It dawns on me then that there is also a possibility that my mother may have reverted back to her own maiden name.
The phone rings again, this time picked up almost immediately.
“What do you want now?” she asks, almost laughing.
“What was mum’s maiden name?”
“White…” she starts to reply.
“Shit, sorry, of course it is. I knew that. Sorry for bothering you…”
“Andrew, what are you up to? Tell me…”
“Do you think mum ever got divorced from dad?”
“No. I know they didn’t because dad told me that just before he died. They were legally separated, but never divorced.”
“…So mum would still be using her married name?”
“Legally, yes…”
“Thanks. Speak to you tomorrow.”
“Andrew…”
Clink. I hang up.
Which means that it has to be Alice S Jardine, the one without Mathew.
Excited, I reach for my wallet, dish out my credit card, and click back on “Full Details” beside Alice S Jardine. I follow the instructions on the screen, and I buy five credits for £9.95.
Five minutes later I have the address of my mother.
Alice Sandra Jardine, fifty-two years old, -my mother’s age-, and living in 22A SeaView Road in Hastings.
After twenty years of searching and wondering, I know exactly where my mum lives.
An hour later I fall asleep while planning my revenge. I will make her pay.
Chapter Fifty Five
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I wake up early on Friday morning, having been unable to sleep soundly all night long. A night full of weird dreams where I picture myself walking up the path to number 22A SeaView Road, pressing the doorbell and waiting for the door to open. A yellow door. The letter ‘A’ dangling obliquely from the door at an angle to the number ‘22’, looking as if it is going to fall of onto the ground at any moment.
I dream the same scene several times, but each time as I picture myself standing there and watching the door open up in front of me, I find myself waking up just before I ever get to see my mother’s face.
Filled with an energy that I haven’t felt before I climb out of bed and shower, breakfast and find myself sitting at my desk in the office before 8 am. The anger towards my mum has become my best friend and companion, and is acting as a shield to my true feelings, allowing myself to partially block out the terror that seems to lurk just beneath the surface, but which rears its ugly head each time my thoughts stray to Slávka. When I do, and each time I think of her, I channel the pain, funnelling it deliberately and very successfully towards my mother.
I hate her.
And I am going to make her pay.
The only problem which I have to solve now, is how. How am I going to make her pay? What can I do to my mother that will make her suffer for the pain she has caused her children, her own children, and her husband who died a single man and never got over the adultery of his only, beloved wife?
I am sitting staring blankly at my email Inbox when I hear a familiar voice behind me.
“Good morning Andrew. It’s good to see you at your desk so early. Working hard to make up for what I said the other day? Good job. Good job…” James says, shouting at me across the office as he steps out of the lift and walks past into his office.
I smile at him, waving briefly in his direction, then continue staring at the computer screen. Scheming. Planning. Preparing.
.
The rest of the day drags by and I get very little done. My thoughts are all somewhere else. Just before lunch, Gail emails me and asks me what I’m up to, trying to find out if I fancy lunch.
I say no, not wanting to talk to anyone today. An isolation that continues even after work when everyone else goes to the Lemon Tree, and I choose instead to go for a long, solitary walk along the south bank of the Thames, eventually ending up on the opposite side to the Tower of London.
With no real appetite, I head home and go to bed early, wishing for the evening to pass as quickly as possible, and for the next morning to arrive as soon as it can.
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I am up and out by 7.30 am, and am sitting on the train to Hastings by 8.20 am.
The train seems to go remarkably slow and no matter how much I will it to go faster, it frustratingly continues to take its own pace, uninfluenced by the importance of my plans and my personal need to enact revenge: to face the demons of my past; to purge my fears and set myself free.
Eventually, an hour later, the taxi I pick up at the station drops me outside of No 22A Sea View Road, Hastings.
Standing outside on the pavement I look at the building before me and then back at the address I have scribbled down on my pad of paper. I check it three times.
There is no garden path. No yellow door. No number 22 with a letter ‘A’ hanging off the door. Instead there is a great big billboard that announces the “Hastings Council Sheltered Housing Project” standing in front a large modern red brick six storey building, consisting of lots of one and two bed-roomed flats.
My mother is only fifty-two. Why is she living in sheltered accommodation?
I walk into a reception area and am immediately asked to sign my name in the book, after answering a couple of quick questions from a bald-headed, rather round fifty-ish looking man in a green council uniform.
“Who are you here to see?”
“Mrs Jardine. Alice Jardine?”
“And who are you?”
“Her son.”
The man looks at me.
“Her son? Do you have identification?”
I show him the contents of my wallet: my driver’s licence, two credit cards, a bank card and a Cannon’s Sport’s Club card.
“Can you sign the book please,” he instructs.
“So,” I say, putting down the pen and looking around me, and seeing several corridors and a staircase leading off and up from the hallway, “Where do I go? Where is No. 22A?”
“You go upstairs, turn left, and go half-way down the corridor. It’s one of the quieter flats at the back with a sea-view. Is she expecting you?”
