Inheritance

by Thomas Wymark

Richard asked me if I wanted to stay the night at his house. I said no. For no other reason than I hadn’t brought anything with me. I had always planned just to come down for the day. It felt a little odd staying over after only meeting him twice, even though he was my father.

  ‘Maybe next time?’ he said. ‘It would be lovely to really get to know you.’

  He gave me a lift to the station and waited with me until my train came. I think he was starting to feel more relaxed about the situation. I had been right. The whole thing was a massive shock to him. He obviously just needed a little time to get used to the idea of having a daughter again.

  The Cornish landscape moved past the train with stunning beauty. I thought that it would be lovely to stay with him for a few days. I wondered if he had now started thinking about Emily. My older sister. I had already looked Online for an Emily Lapton but found nothing. Obviously her name would have changed to that of her adoptive parents. And if she had subsequently got married it would have changed again. Perhaps she wasn’t even called Emily anymore either. I wondered if her parents had told her she was adopted. Whether she had grown up knowing. If she had been older when she was adopted, she would have known anyway. One day with her mother and father, the next day with new parents. How would that have affected her? Maybe it had been better not to know.

  I decided to contact Mary Brookes again. I wanted to let her know I had met my father but also wanted to ask her about tracing my sister. I knew she would be disappointed that I had taken it upon myself to find my father without going through the “proper channels”, but time was against me. With only two weeks until the assessment I had to move as quickly as possible.

  I closed my eyes and let the gentle movement of the train pull me into sleep.

  I saw the woman, writing at the table. The other woman who was the younger version of me. She snapped shut her writing book and looked up, her eyes wide. I moved towards her. She flinched away from me. I saw a sadness, something within her. Something her eyes couldn’t hide. And a terror. Of something external. She was scared of me.

  I woke up with a new idea in my head. A possible way to find out more about my mother’s state of health.

  But first I had to talk to Michael and Rose.

  To them it was just about the most exciting thing they had ever heard. To find that they had a secret past. A hidden family that they knew nothing about. I didn’t tell them about how my mother died, only that it was a long time ago. I expected them to feel sad, but they didn’t. All they wanted to know was when they could meet Richard. They insisted that he should never be called Dad by me, or Granddad by them. Because Nanny and Granddad were their real grandparents. But they still wanted to know everything about him.

  ‘I’m sure we’ll all go down there one day,’ I said. ‘I’m not sure how much room he has at his house, but we could stay nearby. I’m sure he’d love that.’ Although, as I said it, I realised that Richard hadn’t asked about Michael and Rose at all. Or Neil. Perhaps he was still trying to get his head around that part of it.

  Mary Brookes saw me a week later.

  ‘You were very lucky,’ she said. ‘Finding your father without going through us could have been disastrous.’

  ‘I have a sister,’ I said. ‘She’s a couple of years older than me. She was adopted too. Before I was. Is there any way I could trace her?’

  ‘Do you have anything other than her name?’

  ‘Her date of birth, and roughly when she was adopted.’

  ‘You could look on the adoption registers,’ she said. ‘If she’s looking, there might be a match. You may have to update the names first, so that they include birth names.’

  A tight ball scrunched in my stomach. I wished I had brought a bottle of water with me.

  ‘Mary,’ I said. ‘I only have just over a week left before I have a psychiatric assessment. I haven’t been able to find any records about my mother at all. She died such a long time ago. All the indications are that she was mentally ill. That was why she had to give us up. But I really need to find out exactly what was wrong with her. How it affected her day to day life.’

  I rubbed my eyebrow. Mary nodded.

  ‘I had this idea,’ I said. ‘A way of finding out a little bit more about her. About how she was when I was adopted, when she gave me up.’

  From my handbag I took out the adoption file pages that Mary had given me before. I laid them out on the table. I pointed to a name on one of the pages.

  ‘This person here,’ I said. ‘Janice Ward. She was the one who was in charge of all of this. Her name appears several times, and her signature. I think she was the one that wrote a lot of this stuff. She would have met my mother. Spoken to her. Perhaps more than anyone else, about all this. She would have seen what she was like.’

  Mary knew where I was going with this. Even before I finished speaking she was shifting about in her chair, tapping her fingers on the table in front of us.

  ‘Everything they would have done is confidential,’ she said. ‘And this person is probably long retired by now. She would have dealt with so many cases, there’s no way she would be able to remember one particular case. And she certainly wouldn’t be able to talk about it.’

  ‘In a little over a week,’ I said. ‘I may be sectioned. Taken away from my children and husband.’

  ‘Knowing what happened to your mother won’t help,’ Mary said. ‘It won’t change anything for you.’

  ‘It will if I can find out exactly what was wrong with her. If I know what kind of mental illness she suffered with, it will help my case, I’m sure it will.’

