Quarter Past Two on a Wednesday Afternoon

by Linda Newbery

  ‘She said it was her choice to leave, no one had made her. She wanted me to help, but only if I respected her decision. Otherwise she threatened to put the phone down and that would be it. So – I agreed. I couldn’t risk losing her, not knowing what state she was in. There was a weekend between the training days and the start of term, so I went to meet her straight away. She was in Bristol – she’d headed west, with an idea of going to Cornwall, but she got as far as Bristol and was almost out of cash.’

  ‘So you promised to help?’

  He nodded. ‘I thought I’d persuade her to come back, get in the car and head straight home. But she was adamant. She’d left home and she wasn’t changing her mind.’

  ‘But – you haven’t said what made her leave so suddenly!’

  ‘No.’ Michael hesitated now, looking at her doubtfully. Then he said, ‘Anna – do you know about your other sister?’

  When he’d told her, Anna was silent: filling in details, making the brief outlines into a scene, as if watching a film. It was the August day of memory and mis-memory, the day of the garden lounger and the toenail painting. The day she called a casual goodbye to Rose, not even bothering to go outside: she couldn’t now recall the words of farewell, though it was the last time she had heard Rose’s voice.

  ‘Excuse me,’ she said, getting to her feet. ‘I need to find a loo.’

  Anna saw herself plodding down the cul-de-sac, a small figure in shorts and a sun-hat, although she couldn’t actually remember what she’d been wearing that day. Now Rose is alone in the garden with her book, and the sun’s warmth that makes the day feel unhurried, holidayish. It is Anna’s painting, the scene impressed in her mind – Rose in the dappled shade of the pear tree, her clothes pale, her skin and eyes luminous, as if the pear tree exists for no other reason than to cast flattering green shade over the sitter.

  It’s the garden of their childhood, of their games and pretending and fantasies; it has contained and absorbed them, but now Rose has outgrown it. She is whiling away her time, waiting. What’s in her mind? She is thinking about next day, surely, and her results; but she can’t be very worried, sure of her place at Ravensbourne. Anna couldn’t shut out the knowledge that Rose’s A-Level grades would all be As, eclipsing her own more prosaic B, B and C, five years later. Rose, as always, was better, cleverer, surging ahead, doing everything with more flair. And, surely, more urgently and enticingly, Rose must be thinking about him, about Michael; closing her eyes to recall the intimacy in his bedroom, clothes dropping to the floor, his eyes sweeping down her naked body. She is thinking of the things she hopes and expects to do again, more thoroughly, and soon.

  The garden has a side gate; anyone can walk in, and someone does.

  In Anna’s scene Rose is drowsing instead of reading, finally falling asleep, letting the book slip from her hand to lie face-down on the grass. She wakes to the surprise of someone looking down at her, standing by the lounger. A young woman, twenty-something. For want of any other face to supply her with, Anna gives her a version of her own.

  ‘Who are you?’ Rose asks sleepily, and the intruder smiles and says, ‘Don’t you know?’

  No. Of course Rose doesn’t. She looks puzzled, and the young woman says, ‘I’m Zanna. Rosanna.’ She says it as if Rose is meant to know already. ‘I’m your sister.’

  ‘My what?’

  ‘Your sister. Sort of sister, anyway. Your mum is my mum too.’

  ‘What? How can she be?’ Rose is looking up at Zanna through sunglasses, which she now takes off for a better look. Her thoughts blur.

  ‘She hasn’t told you about me, has she? She’s told me about you. You’re Rose, and your little sister’s Anna.’

  Anna now wonders if she and Zanna might have passed each other in the street a few moments before; neither gives the other more than a quick glance, not recognizing that they’re half-sisters.

  ‘Oh! You mean my other mother,’ Rose says.

  ‘I don’t. I mean Cassandra. I’m talking about the three of us – Rosanna, Rose, Anna,’ says Zanna. ‘It’s odd of her to give us those names, like we’re part of each other. Don’t you think?’

  ‘How do you know her?’ Rose asks sharply

  ‘I told you. She’s my mother too.’

  ‘This is rubbish! Complete rubbish.’ Rose stands, pushing her feet into sandals so as not to give the stranger the advantage of height; in wedge heels, Rose is several inches taller. ‘I don’t know who you are, or what gave you such a stupid idea.’

