The first conversation between Glory and Hope was as halting and awkward as Hope’s voicemail, but at least they were as nervous as each other.
“I got your messages as soon as you left them. But after so long it just took me by surprise. I needed a bit of time before I could call you back. I’m sorry.”
Glory was pacing up and down in front of her bed.
“No, it’s fine, it’s fine,” Glory said, her voice wavering. “In fact, there’s something I need to tell you.”
She stopped, wondering if she was really going to start this relationship by telling Hope how their father had betrayed them both.
“Go on,” Hope said with apprehension when Glory let her sentence hang for too long.
“Our dad died.”
“Oh.” Hope’s breath caught in her throat. “Recently?”
“Beginning of the year,” Glory said.
Hope drew in a breath.
“I just missed him. Oh God. I’m crying. Am I allowed to cry about this?”
Glory was glad that no one was around to see the tears that were quietly streaming from her own eyes.
“This whole thing is just . . . it’s weird, isn’t it?” Glory said after she had a second to collect herself, rubbing away the tears. “I don’t really know where to begin. Maybe we should meet in person, just us.”
“Yeah, maybe . . .”
“Well, I mean, we don’t have to do it right away. After all these years, we can wait a little bit longer!”
Glory’s joke was lost in how pathetic she sounded and she regretted her words instantly.
“Right,” Hope said.
“Sorry, that wasn’t funny.”
“It’s OK,” Hope said. “It’s . . . fine. Fine. But I need to go—sorry, not the best moment to end the call, but I’ve really gotta go. I’ll call you back later—or maybe tomorrow!”
Glory garbled a goodbye and tried to remain optimistic, but as twenty-four hours turned into thirty-six she put her ego to the side and sent a message that she had drafted and redrafted a number of times before pasting it into WhatsApp and hitting send:
“Hi! Just wanted to say quickly that I meant it about it being fine to wait. I feel like it came out funny, but I was being sincere. Don’t feel any pressure. Hope you’re having a good week. Glory x”
She regretted the exclamation mark but stood by everything else.
Hope replied a few hours later with a date, a time and a place, so meticulous and abrupt in her communication that Glory felt anxiety run through her. She tried to prepare herself for another potentially tense sibling reunion.
When the afternoon of their meeting came, Glory was at the restaurant extra early. Between the leather banquettes and the polished marble bar that formed the centerpiece of the room, she wasn’t sure where to sit. Sitting at the bar, elbow to elbow, could feel too intimate but sitting opposite each other in a booth would require much more eye contact. Maybe meeting at a restaurant had been the wrong idea from the start, perhaps they should have met in a park or another crowded place where there was enough distraction to fill any silences. In the end Glory sat at the bar with a clear view of the door, crossing and recrossing her legs.
It was like waiting to meet a blind date that she would have to marry later on in the day. Her stomach twisted into knots imagining the worst—what if they didn’t like each other? She checked the time once more and realized that Hope was late, only by seven minutes or so, but the feeling in her stomach morphed from nerves to a tight fist of dread. She wanted to call someone for reassurance, but she hadn’t told anyone that they were meeting, so instead the specter of disappointment hung so heavily around her, she felt that she would have a panic attack if she was forced to wait any longer.
But then she saw the door to the restaurant swing open, and Hope walked in. Of course she knew it was Hope as soon as she saw the shadowed profile through the glass, because although they were not identical, it was like watching a version of herself enter from a different universe. Hope was around the same height, the same build, the same mushroom-tipped nose and smooth brown skin, but her cheekbones sat a bit higher in her face, making it a little longer, and her long flowing black hair made her resemble Faith.
The open and expressive face that Glory had seen in the old photograph was closed in on itself, like a nervous twitch, two white teeth sinking into her bottom lip as she looked around the room for Glory. When their eyes met there was the spark of recognition, almost like a tangible pull, and she said something to the tall blond man who was with her. When he looked over to Glory there was a moment of shock, then the uneasy laugh of disbelief.
Glory hopped down off the stool as they walked up to the bar.
“Hi!” Hope said, and now her face was open again, luminous, her voice cutting through the din of the restaurant. “Can I hug you?”
Glory nodded and all the angst she had felt evaporated in Hope’s quick, self-conscious embrace.
“This is my partner, Mark,” she said as an afterthought, and Mark held out a firm hand which Glory shook.
