Suzanne poured coffee into two large bowls. I loved the way that the French drank out of bowls, though I had never got out of the habit of using cups and Suzanne always thought that was odd. “Cups are for tea,” she’d say for the first few years that I knew her. She didn’t bother pointing this out any more.
I sat down at the table and her cat, Lancia, jumped into my lap.
“So when does she get back?”
“Next Friday.”
Suzanne nodded her head. “Okay. You want to know what I think?”
“Always,” I smiled. “That’s why I’m here.”
Suzanne laughed. “I thought you came for my delicious tarte au citron.” She pushed a slice across the table towards me.
I shook my head. “Not this time. Honestly, I couldn’t. I can’t eat, right now. I just don’t know what to do.”
“You do nothing,” Suzanne said. “That’s what. Don’t tell her.”
“What? But he’s her brother, Suzanne.”
“Her half brother. Who she’s never known. She didn’t grow up with him. He is nothing to her. The love between a brother and sister, it comes from a shared childhood, shared parents...”
“Well, she only had one parent,” I pointed out. “Anyway.”
“So?”
“Well, it’s not like we were the standard nuclear family. I can’t use that argument. All she had was me.”
“So? So what?”
I looked up at her. “She’s an only child with only one parent, Suzanne. A brother will be a huge thing for her. It’ll practically double the size of her family.”
“She has us. She has Christian and your friends. She has Zara. She’s not short on people that love her.”
“It’s not the same as blood relatives though, is it?”
“Half blood,” Suzanne reminded me. “They share a father, that’s all.”
“That’s all, she says,” I smiled, ironically. “If only that was all.”
“Well, exactly.” Suzanne took a sip of coffee. “It’s more complicated than just telling her she has a brother. You have good reasons for not wanting him to be part of her life. Reasons,” she added. “Which Helena understands, or would do, if you told her. Which you shouldn’t. Because it will create a problem where there isn’t one.”
“But what if I’m keeping back something that really matters to her? What if she wanted a brother more than... she cared about anything else?”
“Anything else... meaning your feelings?”
“Well, yes. Look how she is with you and Zara,” I pointed out. “She’s crazy about you. She loves having her ‘family’ around. Even on the rare occasion that my mum or my sister visits, she gets excited. For an only child, having relatives – well, it’s a big deal.”
Suzanne shrugged and picked up the coffee pot. “With your mum and your sister, it’s uncomplicated. There’re no feelings to get in the way.”
“Yes, but whose feelings are we talking about? Mine. I feel selfish. What about hers?”
“She cares about your feelings. She already proved that when you told her about her father and she said she didn’t want to know him. She said it wasn’t worth it. Il ne vaut pas la peine. That’s what she said.”
“I know that’s what she said,” I told her. “But I’m worried that’s not how she feels, deep down. And this... this Sky. Well, he’s done nothing wrong. There’s no justification for keeping him from her.”
“I think you are justified. Because of the pain it’s going to cause you. Because of what it may do to your family, what meeting him might bring.”
I looked up sharply.
“See?” She said. “You’re terrified. You’re in a complete state about this and anyone would understand why, after what Martin did to you. The pain it will cause you outweighs any pleasure she may get from knowing him. He’s a stranger to her, remember. It would be just like meeting a new friend. They have no shared history, nothing. All they share is some genes. Half their genes. It’s not enough to disrupt your whole life and cause you this amount of distress.”
I looked up at her gratefully. “You’re saying this because you’re my friend. My very good friend.” I took her hand and held it tight. She leaned over and kissed and hugged me.
“Of course that’s why I am saying it. Someone has to. And Helena loves you too. She wouldn’t want you to be hurt.”
“So why am I not going to give her the choice?”
“Okay, think about it. Say that you do give her the choice. You tell her. And she decides, non. I won’t see him. Is that really a choice anyway? A free decision she has made?”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, she will be making that decision to protect you. Because she doesn’t want to cause you pain. Of course she would want to see him if given a free choice. It’s not a free choice anyway. So why give it to her?”
I put my head in my hands. “So, basically, she didn’t make a free choice about her father? That’s what you’re saying?”
