by Thorne Moore
‘No!’ Vicky fought her off, shoving hard. ‘Don’t touch me! Don’t touch me.’ She was rigid, her hands claws.
‘Oh Vicky, I’m so sorry. Forgive me, I should have realised, but I was just so selfish! Oh God, and I was so determined – I was going to be such a perfect mother, give you such a perfect life and all I did was ruin things for you. When I read about you being found, that day, it was like a wonderful flower bursting open in front of me and all I’ve done was trample it down.’
‘Must be me, mustn’t it,’ snarled Vicky. ‘Mothers take one look at me and want to kill me.’
‘What?’
‘The first one did! My birth mother. At least she didn’t drag it out for years.’
‘Oh Vicky, no one thought she wanted you dead. She left you, so carefully, where you would be found.’
‘No. No that’s not right. What do you mean, no one thought? You… She… No, she left me for dead!’
‘I promise you, she didn’t. I still have the cuttings, when you were found, when I first thought – hoped… She’d wrapped you up, and when I read it, I thought, I’ll wrap you up cosily, too, I’ll make everything lovely for you, just as she must have wanted to, but all the time—’
‘No! There was nothing about me being found. It was just about her, that woman, trying to kill me.’
‘Kill you? No, no, you’ve got it wrong, Vicky. I’ll show you. I’ve got it, 20th March, 1990. I thought it was the beginning of a whole new world.’
‘20th? No. No. I’ve seen her! I’ve read the story. It was the 23rd!’
Vicky backed away. Gillian couldn’t get her head round what her daughter was saying. Vicky had been abused, horribly, and telling the truth seemed to have unleashed total chaos in her mind.
‘I saw the woman,’ Vicky insisted, in a whisper. ‘She claimed her baby was snatched, but no one believed her, because she made it up. I believed her story. I found her. Here, in Salley Meadows. I told her I was her daughter, and you know what? She slammed the door in my face. She thought I was lying, because she knew I should be dead. She gave birth to me, she tried to kill me and now she won’t speak to me.’
Gillian steadied herself on the back of the sofa, trying to pin down one small fact in this whirlwind. ‘I think your birth mother is in Wales.’
‘What!’
Gillian groped among the sofa cushions and produced the rolled-up newspaper.
‘I think this must be about her.’ Shaking, she held it out.
Vicky took it as if it would burn, unrolled it and stared at the front page.
Bright, attractive Kelly Sheldon, 22, is in Lyford on a mission…
‘I think it must be her,’ said Gillian, faintly. She couldn’t stand it any longer. She groped her way to the kitchen sink and threw up. Shivering, she ran the cold tap, soaked her face. She had no idea how to handle this. She ought to know what to do, driven by maternal instinct, but she was no mother. She was a selfish cow who had wanted a child. This was no house to bring a child into. She’d known it, always, even back then. You don’t bring a child within a mile of Joan. If she had had a true mother’s love for Vicky, she would have let another family take her.
She straightened, still shivering, and groped her way back to the living room.
No Vicky. The Herald lay on the floor, its first page ripped off. The front door was standing open.
Of course Vicky had to get out. They all did. Get out, away from here.
Gillian walked. The air was warm, cloying, not fresh. Traffic fumes hung in it. She couldn’t breathe. Past the electricity substation, surrounded by broken wire. A nasty place.
It had been a nasty place forty odd years ago when she had lost her virginity in the long grass behind it. Learnt what it was all about, according to Joan. Arranged by Joan. Gillian’s disgust and misery, and Joan’s evil cackle. ‘Had a good time, girl? Always knew there was a slut in you.’
Why hadn’t she seen it as rape back then? Why had she just endured, because it was one of those things? If she’d seen it straight, seen her mother for what she was, she’d never have left Vicky to suffer the same.
She stumbled on. St Mark’s church. She hadn’t realised she was coming here. Hadn’t been in the place for fifteen years. She’d been regular to start with, with her new baby, guiltily giving thanks, but in the end, Philip Coley’s soul-battering enthusiasm had been too much for her. And then he had gone and the congregation had withered, and there was no more sense of guilt to nag her.
By luck the door was open; she could hear voices in the vestry, some meeting going on. Usually, these days, the place was kept locked. There were no treasures to steal, but anything that wasn’t fastened down would be ripped up or sprayed.
