‘Thank you.’
‘You are welcome.’ Sarah smiled. ‘So that was quite some evening. I sat and read all of the letters after you had dropped off and I feel like I have run a marathon. What . . . what did you think?’ She sounded nervous.
‘I think I have a new perspective on things, for sure,’ Victoria answered truthfully.
‘A good perspective?’
‘I would say so, yes. I can’t imagine . . .’ She paused, emotion drawing the words from her mouth.
‘I thought we said no crying!’ Sarah pointed out.
They both laughed.
‘How about I get us some coffee?’ Jens stood slowly and yawned.
‘How about we go out for coffee?’ Sarah suggested. ‘All I ever really need is good coffee and a view.’
‘Ah, you win!’ Jens chuckled. ‘You guys go without me. I need a shower.’
Aker Brygge was busy even at this hour on a Sunday morning. Vidar was again on the quayside, saddling up his bike. ‘God Morgen!’
‘God Morgen, Vidar,’ Victoria answered, and he chuckled. ‘Where are you off to? It’s not Saturday – you can’t have another breakfast date?’ she teased.
‘Actually, I do. Saturday is with my mom and Sunday is with my dad.’ He pointed over the water in the direction of Ekebergparken.
His sweetness was lovely, and she closed her eyes briefly to show him she understood.
‘I’ll see you.’ He held her gaze as he fastened his helmet and jumped on his bike.
‘Yes, I’ll see you.’
‘I like him,’ Sarah stated as they walked along the cobbles towards town.
‘I like him,’ Victoria admitted, and they both laughed.
Espresso House was busy, but they nabbed a table with a view out over the fjord. The coffee was hot and strong and blew away the cobwebs of the night before.
‘I feel . . . lighter.’ Sarah took a deep breath.
‘Yep, me too. It was really hard hearing you read your own words. It made it real for me. I can’t imagine,’ Victoria continued. ‘I can’t imagine what it must have been like for you, or for Prim, when I was born.’
‘It was terrible, that’s the truth, and it has been terrible for me every single day since.’
Victoria nodded. ‘You said you were full of anger. Where did that come from?’
‘Well, it was drug-fuelled mainly, or rather lack of drugs, but I think it was rooted in how Mum viewed Marcus. I loved him dearly, but to her he was the knife that pierced my breast, the bridge from which I might jump, the loaded gun that held the bullet aimed at my temple. Her hatred of him coloured her thoughts, and it never cooled, not once. If anything, it intensified. And that was hard for me and no doubt hard for her, as he was your dad.’
‘Whether she liked it or not.’ Victoria filled in the gaps.
‘Not!’ Sarah offered dryly. ‘I know Mum wanted the best for me, and it was hard for her to give up the image she had of me in her mind; she wanted me to be a professional in neat clothes and with a steady life, not sharing needles on a dirty mattress in some rancid squat or constantly badgering my dad for money, which he gave me.’
‘What parent would want that?’ Victoria spoke her thoughts aloud.
‘No sane ones, that’s for sure. But I couldn’t see that; I felt persecuted.’
‘I bet Prim did too.’ It felt good to be in her corner, loyal.
‘Yes, I’m sure of it.’
‘This is good, Sarah. It’s this kind of detail I have been missing. I have never had anyone to ask because you weren’t there and it never felt like Prim wanted to talk about it, and I understand why now. I can see how things broke down and you both just sort of went around in circles. You trying to get a foothold and her trying her best and not always understanding what you were going through.’
‘That’s about the sum of it. The day you were born feels like yesterday and a lifetime ago all at the same time.’
‘October the twelfth.’ Victoria looked up. ‘Coming up.’
‘October the twelfth,’ Sarah repeated. ‘Coming up soon. Nineteen? How is that even possible? I remember every minute of the day you were born. Every single minute. I was mourning Marcus, hurting so badly and beyond sad that he would never know you or you him. It was made harder because Mum wouldn’t talk about him, wanted me to move on, like it was nothing, but my loss ran deep . . . I was still desperate for drugs: worn down by what was happening with Mum, and I knew my time with you was limited . . . It was the best and worst day of my life.’
‘How was it?’
Sarah drew breath. ‘Because I got you, because I held you in my arms and you clung to me, like you knew . . .’
‘Maybe I did.’ She felt a wave of sadness for the little baby who had clung to her mum, possibly able to sense that their time together was limited.
‘And it was the very worst day because I knew I would never love anything more and I knew I was going to lose you. And I knew I was going to die. I had it planned, and I didn’t fear it. I just wanted that hit.’
‘But you didn’t die.’
‘No. No, I didn’t.’
‘Did you, erm . . . did you see Prim and Grandpa after you had left, after you had me?’ She braced herself for the reply, quite unable to stand the thought of them organising clandestine get-togethers while she lay in bed sending nightly prayers up to her mum in heaven. It was unthinkable. And yet, a small, unselfish part of her wanted to know that Prim and Grandpa got to see their daughter before they passed away.
Sarah made no attempt to hide her distress, now obvious and still apparently lying very close to the surface. A question or mention such as this was seemingly enough to prick the skin and release the sadness.
