could have happened.’ He was annoyed with himself for telling her so much more than he’d intended. There he’d stop. He wouldn’t tell her he’d been to the library and searched through all the microfilmed newspapers published around the time of her birth. Or that he’d found the sensational story that had made headlines twice in one year — the story of seventeen-year-old Marie O’Connor, the pregnant teenager who’d arrived in London with a bomb in her suitcase. And who was later convicted of terrorism.

  *

  It was dark when Terry woke to find Leah creeping into bed beside him. He blinked sleepily.

  ‘Leah, what’s the matter? Are you ill?’

  ‘No. I can’t sleep.’ She looked child-like and vulnerable in the moonlight shining in at the window. Her eyes were very bright and he suspected she’d been crying.

  ‘It’s all right. Go back to sleep,’ she said. ‘I just woke up and felt lonely. I wanted to be snuggled up warm with someone.’

  Suddenly wide awake, he threw back the duvet and sat on the edge of the bed, his back towards her. She could be exasperatingly naive at times, this half-child, half-woman.

  ‘Leah, just what in the hell do you think you’re playing at?’ he demanded. ‘You can’t treat people like this, you know. Do you think I’m made of bloody stone or something?’

  His outburst shocked her. ‘Are you rejecting me too now?’

  She was sitting up, her cotton baseball-shirt nightdress clinging to her and her dark hair tumbled about her shoulders. He turned, relenting as he caught the unmistakable quivering of her lower lip. ‘You can be crashingly unimaginative at times, Leah.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to …’ She reached for his dressing gown and pulled it round herself, then sat with her arms clasped round her knees, looking small and forlorn. ‘Terry — you said earlier that I jump into things without thinking them through. You were right. And I did it again while you were away.’

  Shivering, he reached for his sweater, looking at his watch as he did so. It was three-thirty and it was bloody cold. He reminded himself that summer was over. ‘Go on,’ he said, pulling the sweater over his head. ‘What have you done this time?’

  ‘Remember the artist across the yard at number four?’

  ‘Colin thingummy. Guy with long hair — bit weird-looking?’

  ‘He wasn’t weird-looking.’

  He shot her a look. ‘I see. Like that, was it?’

  She sighed. ‘I let him make a fool of me, Tel. I — I thought I was in love. I th-thought it was the same for him. I really did.’

  He saw the bleakness in her eyes and reached out to pull her against his shoulder. ‘Oh, Leah, what am I going to do with you? Go on, what happened?’

  ‘It was so — so wonderful. At least, I thought it was. Then he suddenly left at the end of last week, one day while I was at work; didn’t even tell me he was going — or that he was married.’

  He groaned. ‘And you wonder why I think you shouldn’t be allowed out alone.’

  ‘What’s wrong with me, Tel?’ she asked plaintively. ‘Why do people treat me like this?’

  ‘Because you sit up and positively beg them to,’ he said. ‘You’re basically a strong person, Leah. It’s just that you have this blind spot when it comes to people.’

  ‘He left me this awful note,’ she shuddered. “Thanks for everything”, it said. It was so — so humiliating.’

  He pulled her close against his side. She hadn’t heard a word he’d said. Maybe she’d been right all along. Maybe finding her identity was important. If she could sort out who she was perhaps she’d stop wanting love at any price and settle down to making a life for herself.

  ‘I wonder what she’s like, Tel?’ she said softly.

  ‘Who — his wife?’

  ‘No. Sarah. Do you think we’re identical? Do you think she’s exactly like me? Isn’t it strange to know that there’s another person just like me walking around.’

  He laughed shortly. ‘God forbid.’

  She jabbed him in the ribs with her elbow. ‘Don’t be such a pig. No, seriously, just think. Sarah is my other half. We must have started out as a single cell. I have to find her, Tel. I just have to.’ She looked up at him. ‘Can I stay here with you now? It’s almost morning. I don't want to be on my own again tonight. Please?’

  He sighed resignedly. ‘Okay, you win as usual. Stay if you want.’ Lying back against the pillow he tucked the duvet round her. She was asleep in seconds, her head resting in the hollow of his shoulder, her lips slightly parted and snoring ever so gently with a sound like the purring of a cat. He lay there wide awake. Watching as the sky grew light, he smiled wryly at the irony of it all. Would this girl sleeping like a baby in his arms, who wanted so badly to be loved, ever know how much love was hers for
the taking?

  *

  When he wakened the sun was shining and he was alone again. He found her downstairs in the kitchen, making breakfast. She wore jeans and an Aran sweater of his, which reached almost to her knees.

  ‘Hi. I’ve been for a long walk,’ she told him. ‘Trouble is, I didn’t bring anything warm to wear so I borrowed this.’ She tugged at the neck of the sweater. ‘Okay?’

  ‘Fine. Be my guest. Breakfast smells good.’

  ‘Eggs, bacon, tomatoes and mushrooms. I’m returning the compliment for last night’s supper.’ She held up a slice of bread. ‘Fried?’

  Terry grinned and rubbed his hands. ‘Great. Two, please.’

  ‘I always said you were a pig.’

  He watched her as she expertly flipped the eggs on to a plate and put the bread into the pan. Her cheeks were pink from the fresh sea air and tendrils of hair, loosened from her plait by the wind, corkscrewed around her neck and ears.

  ‘How long will you be working at The Mermaid?’ he asked.

  She shrugged. ‘Till the end of the month. I don’t think Dick’d mind all that much if I went sooner though. There aren’t many tourists around any more and his takings must have fallen.’

  He tucked enthusiastically into the food she put before him ‘Look, Leah, I’ll make a bargain with you. You let your folks know you’re okay and I’ll find you a place to stay in London.’

  She spun round to stare at him. ‘You will?’ She took an impulsive leap towards him but he held out his hands to ward off her embrace.

  ‘Okay. I’ll take your thanks as read. No need to go over the top.’ As she sat down opposite him with her own breakfast he reached for a slice of toast. ‘There’s this guy on the paper who has a house in Notting Hill. He was sharing it with two other reporters but they’ve both left, one to get married and the other to take up a job abroad. He’s offered me one of the vacant rooms but as far as I know the other is still going begging.’