“Yes,” I lie. “Yes. She’s expecting me…”
My hands are shaking as I take hold of the banister and go up the stairs two at a time. I can feel my heart pounding in my ears and the blood pulsing in my forehead.
As I turn left and walk through a set of brown, glass fire-doors into the dark corridor beyond, I can feel the anger rising within me. Stopping a few seconds later outside of the door with number 22A on it, painted on the wood in perfectly straight black ink, I briefly think to myself how different I feel this time in comparison to the time I stood outside number 38 Beech Gardens, hoping to find my mother in such different circumstances. Then I was full of expectation and repressed love that was threatening to burst out at the first possible opportunity, in spite of the years of neglect. This time I am full of hate. Hate and revenge.
I knock on the door loudly, eager not to waste a second more of my life on pursuing this stupid woman…
I hear footsteps and the door opens slowly before me...
A small, rather round and overweight woman in a green dress and a shawl wrapped around her shoulders stands before me, looking much older than her fifty-two years of age. I step backwards from the doorway, shocked and surprised by the size of her. I had expected someone taller than me, someone slimmer…
Her hallway is dark and I can’t see her face properly, but almost as if she is reading my mind she turns to her left side and flicks a switch on the wall.
Her face is instantly illuminated. Lined, worn and tired, round and plump. It’s Hannah in forty years time with twice her current body-weight.
I know without doubt, with blinding certainty, that this time I am looking into the face of my mother.
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The woman is staring at me now. I see a recognition in her eyes and without a word being said, either from me to her or from her to me, there is instant mutual acknowledgement of who I am, and who she is.
The colour in her face begins to drain away, and as she turns white with the obvious shock at seeing me, she starts to fall to her left against the wall.
Instinctively I lean forward and go to catch her, reaching out and grasping her under her arms as her knees go out from under her and she collapses. Too late to stop her falling, and shocked by how heavy she is, I manage only to prevent her banging against the wall or injuring herself, before I lower her gently to the floor, propping her up against the wall.
I feel a surge of panic. What have I done? Has she had a heart-attack? Have I killed her?
I stand up for a second, hovering above her, looking beyond her into the flat and then back down the corridor towards the reception.
My mind is racing, but like a rabbit caught in the headlights of an oncoming car, I don’t know what I should do.
Quick, I urge myself, I have to act quick…I have to get help…so I start to turn, intending to run back to the bald-headed receptionist and call for an ambulance, but I am stopped in my tracks, one foot already lifted and poised to run.
A voice, soft and gentle, but weak, very weak, is calling my name. A voice that I recognise now, calling to me from across all the years, piercing through the dark misty years of my youth. A voice that is calling my name.
“Andrew,…don’t go. Not now…don’t go away. Not again…Please stay…”
I look down at the crumpled body of my mother, and I see the woman’s face looking up at me, her eyes open again and alive. Her voice getting stronger, the colour now returning to her face.
“Don’t go Andrew. Stay. Please…”
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Bending down, crouching on my knees, I speak to my mother for the first time in my adult life.
“I’m not going anywhere. Are you alright? Shall I get help?”
“No…No. I’m alright. You just surprised me. It was a bit of shock. I think I fainted. But I’m okay now…I just need to catch my breath and then I’ll be fine.”
“Can I help you up?” I ask, my voice timid and shaking with fright.
“No, thank you. I can manage,” she says, and I can see strength flowing back into her body as she tries to push herself up and raise herself up off the floor. I reach forward my hand, and she leans on it for a moment, lifting herself up. She turns to me and smiles.
“Thank you…”
She is standing now, her face very close to mine. She is smaller than me by about five centimetres and she is looking up at me, searching me.
“Andrew…you are Andrew? Aren’t you?” she asks, quietly, and I can sense the excitement in her voice.
“Yes. And I think you are my mother, Alice Sandra Jardine?”
I ask it as a question with no malice or anger, and I realise with surprise that in spite of all the years of dreaming and planning, nothing has prepared me for this moment.
Her hands are reaching out to me, her fingers hovering centimetres from my face. As if she was asking for silent permission to touch me. To explore my features. To make sure that I am real.
I nod, and half-smile at her, fighting back a wave of emotion that is boiling up within me, inviting the first intimate physical contact with my mother since I was a tiny, tiny child.
Her fingertips are soft against my skin, a tenderness that I had not expected, and I start to cry as her fingertips trace the profile of my face. My nose, my mouth, my cheeks, my forehead.
There are tears in her eyes now. Silent tears. No more words are said.
She pulls her hand back and cradles it against her own chin with her other hand, as if she was protecting the feeling of touching my face and memorising the sensation and the experience. I see that her arms are shaking. She is scared. Yet there is a warmth in her eyes that is reaching out to me and touching me in some invisible way that I cannot properly describe, except to say that it is an instant rapport, a bonding, a connection that is establishing itself between us that neither of us can control.
The maternal bond that is established between a mother and her son.