“You can go now, I’ll call when we’re done.”
“Oh, right—yes, of course!” Mark replied, and his cheeks flushed.
Hope looked at Glory and smiled again. Glory felt the fist in her stomach unclench.
“Where shall we sit?” Hope took off her camel-colored trench coat and folded it across her arm, straightening out a chiffon top layered over a plain white vest. Her style was preppy, Glory noted, with close-cut skinny jeans and bright white Converse trainers. Glory had opted for a dark long line T-shirt with a cropped leather jacket and faux leather leggings and boots. All she needed was a nose ring and a few tattoos and she would look like Hope’s evil twin, the little devil perched on Hope’s shoulder.
Glory pointed to one of the booths against the wall. She wasn’t sure how the rest of the meeting was going to go but if for some reason things got emotional, she didn’t want to be an easy spectacle for diners to ogle over lunch.
This was the stuff of dreams though—or the makings of a storyline from one of her favorite childhood films or TV shows, the sitcom Sister Sister and Lindsay Lohan’s breakout turn in The Parent Trap to be precise. It seemed incredibly obvious now but she could see why they were such firm favorites to her young self. Long-lost twin sisters, separated at birth by circumstances beyond their control who reunited for fun, frolics and mischief making. Maybe some primal part of her knew more than a child’s mind could fully appreciate, or maybe she had manifested this situation, as she heard people in LA say time and again. Either way, it was happening, but there was no laugh track, no bumbling mishaps that were sure to end amicably. Only desperate anticipation.
They started by ordering drinks.
“I’ll take a fresh mint tea,” Hope told their waitress.
“Same,” Glory said, and Hope’s eyes met hers and they both giggled.
“I’ve been role-playing how our conversation would go all morning, but now I’ve completely forgotten my script!”
Hope laughed nervously, her voice was soft and melodic, free from the blunt force of a London twang. She straightened out the cutlery laid to her right, and realigned her empty glass.
“I should be feeling a lot happier than I am, but when you told me that, um . . . he had just passed . . . I just wish I had got to meet him, that’s all.”
A prickling sensation began to rise through Glory’s body. She couldn’t tell if it was excitement or she was about to throw up.
Their waitress returned and set down their drinks on the table. She then took out her notepad and waited patiently for their food orders.
“Can you give us a minute?” Glory asked her.
“I don’t even think I can eat anything.” Hope laid a hand on her stomach. “This was a terrible idea. I shouldn’t have picked a restaurant.”
Glory really wanted Hope to like her and the rest of her biological family. Things were far from black and white, but as long as Glory held back, it felt like everything she would say to Hope would be a lie. If Hope was going to reject them, she would rather it be sooner than later.
“I’ve been debating whether to tell you this because, well, I don’t want you to hate us, but when I spoke to Mama Wawo, she told me that when you first came to her, she told my dad—our dad—while he was still alive, but he never contacted you because he said it wasn’t the right time.”
Hope’s face closed up again and she recoiled as if she had been physically struck. Glory tensed, waiting for her to get up and leave.
“I-I’ve been so angry since I found out, I can’t imagine how you’re feeling, but I think I can explain,” Glory gabbled.
Hope stirred the mint leaves in her cup, then lay down her teaspoon carefully and precisely next to the teacup and saucer. She blew to cool down her drink and took a small sip.
“I should’ve ordered an Irish coffee,” she said. “OK, go on.”
“Well, I suppose the first thing you need to know is our father was a very proud man, and the last few years haven’t been easy. There are four of us all together, right? Faith is the oldest, then we were born, then there’s Victor, the youngest.”
Hope nodded, whether she had already known this or not, Glory couldn’t tell.
“Well, erm, a while back Victor was arrested and convicted and sent to prison. I was in LA at the time, but it had a really negative impact on everyone, obviously. My mum’s—our mum’s health—has been up and down, she was hospitalized recently, and I know that this whole situation is a really delicate issue for her. I think our dad was trying to protect her or something, or at least maybe wait until things were calmer.”
Hope’s mouth was a straight line. She carefully turned her cup around in its saucer.
“Protect her?” she asked, her voice tight. “From me?”
