A sharp pain shot through my unseen leg wound. A thumping started up in my head and my pounding heart slipped its moorings again.
Neil squeezed my hand tight, as though holding me through the emotion would keep me safe. He was the anchor I needed to keep me from floating skyward, unable to cope with any more of what life had to throw at me.
Like a rumbling avalanche, thoughts crashed down, only to be replaced, moments later, with a new crop. All tumbling on top of each other. Each one buried beneath the one following. My mental list of questions doubled in number. And I still hadn’t had the full answer to one of my first — “why?”.
‘My sister?’ I said.
It didn’t sound as though the words had come from me. My mouth moved, my brain engaged long enough to get the two words out, but they sounded distant. As though spoken by someone else and echoed to us through this sparse room. I imagined us all sitting in a cave. Every sound amplified and thrown around the space by jagged formations and smooth rock-faces.
‘You had an older sister,’ my father said. ‘Have an older sister, probably. Her name was Emily. She was still a baby, really. Not even a year I don’t think. And your mother collapsed drunk on the floor with the front-door open. It was a shocking scene. Tragic.’
Again, more questions exploded into my head like popcorn. From what he had just said, it was clear that he didn’t know where Emily was. Or even if she was alive.
The smile hadn’t left his face. Not once throughout this imparting of information, and yet it had felt as though he was getting his own back. Getting back at me for arriving at his door and telling him I was his daughter.
‘I had no idea,’ I said. ‘There was no mention of it in the file.’
His smile grew. He looked like his photograph in the golfer’s directory. An uneasy feeling crept up my spine.
‘After that, of course, it all came out. How much she had been drinking, how out of control she had been. And all the while I thought we had been working towards a shared dream.
‘Within six months of that happening, Emily was adopted. Your mother couldn’t look after her, you see. Of course I protested, even offered to give up the practice, but that would have meant no money coming in at all. We all just wanted the best for Emily, so adoption seemed like the only route. I didn’t think I would ever get over it. It was one of the hardest things I ever had to bear.
‘I didn’t blame your mother, of course. But she blamed herself. She tried to pull herself together, tried to get straight, as it were, but it was always a struggle. You could see it in her eyes. I think there was something there, you see. Something running through her family, something fragile.’
Neil put his other hand on top of our already clasped hands. Shielding them. Keeping them safe.
‘What do you mean?’ I said. ‘Something fragile?’
‘I don’t know. I think her mother was the sensitive type. I suspect her father was a bit of a rogue. That was why she came over here in the first place, to get away from them. I don’t know the full ins and outs, she didn’t really talk about it much. But I sensed she liked the security she felt with me. The feeling that everything would be alright, she’d be safe. Do you know what I mean?’
I nodded. Neil too.
‘I really did everything I could. I worked less, came home during the day, tried to bring her back to normality. Then she got it in her mind that she was well enough to have another child. She was convinced that she would be able to cope. She convinced me too. That was when you came along. I really thought it was a turning point. I really thought that I would have a child to love and care for. To keep.
‘But it wasn’t to be. Even before you were born the authorities were making noises, looking back at what had happened before, looking into your mother’s medical history. I think they had made their decision before they even came to see us. So once again our lives were ripped apart. You were taken from us.
‘Well, I’ll be honest, it almost finished me. It was almost too much for me to take. But I tried to hold strong — for your mother’s sake really. Strong and supportive.
‘But her drinking got worse after that. Her moods were appalling and she became quite physical. I would just take it, of course. I couldn’t fight back, it wouldn’t have been right. In the end I think life just got so unbearable that even the drink wasn’t numbing it anymore.
‘I encouraged her to seek out her family, to make redress between them all, but she was reluctant to do anything. We carried on with our daily lives. I pushed on with the practice, hoping that the extra money would bring some sort of stability into her life. She even went back to the library for a short while, but I could see it was no good for her.
‘Then one morning I woke up and she wasn’t there. In the bedroom I mean. It had become increasingly rare for her to wake up before me — because of the alcohol. But I thought she may have gone downstairs to prepare breakfast, she did every now and then.
‘Every night she would leave her clothes on a chair by the bed, ready to wear in the morning. As soon as I saw her clothes still folded on that chair I knew that something was wrong. I felt her side of the bed and it was cold. I slipped out of bed and into my dressing gown.
‘I found her on the stairs. She had tied one end of a rope to the top of the banister and the other end around her neck. I think she just climbed over the banister and hung herself. She had made no noise. And there was no note. The world had just got too much for her. And I could understand that. Losing my children was the most awful thing. It’s something you never really get over, you know?’
I wiped the tears away from my eyes and dug into my pocket for a tissue. My nose was running and my body shook. Finding no tissue, I wiped my nose on my sleeve. Neil’s arm came around my neck and shoulders, and he rested his head on mine. I sobbed quietly.
I was aware of my father standing up. The coffee mugs clinked as he picked them up and placed them on the tray. His footsteps echoed away to the kitchen.
‘I’m so sorry, Chris,’ Neil said, his voice barely above a whisper.
I shook my head.
‘It’s just so sad,’ I said. ‘So, so sad.’
A tap gushed in the kitchen, followed by the sound of a dishwasher being opened and the cups and spoons being placed in it.
The tears were dripping off my nose and cheeks and falling onto my trousers, making damp patterns of sadness.
My father’s footsteps echoed back into the room.
‘I’m sorry, Christine,’ he said. ‘I suppose this has all come as quite a shock to you.’