  Mary closed her eyes. Her shoulders sagged.

  ‘I’ll make a few enquiries,’ she said. ‘But I don’t think we’ll be able to do anything. I think you’d be better off trying to find your older sister. She may have found out more about her past than you have.’

  I searched Online and by phone. Three days of effort found her.

  Janice Ward.

  There had been an address for her in my adoption file, but it was only the address of the office in Plymouth where she worked. I eventually found someone there who knew of her. She had apparently retired quite some time ago. They thought she was still local to the area.

  Then on the evening of that day, four days before my assessment, Mary Brookes surprised me. She emailed me saying that she too had found Janice Ward, and had contacted her. She had explained my situation to her and Janice had agreed to talk to me. There was a phone number. My heart pounded and the adrenalin pushed up inside me. Neil and the kids were watching television. I grabbed the phone from the kitchen and took it upstairs with me. Shut the bedroom door and rang the number.

  Janice Ward answered the phone. She sounded a bit like Mum. Her voice was warm and gentle. Few words, but they all sounded like they mattered. Like they deserved your attention even if she was only talking about the weather.

  ‘I was expecting your call,’ she said. ‘Mary Brookes told me that things were quite urgent.’

  I was pleased she couldn’t see me blush. The way she said urgent made it sound like life and death. I now wondered if this really qualified as urgent.

  ‘It is to me,’ I said. ‘I have an assessment in a few days time, which may have a big impact on my future. It would affect not only me, but my children as well. And my husband.’

  ‘Mary told me a little bit about your situation,’ she said. ‘To be honest, I think she was surprised that I remembered your case. We deal with so many. You try to remember them all, you feel like you should, but it’s hard to remember sometimes — emotionally as well as mentally. But I do remember your case. At least I think I do, from what Mary told me.’

  My body fizzed as she spoke. I curled and stretched my fingers. It was the same feeling I used to get from wearing woollen gloves and running around outside. Fizzy hands that I would clap together to dispel the tickling feeling, and warmth flowing over my body.

  ‘I understand you’ve already made contact with your bi
rth father,’ she said. ‘How has that been?’

  ‘It’s been lovely,’ I said. ‘He was quite shocked at first, which was only to be expected, but he’s great now. I’ve been down there a couple of times to see him.’

  ‘Where does he live?’

  ‘In St Germans — not too far from Cawsand.’

  ‘Mary said that your mother had died?’

  ‘Shortly after I was adopted. She killed herself.’

  Janice didn’t immediately respond. I wondered if she had heard me. Wondered if mine really was the case she thought she remembered.

  ‘I’m so sorry to hear that,’ she said. ‘Poor girl.’

  Did she mean my mother or me?

  ‘Mary didn’t mention where you are living now, Christine. I’m in Plymouth — is that far from you.’

  ‘I’m about three hours away,’ I said. ‘Between Bristol and Bath. Could we meet up?’

  ‘I’m afraid I’m not particularly mobile anymore,’ she said. ‘It’s quite difficult for me to travel. But I would be happy to see you if you could get down here?’

  I was ready to catch the next train down there. I could probably be there by about 9pm.

  ‘I can come down anytime,’ I said. ‘Tonight if you like.’

  She coughed or laughed or something. I’m not sure if she thought I was being serious or not.

  ‘Anytime in the next few days,’ she said. ‘I don’t do much during the day.’

  ‘Would tomorrow be too soon?’

  ‘Tomorrow would be fine,’ she said. ‘What time can you get here?’

  ‘I’ll have a look and give you a call back. Is that OK?’

  I spoke to Neil first. Checked if he was OK for me to disappear off down to Plymouth. He said he would take another half day and pick up Michael and Rose from school. Michael wanted to come with me to meet Janice. I said no.

  I checked the train times and rang Janice back. We agreed that I would be at her house by about 10:30am.

  My body still fizzed with excitement. I felt like I wanted to go out for a run, or tidy the house again. I did neither. Just paced around downstairs, walking from room to room. Sitting down then jumping up again just a few minutes later. I tried my crossword book but just couldn’t concentrate. In the end, I had an early shower, spending ages soaking and washing and soaking again. I only got out when the water started to run cold. My fingers had crinkled, like they did when I used to have a bath when I was little. Mum used to say it was because I ate too many prunes. I didn’t even know what prunes were.

  Although I only had a few days before the psychiatric assessment, I felt as though things were coming together. Michael and Rose were back home; Neil and I were as close as we were when we’d first met; I had found my birth father; and now I was going to find out more about my birth mother.

  Eventually the fizzing inside me subsided enough for me to go to bed with the expectation that I might actually get some sleep.

  And I did.

  Until I was woken by the ringing of the phone.

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