“Of course she didn’t. Her choice was informed by her love for you.”
I looked up at her. “That doesn’t help,” I wailed. “Now I just feel guilty!”
“Well, don’t. What about you? You count too. You are entitled to think of yourself.”
I traced the pattern on the tablecloth with one finger. Slivers of sunlight fell onto the table and I turned to look out of the window. I loved the view from Suzanne’s kitchen, which looked out onto a beautiful orchard. A tiny robin was hopping around on the grass, looking for scraps or worms to eat.
“You’re right. I’m scared,” I confessed. “I have been since I told her about her father. She accepted my side of things almost too readily, too easily. She accepted that he raped me. She accepted that her father is violent and unworthy of her love. But she’s only ever heard my side of things, hasn’t she? Sky may tell it differently. Helena loves me and she doesn’t want to hurt me, but what daughter doesn’t want to know her father, to believe that he’s a good person who would have loved her, given half a chance?”
“And that’s the reason why you shouldn’t tell her about her brother. It’s for her own good, for her own protection.” She nodded towards Lancia, who was purring gently in my lap. “Let sleeping cats lie.”
“So what she doesn’t know won’t hurt her?” I asked. “Is that it?”
“Exactly. That’s what I’m saying. And it’s true.”
I contemplated this for a moment.
“We are the authors of our own lives,” Suzanne said. “You’re a journalist, Lizzie, so stop translating other people’s work and write your own story.”
“Very profound.”
Suzanne smiled.
“Or were you actually talking about what I do for a living?”
Suzanne smiled again and shrugged. “If you like. It’s up to you.”
*
Helena returned at the end of February. I could see instantly that nothing had changed and that Zara had kept quiet about Sky, and Catherine, as I’d asked her to. I felt a confusing combination of guilt and relief, but life resumed as normal. Helena attended classes at the lycée and competed or studied in the evenings for the ‘Bac Blanc’ – her mock finals – whilst cramming in driving lessons in between. She drove to all her tournaments, with me sitting beside her, and by early April she’d put in for her driving test. Then she got the letter she’d been waiting for: she’d been offered a conditional place at LSBU. She was happier and busier than I’d ever seen her, and I couldn’t help but be happy for her too and proud of her achievements, despite the undercurrent of fear and trepidation that was with me all the time.
At Easter, Helena again left for London to attend a campus tour and science fair at the University and to look for a part-time job. I waited nervously for a call from Zara to tell me that things had gone awry, that she’d let the cat out of the bag, or that they’d bumped into Catherine again – but nothing.
“No news,” said Zara, every time I phoned.
On Helena’s return at the end of the month, however, she was noticeably different. I picked her up at the station and she hugged me briefly and without emotion as I got out of the car. When I asked, she told me about the university and the new friends she’d made already, ones who would be on her course that September. But she didn’t initiate any conversation between us and soon fell silent – to concentrate, she said – as she drove us home.
When she got inside the house, I expected her to do her usual trick of unpacking as she walked through the house, leaving a trail of devastation in her wake. But this time she went straight into her bedroom, shutting the door behind her. I stood in the kitchen, waiting for her to appear. In the past, she’d spread her stuff out all over the kitchen and then sit at the table with her feet on a chair, drinking energy drinks and telling me her news, before getting onto the phone and speaking loudly and excitedly to her friends, leaving me to collect up her belongings, sort out her dirty washing and put her passport and English money away. This time, she was gone, along with her bags, the minute we got inside the door.
In the weeks that followed, she was often moody, irritable and withdrawn. Every time I asked her what was wrong, she’d simply tell me that she had a lot to think about and a lot to do; her final exams for the Baccalaureate were imminent and she hadn’t done enough work. She hadn’t been sleeping well, she said, but when I tried to talk her into going to see the doctor she insisted that there was nothing wrong.
“I just need to get on, Mum,” she’d say every time I poked my head round her bedroom door. “Can you shut the door please, on your way out?”
The old anxiety I’d felt in the months before Christmas began to creep up again. I knew that there was something more fundamental than exam stress going on. The only time she’d talk in more than single sentences to me was when she needed money or help in planning what she’d need to buy for London. There were a number of events going on at the Uni over the summer and she’d found a job, waitressing, at a restaurant nearby. She was planning to leave in June, as soon as her exams were over, and it seemed as though she couldn’t get away fast enough.
