‘You missed Harriet’s childhood,’ I say to Lydia. She is standing by the long window. The glass statues gleam.
‘So you said,’ Lydia replies with an edge to her voice. ‘Can we move on from this now?’
There is still so much I need to know, so I change the subject, telling her I’m thinking of joining a photography group. ‘I’ve always loved taking photographs.’ She gives me a look that says I am stating the obvious. ‘I have lots of photos of Harriet when she was little.’ I can’t resist adding this last part even though I know I shouldn’t keep wanting to make Lydia aware of how much she lost when she abandoned Harriet.
There is a photograph of Harriet in the green album, the one that only has pictures of her. She is sitting on the sofa looking sleepy.
Zora is evening teaching, so I allow Harriet to stay up past her bedtime. We snuggle up on the sofa watching television. I’ve put on the gas fire with the living flame and it glows orange-yellow as we eat the chicken soup I’ve made. I go and fetch my camera and I take a picture; Harriet looks so contented. She blinks in the flash of light and asks if she can have a chocolate biscuit now that we’ve finished the soup. ‘Mummy Z would let me,’ she adds.
Harriet is learning to play us off against each other. I think of Lydia. Perhaps I should nip this in the bud but instead I allow her to fetch a biscuit from the tin.
Her cheeks are pink from the warmth of the fire. She is wearing a fuchsia-coloured dressing gown and slippers with the head of a bear on each foot. She has begun to protest that they are childish – ‘after all, I am nine now’ – and she has asked for a new pair for Christmas.
‘Shall we listen to some music?’
Harriet nods and I put on Kind of Blue.
‘Your dad loved music, especially jazz. He used to play the trumpet. Your granddad got him one, second-hand.’
‘Was he good at it?’
‘Not very,’ I answer truthfully, remembering the flat, squealing noise the trumpet used to make when Cal was practising. We were all glad when he stopped trying.
‘Where’s the trumpet now? Maybe I could learn to play it?’
‘At your grandparents’ house somewhere, I expect.’
‘Completely buried, probably,’ Harriet replies. ‘Granddad likes things better than people.’
‘Why do you say that?’
‘He only pays attention to things.’
Harriet has realised that she is largely ignored when she goes to her grandparents’ house. Like her birth mother, she isn’t accustomed to this; it unsettles her. We don’t visit often – it feels too hazardous. We are squeezed into a small space in the kitchen between the window and the back door. Every surface groans with piles of useless things. It’s not that Mum and Dad don’t love Harriet. It’s more that they can’t bear to see her – she looks too much like Cal. And Zora and I aren’t her mothers, we are only her guardians. Harriet could be snatched away from us at any moment, and how would they bear another loss?
‘What else did Daddy like?’
‘He was a really good swimmer; he enjoyed that.’
‘I love swimming too,’ says Harriet.
There is a photograph in the green album of Harriet in the sea; she is smiling broadly, splashes of water rising up around her. When was this taken? I don’t remember taking it.
‘I wish I could have some ice cream,’ says Harriet, hoping to charm me with a broad smile.
‘You’ve just had a chocolate biscuit.’
‘I still wish it though,’ she says, snuggling closer.
‘Shall we go to Wandsworth on Saturday?’
Harriet nods enthusiastically.
Cal is buried there. We go every now and then to put flowers on his grave. Zora disapproves, she thinks it’s morbid, but I make it into an outing. Harriet and I go and tell Cal all the things we’ve been doing and then we eat ice cream sundaes in a café in his memory.
‘What did my birth mother used to like?’ asks Harriet.
Zora and I avoid discussing Lydia, even though we are aware that Harriet needs to know about both her parents. ‘I don’t really remember,’ I reply.
‘You do!’ says Harriet, looking shocked at a lie she knows to be blatant.
I screw up my face as if I am trying hard to recall Lydia. Then I say, ‘She liked shopping. She had exquisite taste, your birth mother.’ And an exquisite amount of disposable income.
‘I don’t remember her,’ says Harriet. There is sadness in her voice. ‘Why did she leave me? Didn’t she want me anymore?’
I’ve had to explain this to Harriet too many times. She keeps asking, wanting confirmation that she wasn’t simply abandoned. I repeat the story Zora made up – not made up, exactly; it was more of an embellishment. ‘Your birth mother and Cal were deeply in love. They were going to be married. But then Cal died and your birth mother was so shocked and so very unhappy that she couldn’t cope with her life anymore. She was afraid that because she was so ill from grief she wouldn’t be able to bring you up properly. She didn’t want to lose you but she knew she had to do what was best for you. She loved you so much, and that’s why she asked us to look after you. Sometimes people give up the things they love most.’
‘Why?’ asks Harriet. ‘That’s stupid.’
She has a point, so I pretend not to hear. After a while, I add, ‘She wanted you to have the best possible life. We were Cal’s sisters and she knew how much we wanted you to live with us, so she brought you to us.’
‘Why hasn’t she ever phoned me or written me any letters?’
‘She misses you too much. It makes her too sad.’ I am losing my way in this. I can feel Harriet’s desperate need to believe me but I can also feel her doubt. The story is less plausible now she’s older. How can I make it believable yet at the same time convince Harriet that she wasn’t abandoned, that she was loved? I’m faltering in the fog of my lies – this story will only get harder to tell as the years pass. I can feel her hurt. Damn Lydia. She must have known it would be like this for Harriet when she left her with us.
Harriet is half-asleep. ‘Will my birth mother ever be coming back for me?’ she asks, with such longing in her voice.
‘What will we do if Lydia returns and wants to take Harriet away from us?’ Zora and I say to one another, almost every day, and almost every day we put the question to one side because we can’t afford to think about it.
Harriet says, ‘I love you and Mummy Z. I want to stay with you forever and ever but…’
‘But you’d like to know your birth mother too, is that it?’
She nods.
Could Lydia possibly come back for Harriet? It’s been so long that it doesn’t seem likely. Zora and I start to ask each other this question a little less often. But just as we are beginning to feel confident that Harriet will always be with us, Lydia returns.