It took years for that perspective to change and when it eventually did, recognition of the reality of her circumstances was like a punch in the gut. As an adult I came to recognise that she was no fighter at all. She was a helpless little girl, lost in a country in the midst of a turmoil all its own.
Chapter 30
The first Tuesday night I’ve spent alone since Guy first started coming over here passes without a response to my email. By Thursday, hitherto one of ‘our’ days, there’s still nothing. Meanwhile, his Instagram Stories are dominated by the exhibition in London and include a video of a demonstration he took part in, which involved lying on the floor as a woman did a handstand on his thighs, each leg spread horizontally like an iron girder.
While my mood refuses to lift, outside my plants are drunk on sunshine. Vibrant blooms jostle and spill onto the lawn; nasturtiums snuggle next to cornflowers and zinnia, while the spikes of hollyhocks nudge four feet of crimson splendour. Clumps of catmint bubble along the side of the path and each tiny jasmine flower has opened up, producing a dense, creamy mass on the pergola. I’m in the process of deadheading some phlox, when Jamie’s van pulls up outside.
‘Hey there,’ he says, opening the gate. ‘Only a small delivery today.’
‘Oh yes, I was desperate for some garden ties.’ I paid £2.99 for them just so I could have someone to chat to, despite the four hundred I already have in my shed.
‘Where’s my girl?’ He grins and for half a moment I think he’s referring to me. He drops to his knees as Gertie hurtles towards him.
‘Time for a cuppa?’ I offer, as he ruffles her fur.
‘It’s a bit tricky today, Ellie,’ he says, standing up. ‘I’m going to the hospice Mum was in. I offered to help with their new garden. So – any tips would be gratefully received…’
‘Hmm. Don’t take too many tea breaks?’
‘Noted.’ He hesitates. ‘Maybe they won’t mind if I’m a few minutes late.’
I make two mugs and we sit side by side under the shade of the cherry tree. He tells me that he’s only recently started to volunteer, but is already struggling to find as much time as he’d like; he plays in a local rugby team, which tends to eat up his every spare minute. That and seeing family and friends – of which there seem to be dozens. Mike is the one he talks about most. He is getting married next year and Jamie is to be best man, something he’s excited about and dreading in equal measure. He assures me he’s no public speaker. There is also a Greg, a Diane and Rachel, the last of whom was in the year below us at primary school. I remember her as a sweet, funny girl with an extraordinary voice that won her the role of Nancy in the school performance of Oliver!. Something in the way he talks about her makes me wonder if there’s more to their relationship than just friends.
‘How are things with you and your man?’ he asks.
‘Not great,’ I confess. ‘I can’t stop thinking about it.’ I tell him about the tickets Guy bought, the sweat I leaked into the upholstery of his car and how I ended up spending my birthday having a heart to heart with my parents instead.
‘And he hasn’t phoned?’
‘No, he just texted to say that he isn’t coming over.’
‘Maybe he’s just a dick then,’ he shrugs.
I snort. ‘I’m fairly sure that isn’t the issue. This is not the nuanced and insightful opinion I was hoping for from you.’
‘Yeah, whatever,’ he grins. ‘He clearly doesn’t know a good thing when he sees one. That’s all I’m saying.’
I take a sip of my drink. ‘Have you ever been in love?’
‘Me? No.’
‘Not the romantic kind?’ I ask.
‘Oh, I wouldn’t say that. I think I’m just holding out for the right girl.’
It strikes me that Jamie could be attractive, in a certain light. There’s something solid and straightforward about him, and a confidence that has grown with age. There are still glimmers of that shy kid, of course, but he holds himself in an entirely different way, one that suggests, rightly or wrongly, that he could more than look after himself.
Somehow, I can imagine exactly the type of girlfriend he’d end up with. She’d be pretty but wouldn’t realise it, even when he’d joke that he was fighting above his weight and absolutely mean it. She’d be a primary school teacher or specialist cancer nurse, universally popular and loved for her sunny disposition. She’d have no hang-ups beyond a dislike of some minor cellulite and every year they’d go on holiday with friends, to Cyprus or Turkey, or another warm destination where they’d enjoy all-inclusive drinks and—
‘Ellie?’