Her tears are flowing down her cheeks now, and slowly, very slowly her arms extend outwards towards me. “Andrew…” she says my name tentatively. “My son…”
And in that moment I step forward, and this tiny, round woman, wraps me into her embrace and holds me close, rocking me against her.
There are tears now. Many tears. From both us. Stored up from years and years of life and yearning for something that should have been but never was. A well of tears that bubbles forth and flows unimpeded between us.
We stand there together in the doorway of number 22A, swaying gently back and forth in each other’s arms.
Mother and Son.
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“Come in and sit down,” she says softly, pulling back from me and holding both my hands in hers. “Come in and tell me why you have come to me now.”
I follow her back into her small, comfortable two bedroom flat, with a separate dining room and lounge. Everything is neat and tidy, clean, and fresh. The décor is tasteful, the walls painted ivory cream or yellow, fresh flowers in a vase on a dining room table.
“Your house is very nice,” I say, commenting on the obvious and feeling rather awkward, almost embarrassed now for the emotional outburst between us. Now the embrace is past, it feels strange. There is a connection between myself and this lady, my mother, but there is also a vast distance. A distance between us that I do not know how to start to cover. My mother is a stranger to me and I know nothing about her.
“Please, sit down Andrew,” she says to me, almost formally. “I will make us both a cup of tea.”
I sit down on a chair in the lounge and she disappears into the kitchen. I hear the kettle go on, and a moment later she is standing back in the doorway, just looking at me, her two hands resting on her large bosom. Looking at me as if I am a ghost that might just disappear at any moment, and she doesn’t believe what it is that she is seeing.
We look at each other, then I look away, deliberately breaking the intensity of the moment.
How do I start to cross the divide? To bridge the years lost between us?
Before I can think of anything she disappears again, and I hear cupboards opening and closing, the sound of cups, a fridge door, and then miraculously, my mother is there again.
She walks into the room and sits opposite me, putting a small tray down on a table between us, then sitting back and staring at me again, her hands once more flying defensively and nervously up to her chin.
Silence. She says nothing. I say nothing.
She leans forward and lifts the lid off the teapot and stirs it with a spoon.
“Just waiting for the tea to draw…” she says. “The best way to make English tea…” No sooner has the word ‘tea’ left her mouth, than she drops the spoon onto the table and lifts her hands both back up to her chin. “Oh Andrew, “ she declares, her hands shaking nervously against her face. “I don’t know…are you English or Scottish? …Where is that you have you been living all these years?”
A simple enough question, but one which shows how much of a chasm there is between us. A mother who does not even know the nationality of her own son.
“I am Scottish.” I answer, picking up the spoon and offering it back to her. “My dad was Scottish and we’ve lived in Edinburgh most of my life.”
As I speak and she takes the spoon from my outstretched hand, I feel a twinge of anger, and at the same time I realise that although I am feeling a little anger return now, the moment she opened the door and I saw her for the first time, all my plans for revenge and all the anger that I had armed myself with before I arrived had suddenly evaporated and disappeared. On
ly now do I feel some of it returning.
“Here,” my mother says, nervously pouring my tea and offering it to me. “Do you take milk or sugar?” So formal, so polite. So unlike how a mother should be to her son.
“No sugar please. Just milk,” and then , “Thank you,” as she hands the cup over to me.
“Would you like a biscuit too?” she asks.
“No thanks.” I reply.
We both take a sip of our tea.
“Andrew, please. …tell me. Why have you come today? I am so happy to see you, …but before I allow myself to get excited, I need to know why you are here…” my mother says, so small, so timid.
As I hear her say these words, I feel a strong urge to fly into her arms again, like a little boy running to his mother with a cut knee. But I resist, the anger within me nurturing itself and growing stronger.
There is a war going on within me: the anger fighting with the little lost boy who wants to be loved and needs a mummy. The injured soldier versus the little child. The soldier speaks next, rebelling against the weaker side of me that is so willing to seek attention and love, in spite of the past.
“I came because I was angry. Because something happened to me recently that made me realise that ‘enough-is-enough’. I needed to find you and confront you, because I needed to tell you just how much damage you have done to me and my sister. I needed to make you understand that I can never trust another woman and that I can’t have any decent meaning relationships because of what you did to me and my sister and my dad. You took away my ability to lead a normal life. You ruined my life. And I wanted to find you and tell you that it had to stop…you have to set me free and let me be myself. You have to let me love and trust and not …”
I am crying now. Again. And words are tumbling out of my mouth in quick succession without any sense behind them, all my careful planning and rehearsing something meaningful to say has been swept away by the reality of now. I speak in an endless flow, a senseless string of words that wants so much to capture the hurt behind them that has built up over all the years and with which I want to somehow convey how much I am hurting inside, …but failing to do so, as the words simply tumble out of my mouth one after the other in no particular order.
The Sleeping Truth : A Romantic Thriller (Omnibus Edition containing both Book One and Book Two) Page 41
