12 years earlier
Robyn was standing in front of the mirror, putting the finishing touches to her outfit, not sure how comfortable she felt in a denim waistcoat, black suede chaps and a pink Stetson. It was way more daring than her usual dress code, but it fitted the Country and Western theme of tonight’s party, a joint celebration of her eighteenth and her mum’s fiftieth. The theme had been Sheila’s suggestion, and Robyn had gone along with it happily as it was the perfect way to bridge two generations and easy for most people – all you needed was jeans and a checked shirt. They were having a big hog roast in the Dutch barn, with hay bales to sit on and dancing until the small hours.
‘Mum! You look fantastic!’ Robyn laughed when her mum knocked on her open door. ‘Shania Twain, eat your heart out.’
Sheila posed in the doorway, in a plaid shirt knotted at the waist, a denim miniskirt and cowboy boots. She’d put her hair in curlers and it was spectacularly bouffant, and she had on false eyelashes and red lipstick. She looked so much younger than she usually did, but Robyn knew that from tomorrow onwards both of them would be back to fleeces, wellies and ponytails.
Sheila was smiling but she looked nervous.
‘I’ve got something to give you.’
She was holding a box. Robyn frowned, confused.
‘But you’ve already given me my present.’ Her parents had bought her a new surfboard. She’d taken it to the beach in Everdene that morning, catching wave after wave before dragging herself out and coming home to help with the party preparations.
Sheila walked across the room and sat on Robyn’s bed. Her face was serious. She was drumming her fingers on the lid, riddled with nerves.
‘I’ve been plucking up the courage all day to bring you this. I’ve even had a swig of Jack Daniels.’
‘Mum! I don’t understand. What is it?’ Robyn had never seen Sheila so agitated. It was odd, looking at this dolled-up version of her mother, and Robyn felt unsettled. She could smell the Jack Daniels, too. Sheila and Mick weren’t great drinkers. It didn’t fit with the lifestyle. The early mornings.
‘I know we don’t talk about it very often,’ Sheila began, hesitantly. ‘But it’s not because we want to hide anything from you. And we’d always talk about it if you wanted to. It’s just … difficult.’
She looked down at the box.
‘Oh,’ said Robyn, finally understanding. ‘You mean my adoption.’
Robyn knew her mother had been very young when she had her – still at school – and unable to look after a baby, and Sheila and Mick had adopted her when she was just three months old.
Sheila nodded. She ran her fingers across the wrapping paper covering the box. It was a musical manuscript, hundreds of black notes dancing across black lines.
‘I know we’ve always been open about adopting you. But I’ve never told you much about why. Before … you … I had three miscarriages. Late ones. The last one … was very late. I had to deliver him. A little baby boy. Tiny. Perfect.’
‘Oh, Mum.’ Robyn had always guessed that there must have been problems, but not that her mother had had to go through such an ordeal.
‘It was awful. Of course it was. I found it very traumatic. But your father found it even more difficult than I did. I didn’t think he would ever get over it. He didn’t speak for weeks. He wouldn’t talk about it. I was beside myself with worry. And I had no one to turn to. People didn’t talk about things in those days. You just got on with it. Or in Dad’s case, shut down.’
‘Couldn’t the doctor help?’
‘Your dad wouldn’t see anyone. You know what he’s like. How he goes in on himself.’
Robyn knew only too well. It was a year since the cows had gone and Mick’s livelihood had been snatched away. It was only in the past couple of months that he had emerged from his introspection and become himself again. It was hard for him, but it was hard for everyone else too. Especially Sheila.
‘You were like the sun coming out when you arrived. He became a different person. He doted on you from the moment he saw you.’
Tears welled up in Robyn’s eyes. She had been too tiny then to remember it now, but she could imagine Mick picking her up with his big hands, his eyes twinkling with kindness, his gentle voice.
‘And please don’t see it as a fault, but your dad doesn’t deal with the memories very well. Talking about your adoption makes him remember everything that happened before.’ Sheila sighed. ‘It’s part of my job to protect him. He’s strong in so many ways – there’s no one else I’d ever want on my side – but sometimes he doesn’t cope very well.’
‘I understand that, Mum. And you don’t need to talk about it. It’s in the past. I don’t need to know anything, really.’
‘We didn’t know much about you ourselves. Just how young she was. We knew she came from a good family from up country. But as of today, you have the right to search for her.’ Sheila swallowed. She obviously found the words difficult. ‘Your birth mother.’
‘I know,’ said Robyn. ‘But—’
‘Which is why I’m giving you this.’ Sheila rushed on, patting the box. ‘She sent it with you, the day you came to us. I’ve kept it safe for you. Now you’re eighteen it’s for you to keep.’
Robyn bit her lip and nodded, staring at the box as she handed it over. She took it. It felt very light. What other secrets were in here?
Sheila smiled at her daughter. She looked relieved but exhausted by the exchange. Giving Robyn the box was the right thing to do, but she probably also feared the consequences of handing it over. She couldn’t help wondering about that other woman, somewhere, who knew the significance of today, and was probably thinking about the daughter she had given up, and whether she would now try to find her.