She walked up the central aisle. Plastic chairs and the smell not of sanctity but of polish and disinfectant. She stopped before the crucifix with its pink writhing Christ. A crown of iron thorns. Vivid glistening painted blood. Let the thorns bite deeper, she thought, staring up at the dead image. Let them hurt you like you hurt me. Why did you let it happen to my little girl? I hate you.
But there was nothing here to hate. Sitting down on one of the plastic seats and staring at the image, she knew; there was no God. There was only hell.
iii
Kelly
‘Oh,’ said Joe. Hangdog. It occurred to Kelly that Joe always looked slightly hangdog, so there wasn’t really much change. A shift from aimless contentment to bewilderment. ‘So, that means, we’re not, like, together any more.’
‘But we’re still friends. Just not – you know.’
‘Yes. Sure.’ Joe stood up. ‘I’m going out. Need to get my head round this.’
He sidled out of the door, shoulders hunched. What should she do? Give him space to come to terms with it, or follow him? Either way, she could hardly stay in his digs while he mooched off. She grabbed her bag and hurried after him.
He hadn’t got far. He was standing staring at his bike, hoping it might give him an explanation.
Kelly swore inside. She hadn’t meant to hurt Joe. She had never meant to hurt anyone in her life, but perhaps that had been more the easy-going goodwill of laziness than innate virtue. She wasn’t feeling virtuous now. She was feeling cruel and heartless, and that wasn’t fair because she hadn’t planned this. It had happened, this tsunami. Why did there have to be this flip side to finding her soulmate?
‘Joe, I’m sorry. It just happened. It’s not like anything I’ve ever felt before.’
‘Not for me, you mean.’
‘Not for anyone. It’s not about liking someone, or fancying them. It’s something I didn’t even know existed.’
He looked at her, a hint of puzzled curiosity in his misery. If she had discovered something entirely new, perhaps it was some weird exotic thing, like Lassa fever, and she couldn’t help it.
‘I am so sorry, Joe. I really do like you, I want to be friends, especially after you’ve been so great with my mum being ill – looking after the animals and all that.’
He shrugged, perhaps feeling the self-satisfaction that she had hoped to inspire. He’d proved a true friend when she’d needed him. Never mind that for him it had actually been a rent-free holiday with minimal responsibilities and a chance to drain someone else’s larder. ‘Yeah, well, that’s okay.’
‘We still friends?’
‘Yeah.’ He sounded resigned. She couldn’t really expect him to sound enthusiastic. ‘You still want to come to see Black Amber?’
Damn. ‘I can’t, Joe. Ben’s coming…’
‘Oh. I’ve got the tickets.’
‘What about Maddy?’ Inspired thought. ‘She was really keen on them. I bet she’d love to go. Ask her; she’ll buy a ticket off you.’
‘Maddy? You think? Yeah, maybe.’
He could offer to sell Maddy a ticket or, if he had any gumption whatsoever, he could just invite her. She was unattached at the moment, and even if she were more interested in Black Amber than in Joe, it would salve his dignity a
little. It was up to him; Kelly wasn’t going to pull any more strings.
‘Yeah, maybe, I’ll go see her.’
She watched him get on his bike, stamp hard and turn out onto the road.
It had been painful, but it could have been worse. The decks were clear now for Ben to arrive on Friday night. She’d topped up her mother’s prescription and done the shopping. Bought a steak. She might convince him in time that the vegetarian option could be just as good, but baby steps, no need to rush it.
She’d just got to wait out the next twenty-four hours. She turned the Astra for home, feeling that warmth growing as she bounced slowly along the track to the cottage. Just twenty-four hours between her and ecstasy. The office and the pub weren’t expecting her back at work until next week. Nothing else to worry about.
Except that they had visitors.
She didn’t recognise the car. A green mini, parked by the wheelbarrow near the front door. Jehovah’s Witnesses? They usually stopped at the top of the lane and walked down, in their misplaced Sunday best.
She carried the corn to the bin in the shed, gathered up the bags of shopping, slipped into the house, expecting to hear the anodyne murmur of religious platitudes.
She heard her mother’s voice, high with panic.
‘But I don’t understand. It can’t be.’