‘Sorry. Miles away. You must be ready to get back into the dating game again soon?’ I ask. ‘Surely you’ve got a couple of groupies in Sweden by now.’
‘That’s a long way to go for a date,’ he laughs.
‘Oh, that reminds me,’ I say, leaping up. ‘I bought your book! You’re going to have to sign it for me.’
I head into the house and return with the book and a pen, before handing them to him. The look of astonishment on his face makes me laugh.
‘Where on earth did you get this? I know you didn’t pop over to Sweden for it.’
‘Didn’t I say you could get anything on the internet these days?’
‘I think this could be my first ever UK sale,’ he says, shaking his head.
‘The first of many, I’m sure.’ He opens the book to the title page and pauses as he contemplates what to write. ‘Oh God, the pressure. This is like trying to think of something really good to write on someone’s leaving card.’
‘You’ll have to get used to it,’ I reply. ‘Hey, I bet your mum would’ve been really proud of this.’
‘Oh God, she’d have been unbearable. Neighbours wouldn’t have heard the end of it. The thing about being raised by a single mum is that nobody else can take credit for their child’s accomplishments.’
He lowers his pen. ‘I meant to ask: what do your mum and dad think about what happened with your man? You said you had a heart to heart with them.’
‘They think I should go to see my therapist again. They’re probably right.’
‘So why don’t you?’
‘I’m scared.’
‘Is she that bad?’
‘Colette? God no, she’s lovely.’
Then a text arrives on my phone. I balance my empty mug on the grass and open it up. It’s from Guy.
Hello Ellie. So sorry I haven’t been in touch. Things have been crazy. I’ll explain when I see you but I’m free on Tuesday if that works? X
I feel my heart swell and look up at Jamie. ‘It’s from him. All isn’t lost after all.’
‘Well. There you go then. You’ll definitely have to go and see your therapist now, won’t you?
‘Yes. I agree.’ I inhale deeply. ‘The problem is, she won’t want to come to the house. I’d have to go to her. Plus, one of the reasons I stopped going was that she wanted to “explore” my childhood. My… early childhood, that is. I don’t like doing that, to put it mildly.’
‘You mean, the place you lived before you came to England?’
I nod. He places his cup on the grass by his feet and straightens up again, crossing his arms over his chest. ‘It must’ve been tough coming here the way you did, at that age. Hardly knowing any English. None of us knew a word of your language – apart from “Salut”, which Mrs Hennessy got us to all learn for your first day.’
‘Sweet gesture, but I didn’t enjoy that. I’d have preferred to slip in to the back, unnoticed.’
‘But you settled in so quickly,’ he says. ‘You made friends straight away. It wasn’t long before you were just like any other kid. It was as if you’d been there for ever.’
‘My eight-year-old self would have been very happy to hear that. Hey, you still haven’t signed my book.’
‘Sorry, I’m an amateur. I keep getting distracted.’ He picks up the pen and starts to write.
Chapter 31
I don
’t remember anything about my journey from Romania to the UK. Mum and Dad say I slept most of the way, waking only when my in-flight meal arrived. They discovered later that I’d hidden the bread roll and pack of biscuits in my pockets for some future, unspecified emergency. I wore a pink T-shirt with Minnie Mouse on the front and a new pair of trainers with soles that lit up when I walked, items brought by my parents. There is a picture of me wearing them, taken in Heathrow, smiling as I held Dad’s hand on British soil for the first time. But as I was swept along to my new, better life, there was also an urgent topic on my mind.
I’d babbled on and on in Romanian, from the moment I got into the car at the airport. My new parents barely understood a word – it was beyond anything they had picked up from the Romanian audio course they’d been cramming for the last couple of months. But there was one thing I kept repeating. A name. Tabitha.