  ‘It’s all true, if you’ll just listen. The adoption agency put me in touch with her, with Cassandra. You’re adopted too, aren’t you? She told me that. So really Anna’s my sister but you’re not. Is Anna around? I’d like to see her.’

  Anna couldn’t decide on Zanna’s motivation. Was she resentful, vengeful, or merely curious? And what did she think of Rose? Was she disconcerted to find someone so beautiful, so unlike her – because although Anna could picture her only vaguely, she must be cast as plain, unbecomingly dressed, with a clumpy, waddling walk, maybe, in order to make the contrast with Rose all the more striking.

  ‘I see,’ says Rose. ‘You want to take over. You want to be me. That’s why you’ve come.’

  That’s how Rose, with her gift for melodrama, would see it. Her mother has deceived her, has claimed back her firstborn, Rosanna, her real daughter. They were characters in a folk tale, babies exchanged at birth. Rose was only a replacement, a foundling. They could so easily be swapped back, the only proper end of the story. Zanna is a cuckoo, huge, demanding, ravenous, bent on pushing her rival out of the nest.

  ‘Come in, why don’t you?’ Rose goes on, as Zanna hesitates. Her voice is hard-edged, a little shrill. ‘Have a good look round. Why don’t you stay? You belong here. I don’t. I can go.’

  ‘No, I didn’t mean – I only wanted—’

  ‘Have you brought a bag?’ Rose says, over her shoulder, striding towards the open French windows. ‘Or is it simpler if you take over my clothes? You’re a couple of sizes bigger, but the looser things might fit. I don’t know about the shoes.’

  How would Zanna react? It would be hard to resist the chance to see inside her mother’s house, to see how she lived. But although Anna was curious about this young woman, this half-sister whose existence was unknown to her half an hour ago, her eyes were on Rose. Rose, whose sudden fury of energy brought her to life in Anna’s mind, just as she had indeed been brought to puzzling, incomprehensible life by Michael’s story.

  Rose, with a plan shaping itself in her mind, would flounce around the house so quickly that Zanna can hardly keep up.

  ‘Here’s your room,’ she says, with a dramatic flourish. ‘You can move straight in. Give me half an hour. I’ll take what I need and go.’

  But perhaps it wasn’t like that at all. Maybe Zanna, Rosanna, had been to the house before, with her – with their – mother. Because the mother here needed re-casting too: she would have to be played by someone other than the Sandra Taverner Anna thought she knew. She had become a woman with a secret daughter, a hidden past.

  Rosanna, Rose, Anna. In her mind they lined up like Russian dolls on a shelf, decreasing in size, herself the smallest and least important. Rose had always been larger and brighter, but now there was someone else, someone powerful enough to elbow Rose aside, out of her life and into a new one. Or perhaps the shock had sent Rose tumbling off the shelf to smash into little pieces, and it was Michael who picked up the bits and put them back together.

  ‘Are you OK?’ Michael said, when she arrived back at the table and threw him a vague smile. He had changed too: no longer a suspect, but someone she would have to trust, because he was the one person Rose had trusted when she turned away from her family.

  ‘I still don’t see how it could have happened like that. How she – Rosanna – could turn up like that, without my mother knowing.’ She slumped into her chair, though Michael had zipped up his coat and it seemed that they were going somewhere.<
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  ‘I don’t think she did appear from nowhere. Rose got the impression that she and your mother had been meeting regularly for a year or so, away from home, of course. Maybe Rosanna followed your mother, or got hold of her address somehow. Maybe your mother gave it to her.’

  ‘Rose was adopted too – you did know?’

  Michael nodded, and Anna went on, ‘She couldn’t have contacted her birth mother until she was eighteen, and then only if the mother agreed. On Rose’s eighteenth birthday I asked if she was going to, but she said no, she didn’t see the point. But maybe that changed – you must know?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Michael. ‘Rose is in touch with her mother. They don’t meet often – a couple of times a year. There’s a stepfather, and a half-brother and -sister, quite a bit younger.’

  ‘So she’s got a whole new family?’ Anna’s voice came out small and hurt. ‘She left us all behind and started again?’