‘It’s here, in black and white,’ accused another voice, as Kelly, dropping the shopping without a thought, burst into the kitchen.
A girl, her own age maybe, short lank hair, angular face, heavy glasses, slamming a sheet of newspaper down on the pine table at a terrified Roz.
‘Who the hell are you?’ demanded Kelly, grabbing the girl’s wrist.
She turned, wrenching herself free.
‘Who are you?’ repeated Kelly.
‘My name is Victoria Wendle.’ The girl straightened her cuffs. ‘Allegedly.’
‘What are you doing here?’
‘Doing what you wanted, aren’t I? Come to visit my mummy.’
‘What?’ Kelly looked across at Roz, who was standing, hand to her throat, scarcely able to breath. ‘It’s all right, Mum.’ She looked down, at the torn sheet of newspaper unfurling on the table. The front page of the Lyford Herald.
It wasn’t supposed to be here. She hadn’t calculated on anyone showing a copy to Roz. This was Kelly’s private scheme.
‘You’re Kelly Sheldon, I suppose?’
‘Yes, but…’ She had asked for contact from the missing girl. An exchange of notes, testing the waters, before they decided where to go next. Nothing sprung on them like this. This was that girl? No phone call, no questions, she’d just driven straight here, on the basis of one newspaper story? She must be a crank. ‘You think you’re the baby I was swapped with?’
‘Oh yes, “swapped” all right.’ Vicky jerked her head in Roz’s direction. ‘I wasn’t quite what she wanted so she swapped me.’
‘I don’t know what story the stupid paper has printed,’ said Kelly, ‘but you’ve got it all wrong. My mother had nothing to do with it. There was a mix-up at the hospital.’
‘Oh yes!’ A harsh laugh. ‘Labels swapped. Is that really what she told you?’ Vicky flung her accusation straight at Roz. ‘Is that what you said?’
Roz raised her hand to her mouth, biting her finger. ‘I don’t know. I heard the nurses – I don’t know. I don’t remember.’
‘It’s all right, Mum.’ Kelly was beside her, guiding her to a chair, but Roz refused to sit down.
‘Don’t get upset. She has no right to come in here, attacking you like this.’
‘No?’ asked Vicky. ‘No right to ask the woman who gave birth to me why she dumped me in a cardboard box and exchanged me for a better model?’
‘I don’t know where you got this idea from—’
‘From the Lyford Herald!’ Vicky picked up the sheet of the Herald and slammed it down again.
What on earth had it said? Kelly picked it up, her fingers trembling with anger.
Kelly, a marine engineering graduate of Pembroke University…
‘There isn’t a Pembroke university. And I never said I had a degree.’ It wasn’t the issue, she knew, but it told her exactly how it was going to be. She read on. Had her mother seen this? ‘I didn’t say half this.’
Roz gazed in bewilderment at Kelly. ‘I don’t understand. You said?’
Kelly put her arms round her and squeezed. ‘I’m sorry. But you were ill and I thought if I couldn’t give you one of my kidneys there might be someone out there who could, so I went to Lyford—’
‘Lyford?’
‘Where I was born?’
Across the table, alone, Vicky was looking at them with loathing, her hands clenching and unclenching.
Kelly was appalled. Why was the girl so angry? Kelly hadn’t pictured their meeting like this. She had imagined shock, maybe, even denial, but not this fierce fury.
Well, never mind Victoria Wendle. An irrational crank. It was Roz that mattered now, and Kelly could feel the life draining out of her mother.
‘Why did you go to Lyford?’ Roz whispered.
‘I thought I could find the other baby. I put an advert in the Herald, and then they wanted to follow it up so I gave them an interview. I didn’t stay to see what they printed. I wish I had. I didn’t say anything about you dying, having just a month to live. I never said anything like that. I just said you’d developed kidney problems, but they’ve made it into a stupid sob story.’
‘You just said kidney problems?’ demanded Vicky. ‘They invented the bit about Maturity Onset Diabetes of the Young?’
‘No, no, I explained that bit—’
‘Well then!’
‘Well what?’
‘That’s what I have. That’s what I have to deal with for the rest of my life. Inherited. Thank you, Mother. Diabetes and a cardboard box were all that you ever gave me.’
