When we breathe it’s almost synchronised, only a fraction of a second keeps us apart. A lifetime and a fraction of a second’s breathing time separate us in these quiet, uncertain minutes. I want to say something. Something pithy and clever, something that’ll cement me in her mind as someone she’d like to be connected to. My mind isn’t working like that: its fingers keep reaching, grabbing at words, phrases, sounds, even, to piece together and say, but those things keep slipping away, out of reach, unobtainable.
We are sitting in the flower garden as it’s time for afternoon tea and most of the residents who are able will be having tea and cakes down in the rec room where I was with Mrs Lehtinen.
‘This can’t be happening, right?’ Abi says. ‘Cos if you ever met my parents, my mum, you’d know that this couldn’t ever be happening.’
‘I’m guessing your mum never mentioned me. Not to you or her husband.’
‘Husband? My dad, you mean. My mum’s been with my dad since she was seventeen. She came to Brighton to start university, and stayed with my dad’s parents cos they knew her parents back in Nihanara, you know, the country in Africa?’
I nod, I’ve heard of it. If I’d had any idea that was where my DNA came from I might have paid more attention in my geography classes.
‘They fell in love after a few months of knowing each other, and just before my dad finished his first law degree they got married.’ She recites the story as though she has heard it several hundred times. I used to be the same. I’d ask Mum and Dad about how they met, when they got married, over and over again. I used to pore over their pictures, looking at their clothes, their faces, the faces of the people around them. I wanted to know everything about their love and their life before me.
‘My mum and dad did everything so right, they always do everything so right, that’s why this can’t be happening. Cos my mum? Sex before marriage? In the same house as my grandmother? Giving a child up for adoption? No way. NO. WAY.’ She shakes her head. ‘They still say a prayer before dinner. Even now. There is no way.’
All right, I think, no need to rub it in. I am their dirty little secret. Their. It sounds like Abi’s father is my father too. We are full blood sisters. They stayed together and got married. Had another child about ten years later. Forgot the child in the butterfly box ever existed because she didn’t fit into their cosy new life. I wonder why they left it so long? Maybe they kept trying and trying and it never happened. It might even have occurred to them after months and months of no joy that maybe they should have stuck with the one they had first.
‘I think I need to leave.’
‘What did you say?’ Abi asks.
My hands fall away from my face, trembling as I swivel slowly to look at her again. It’s uncanny – our features are arranged so similarly, I could be looking at a picture of myself from at least ten years ago.
Ten years ago Seth asked me if we could talk about having a baby. I’d stared at him for a long time, horrified at the suggestion. Yes, obviously we were together for ever as far as I was concerned, but a baby was the last thing on my mind.
‘Have I said the wrong thing?’ he asked.
‘I, erm, Seth, babies … I …’ I shook my head. ‘I don’t think I can.’
‘Not ever?’
I started to breathe deeply, I was about to start hyperventilating, panicking. ‘I can’t … I don’t know anything about where I come from, what sort of stuff is in my biology. What it would do to a child I have. I hate going to the doctors anyway because there are all these things they ask you and I can’t ever answer them because I was adopted and my mum won’t let me find my other parents, not even to ask about my genes, so I’ll never know. It’ll be worse with being pregnant, having a baby, that’s all about what can be passed on. And I won’t know. I’ll never know—’
‘Hey, hey, hey,’ Seth said and grabbed me into a hug to quell my panic. ‘Let’s talk about it another time. Or not. We’ll see how things go. It was a stupid suggestion.’
‘No, it’s not. We can talk about it another time, OK? Just not now.’
Ten years later, him mentioning that we might have made a baby was the start of the last conversation we had as a couple. Ten years ago there was so much going on, and I still looked as young and naïve as Abi.
‘I said, I think I need to leave,’ I reply.
‘Oh. Right.’
‘This isn’t … I’m not coping very well with this and I need to leave.’
‘Why don’t you come meet my parents? Maybe they’ll be able to explain all of this. You might be my long-lost cousin instead of, you know … Which would be mad, but kinda cool, too.’
‘Did you used to sleep in a cardboard box?’ I ask.
Abi frowns at me, her eyes darting up and down over me, checking me out again. ‘Yeah, why? Wait, how’d you know?’
‘I slept in one, too. It’s an old—’
‘Finnish tradition,’ she finishes. Her scrutiny intensifies.
‘Did she decorate it in butterflies? Your mum? I assume it was your mum who decorated it, and not your dad.’
‘No, I had hummingbirds. My eldest brother had eagles. My other brother had doves. Yes, Mummy drew them.’
Brothers? Brothers. I have a sister. I have brothers. They didn’t wait ten years to try again.
‘I really need to go now.’ My bag clatters to the ground when I stand and I immediately throw myself to my knees, gathering up my belongings, shoving them away because I feel exposed enough, I don’t need her to see anything else about me, to have something potentially negative to relay to her parents.
‘I seriously think you should come meet my parents,’ she says while I replace my bag’s contents and search thoroughly for anything I may have missed.
‘No.’ I shake my head. ‘No, thank you.’ Am I simply turning down an invitation to tea or the chance to meet my biological parents, the people who gave me the blood that flows through my veins? ‘I need to go.’
‘But—’
‘No offence, but over the years I’ve imagined meeting the people who could potentially be my biological family and it was nothing like this. If you don’t mind, I’m going to leave now. I need to go home, sit down, start to get my head around it.’
‘What do I tell my mum and dad?’
My shake of the head looks more dismissive than I feel inside, and the up and down flap of my arms seems far more exasperated than I feel. ‘I don’t know,’ I tell her, earnestly. ‘They’re your parents.’