Suzanne told me to ignore her. “She’s a teenager,” she said. “It’s about time she started acting like one. Moody is normal. She needs to rail against you, to rebel. She’s never done that.”
Christian agreed. “She’s about to fly from the nest,” he said, more than once. “She’s preparing herself mentally to detach from you.”
I wasn’t convinced. In mid-May, I telephoned Zara. “Did anything happen?” I asked her. “When Helena was with you at Easter? She’s been in a really strange mood ever since.”
“I don’t think so,” said Zara. “I can’t remember now.”
“Well, what did you do? You know, when she was there? What was your daily routine?”
“I don’t remember. We got up. We had breakfast. Then she went out to look for work or she went to the Uni. I didn’t see that much of her to be honest.”
“What about in the evenings?”
Zara paused. “Oh, yeah. That’s right. Well, there was someone who phoned her a lot. A guy. Someone from her course, maybe?”
“Zara!” I said. “Thanks for telling me!”
“I thought she’d tell you herself.” Zara sounded indignant.
“Sorry.”
“That’s okay. She didn’t tell me very much, now I come to think of it. She kind of played it down, as though it wasn’t that important. I’m trying to think now. Did she tell me his name? I don’t think she did.”
“Where did they meet?”
“I don’t know exactly. I just remember her saying that she was off to meet up with some of the people she’d met at the science fair. And then this one guy in particular started to phone her. Quite a lot.”
“And? What did they talk about?”
“I don’t know. She never said much when I was around. It was just ‘Yes’, ‘No’, ‘Okay then’ and stuff like that. And then she’d say she was going out.”
“How do you know it was a guy then?”
“Just an impression. You know how girls can be when men are around.”
“I know how you can be when men are around,” I said, and we both laughed.
Zara continued, ”I saw a strange name come up on her phone once or twice. When she was in the bathroom, and she’d left her phone lying on the table. A couple of times it rang, and I wondered if it might be you calling, so I got up and had a look. But it was a name I didn’t recognise so I didn’t think I should answer it.”
“Can you remember what it was?”
I hadn’t noticed Helena’s phone ringing much at all, since she’d been back home. She was always on her iPad – which she now kept in her room, whereas she’d previously left it lying around the house, or in the car. She’d always been so casual about it in the past, that I’d been worried it would get lost. Now I hadn’t seen it leave her sight.
“No. Sorry. I think it might have been French.”
“Really?” My spirits lifted a little. That would be good. A French lad. They would study together and come home together. I supposed there were likely to be a lot of Europeans on her course.
“Well, I don’t know why I say that. It was just the impression I got. The name seemed French. But I couldn’t tell you what it was. Sorry.”
“That’s okay. Not to worry. If you remember...”
“Yes, of course. I’ll call.”
A few days later I seized my opportunity. Helena had virtually stopped competing, saying that her exams were too close now, and that she’d be entering the English leagues soon enough anyway. However, a good friend and team member had fallen ill the night before a swimming gala and Helena had been asked to step in. Her driving test was scheduled for the following day and I had no doubt that she would pass. She was a competent driver, and I reflected with some sadness that this was almost certainly the last time she’d need me to sit beside her as she drove.
Helena was silent throughout the twenty minute journey to St Denis, giving me brief, snappy, replies whenever I spoke and eventually an, “I’m trying to concentrate, Mum!”, after which I gave up trying. I wondered for the millionth time what on earth was wrong with her. I hoped she wasn’t taking drugs. Not recreational drugs – I knew she wasn’t stupid enough to do anything like that – but performance enhancing drugs, steroids or suchlike. Those drugs could have an effect on your moods and your sleep, I knew that. They could change your personality, not to mention the physical side effects – they could cause liver and heart problems, and fertility problems too. They could damage my daughter’s young body; I had a right to be concerned. I glanced across at Helena, who was immobile beside me, her eyes fixed firmly on the road ahead. I prayed that wasn’t what she was doing: drugs. Maybe it was this relationship she’d got into instead – maybe it wasn’t a good one. Maybe he was a bully; maybe he was controlling her, or pushing her around. Something had to account for the way she was behaving. But I didn’t like that thought much either. I really needed to know what was wrong. After all, maybe she needed my help?
