Mum doesn’t truly think it’s wonderful news. I can tell by the way she’s trying really hard to smile. From the fear spinning in her eyes, I can tell she thinks it’s terrible news but she doesn’t want me to have another panic attack. She’s also doing what I did whenever she asked if the other children were still picking on me at school – she’s pretending everything’s fine, like I did with her, to spare my feelings.
‘Now, tell me what happened,’ she asks gently. She holds my hand and I know her eyes are pretending that I’m not wearing this jacket, which she hates so much even though she did take it in for me. ‘Did it not go as you expected?’
‘I didn’t plan it, Mum!’ I’m screeching. Screeching like the deranged person I feel I am right now.
‘Sorry, sorry,’ Mum says. She soothes me with her tone, with a few strokes on my hand. ‘Tell me what happened.’
‘You have to promise you’ll listen to me without interrupting and you won’t get cross or think I’m lying. You have to promise.’ I sound like I’m fourteen.
‘I promise.’
‘Which part?’
‘Pardon?’
‘Which part do you promise about?’
Mum stares at me blankly. Actually, I sound like I’m five.
‘Which part do you promise about, Mum?’ I insist, still in five-year-old mode.
‘All of it?’ she replies.
I sigh, relieved. If she does get upset I can remind her of the promise she just made.
‘Will you tell me what happened now then, love?’ Mum asks. She’s showing remarkable restraint in the face of my completely irrational behaviour.
‘About two weeks ago I went to a nursing home and I met this old woman who was a neighbour of … of those people.’
‘Which people?’
‘You said you wouldn’t interrupt.’
‘I know, love, but I’m not completely understanding you.’
‘She was Finnish, this woman. It was her that they … those people … got the idea for the butterfly box from.’ Mum nods, now she understands. ‘And she said that the daughter of those people works there.’
‘Daught— Sorry.’ Mum purses her lips to stop herself talking again.
‘I went to talk to her then I changed my mind but she came out to the car park and I spoke to her. We had a chat and I found out that she has two brothers and her parents have been together for nearly forty years. So her parents are both my—’ I’m finding it hard to say the word in relation to them and me. ‘I came home and I wanted to tell you but I couldn’t, so I didn’t. She kept ringing me but I didn’t reply. So she tricked me. Got someone to pretend to want to talk to me about an engagement ring, you know, the man I was telling you about who wanted one done really quickly? Then suddenly she’s there and then she’s there.’
I look at Mum, expecting her to speak. She doesn’t. Her lips are still pursed, as though waiting to be sewn together.
‘Her,’ I say.
‘Your birth mother?’ Mum says when she realises I need her to talk now.
I nod. ‘Yes. My birth mother.’ I can say it now that Mum has said it first. She’s broken the taboo so I can too.
‘I bet you were a bit surprised.’
A bit surprised? A BIT surprised? A BIT SURPRISED?! ‘Yes. It was too much for me, I had to get out of there.’
‘You must have been in all sorts of turmoil. I bet she was, too.’
I glare at my mother. I don’t mean to, but it sounds like she is putting herself in her shoes.
‘Don’t look at me like that, Clemency. It will have been a very difficult thing for her to do, to come and meet you like that. She won’t have known what your reaction would be, and imagine seeing for the first time someone you haven’t seen since you gave birth to them. Imagine how terrifying it would be. She must have been in bits anticipating it.’
At least she got to anticipate it, not like me, who had it sprung on them, I think in reply. ‘I suppose you’re right,’ I say.
‘I’m sure she’s thought about you all these years and I’m sure she was just bursting with the things she’s wanted to say to you after all this time. Did you speak to her at all?’
I shake my head. ‘She gave me the box with the photos that’s in the corridor, but we didn’t really speak.’
‘Would you like to see her again?’ Mum asks.
‘Would you mind if I did?’ I reply.
I’m carefully watching my mother: I see the edges of her smile touch her eyes, but don’t take over them. I see the strain from having to smile, the clenched tightness of the hand that is not stroking my back. ‘It’s not about me, love, it’s about what you want,’ she says eventually. So eventually that inside I think: I knew it! I knew you didn’t think it was wonderful news.
Mum doesn’t want me to get hysterical again, which is why she is playing along for now. She’s probably hoping this whole experience will have put me off, will stop me from even contemplating getting in touch with them again.
‘I don’t know what I want to do,’ I say. As much as it’s the truth, I need my mother to be honest with me. She needs to tell me what she really thinks. Over the years there’s been one abiding message that she has sent me: do not go looking for your other family. Do not do anything that will upset what we have. Dad wouldn’t have minded, but with Mum, it was obvious it would have been to her a huge rejection of who she was and what she had done for me. Why she was now pretending not to mind could only have been down to her not wanting me to become hysterical again.
‘OK, love,’ Mum says quietly. ‘I understand.’