  ‘I wouldn’t say that. They’re not close. And it wasn’t easy for her.’

  ‘What about Zanna now? Does Rose see her?’

  ‘No, not since that day.’

  ‘But have you, or Rose, considered that this Zanna might not have been telling the truth? She could have been ill or deluded for all we know, and somehow got hold of the idea that she was my mother’s daughter.’

  ‘Rose believed her,’ Michael said simply.

  ‘So – what then? Tell me how it happened, after you went to her in Bristol.’

  ‘I felt responsible – if I really was the only person who knew, it was up to me to try to make her see sense. I tried, I really did try, to persuade her that it wasn’t so bad, and that she had to talk to your mother about all this. She flatly refused. She said that your father didn’t know about Zanna, and she couldn’t be the one to tell him. And she felt betrayed. She said that your mother had never wanted her – only wanted Zanna. Your parents adopted her because they thought they couldn’t conceive, and then they had you.’

  ‘But I’m sure that’s not true!’

  ‘It’s what she thought. Or what she convinced herself.’

  ‘That was one of the awful things, when she went. I remember one of my great-aunts saying At least she’s not your real daughter, as if it would have been worse if it was me. But to them, she was their daughter. She must have known that, surely?’

  ‘Maybe. But once she gets an idea in her head there’s no shifting her.’

  Of course, he knew Rose better than she did, now; Anna had to take this in. She said, ‘Tell me what happened when you came to Bristol that first time. When she refused to go back.’

  ‘She met me at the station. I hardly recognized her – she’d cut her hair short and ragged, her lovely hair, and she wore dark glasses, and looked pale and exhausted. That made me all the more determined to get her home. I bought her something to eat and talked at her for ages. She listened, but in a quiet, obstinate way. Nothing made any difference. She said she wasn’t that Rose any more, the Rose your parents thought belonged to them. Maybe she never had been. And she kept reminding me that I’d promised not to break her confidence. That she had the right to leave home and start out on her own. So eventually, when I saw I wasn’t going to win, I had to go along with it. She was used to a nice home, food on the table, parents who loved her, and you – she’d soon start missing all that, I thought. Maybe she did, but it didn’t change her mind.’

  ‘But she did need you.’

  ‘I guess she’d have managed somehow, but I was glad of the chance to know she was safe, and had somewhere to stay. She’d slept rough, the first couple of nights. Then she got herself a job picking fruit, sleeping in a shabby caravan. I helped her find a cheap B&B in Bristol while she looked for work, and we found her a one-room bedsit and a waitressing job, and that was enough to keep her going. Every weekend I went to see her. I finished with Pippa – it had always been a bit on-off anyway. It was Rose now. And … you know how they say you can get used to anything, and it’s true – it soon seemed quite normal to go off to Bristol every Friday after work, and head back to Kent every Sunday night. A teacher’s starting salary wasn’t great, but it was a lot more than she was earning. Six months later we found a little house, and then I thought of that as my main home and rented a tiny flat in Sevenoaks for term-time. I liked it at Oldlands, got on well with the head of department there, and at the end of my second year I was offered a promotion, so I stayed on, even though it’d have been easier to move to Bristol. But also there was you. Oldlands Hall was Rose’s link with you.’

  ‘She wanted that?’ Anna said, astonished.

  Michael nodded. ‘Yes, she asked about you, and I always told her if I saw you around school or covered one of your lessons. And I came to your art exhibition.’

  ‘Yes, I remember.’

  He looked regretful. ‘When I saw that it was all about her, it made me realize all over again what she’d done to you and your parents, how it wasn’t something you could get over. I had another try. But she wouldn’t budge, wouldn’t make a phone call. She was afraid of going back.’

  ‘But why? Afraid of what?’

  ‘Of even thinking about her old life. It was like a box she didn’t want to open.’

  ‘Couldn’t you have—?’

  ‘Insisted? I tried, Anna, believe me. She threatened to run away again. Said she’d done it once and she’d do it again. I believed her. And I couldn’t risk that, couldn’t force her. It would have to be her own decision.’

  Anna nodded slowly, knowing how Rose could be.

  ‘I haven’t told you – she changed her name,’ Michael said. ‘She called herself Rosalind, Rosalind Owen. I don’t know why she chose Owen. She’s Rosalind Sullivan now. But she’s Rose to me, always has been.’