“No, not you,” Glory said quickly. “From disappointment in case things didn’t work out or you were angry. And of course, I don’t know this for sure because my—our—dad never spoke to me about any of this. I didn’t even know you . . . well, it just wasn’t spoken about so I’m kinda putting words in his mouth, but I just thought you should know. I want to be honest and transparent. No secrets.”
No more secrets, Glory corrected herself internally.
“Is she still in the hospital?”
“Oh, our mum? No, she’s back home. She’s doing better, back at work.”
“Does she know we’re meeting today?”
“No. I told her when I got your number and called you, and she was quite positive and hopeful. But I haven’t told her about today.”
“Good,” Hope said with a finality that made Glory uncomfortable, but if Hope sensed her unease she didn’t feel the need to explain what was so good about that.
“Angry . . .” Hope said quietly, sounding each syllable deliberately. “Do you think I’ve got anything to be angry about?”
She looked Glory in the eye as she asked this and Glory felt like she was caught in the hot beam of a spotlight.
“Probably,” Glory replied. “I mean, I feel angry, so I would understand if you did. You’re entitled to that.”
“I’m so sorry about Victor,” Hope said. “Do you get to see or talk to him?”
“Yeah, he calls and we go to visit him. He’s not actually too far from here.”
“That’s good,” Hope said. She rotated her cup in the opposite direction, stared at its contents and took another small sip. “I’m sorry if I’m not saying much, it’s just a lot to take in.”
“Please don’t apologize. This is kind of why I didn’t want to tell you, but I thought it’s only fair to let you know what you might be getting yourself into. Give you a chance to change your mind and run.” Glory laughed too loudly, again regretting an ill-judged joke. She was acting too familiar, aching to bridge the decades between them.
“Thanks for being honest,” Hope said, straight-faced.
Glory took a gulp of hot tea, swallowing quickly then picking up the menu.
“I think I’m actually gonna get something to eat, I don’t want anything too heavy though—do you want to share something?”
“No, but you should get the chicken and pomegranate salad, it’s really good.”
Hope waved over the waitress and Glory placed her order.
Glory watched Hope fidget with her watch and rearrange her unused cutlery again.
“How did you find Mama Wawo?” Glory asked after she had drained her cup. “All this time I thought you’d still be in Birmingham.”
“Stourbridge,” Hope corrected. “I moved to London for university actually. I studied History at King’s.”
“Oh, right,” Glory said, feeling intimidated by the casual familiarity Hope showed with the prestigious institution.
“I got Mama Wawo’s number from my mum. She gave it to me when I first moved to London. I think she thought I chose to move here to find my biological family.”
“So you always knew?”
“That they weren’t my biological parents? Of course! That’s not something you can keep a secret!”
“No.” Glory felt embarrassed. “I mean, you always knew that we were here? In London?”
“Oh, yeah,” Hope said. “Well, when I was little I used to think that Mama Wawo—or Mrs. Wawo, as my mum would call her—was like a fairy godmother or something. When I asked my parents why they were pink and I was brown, my mum would say that Mama Wawo brought me to them. Then when I was about nine, I realized that she was actually a real person and that my birth family were in London. Then they told me the whole story.”
“What did they tell you?” Glory asked slowly.
“That they used to look after me, you and our other sister and then when it was time for us to go home, everyone agreed that it would be better for me to stay with them. Then we moved to Stourbridge to look after my mum’s mum, before she passed away.”
“Oh, right,” Glory said. The words “my mum’s mum” bored deep into her brain.
“Is that what you were told?” Hope asked.
“Yeah, pretty much, but I didn’t know why you moved.”
Hope nodded and looked down into her cup. Glory looked around the restaurant.
“Why . . .” She coughed. “Um. Why didn’t they get in touch with us earlier? Like, before you moved to London?”
Glory didn’t like how the question sounded once it had left her mouth, and the look Hope shot her suggested she didn’t like it either.
“They tried once, just before I started secondary school, but my mum said she couldn’t get through. Maybe it wasn’t the right time.”
Hope held Glory’s gaze pointedly, until Glory had to look away, that sick feeling creeping over her body again.
Glory’s salad was delivered to the table, but she was no longer hungry.
“Do, erm, Joan and Edward know you’re meeting up with me today?” Glory asked, pushing the salad around her plate with a fork.
“My mum does,” Hope checked her watch. “She’s probably waiting anxiously by the phone for an update.”