I sniffed and looked up at him. A benign smile on his tanned face. Looking down at me. He looked like he was sorry for me.
‘It’s OK,’ I said. ‘Was she … I mean, had she … been there long?’
‘She was quite dead when I found her. The police suggested that she had got up in the middle of the night to do it. I had been working so hard that I slept through just about anything. They said there was no way I could have prevented it. I suppose she had been determined, you see. Determined to make amends for what she thought she had done. She blamed herself for you and Emily. Blamed herself for the way things had turned out.’
‘How were you?’ I said. ‘How did you cope?’
‘The only way I knew how. I just threw myself into my work. It’s what she would have wanted. It was our dream to make the practice work, to make a success of it. So that’s what I did. I just got straight on with making it work. For her. For her memory.’
I realised I was burning hot. Not just my face, but my whole body felt like it was on fire. I sat back and fanned my face with my hand. Neil looked to my father.
‘Is it possible to open a window?’ he said. ‘I think a bit of fresh air might help.’
My father nodded and walked to the small window between the bland paintings. He pushed it open, but not too far.
‘Ernie has a habit of trying to get out of open windows,’ he said. ‘So I have to be quite careful.’
I stood
and walked over to the window. My father stepped aside as I approached.
‘Are you OK?’ he said.
‘I’m fine. I’ll be OK in a minute. Just a bit of fresh air, that’s all.’
The small window was slightly higher than head height, looking up to look out I could see grey clouds shunting slowly across a pale blue sky. I realised it had stopped raining. The world was moving on. Relentless and reliable. Never really changing. Individual stories developing all the time. Lives ending, lives beginning, lives struggling. But out of this little window, the world remained constant. Oblivious to my tears, not caring less, or more, about my sadness. I breathed in the air. Listened to the birds. Seagulls calling on the wind. Soaring on the breeze, searching for the next meal. I wondered how long seagulls lived. Did they die of old age? Why weren’t our streets littered with the bodies of dead birds, just worn out of life, dying as they flew? What happened to all the dead birds? I turned from the window.
‘What happened to her?’ I said. ‘Afterwards? Was she buried?’
‘At the church in Cawsand. Her family didn’t even come over. It was ever so sad.’
I nodded and swallowed back more tears.
‘You said earlier that she got … physical? What did you mean by that?’
‘She wasn’t herself,’ he said. ‘She would lash out, become more aggressive. She had an anger inside her.’
I couldn’t bring myself to look at Neil. His scratched face and body were already etched into my mind.
‘Did she ever hurt anyone?’
My father looked surprised by the question.
‘Hurt anyone?’ he said.
‘Did she ever hurt anyone else?’ I said.
He frowned. The lines already on his forehead deepening further.
‘Part of the reason I wanted to find you,’ I said. ‘And my mother, if she was still alive, was because of what’s happening in my life at the moment.’
I glanced at Neil. He gave me a tight smile.
‘About three months ago,’ I said. ‘I was attacked. Mugged. Someone hit me over the head, and when I fell I hit my head on the pavement.’
I lifted the hair from my forehead. He winced at the scar.
‘And since then I’ve been having blackouts and things. Voices and visions, nightmares. All horrible. And also I’ve been experiencing physical changes in myself. I’ve been more aggressive, more angry. And I’ve felt stronger too.’
My father sat back in his chair, folded one arm across his chest and rested the thumb of the other hand under his chin. He tapped his nose gently with his forefinger. He looked as though he was listening to a bedtime story. Eyes drifting off, imagining the scene I was painting for him. His ever present smile ever present.
‘I have had swelling to my brain, due to the head injuries, but the doctors have become additionally concerned about some of the things that have been happening to me. I’m due to have a psychiatric assessment in a couple of weeks. To ascertain whether or not I have a mental illness.’
I swallowed and rubbed my eyebrow. My father continued tapping his nose, and eye-drifting.
‘One of the questions the doctor asked me, was if there was any history of mental illness in my family. That was what started this whole thing off, finding my birth parents. That’s why I only found out recently that I had been adopted. Because I asked the question of my … adoptive parents. Obviously, they didn’t know. So now I’m here. Asking the same question of you. Is there any history of mental illness in my family?’
My father flinched at the question. Stiffened. That gave me the answer. Not the answer I wanted, but the answer I had been bracing myself to expect. His head twitched slightly and his drifting eyes came crashing back to reality. His Adam's apple moved up and down as he swallowed and the redness returned to his neck.
‘So there was something,’ I said. ‘Was it just her, or did it go further back in her family?’
A momentary confusion passed across his face, then his whole body seemed to relax.
‘As I said,’ he said. ‘I think both her mother and father were unusual types. Who knows what went on back through the ages. I really didn’t know much about them all. But there was obviously something not right in your mother. I hadn’t wanted to tell you. You didn’t really need to know. But seeing as things are happening to you to.’
I nodded. Tried to loosen my shoulders.
‘I had expected it,’ I said. ‘It kind of makes sense. What about your family?’
‘Mine? Oh, we’re all fine. Apart from a tendency towards heart attacks. My father died of one, and an uncle. My brother has heart problems too. That’s why I play golf. Keeps me going. Keeps my heart working, you know?’
‘I wonder if it’s possible to get medical records for my mother. And maybe her family?’ I said.
My father shook his head.
‘From all that time ago? I wouldn’t have thought so. Do they keep records that long? I can’t imagine they would. I wouldn’t know where to start even. Perhaps the Internet?’
I hadn’t really meant to ask the question out loud, my mind had just started tumbling thoughts again.
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