When we arrived Helena went off to change and I’d just settled myself down on the edge of the spectator area, when she appeared from the changing rooms in her costume, her hat and goggles already on her head.
“Have you got any change, Mum?” she called to me. “For the lockers. I’d forgotten – I’ve got no cash.”
“Sorry. I just—”
A loud whistle blew on the pool side and a few feet away I could see her team captain standing up and walking towards the pool.
“Never mind,” said Helena, quickly. “I’ve got to go. Can you look after my stuff?”
“Of course.” I stood up as she kicked her swim bag under my seat, pushed a jumble of clothes into my arms and promptly disappeared. I watched for her to appear on the pool side and then folded her jeans and sweatshirt neatly and placed them on the seat next to me. I bent to pick up her socks, which had rolled in her trademark ball between my feet. As I did so, I saw that the zip of her swim bag was open and that her phone was about to fall out.
I glanced back towards the pool and saw her lining up with two other girls. A whistle blew again and she bent forward, ready to dive. As soon as she hit the water, I grabbed her phone from her bag. I guessed right that the code would be the same as the iPad – Helena was useless with remembering numbers – and so I quickly unlocked it and scrolled through her texts.
I didn’t have to scroll far before I found a name I didn’t recognise. It was from someone called ‘Fre’. With one eye on the pool, I opened it and read, “Great. When are you back in London then? Meet you from the station?” Bingo. That was easy. Although it didn’t sound as though he was French. It sounded as though he lived there, in London. And the text was in English, of course. So that part wasn’t right.
I looked up. I could see Helena’s pink swim hat bobbing up and down. She was three quarters of the way across the pool and would be tumble turning any second now and swimming back in my direction. I scrolled down again, quickly. Helena’s text to ‘Fre’ read: “Wait till I see you. Tell you more then.” I looked up again. Helena had turned. Up popped her hat; she was coming towards me now. I held the phone down below the seats, out of sight and sat back in my chair and cheered.
‘Fre’. What kind of a name was that? I didn’t even know how to say it. It was shortened, most likely. But why would you shorten it to three letters that didn’t spell anything that made any sense? Unless you were trying to disguise that person and at the same time remember what you’d named them, I thought. I waited impatiently for Helena to finish the lap and turn again. As soon as her head ducked under for the tumble I pulled the phone out and carried on reading. “Do you know why she just left and didn’t tell him?” Who? Who did Helena know who had left anyone? I decided to stop reading backwards and scrolled way back through their conversation – their long conversation. There were more messages than I could count. And as I read on, from top to bottom, it was abundantly clear that they were talking, amongst other things, about me. Me, and Martin. And about how Helena had been conceived.
My legs felt weak. I somehow hadn’t expected Helena to want to talk about her father to anyone. When she’d said she didn’t want to know him, I’d thought that was it: end of subject. She’d never mentioned him after that. She’d never asked any more about him and I’d thought the subject was closed. Although I had worried constantly that she might look him up on the Internet out of curiosity – maybe even change her mind and tell me she wanted to find him, after all – I somehow hadn’t imagined her talking to her friends about him, about me. About what happened. It felt so personal, such an intrusion into my life and my past to see it like that, on a mobile phone, reduced to a series of text messages.
And why did this boyfriend want to know so much, anyway? It wasn’t the kind of conversation you’d expect between a young woman and her new boyfriend. Most men, in my experience, didn’t want to know that much about your past. They’d listen if you wanted to talk about your parents, but they didn’t really need to know. Yet, in this conversation, he seemed to be prising the details out of her.
And then all of a sudden it hit me. ‘Fre’ was short for ‘Frère’. Brother. It wasn’t a boyfriend she was talking to. It was Sky.
