Gran is waiting for me when I get off the bus. Usually you are only supposed to have visitors at weekends, so she must have got special permission, or she didn’t ask and just turned up.
I had managed to forget Mum for a bit.
The tearoom is shut so we go and have a seat on a bench. Gran tells me the truth about my mum. She had wanted to tell me before, but Mum had forbidden her from speaking to me about it.
I have two sisters and a brother. The girls are six and four and the boy is two. She tells me their names but it is too quick for me to remember them. I think one was Ann or Annie.
She then explains everything to me. Everything. She tells me who my dad is. Not his name, but where he was from and what his job was. He was from Donegal, in Ireland. Mum was a young shop worker, nineteen, when she met him. She only went out with him a couple of times but that second time she got pregnant and he disappeared shortly after, presumably back to Ireland. She knew his name and where he was from but nothing more.
Mum had me, but she was on her own, and they all decided that the best thing to do was to put me into care. They heard about the Homes and agreed it would be a good place for me. She gave me up at three weeks old and Gran said Mum became ever so sad; for long afterwards she wouldn’t speak to anyone.
Eventually she met a man and they got married and had a baby girl. Gran says that Mum’s intention was to bring me back into the family once she had a family of her own, and that’s what she still wants to do, but the time isn’t right as the children are so young and I am doing well here.
She also says that the reason Mum is how she is when she comes to visit me is that she finds it very hard, as she wants me back, but she can never tell me that as she doesn’t want to get my hopes up in case she can’t make it happen.
I don’t cry. I want to cry again but I don’t. But it is nice to hear Gran say that Mum actually does want me back.
It’s good of Gran to finally explain things; she says she feels I am old enough to know the facts. She says that she had thought I was old enough to know for a while now, but she didn’t want to go behind Mum’s back. But after the last time I saw Mum, she told Gran that it was time to tell me the truth.
Gran says it is a huge relief to finally be able to tell me and she says how sorry she is not to have been able to speak about it before and that she hated having to keep it from me.
She is such a nice lady, my gran. She has a kind face, and her eyes are warm and caring. When I fell out with Mum my only worry was that I wouldn’t get to see Gran again.
I think you can tell that she is my gran. She looks a little like me even though she is much, much older and her face has more lines on it. Jonesy has met her and she says I look like her. Actually, she says I would look like her if I had been in the bath too long.
Gran asks me about Jane’s murder, whether I’ve heard anything. She didn’t know about Sally Ward going missing and that she is still missing. It’s been four days now. She’s got to be dead; everyone is assuming she’s dead. Someone would have seen her by now if she wasn’t. Gran is horrified at the thought of it. I tell her about Mrs Paterson’s speech at breakfast and about her saying that life is much harder for women than for men.
When I say this, Gran looks at me for a long time. I think she is trying to work out how to reply.
Eventually she says, ‘Life is different for women. It’s not necessarily worse, just different.’
She pauses. ‘No, it is sometimes worse, but only in some ways. Some ways it is definitely worse to be a woman, there is no doubt about that, but in other ways it is better, and I think that when you are a woman it will be a better time to be a woman than it has ever been before. But it is never easy, and it is often hard.’
‘Was it hard for you, Gran?’ I ask.
‘Yes, Lesley, it was hard for me, but life is hard for all of us. There’s no getting away from it.’
‘What about for film stars?’ I ask.
‘It’s hard for them, too. Just because they’re famous doesn’t make their life perfect.’
‘So what should I do, Gran?’
‘Just be you, my girl, and if you stick to being you, I am sure you’ll be fine.’
I don’t know what she means by that, but it seems nice and I feel good when she says it.
I tell her a little more about Eadie and she is happy that I have someone like her here for me. Then she has to go. Her bus is coming soon and she has to get home.
‘Is your husband a good man?’ I ask before she leaves.
‘Who, Francis?’ she says, then breaks into a smile. ‘Yes, he is a good man; he’s not perfect, but then no one is, and I think I made the right choice in marrying him. I’ll tell you all about it one day.’
With that, she gives me a big hug.
She waves goodbye and I go back to the cottage with too many thoughts chasing each other round my head.