It was up to Robyn. From today, she was officially an adult, responsible for her own future. But also her past.
‘All I ask,’ Sheila said finally. ‘All I ask is that you tread carefully, if you do ever want to find out more.’
‘I’m not going to open it,’ Robyn told her. ‘Not now. I’ll keep it safe, and if I ever feel the need, I will open it. But right now … I’m happy with who I am. I don’t need to know anything.’
She put the box down on her desk and put her arms around her mother, pulling her close.
‘Oh dear,’ Sheila half-laughed through tears. ‘I’m going to have to do my make-up again.’
‘Come here,’ said Robyn, wiping the black streaks from under her mother’s eyes. ‘There. That’s better.’
When her mother had gone, Robyn picked up the box again. She shook it and could feel a few items sliding about inside. Outside, she could hear a couple of cars arriving – probably the hog-roast man, or the DJ. She should go and help. Now wasn’t the time for emotional upheaval.
So she put the box in the bottom right-hand drawer of her desk and pushed it firmly shut.
11
And there it still was. Robyn lifted it out. It was a lever-arch box file of the kind found in an accountant’s office stuffed with receipts. To disguise the dreary grey of the cardboard, it had been covered in wrapping paper made to look like a music manuscript, with rows and rows of minims and crotchets and quavers punctuated by flourishes. The paper was a little faded now, the yellowed sticky tape lifting, but she ran her fingers over the notes, imagining her mother wrapping it carefully, wondering what she was feeling. Relief? Despair? Grief?
She lifted the lid.
Inside was a scroll of paper rolled up and tied with a red ribbon, a Maxell C60 cassette tape and a faded velvet toy piglet. And at the very bottom, a photograph with rounded edges, the colours faded now. It was of a baby in a white romper suit with a scalloped collar, lying on a yellow furry rug, looking up with the faint half-smile of someone who has just discovered the joy of recognising someone they know.
That must be me, thought Robyn. That
must be me, smiling up at my mum. She wondered who else had been there when the photo was taken, and if the circumstances that had led to her adoption had already unfurled. Or was this a happy moment before things went wrong?
She certainly didn’t look like a baby who wasn’t being looked after or who was in any kind of danger. She looked content, well fed and well dressed.
Just holding the photo made her feel a step closer to her mother. Knowing that perhaps she had taken the photo and had sent off the film to be developed. Had she rifled through a selection and picked this out as the best one to give to the baby she was giving away?
Or who was being taken away from her?
The thought was unbearable. Even at this early stage, the thought of her own child being put into someone else’s care was too painful to imagine. It was primal, the need to protect.
She picked up the tape. The writing on the label had faded into nothing and she couldn’t decipher the words. She turned it over to see if there was a clue on the other side, but that was blank. There wasn’t a cassette player in the house any more. Her pick-up had one, though. She shivered at the thought of going outside again, but her curiosity burned brighter than her desire to keep warm.
It was funny, she thought, how she had kept the box unopened for so long yet now she couldn’t wait another moment to examine everything in detail, to find out as much about what had happened as she could.
She pulled on her Uggs and a fleece and crept back downstairs. Thank goodness Clover still wasn’t back. If she saw her, she wouldn’t rest until she knew what she was doing. Twelve years younger than Robyn, Clover had been something of a surprise to her parents, and now her mother had told her about the miscarriages, Robyn understood why the pregnancy had been such a stressful time for them. She remembered her dad being anxious and overprotective, and her usually energetic mother spending a lot of time in bed. She must have been terrified of losing the baby. But by some miracle, Clover had made her way into their world, exuberant and noisy from day one.
There had never been any favouritism between them. No implication that Clover was properly ‘theirs’. They hadn’t been treated in the same way because they were so different and so far apart in age, but they’d had the same opportunities, the same attention, the same unconditional love.
Inside the car, she made sure the headlights were off and switched on the engine so the cassette player would work. Her hands were shaking slightly as she pushed the tape in. She didn’t know what to expect. A recorded message? Or worse, nothing? Might the recording have faded over the years? How long did sound last?
There was silence for a few seconds, and then she detected the sound of an expectant audience. The occasional cough. Then a round of polite applause. Whoever was about to perform must have appeared on the stage.
There was a moment’s silence, then the music began. It sounded more like a harp than a piano, the notes rippled so fast up and down the keyboard. And then a dreamy melody emerged, fragile yet insistent. It was spine-tingling, each individual note so delicate and yet when combined the music pulled you in with surprising strength, at some moments alluring, at others menacing and at the end, achingly sad. It built to a climax, and then drifted away.
Robyn felt a lump in her throat as the final traces faded, the melody becoming almost a ghost of itself. What was this piece of music, and what did it mean? She found it profoundly affecting, even without taking into consideration that it was something that held significance for her mother.
Was it her favourite piece of music? Was she the one playing it?
She listened to the rest of the tape, in case there was anything else on it, but it spooled through to the end in silence. She rewound it and listened again, and by the end she had tears pouring down her cheeks. That was the kind of music it was.
Afterwards, she sat for a while in the darkness and the silence. She knew that now she had to undo the ribbon on the last thing in the box.