Hope let out a little laugh, the first genuine one since she had arrived.
“She’ll probably tell my dad. Then she’ll want a blow-by-blow account when we go and see them in a couple of weeks.” Hope rolled her eyes and drank her tea.
“Are you sure you don’t want some salad? I’m not going to finish it.”
Glory hadn’t taken a single bite, but she pushed the plate to the center of the table anyway. Hope picked up her fork and speared some chicken and salad leaves.
“Is it just you? I mean, are there any other, erm, children in your family?” Glory asked.
Hope chewed her mouthful and swallowed, suddenly looking guilty.
“Yeah, I was a right brat growing up. My parents were considering fostering another child, they thought I might want a sibling, but I told them I didn’t want one. I wanted it to just be me, and I had Carlene, my best friend, who felt more like a sister anyway. So they never did. Then I got up and left them to come to London, didn’t I?”
Hope’s strained smile had returned.
Glory scooped up a few pomegranate seeds and crunched them between her teeth. She wanted to know more about this Carlene.
“What was it like growing up? I hope you don’t mind me asking.”
“It’s fine,” Hope said, setting down her fork. “Everyone asks, and not so politely either. But besides the fact that I had white parents, there was nothing particularly interesting about it. It was a nice childhood. No horror stories, no identity crises.”
“Horror stories?” Glory frowned.
“Well, some black children who have grown up with white parents have these horrible stories, like physical and psychological abuse, or sometimes their foster families or extended families didn’t like them that much,” Hope said. “When I decided to finally search, I joined this kind of support group online. Some of the stories will give you nightmares. But my childhood wasn’t like that. Not at all.”
“Well, that’s a relief.”
“Yes, my parents loved me.”
Glory cleared her throat.
“Did you think my—our—parents didn’t?”
She was getting caught up in the imprecise nature of possessive pronouns. Her parents were technically Hope’s by blood and science, but in any concrete sense they were strangers. Glory knew that rationally, but she couldn’t shake the irrational irritation she felt at Hope’s insistence on referring to Joan and Edward as her parents. She couldn’t ignore the way Hope sidestepped referring directly to the parents they shared.
“I . . .” Hope started, pushing her fork aimlessly around the plate. “I don’t know what I thought, to be honest I tried not to think about it too hard.”
Melancholy crept into her voice, so Glory nodded and allowed the moment to breathe before carefully changing track.
“What’s Stourbridge like compared to London, then?”
“It’s calmer, friendlier. People actually talk to their neighbors.” Hope pulled a face that Glory couldn’t read.
“Are there many black people there?”
“Not as many as London,” Hope said. “I didn’t have my first black friend until I was eight.”
Glory’s face must have revealed the shock she was feeling because Hope started grinning.
“Are you serious?” Glory asked, trying to imagine a childhood where none of her friends looked like her.
“Yeah. There was a girl in my primary school from Zimbabwe but we basically hated each other—that’s awful, isn’t it? But they would always lump us together or pit us against each other and we took out our frustrations on each other, so she doesn’t count as a friend. Then I met Carlene when I was eight. She was black, but Jamaican. I didn’t have my first Nigerian friend until I came to uni. That’s when I learned how to say my surname properly.”
“You kept your surname?”
“In secondary school I thought about changing it because I was tired of all the teachers struggling to say it,” Hope confessed. “But then I found out the translation.”
Glory had never even thought about what her surname meant.
“It means ‘valor comes home’ or something, doesn’t it?”
Glory nodded as if she was certain of that fact.
“And, I dunno, I just liked the bit about coming home.”
“I searched for you online, but I couldn’t find you anywhere, not even Facebook.”
“Oh no, I stay off all of that stuff. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. Not my thing at all. I mean, I had a Facebook profile once but I deactivated it a few years ago.”
“Good for you. I basically live on Instagram and I kinda hate myself for it.”
“Let me see your Instagram profile!” Hope said suddenly, a glint flashing in her eye that struck deep at Glory’s heart as it reminded her of Victor.
“Oh, no—not in front of me! That’s just awkward. I’ll give you my username later and you can pree when I’m not around!” Glory said with a smile.
“I’m sorry,” Hope said, returning the smile. “I just love living vicariously through my friends—especially dating apps! Oh my god! I love a good Tinder swiping session.”