Roz was biting her lip, shaking with panic, eyes wide.
‘You have the same condition?’ Kelly tried to think. She had never thought of the probability of them sharing the illness. ‘So you wouldn’t be able to give a kidney anyway?’
‘Give a kidney? You seriously think I’d give up a kidney for her, when she threw me away? I’d rather give her arsenic!’
‘Look, stop it!’
Whatever was going on here, Kelly could sense the girl’s anger eating into Roz like acid.
‘I don’t know why you’re so mad, but it’s not Mum’s fault. She didn’t know she was giving you diabetes. She didn’t know she had it herself until a few months ago.’
‘But she knew enough to decide I wasn’t what she wanted.’
‘You’re talking nonsense.’ Kelly stared at the paper again, searching for some clue to this cardboard box stuff. There was nothing about that in the article. Crap about Roz being on the point of dying and Kelly’s desperate quest and the mix-up in the hospital. The rest was a diatribe against the Lyford and Stapledon Health Trust, hospital incompetence, careless disposal of hospital waste and stuff about a body wrongly labelled in the morgue. Nothing about a cardboard box.
‘Go on,’ said Vicky to Roz. Despite her iron self-control, Kelly could sense shivers running through her like the tremors of an earthquake. ‘Tell her the truth. Tell her how you decided I wasn’t good enough, so you dumped me in a shop door and chose another baby instead.’
Kelly expected Roz to be outraged by this, but Roz’s face wasn’t registering denial. Shock yes, but the shock of awakening, as if cold water had been flung in her face. She gasped.
‘I didn’t think that!’ Roz’s eyes flicked from Kelly to Vicky to Kelly, as if she couldn’t comprehend which was which. ‘No, it wasn’t like that!’
‘Mum?’ Kelly said. She too was looking from Roz to Vicky to Roz, chilled – two faces so entirely different and yet, in some appalling way, so much the same. Mother and daughter. The same jaw and cheekbones, the same hair colour. Kelly had never worried that there might be another girl entitled to her
mother’s love. Was it the similarities that hurt now? Or the way Roz was focusing on the other girl, with tear-washed pleading eyes?
‘I loved you,’ said Roz. ‘You don’t understand. I was frightened. I was only 17. I thought Gary was going to kill you. I couldn’t protect you. I thought you’d be safer, happier, if I gave you up. I put you where I knew you’d be found.’
‘In a cardboard box.’
‘For warmth, yes. I thought you’d be safer without me. Only after I’d done it, I couldn’t bear it. I wanted you back so much, and there you were, and when I had you back, I knew I could never be without you again.’
Kelly stood frozen. She couldn’t understand what her mother was saying.
Vicky stood silent too, for a moment. The shaking was subsiding, the anger losing its needle-sharp intensity. ‘You didn’t have me back though, did you?’
‘I – yes. I did. I got you back.’
‘Not me.’ The girl pointed at Kelly. ‘It was her. Another baby. Say it. You took another woman’s baby.’
‘No. No! There was no other woman! There was just a baby. Just my Kelly.’ A door opened in Roz’s brain, a door that had been barred and bolted and padlocked for twenty-two years. A door opened and a terrible truth was creeping out. ‘I wanted you back so much.’
Kelly stared at her, feeling something inside herself shrink and shrink until it shrivelled away. ‘You took a baby? Is that what she’s saying? You just took me?’
Roz’s face was grey. ‘You were there. Waiting for me.’
‘Oh God. Oh no. What did you do?’
‘Nothing. You were there, so I picked you up and carried you home.’
Kelly swallowed hard. ‘You thought I was the same baby you had given up?’
‘Yes!’
They both looked at Roz, staring at her, challenging her to tell the truth.
‘I don’t know. I don’t know what I thought. It was all different then. Everything was frightening. I thought Gary would kill you. I thought they would take you away from me. I don’t know!’
It was true. Roz didn’t know. A voice within was telling her she could know if she chose. She could look at it straight and recall it all, cut through the muddle and desperation and see the cold cruel truth. But that would mean letting go of all she had. All her life she had been clinging to someone or something. For years she had clung to Kelly and if she looked straight at the truth now, that one beacon, her daughter, would be lost. Everything would be lost. ‘I don’t know!’
