A few days later, Juliette sat opposite her mother in the sitting room of the house she’d grown up in – Cynthia said it would be better in there, although Juliette hadn’t been quite sure what her mother had meant by ‘better’. Barney was at school and her father was at work and the house felt only half-inhabited, as if ghosts instead of real people lived there. Juliette felt oppressed by the formality of the room today, of sitting across from her mother, perched on the edge of the sofa with a cup and saucer on her lap while Cynthia looked thin and sad in Giles’ armchair. Why couldn’t they sit in the kitchen where the sun streamed in and forced a modicum of jollity into the atmosphere, where the Aga gave the room some warmth, some substance? Juliette felt her heart beating fast in her mouth, and despite the wild erratic thuds it was a vacant, empty feeling somehow, above her tongue, and it wouldn’t go away, even when she sipped her tea.
‘What is it, Juliette, dear?’ asked her mother eventually, once it was clear Juliette wasn’t going to start the conversation. ‘Why have you come home like this? Is there something wrong?’ She paused. ‘Is it Stephen?’ she asked, although she knew it wasn’t.
Juliette looked at her right hand, in its black lace fingerless glove, holding the delicate handle of the teacup clumsily, like a chimpanzee in one of those tea ads. Why couldn’t she just have had a mug? She looked at her mother’s hands, which although small were large-palmed and raw with washing, it must be all the cooking she did; she really ought to use hand cream. She looked past her mother to the window-ledge, full of knick-knacks and photos: of Juliette and Barney on the beach at Salcombe; of Juliette with Popcorn (the latter proudly wearing a blue and white rosette, his head at a jaunty angle, as if he knew he had won); of Giles and Cynthia on their wedding day, the looks in their eyes innocent, from a different era (the only photo of their wedding she’d ever seen, now she came to think of it); of Giles as a boy with his brother and their parents, and this picture was from another even earlier time, another universe – the dour dark clothes, the two boys’ ears jutting out of their brutal haircuts, their parents looking old despite surely being still in their thirties, the grimly startled expressions, fear of the camera she supposed. She wondered why that picture had been framed at all, it wasn’t a good one.
‘Juliette,’ said her mother again. ‘What are you thinking about, dear?’
The question yanked Juliette out of the distant past, back to more recent events, to the furniture-polish smell of Somerset House, the inky curl of the letters, the thickness of the paper, the words. The phone box.
‘You know,’ said Juliette finally, but she didn’t say it accusingly, just in a let’s get on with it kind of resigned tone.
‘You wanted to know where you’re from,’ said Cynthia. ‘It wasn’t for your course, was it, darling?’
Juliette shook her head slowly as tiny tears formed just above her eyelashes, and they sparkled like drizzle in sunshine.
‘What have you done about it, Juliette?’ said Cynthia. ‘Have you done anything?’
Juliette put down her tea on the mahogany coffee table and the gentle clink of the fine bone china, of the cup and saucer chattering with each other sounded loud, explosive to them both.
Juliette stared out of the window, past the eclectic assortment of photos, towards the house across the street, and she saw that the neighbours had a brand-new car – it was red and shiny with a ‘C’ number plate, although she would never normally have noticed, she had little interest in cars.
Juliette sat silently still. She didn’t know how to broach it, even though she’d come home specially, on a Friday – after her abortive phone search she’d felt like she’d explode with the not-knowing. Cynthia waited resignedly, looking at Juliette’s black-lace hair band and tights and gloves and thinking it all looked a bit over-the-top, how the lace didn’t go with the pink flowery skirt and Aran knit jumper and heavy boots, but she didn’t say anything of course, she didn’t want to hurt her daughter’s feelings.
‘Elisabeth Potts,’ Juliette said in the end. ‘Who is Elisabeth Potts?’
Cynthia tried not to react, but her back stiffened.
‘Where did you get that name, Juliette?’
‘You know, Mum,’ Juliette said. ‘It’s on my birth certificate.’
Cynthia looked forlorn then, as if it were game over, although of course really it had only just started. This was the end of the family she’d tried so hard to create. She’d always been aware Juliette would want to know one day, but she felt like she’d failed her daughter somehow. Poor Juliette, she was too young still – she, Cynthia, should have managed it better. It was never meant to be like this.
‘Maybe we ought to wait until your father gets home,’ said Cynthia. ‘We should all talk about it together, as a family.’
‘NO,’ said Juliette. She looked shocked at herself. ‘I’m sorry, Mum, but I can’t wait any longer.’ And Cynthia saw that she couldn’t, that she was bursting with hope and fear.
‘It’s just I know the name,’ said Juliette. ‘I know that I know it, but I can’t think how, or where from.’
Elisabeth Potts. A name to remember? Juliette sat across the room from her mother, auburn hair glowing, her mind searching forensically over her past life, searching out the time, the place, she had first heard those two words. Elisabeth Potts.