Glory laughed through teeth that were stopping her from asking who Hope’s friends were, what they were like and if she could see pictures of them. She wanted to soak herself in every minute detail of her sister’s existence, do some vicarious living of her own. If this was a film—and if they had been identical—they would plan to swap lives for a week, slipping into each other’s skins and learning about the other from the inside out. Despite herself, Glory felt exhilarated at the prospect.
Hope was still smiling when she picked up her fork and took another bite of the salad that sat between them. Glory decided to try a proper mouthful. The sweetness of the pomegranate seeds next to the salty chicken and toasted walnuts tasted divine on her tongue, and she had refilled her fork before she had swallowed the first bite.
“Good isn’t it?” Hope said as she picked up a salad leaf to nibble at.
“Mmm,” Glory hummed through another mouthful.
“Do you like Nigerian food?” Glory asked when half the plate was gone.
“I do actually. I don’t cook it, but I think I’ve worked my way through the entire menu at this Nigerian restaurant near our flat.”
Glory perked up at this.
“What’s your favorite?”
“Erm, fried rice and moin moin. Sorry, I’m pretty basic.”
“I thought you were going to say jollof rice—that’s basic.”
“Jollof rice is overrated to be honest.”
When Glory clutched at her heart and gasped, Hope quickly clarified.
“It’s nice, I’ll eat it, but it’s not worth going to war over. Same with Supermalt.”
“You don’t like Supermalt?!”
Hope pretended to retch, sticking out her tongue and shuddering.
“Carlene couldn’t believe that one either, but it’s disgusting. I really can’t.”
“Does Carlene still live in Stourbridge?”
“No,” Hope said, her voice falling to just above a whisper. “She died about eighteen months ago.”
Glory stopped mid-chew.
“I’m so sorry.”
“Car accident. On the motorway.”
Glory swallowed hard. She needed water.
“How old was she?”
“Twenty-four.”
“Wow, I’m really sorry.”
“You go to bed one night and then you wake up the next morning and your best friend is gone. I know that death is never easy to deal with, but if she had been ill or something, it wouldn’t have felt so violent.”
“Our dad died suddenly too. He just collapsed out of the blue. Pulmonary embolism.”
“It’s never easy.”
“No.”
Hope reached into her bag and took out her phone.
“Oh! Mark’s texted me, like, five times.”
She dismissed the notifications and tapped at her screen, eventually setting it down on the table to face Glory.
“That’s Carlene.”
Glory leaned over and looked at the picture. Hope had her arms wrapped around another woman, she was very slim, very pretty, with long straight black hair. Glory could see how these two could be mistaken for sisters. Carlene had one hand on the side of Hope’s head pressing it into her cheek. The other hand held a bottle of wine or champagne. It looked like someone’s birthday party.
“She was always telling me that I should look for my bio family, she used to joke that I might be related to African royalty—her dad was Rastafarian—but in my head, I always thought, I’m fine. It felt like if I went looking it meant I wasn’t happy or satisfied with my life, like my parents had done something wrong.”
Hope stopped and exhaled, pressing a knuckle to the inside corner of one eye.
“When she died I thought, well, I have to now, don’t I? Because you just never know. You never ever know.”
Glory wanted to tell her that it was a death that started her on this path too, but the fullness of that story felt too bitter to deliver. They had talked through enough hard things for now.
“Oh God, it’s Mark again,” Hope said when the image on her phone was obscured by another notification. “Let me just call him.”
While Hope made the call, Glory finished what was left of the salad. She was exhausted, physically and emotionally. She called the waitress to deliver their bill as Hope ended her conversation.
“I’m so sorry, he’s so protective. He’s literally just been loitering around, waiting for us to finish.”
“It’s OK.” Glory smiled.
When the bill came, Hope took care of it, waving away Glory’s offer. Mark appeared at the window like an apparition. Glory could see him scanning Hope’s face for any indication of how their reunion went, but Hope was still burdened by the thought of Carlene. Instead Glory offered a bright smile in his direction.
The long-lost sisters hugged again, this time tighter and for longer. Mark looked satisfied.
“I’m sure we’ll meet again, Glory,” he said as he waved goodbye. Hope grasped his hand, smiled at her sister one last time and the couple walked away from the restaurant, a low sun against their backs.