She went back upstairs, putting the tape back and lifting out the velvet piglet, a soft squashy toy perfect for little hands to clutch. She held it to her face and breathed it in, but apart from smelling a little musty there was no scent that she recognised. Then she lifted up the scroll of paper and pulled on the ribbon. It came away easily, and she unrolled the thick green paper. It was her original birth certificate. She’d been issued with a fresh one when she’d been adopted, with her adoptive surname: Moss. But here were the details she had never known.
Her birthplace: Ronkswood Hospital, Worcester.
Her own name: Robyn Amanda. She had always known her parents hadn’t changed her Christian names, but seeing them there made her feel a surge of love for them and their respect for who she was.
And there was her mother’s name: Emily Anne Silver. Born in 1972.
Her father was Unknown.
She felt overwhelmed. Each of the words that were new to her were written in thick black fountain pen, as if to drive their importance home.
Silver. What a beautiful surname.
And Emily. She tried to picture her. Did her own dark hair come from her, or did it come from Unknown? And what of her bone structure, her stature, her grey eyes? Her soft voice; her lack of fear when it came to water and horses and heights? Her disinterest in fashion and her love of plants?
Emily Silver. Seventeen years old when she’d become a mother. Younger than Clover was now. She wouldn’t even be fifty yet.
Hello, Emily Silver, whispered Robyn. Our story starts again here.
12
1986
When she was sixteen, Emily Silver pushed a girl down the stairs at school. Backwards. She could have killed her.
It was the first thing in her life that was in any way out of the ordinary. And it had a massive effect on what happened later, because it proved, to the people who had the power to decide her future, that she was unstable.
But she wasn’t. Any sane person would have cracked under the pressure. If anything, it was proof that she was normal. But records are subject to context, and if people want to rewrite history, or use evidence against you, it can be difficult to prove them wrong, especially if you are vulnerable.
Everything up until the incident had been quite dull. Emily’s parents, Vivian and Neal, were older than her friends’. Her mum had her when she was nearly forty and her dad was forty-five. This made them both overprotective but slightly detached, as they didn’t really remember being young themselves by the time she came along. Her father worked in the planning department, enforcing building regulations and issuing completion certificates. His job meant they had the best house in the close they lived in, tucked away at the end with the biggest garden, because he’d been given first refusal when they were built – the only time he’d taken advantage of his position.
It was the kind of road where everyone washed their car on a Sunday. And if one person got something new, everyone copied. Like bay trees. There was a craze for bay trees in big pots outside the front door; a craze that Vivian started. The weekend after she put hers out, the local garden centre ran out. It had given her a little boost, to think that she had some influence in the close.
Vivian was just a wife and mother, which was OK in those days. She always looked worried, as if she knew she was getting things wrong. She fussed a lot over Emily’s father, and she didn’t have many friends of her own. She didn’t really socialise with the other mums in the close, being that much older. She would watch them come out in their fitness gear, off to the gym. Secretly, she wished she could prance about in Lycra and go for coffee with them afterwards. She knew they didn’t invite her to their little evening get-togethers, when they sold cookware or skincare or sometimes something much naughtier – she’d heard on the grapevine what they were selling: skimpy nighties and fluffy handcuffs – and although she didn’t really approve, she would have liked to have been asked.
Perhaps if
she’d been friendlier with all the other mums in the close, she’d have handled things with Emily differently.
Emily was about to sit her GCSEs at Wormestall High when it all started to go wrong. After primary school, her parents had wanted her to go to St Anne’s, the girls’ convent on the other side of town, with its hideous purple uniform that made its pupils a laughing stock. They thought she had a good chance of a scholarship because she was studious and she played the cello. She’d passed her grade five with distinction by the age of eleven, not because she was a musical prodigy, but because she practised doggedly for at least an hour a day, every day.
Emily didn’t want to go to St Anne’s. She was afraid the other girls would be too posh and glamorous, when she was just ordinary. So she used every trick in the book to persuade her parents that Wormestall High was the right school for her. Rhetoric and tears, mostly.
‘I don’t see the point of paying to go to school,’ she said, ‘when I can get a perfectly good free education and stay with my friends.’
‘But St Anne’s has so many more opportunities. And facilities,’ argued Vivian.
‘They both have the same cello teacher. Miss Bembridge is peripatetic. And that’s all I care about.’
‘We should let her go where she wants, Vivian,’ said Neal. ‘There’s no point in her being unhappy.’
‘I think it’s a mistake,’ said Vivian. ‘But whatever you think is best.’
Emily suspected her father was rather relieved not to have the pressure of school fees, but she was hugely relieved to have won the debate, despite her mother’s disappointment. She knew her mum just wanted the best for her, but the thought of St Anne’s terrified her. All those girls with long blond hair and endless legs.
She could disappear into the background easily at Wormestall High, because it was so big. Emily never wanted to be noticed, or be the centre of attention. Most of her friends from primary school were there, and everyone else soon got used to her being a little odd. Not a total freak, but she was a bit of a swot – she found work easy and didn’t mind doing homework. And she was useless at fashion.
A Wedding at the Beach Hut: The escapist and feel-good read of 2020 from the bestselling author of THE BEACH HUT Page 6