‘No. I never saw them, and I thought I had got used to the idea of it, until I heard that Mum had passed away and I felt my world crash. It was really hard when Dad died too, of course, but Prim . . . I thought she’d go on for ever. I thought there was always a chance that she’d pick up the phone or answer my letters.’
‘You wrote to her?’ Jesus Christ! Did I unwittingly hand her the mail with your letters in it? Have I sat on the sofa with my nose in a book while she wrote you letters at the bureau, only feet away?
‘Not for many years. She asked me to stop. And I did. When I left the facility . . .’ Sarah spoke plainly and with more than a hint of justification in her tone. ‘Prim, despite our differences and being well into her sixties, stepped up to the plate and came and stayed close to where I was living, in a grotty shared house. She booked into a smart little B&B and she brought you to see me twice a day, no matter what my state. And often that state was not good. Not good . . .’ She looked at the floor with knitted brows, as if even the memory was too painful. ‘It was brave of her. I can see that now. Morning and night, she would come to that lousy bedsit so I could hold you and settle you, every day, twice a day for three months. I would kiss you sweetly on the forehead, trying to imprint myself on your memory – once when you arrived and once when you left. Do you remember anything of it at all? A smell? A thought?’ She asked with such hope it was pitiful.
Victoria shook her head. Nothing. Absolutely nothing. I wish I did.
‘I have survived on the thought that you might somehow have sensed me, remembered me in some way for all these years.’
‘I didn’t.’ She spoke softly.
‘I knew I had to give you up.’ Sarah was crying now, and didn’t bother to address her tears, as though the state was as natural to her as breathing. Victoria found it hard to hear. Sarah sniffed. ‘I thought I would die. I wanted to die. And I knew you deserved more and so I kissed you twice a day, every visit until my time ran out. Prim let me hold you one last time and left me with some money, and she took you back to Rosebank and I went even further off the rails . . .’ Sarah looked at her. ‘That was all I got of you. Three months, twice a day. One hundred and eighty kisses. And I cherish each and every one. No one expected me to survive, especially not me.’
‘I think losing your mum is one of the worst things imaginable. It doesn’t feel right. And I thought I had gone through it, but I was thinking today that I am going to have to lose you again one day, when you really die, and I don’t know if it will be easier or harder the second time around.’ She was glad of this openness and the seemingly calm manner in which they were now talking. It felt real, and it felt a lot like progress.
‘I hope it will be easier, because I don’t want you to have a day of sadness, but I also hope it will be harder because I hope by then you might feel a bit more favourably towards me. I know you are angry at me, doubtful of me, which I understand, I do’ – she put in the caveat – ‘but I would like some of that anger to have gone.’
‘I have been angry at Prim too, since I found out, and it has stopped me mourning her properly, I think. But today, I don’t know. I think she tried her best.’
‘She did,’ Sarah acknowledged. ‘She tried her best; I was not easy.’
‘Things seem a bit clearer right now, and missing her not quite so painful. I found her, you know, on the day she died.’
‘Oh!’ Sarah sighed. ‘I did not know that. That must have been terrible.’
‘It was. Even though she was older, I still never expected her to die, not really.’
‘I felt the same,’ Sarah reminded her. ‘I thought we would always have time to make things good. I shall regret it for the rest of my life. My consolation is that I know you would have brought her so much joy, so much joy . . .’
‘Daksha and I went shopping and for a coffee, and Prim asked me to buy her a balaclava—’
‘A balaclava?’ Sarah interrupted with a note of surprise.
‘Yes!’ Victoria laughed. ‘But she meant baklava, the Greek pastry!’
‘Oh, makes more sense.’ They both laughed.
‘I came home, and there she was in the garden room . . .’
‘Her favourite place.’
‘Her favourite place,’ Victoria concurred.
There was a moment or two of silence which felt a lot like peace as the two women, connected by blood and history, looked out over the water, where big ferry boats came and went, taking people out to the islands around Oslo. ‘I wanted to ask you something, Sarah.’
‘You can ask me anything.’
‘Why did you decide to tell me you had died? Why that?’ And there it was: the big question. The one that pained her the most. ‘It was so final and so brutal.’
‘I have avoided—’ Sarah stopped abruptly.
‘Avoided what?’ Victoria sat forward in the chair.
Sarah’s voice now sounded a little sticky, as if the words had to pass through a dry, nervous passage to reach her.
‘I have avoided telling you this because I didn’t want you to feel badly towards Prim. You are the most amazing human being, and that means she did it right! She did a good job. And I can’t, hand on heart, say that I would have done the same, had you been in my care, and it’s important to remember that.’
‘Avoided telling me what?’ Victoria pushed, her pulse now racing.
‘I didn’t know that Prim had decided to tell you that I had died. It was a dreadful, unbelievable shock to me. It still is.’ She toyed with the handle of her coffee cup.
‘You . . . you didn’t know?’ Victoria didn’t know what to think. This information told her that Sarah had not been complicit in the deception, but that Prim . . . her beloved, flawed Prim had deliberately chosen this act . . . this lie to . . . Oh, Prim! She steeled herself for what might come next.