My first year in the UK is a blur, but I have a few stand-out memories. I remember worrying about where my next glass of water was coming from. Biting into the cling film wrapped around a sandwich, having never seen such a thing before. I was constantly hoarding food and Mum would often find bars of chocolate or fruit and cheese under my pillow. I was obsessed with where Tabitha was for a long time after I arrived in England. I asked about her constantly, begged Mum and Dad to speak to the orphanage to see if she’d been found, because I couldn’t live with the idea that she’d ever returned there. I had only a few photographs of her that had been taken by Dad and my favourite showed the two of us, standing in front of our adjacent beds, holding hands. I used to sleep with that picture, kiss it at night, before tucking it under my pillow to keep it close to me.
But however much I missed her, no part of me wanted to go back to Romania and the orphanage. I made that very clear to the stream of translators and social workers, counsellors and officials, who’d arrive at the house and fill me with anxiety by their mere presence. I wanted to stay in this warm, safe place that was full of food and music and where we did jigsaws and made cakes. Instead, I set about trying to persuade my new parents to find out what had happened to Tabitha, so that they could bring her to England too. Once my language skills had evolved enough to communicate this, they didn’t say an outright no like the Italian couple had when Tabitha wanted them to adopt me. But of course they didn’t say yes either. All of which was immaterial because absolutely nobody knew where she was.
Mum had promised to keep checking to see if my friend had ever returned. I’ve since learnt that Mum was in touch with a man who’d by then become a close friend of hers – Andrei Rucarenu, the Romanian director of a British-based charity. I don’t know him as well as she does, but he’s always been a compassionate, urbane and infinitely likeable man, with a fierce determination to do the right thing by the children of his country.
He promised that, if Tabitha ever returned to the institution – or indeed any of those his organisation worked with – he would be in touch immediately. A few weeks later, Mum sat at the end of my bed and stroked my hair as I asked about my friend for the umpteenth time. ‘I’m sorry, darling. Nobody can find her. But if anyone does, they will let us know straight away.’
As crushing as it was to have no idea of her fate, I was also relieved she had never gone back to the orphanage. Wherever she was, it would surely be better than there.
I concluded that perhaps she had found some parents like mine. Because, although I knew that people in Romania were generally not as wealthy as in the UK, I also knew – because Mum kept telling me – that the rest of the country was nothing like the orphanage. Not by any means. In fact, she’d said, it was a beautiful place, full of warm, welcoming people, plenty of whom were part of a loving, happy family. I thought about Felicia, one of the kinder educators at the orphanage, and remembered the affection with which she’d talked about her own three daughters. Perhaps she wasn’t the exception, after all.
Right from the start of my time in the UK, the focus of all my efforts was on trying to fit in. That, I was convinced, was the key to ensuring I’d never be sent back. My first major introduction to British children was at Sarah Hardy’s birthday party, a week before I officially started school. Sarah and I were to be in the same class. Her mother – a former colleague of Dad’s – had given the impression that the party would be low key; ‘just a handful of friends’.
Mum took me shopping a couple of days before, telling me through a combination of sign language and a Romanian dictionary, that I could choose whatever I wanted. I picked out a pale yellow dress with little painted tulips, netting under the skirt and a ribbon tied at the back.
My hair smelled of shampoo and was so clean that it squeaked. My nails were neatly clipped, without the half-circle of dirt I’d always thought was permanent. I had colour in my cheeks and the hollow pains in my stomach had gone. In a matter of only weeks, I already looked and felt a world away from the girl who’d stepped onto a plane a thousand miles away. ‘So pretty.’ Mum had smiled at me. Being pretty wasn’t something I’d given a second thought to until then.
Logic tells me that I must have been apprehensive, but the overwhelming feeling I recall on entering that party was wonder. At the attractive house with its huge front door and white, arched windows. The balloons that floated up in the hallway as I stepped in, clutching my new father’s hand, curling shyly into his side. My senses were overloaded with squeals of laughter, twirling dresses, music and wrapping paper. I could tell Dad was worried about there being so many kids, but Sarah’s mum just knelt down and said some kind words. Their translation was beyond me but their meaning wasn’t: we are going to make sure you’re all right here.
