Inheritance

by Thomas Wymark

By the time I sloped up to bed, someone (presumably Mum) had cleared the broken photos from the stairs. I’d forgotten about them and realised I hadn’t apologised for smashing them. I wished I had.

  I spent the night slipping in and out of sleep.

  I wasn’t disturbed by dreams or visions, but my new name came and went like a flickering light.

  I tried to imagine what my natural parents might look like. I thought about Michael and Rose. What physical characteristics would they have inherited from these people? What if the madness had passed to them too? Did it work like that?

  I turned in bed, first on one side, then the other. I moved my arms and legs to try to find a comfortable position. I lay on my back, then my front. I lay with my eyes open, then shut. I was so tired I would have happily gone to sleep forever, and yet I felt as though I could get up and run around the house to burn off energy.

  Eventually the birds outside greeted the new day with raucous chatter. The sun broke through the curtains and I followed the slow laser of light as it inched across my bedroom wall.

  I was grateful for the end of such an uncomfortable night, but would gladly have accepted another eight hours to try again.

  I texted, then rang, Neil.

  He was running behind for work and didn’t have much time.

  ‘We need to meet for lunch,’ I said.

  ‘I can’t, Chris. I’m so busy at the moment. I don’t think I have the time.’

  ‘Make the time, Neil. This is very important. I’ll be outside at 1pm.’

  He sighed. A sigh tinged with a growl. I imagined his eyebrows were raised significantly too.

  ‘Make it 12:30,’ he said. ‘But I won’t have long.’

  Dad said he was happy to take me into town.

  ‘I have things I can do there anyway,’ he said. ‘Will you want to come back here again afterwards?’

  I hadn’t really thought any further than lunch with Neil.

  ‘It might be a good idea for me to go home,’ I said. ‘I can make a start on the Internet then, see what options are available. And tomorrow I have another appointment with my counsellor, although I might cancel that.’

  ‘I’ll be in town for about an hour,’ he said. ‘Then I’ll come back to the bank and you can decide what you want to do then.’

  I packed my suitcase with the intention of leaving it in Dad’s car.

  ‘Do you want me to make you a sandwich, love?’ Mum said.

  ‘I’ll eat when I’m with Neil,’ I said.

  Neil kept me waiting for ten minutes. In fairness I had been five minutes early. We walked to a cafe a few minutes from his work. We ordered two coffees and two chicken and sweetcorn baguettes.

  When I first mention the word “adopted” the colour drained from Neil’s face. His eyebrows went way beyond raised. It fazed him so much that he knocked a great glug of coffee over the table. I had never seen him so shocked.

  I told him everything I knew about the adoption; the names; the insistence by the care-worker that I shouldn’t be told; the possible mental illness. I told him how much Mum and Dad loved me. I told him that, yes, of course I was pissed off with them at first, but somehow it all seemed to make sense now. I felt even more of a unit with them now.

  I told him that I had lashed out at my mum and pushed them both to the ground. That I had then blacked out for about an hour.

  We talked about my worry for the kids. If there was mental illness, would it affect them? Was it already in their genes?

  He rang his work while we were in the cafe and told them he felt ill and wouldn’t be back in until the morning. So now both of us were shocked.

  ‘I’m not sure how long I’ve got, Neil,’ I said. ‘To find them, I mean. The doctor could ring at anytime and tell me I have to go for a psychiatric assessment. I’m sure if that happened I would be put away somewhere. I have to find them before that happens. At least then I’ll know how the mental illness manifests itself, assuming it does exist.’

  ‘I’ll help you,’ he said. ‘We’ll go through it together. We’ll brainstorm and see if we can come up with ideas on how to trace them. We’ll work on it as a team. I’m sure we’ll find something.’

  I rang my Dad’s mobile, but it was switched off. I didn’t bother leaving a message, I knew he would have no idea how to retrieve it. We ordered another coffee each.

  ‘What about the kids?’ Neil said.

  ‘What about the kids?’ I said.

  ‘Are you going to tell them? About being adopted.’

  ‘They aren’t adopted,’ I said.

  Neil kicked me.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I was thinking of keeping it from them for thirty-seven years and then breaking it to them when they started going a bit doolally.’

  ‘You won’t have to wait thirty-seven years for that,’ he said.

  ‘Not if they’re anything like their Dad,’ I said.

  He kicked me again.

  I avoided answering his question about whether to tell Michael and Rose. I was only just starting to get my head around it myself, so I had no idea what words to use when telling the children. I would tell them, of course. I couldn’t very well fly off the handle at Mum and Dad for not telling me, and then not tell Michael and Rose.

  We left the cafe at quarter past one. Dad was already hanging around outside the bank when we got there. I told him I was going to go home and Neil lifted out my suitcase.

  I gave Dad the biggest hug, thanked him for everything. Thanked him for my life. I squeezed him hard. It made him cough. But he smiled through it.

  Neil dumped my suitcase into his car, and we drove home.

  Although Neil and I were home together, I felt uneasy. I kept him with me as I opened the windows downstairs. Made him wait outside the downstairs loo while I was inside. And I made him come upstairs with me so I could find a cardigan to put on.