  ‘Is it that easy, then, to change your name? What about papers?’

  ‘She applied for a new copy of her adoption paper, saying the old one was lost. That’s the equivalent of a birth certificate, so once she’d got that she could get a passport, register for tax, et cetera.’

  ‘Rose always said she’d never get married,’ Anna remembered. ‘Marriage was too dull and conventional for her.’

  Michael smiled. ‘Well, we did, soon after our first son was born.’

  ‘You’ve got a child?’

  ‘Two boys, fifteen and eleven.’

  Anna’s head swam with this new piece of information. How many more shocks were waiting for her? How many more family members, relatives she’d been unaware of? She imagined them clustering round her like shadows, unseen till now. The thought flashed through her mind that Michael could be lying; that Rose was dead after all, and had been for twenty years. Raising both elbows to the table she rested her forehead on both hands for a moment, then rubbed her eyes.

  ‘What I don’t understand is’ – she looked at him blearily – ‘is why, if you kept your promise for twenty years, you’re breaking it now by telling me all this?’

  ‘Because Rose said I could.’

  ‘She knows about me?’

  Michael nodded. ‘I told her, the day you phoned. I think we’ve had enough of secrets.’

  ‘Why’s she ready to let it all out, after so long?’

  ‘You can ask her that yourself.’

  ‘Are we going to your house? Is she at home?’

  ‘Yes – is that OK?’

  ‘Well, I …’ The words crumbled in Anna’s throat. ‘I can’t take it in, that it’s going to happen. Today.’

  ‘I know. Of course you can’t.’ Michael looked at his watch. ‘We’ve got to get another train. There’s one due in ten minutes.’

  ‘To where?’

  ‘Penzance. We live in Cornwall, a few miles from Land’s End.’

  ‘Land’s End! So she kept going, then. Heading west as far as she could without taking to the sea.’

  She wasn’t sure why this came out flippantly, but Michael nodded and said, ‘It’ll mean staying till tomorrow. Are you OK with that? There’s no way you could come to the
house and still get back to London tonight.’

  ‘I haven’t seen Rose for twenty years,’ Anna told him. ‘I think I can spare one night.’

  Michael’s small Peugeot was in the car park at Penzance station. Fastening her seat belt, Anna wanted to protest that she wasn’t ready, she needed more time; she felt sick at the thought of meeting Rose within the next hour. The car climbed a steep lane away from the town, with views over the harbour and across to St Michael’s Mount, its causeway part covered by the sea. Soon the coastline was lost to view, hidden behind high banks each side of the single-track lanes. Dusk was falling; when the car crested another low hill, the sea spread out again in front, calm, deepest blue, with dark cloud streaking the horizon. A lane led steeply down to a settlement, too small to be called a village: a cluster of cottages in a cove, with cliffs on either side. In the fading light Anna saw low pines and ragged palms, a small stone quay with tethered yachts and dinghies. Reflected lights shimmered on the water. She had the sense of arriving somewhere she’d been before, as if the place had been waiting.

  Now Michael seemed nervous too as he backed the car into a space behind a garden fence.

  ‘OK?’

  He gave her a sidelong glance before getting out; she nodded, not trusting herself to speak. The person she was about to meet wouldn’t be Rose, but someone else. This would turn out to be a dream, the kind that segues into a different story altogether.

  She followed him to the front of a white-painted cottage. A paling fence enclosed a tiny front garden, all stones, adorned with pieces of driftwood, netting and fishing floats. A pot of daffodils stood by the door. Anna thought of the Norfolk holiday: Blakeney, the holiday cottage, and her vision of the contented family who belonged there.

  ‘We’re here!’ Michael called, opening the front door, which led straight into a small sitting room, furnished in shades of red, maroon and brown, with many cushions and throws. There was a reassuring smell of cooking and woodsmoke. The first person to appear, clumping down a spiral staircase, was a small dark-haired boy introduced by Michael as Euan; his face broke into an open smile when he saw Anna, quite without curiosity, as if she were a neighbour who’d called in. Anna wondered how much he knew about his mother’s past. She could identify with that, Michael’s revelations having shown her how little she knew about her own mother.