She took me by the hand, as Dad hovered. He wanted to stay, but after a few minutes I insisted he left like everybody else’s parents had. When he arrived to pick me up, twenty minutes early, I was playing musical bumps. My cheeks glowed and my belly ached from sponge cake. He didn’t need me to say what was already clear to everyone: I’d had the most wonderful time.
* * *
Over the next decade, I became as much of an English little girl as anyone who had happened to be born here. I joined the Brownies, ran for the county, stood for school council, made more friends, passed exams. I achieved a Gold in the Duke of Edinburgh Award scheme and went to a garden party at Buckingham Palace – home of the Queen of England herself – to collect it. I spoke with an English accent, I had a British passport and two English parents. As far as I was concerned I was now English.
For Mum, though, it was not as straightforward as that. She wanted to make sure that I didn’t turn my back on my Romanian roots and tried to angle my education and upbringing to reflect them. She cooked Romanian dishes and urged me to maintain the language. She continued to teach herself Romanian and stayed in touch not just with Andrei, but with several other Romanians she’d met and befriended during the adoption process.
She kept assuring me that, despite what I’d been through, Romania was a place of medieval castles and gothic churches, with charming towns and wonderful, warm people. She even got in touch with a local au pair from Suceava and invited her over for chats in my mother tongue. I went along with it for a while, then simply refused.
I couldn’t tell you the exact point the switch was flicked. One year after I arrived in the UK, perhaps two? All I know is that it was decisive. I didn’t want to know about anything to do with my old life. I didn’t want to talk about it, I didn’t want to think about it.
Perhaps this is why I’ve never felt any inclination to go looking for my birth mother. I don’t hold the slightest resentment against her for giving me away. I know enough about Romania’s history, about the poverty, the politics and the fact that she was one of hundreds of thousands of women left with no choice but to do what she did. But while I don’t think about her, or my birth father, or any theoretical brothers or sisters, there is one person I’ve continued to think about endlessly, whose fate consumed me for years after I stopped talking about everything else to do wit
h my past.
So when Mum comes to knock on the door of my annexe one afternoon, telling me she wants to talk about Tabitha, there is a moment when I struggle to comprehend the statement. In the immediately preceding moment, I’m preoccupied with thinking about Guy and what I’m going to say to him the following day. To hear Tabitha’s name makes my heart jump and my first assumption is that Mum wants another conversation like the one we had on my birthday. That she wants to discuss my feelings, explore memories. The last thing I’m expecting is the conversation that actually follows.
‘Do you remember walking in on your dad and me a couple of weeks ago? We were having a… difference of opinion.’ She perches on the arm of my sofa and only then do I notice that she has a foolscap folder in her hand.
‘In the kitchen, you mean?’ I ask, pulling on my wellies and glancing at the weather outside.
‘Yes. It was because I’d found something when I was writing the piece for the Observer. I didn’t mention it the night of your birthday because there was so much going on already.’
I straighten up and look at her. ‘What was it you found?’
She opens the folder. ‘It was just after I’d returned from Romania. I was doing some online research and stumbled across the archive in a French magazine.’ She removes a printout, walks towards me and hands it over. ‘It’s a piece of photojournalism, won a couple of awards apparently. The picture that caught my eye was taken in 1991. When I read this girl’s story and saw the name and dates…’
My eyes scan a double spread dominated by a single, landscape photo and a headline that reads ENFANTS SOUTERRAINS.
‘It means “Underground children”,’ Mum says, but it’s the image that interests me more than the words. It’s of a girl with a sweet face, almond-shaped eyes of a dark brown hue and high cheekbones.
My hand shoots to my mouth.
‘It says her name is Tabitha in the caption,’ Mum says. ‘Do you think that might be her?’
The World at My Feet Page 15