  ‘Has that missing picture turned up?’ I said.

  Neil shook his head.

  ‘I’ve not looked for it,’ he said. ‘I’ve been busy cooking microwave meals. You have no idea how complex that is.’

  I Googled the surname Lapton and immediately brought up dozens of sites inviting me to trace my ancestors or to start my family tree.

  We both took turns, searching and researching. I discovered that one’s natural parents are more generally known as birth parents. We looked at the agencies that were available to help both adopted children and birth parents to get in touch with each other. And I found out how to get hold of my original birth certificate.

  I made initial contact with the local council to try to arrange a meeting to discuss my adoption and was told it might be possible to see my adoption file, once they had located it.

  Every time I heard a noise outside, Neil would have to go and make sure that there was no one there. But he had to wait for me to come with him if it meant he was going to be out of sight.

  After three hours on the computer I had to stop. I slumped down in the armchair. Neil chose the sofa. He put his feet up.

  ‘Bring me twelve paracetamol, six gallons of cold water and a frontal lobotomy, please,’ I said.

  ‘You already had the lobotomy years ago, remember?’ Neil said.

  ‘I remember,’ I said. ‘It was to bring me down to the same social level as you.’

  Neil dragged himself off the sofa and stood behind my chair. He massaged the back of my neck. I was pleased that it felt different to when my Mum had done it the day before. It took my mind of my pounding head.

  ‘I am scared, Neil,’ I said. ‘About where this is all going. Even if I find my birth parents, that’s not going to stop any mental illness if it’s already inside me.’

  ‘It might not be inside you,’ he said.

  ‘Where have you been the last couple of months?’

  ‘But couldn’t that just be as a result of your head injuries?’ Neil said. ‘It might not be a sign of anything more.’

  I admired his optimism, but would have prefe
rred the truth. Uppermost in my mind was the safety and future of Michael and Rose. I knew that Neil was the same. He would have thought about the consequences of me being mentally unwell. At the very least he would have wondered if it were true. My behaviour of late must have appeared more and more bizarre to him. He couldn’t not be worried.

  He stopped massaging and resumed his natural position on the sofa.

  ‘I’m seeing Colin tomorrow,’ I said. ‘Do you want to come?’

  I hadn’t planned on inviting him until the question came out.

  ‘It might be good,’ I said. ‘Then you will have met him, you’ll know where I’m going, and you’ll know the sorts of things we talk about. Then you won’t be so jealous.’

  ‘I’m not jealous.’

  ‘So, do you want to come?’

  ‘I’ve got work,’ he said.

  ‘You had work this afternoon,’ I said. ‘But here we are.’

  ‘I don’t think I’d get away with it again.’

  ‘You won’t know until you try. Anyway, you could always tell them you had to see a counsellor. That would worry them. They might decide not to throw so much work at you.’

  ‘Isn’t this all private though,’ he said, ‘what you and the counsellor talk about? Me being there might make things awkward.’

  ‘It’s only awkward if I say it is, and I’m the one inviting you.’

  He propped a cushion under his head.

  ‘I’ll see how I feel in the morning,’ he said.

  ‘I might have changed my mind in the morning,’ I said.

  He reached for the cushion and launched it at me. For an ex-rugby player, it was a very poor shot. Even if I had been standing on the chair it would have cleared my head by at least a couple of feet. It landed on the sideboard in the corner, knocking over a vase of flowers. He ran for the vase while I ran for a tea towel.

  ‘Pillock,’ I said.

  ‘I didn’t want to hurt you,’ he said.

  He picked up the vase and fallen flowers. I mopped the water from the sideboard.

  ‘It’s gone down the back,’ he said. ‘It’s dripping down the wall.’

  ‘So what are you going to do about it, Einstein? Do you know where the other tea towels are?’

  He lumbered off to the kitchen, vase in one hand, flowers in the other.

  We passed each other on his way back.

  ‘I’m going to stick this straight in the washing machine,’ I said. ‘You can put that one in too, once you’ve finished with it.’

  I walked into the kitchen as Neil hefted his strength to moving the sideboard away from the wet wall. I shoved the wet tea towel into the machine and left the door open.

  I noticed soil still on the floor from the plant.

  ‘Neil,’ I said. ‘You could have at least hoovered that up.’

  He shouted to me from the living-room.

  ‘Chris. Chris, come here.’

  ‘Don’t change the subject,’ I said. ‘It would only have taken you a minute.’

  Neil raised his voice. My heart went cold.

  ‘Chris. You need to come in here.’

  I ran into the living-room, wishing I had grabbed a knife first. Neil was red-faced. It didn’t look like it was from the exertion of moving the sideboard away from the wall. He pointed at the wall behind it. As I drew closer I could see there was writing.

  ‘Look,’ he said. ‘It’s been scratched into the wall.’

  I heard a scratching sound coming from downstairs.

  Neil moved as I crouched down next to him. My pulse shot up. I pulled my cardigan tight around me and leaned into Neil and sat on the floor, not daring to move. The words on the wall explained the missing photograph.

  “I KNOW WHAT YOU LOOK LIKE NOW”.

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