‘I made contact with her when you were a toddler to say that I was trying to get myself straight, that I had met Jens and that things were looking up for me. And what I told you at the airport was the truth – Mum said she was doubtful of my sobriety, and I don’t blame her! I can’t blame her. All she had ever seen was me promising to get clean and then falling straight back into my old habits. She said she would only risk giving you back to me if there was a cast-iron guarantee that I wasn’t going to disappear, relapse or kill myself, as she was not willing to put you through that, and that you deserved more. I told her the truth – there were no cast-iron guarantees – and she said it wasn’t worth the risk, as you were happy, and she was right. And so I worked hard at getting back on my feet and then, when you were six, I contacted her again, and that’s when she told me you thought I had died.’
‘How did you feel?’
‘How did I feel?’ There was the unmistakable sound of a sob under her breath. ‘Like I had died, or a part of me, at least. Like all the grief I had felt for Marcus came rushing to the top, but worse, deeper, harder to handle. Like the small window letting in light was barred shut and the future was just as dark and lonely as my present. But I had to tell myself that you were happy and that she had her reasons.’
‘But she didn’t give you a chance! She didn’t give us a chance!’ Victoria raised her voice.
‘Because she had already given me so many chances and this was no longer about me. It was about you, the little girl who she wanted to protect and who she loved.’
‘But . . .’ Victoria felt the slip of tears over her cheeks. ‘But why would she do that? Why would she do something so extreme? So irrevocable? Why would she do that?’
‘To keep you safe.’ Sarah’s tears now matched her own. ‘Because she didn’t trust me and she knew there was no way back from what she had said without causing you the maximum of confusion and pain. Something neither of us wanted.’
‘She took you away from me! And she kept me away from you!’ Victoria sobbed.
‘Yes, but she did what she thought she had to do to keep you safe . . . and when you are a mother, you’ll be surprised what you would do to keep your child out of harm’s way. You need to try and understand that!’
‘But she wasn’t my mother! You were!’ Victoria’s tears now clogged her nose and throat as her eyes streamed.
‘Only in name, Victoria, only in name . . .’
The two cried together until their tears began to ebb, and they breathed deeply as calm returned. ‘It’s not easy for either of us.’ Sarah spoke softly. ‘And all we can do is keep talking about it, keep working things through until we reach an understanding. But this weekend feels like we have made a start. And never forget that Prim and I loved you as much as we loved each other, and that is how you and I will get through this: with love.’
‘Yes, with love.’ Victoria could only echo the beautiful sentiment. She realised she was shivering. ‘I’m getting a bit chilly. I think the temperature’s dropped.’
‘It does that. Do you want to get back? I know Jens will have prepared waffles, plus we have a birthday cake to eat!’
‘Yes, we do.’ Victoria stood, and the two walked back towards the apartment, side by side.
‘I feel like we have taken a step on to that bridge, Victoria, do you?’
‘I do.’ She nodded, looking to the other side of the water, towards Ekebergparken. ‘I do.’
THIRTEEN
The rain fell as Victoria boarded the plane and that suited her just fine. The plane began to taxi along the runway and her thoughts turned now to home – she was excited to see Daksha. As she soared higher into the sky, she looked down from the incredible vantage point at the city of Oslo below and thought of lovely Vidar. He was right: you could only really appreciate something when you were looking back at it, the whole picture from above, and what she appreciated was that Sarah had spoken the truth, and now she had the full
story, the answers she had been looking for. Opening her laptop, Victoria read the last two letters, hearing Sarah and Prim’s voices in her head as she did so, voices that were a little bit like her own.
October 2001
Rosebank
Epsom
Surrey
Sarah,
I have read your letter and I have cried an ocean.
It seems like you have given up, and that makes me feel very afraid because, if you are not fighting, then the fight is over, and the thought of losing you breaks my heart into pieces. You are my heart.
Please, please, I beg you, don’t give up!
I want to make you a promise that I will love Victory and care for her as I have you, with every fibre of my being. It has been a privilege to be your mum, and to take care of your little girl will be the same.
The sadness your addiction has brought us is more than I thought I would be able to bear. I cannot think that this little girl might suffer in the same way.
If you choose the drug, Sarah, if you want to end your life that way, as you seem so set on doing, then you cannot contact her. You cannot let her love you and get close to you, only to lose you. That would be too much, and trust me when I tell you the pain of being so helpless, unable to intervene, is more than any person, mother or daughter, should have to go through.
I am praying you choose to stay clean. I am praying you choose to come home with Victory and live a life! A wonderful life! But if you can’t do that – let your daughter have that wonderful life. A life not marred by drugs and the world that comes with that choice. A choice I will never fully understand.
I love you, Sarah, I will always love you, but I also love my granddaughter and I will fight to keep the world you seem insistent on inhabiting away from her door.
I will be there when you need me.
Keep me posted and know that my heart and spirit are broken, entirely broken. I don’t know how we have got to this.
I don’t and never will understand, but keeping Victory safe and secure means losing you, and that is something I will have to live with for the rest of my life.
The Day She Came Back Page 27