Fear overwhelmed me. I looked up and took a sharp intake of breath. I’d run out of time; Helena was getting out of the pool. I’d lost count of the number of lengths she’d done. I just hoped she’d been too busy swimming or too far away to see what I was doing. I waited until she turned her back again and walked over to her coach, and then slipped the phone back into her bag.
*
Helena was pretty much silent again on the way home. She checked her phone, briefly, before getting into the car and I waited nervously for her to notice that it had been unlocked or that there was something different about it (had I inadvertently changed the settings or the predictive text or something on it?) but then she pushed it into her bag and got into the drivers’ seat without a word. Once, when we were on the route de Saint-Leu and heading back home, she asked me about her times, and whether I’d seen something her competitor had done on the seventh lap. I wasn’t sure for a moment whether she was testing me, to see if I’d been watching, and was about to challenge me and ask me what I’d been fiddling with whilst she was in the pool. But when I confessed that I hadn’t seen anything untoward, she simply shrugged and said that, “Obviously no-one else did either. Anyway, who cares? I’ll be swimming in London in five weeks’ time.”
When we got home and Helena was once again holed up in her room, I went into my own room and phoned Zara.
“‘F-R-E’. Yes, that’s it,” she said, excitedly. “I remember now you say it. I thought he was French. Word association, I suppose. I wonder how they got in touch?”
“You honestly didn’t tell her anything?”
“No. I promise you, Lizzie. I kept my word. It’s nothing to do with me. You know as much as I do. More.”
“More?”
“Well, you’ve read the texts.”
“I had to.” I felt awful. But if I hadn’t read them I’d still feel awful. Feeling awful seemed to be my default position of late.
“I expect they’ve been emailing too. You might be able to find out more if you go into her emails.”
“I’m sure they have,” I agreed. No wonder I hadn’t seen her iPad for weeks.
“Have you checked Facebook?” Zara suggested. “To see if they’re Friends?”
“No. I’ll do that now.” I walked to the computer while Zara stayed on the line, listening carefully for Helena’s bedroom door, to be sure that she hadn’t emerged from her room. “No. They’re not,” I said, after a quick search through her list of Friends. “But that doesn’t mean anything. Except that she hasn’t Friended him because she doesn’t want me to know.”
“Okay. I’ll see what I can find out,” Zara said.
“What? What do you mean?”
“I’ll talk to Helena. Fish a bit.”
I thought about that for a moment. “No,” I said finally. “Not a good idea.”
“Why not? She talks to me. I’ve always been more like a friend to her than anything else.”
“Yes, and she trusts you,” I said. “She’s coming to live with you for God’s sake. There’s a reason she doesn’t want us to know about this.”
“Yeah, she doesn’t want to hurt you,” said Zara. “That’s all.”
“Even so, the last thing I want is her finding out that you’ve been asking her questions and then going to me behind her back – and then she decides to go and live somewhere else and I won’t know anything. I won’t even know if she’s alright.”
“Ah,” said Zara. “So you just want me to spy on her?”
“Of course I do,” I said, irritably. “I’m her mother.”
“Okay, okay.” I could imagine Zara putting her hands up and making bug eyes and giving me her fake death stare, the one that always made me laugh.
I laughed.
In a perverse kind of way, this was almost a relief. At least I knew now what was wrong with Helena, the reason for her moods. It had been more than the pressure of her exams, I‘d known that. We’d always been close and she’d never shut me out like this before. Whatever Suzanne wanted to say about her rebelling, railing against me, this was all too abrupt, too sudden for it to be a strike for independence. And it was obvious from the text conversation that this was Sky she was talking to; I was in no doubt about that. I guessed that she was torn between getting to know her brother and hurting me, and that was her reason for her shutting me out.
Poor Helena. The conflicting emotions she was feeling were no doubt tearing her apart. As if she didn’t have enough going on at the moment, I thought to myself. I didn’t want her to blow her exams. I had to do something. And it may not be too late. If I acted quickly then maybe I could limit the damage; I could support Helena’s decision to see Sky, and I could check that Martin was no longer in the picture, out of their lives, keep one step ahead of it all. Who knows? It could all turn out just fine.
“So. Have you still got her phone number?” I asked Zara. “I need to phone her.”
“Who? Phone who?”
“Catherine,” I said.