A Family Affair (56 page)

‘I'm not asking you.'

‘That's all right then, because …'

‘Jenny, you're making this so hard for me!'

She was close to tears again. Jenny gazed at her, puzzled.

‘What do you mean?'

‘Being so against the idea …'

‘I can't help it, Heather. I know you'd do your best but I couldn't. I just couldn't.'

‘… because it's what I did.'

‘What?'

‘Oh, Jen, I know this is going to come as an awful shock, but … well, the same thing happened to me when I was … well, younger than you, actually.'

‘You mean …
you
had a baby?' Heather nodded, not speaking. ‘You! But what happened to it? You had it adopted like I'm going to?'

‘No.' Heather's mouth worked but no more words came.

‘Then what? Did it die?'

‘No. Oh, Jenny …' And suddenly the tears were coursing down her cheeks and she reached blindly for Jenny's hands, squeezing them so hard that it hurt. ‘No, she didn't die, and she wasn't adopted. Well, not the way you mean. Oh, don't you see? Do I have to spell it out to you? Oh, Jenny …'

‘No!' Jenny said. She couldn't – wouldn't – believe the thought that was occurring to her. It couldn't be! She was mad to think it for even a moment. ‘No! No! Tell me I'm going crazy! It's not … Heather. You're not saying … are you … that
I
… ?'

Heather didn't need to answer. It was there in her eyes, written all over her face.

‘Heather! Tell me!' Jenny was screaming now.

Heather was crying in earnest, her face crumpled, the sobs coming from deep inside.

‘Yes, Jenny, it's true. Mum's not your mother. I am.
You
were my baby, Jenny. I'm not your sister. I'm your mother.'

‘Oh God!' Jenny whispered. The room was spinning round her, she thought she was going to faint. She tore her hands away from Heather's, seeing her through the mists, seeing not the familiar, the loved, but a stranger. A stranger who had lied to her, deceived her, for the whole of her life. A stranger who was now taking away from her everything that formed the foundations of her world – her parents, her very identity. ‘Oh God! Oh God! Oh God!'

‘Jenny, please …'

‘Oh God! Oh God!' In shock, she repeated those same two words over and over again, as if she had been wound up like a clockwork toy. She could hear them escaping her lips, monotonous and inevitable, meaningless yet filled with every emotion she could imagine and some she could not. And she simply could not stop.

‘Jenny – is it so bad? Please, I love you! I've always loved you! You don't know how many times I've wanted to tell you, but I couldn't. It wouldn't have been fair to Mum. Not after all she did … I was just a child, Jenny. It was either give you up completely, or this. I didn't want to give you up! And Mum didn't want it either. It was her idea. She said she'd bring you up as her own, so we moved out from Bristol, away from anybody who might have guessed. And she did. And I … Well, at least I hadn't lost you. Not completely. I could watch you grow up – be there for you. I could even pretend sometimes when I was looking after you that everything was the way I wanted it to be. You were my little girl. My darling little girl. And you were with your real family – not with strangers … Jenny, it's not that bad, surely? That I'm your mother? Oh please, Jenny, tell me you forgive me.'

Jenny leaped to her feet. The atmosphere of this horrible room was suffocating her, there was a thundering noise in her ears, she thought she was going to be sick.

‘How could you?' she ground out through chattering teeth. ‘How could you live with a lie like that?'

‘Jenny …'

‘Go away, Heather! I never want to see you again!'

She turned and ran from the room. All the ghosts and unquiet spirits, all the whisperings and tumult, all the roaring and shaking of a world disintegrating, went with her.

Sister Theresa came to her room.

‘Jennifer? You can't stay up here. You must come down.'

Jenny turned her face into the pillow, not replying.

‘Jennifer? Did your sister say something to upset you? It's all right, she's gone now. Look – you must come down. Sister Anne …'

‘I don't care about Sister Anne,' Jenny muttered. ‘What do I care about that silly old crow?'

Sister Theresa pretended not to have heard.

‘Dinner is ready. It'll be getting cold.'

‘I don't want any dinner. I feel sick.'

‘Should I fetch the doctor?'

‘No. I don't want the doctor.'

‘Then you must try to calm down. This is very bad for you and for your baby.'

‘I don't care.'

‘Don't care! About your baby! Come on now, you mustn't be so selfish.'

‘Why not?' Jenny muttered, and she meant it.

She felt like being selfish, if that was what thinking about yourself first meant. She couldn't think of anything but herself. In the most fundamental way. Like – who was she? For all of her life she had known – or thought she had known. Now the things she had taken for granted had been stripped away and she no longer knew. Not just who she was now – but who she had ever been. Jennifer Simmons ceased to exist. She was in a vacuum and it was the most terrifying thing that had ever happened to her.

Mum was not her mother at all but her grandmother. Dad – not her father but her grandfather. David, her uncle. Vanessa, her sister. Heather …

Hatred welled up, choking her. How could Heather have done that to her? How could any of them? It was the fact they'd kept it from her she couldn't stomach. That they'd known, all of them, something so completely fundamental about her and she hadn't. As a betrayal it ranked with the worst. All her life they'd pretended. All her life, nothing had been as it seemed. Nothing! And they'd known it and she hadn't. They had conspired to keep it from her and the conspiracy made a unit of them somehow, a unit of which she was no longer a part. She'd been Jenny Alone all the time and she'd never known it. Separated from them by the enormity of a truth she'd never so much as guessed at. A lie. It had all been a lie. Everything. Always.

It explained a great deal, of course, like why Carrie had always been so protective of her. Carrie had been desperately afraid that she, Jenny, would go the same way as Heather. Not following in a sister's footsteps, but taking after her mother.

And she had. She had! That was the supreme irony of it. For all Carrie's precautions she had ended up just like Heather. Just like her mother.

She wanted to scream. She wanted to cry. And she could do neither. She simply lay staring at the ceiling while the emotions rolled over her in relentless waves, leaving no room for coherent thought.

Maybe if they'd told her before this she could have coped with it. But not now. The enormity, in her heightened emotional state, was simply too much. And Jenny couldn't imagine she would ever get over it, ever feel any differently.

Afterwards Jenny was never quite sure at what point she decided what she was going to do. She was never quite sure, come to that, if it was a conscious decision at all, or just a reaction. Of only one thing was she perfectly, absolutely certain. The whole of her family had become strangers. Only one living being in the whole world was hers and hers alone.

Her baby. Not her baby and Bryn's – he, like the rest of them, had abandoned her, deceived her, let her down. But the baby, the tiny helpless life inside her … it was the one constant she could cling to. Whatever it took, Jenny was decided on one thing. Nothing in heaven or on earth would persuade her now to part with her baby.

Joyce Edgell liked the fact that her kitchen window overlooked the Green. Some might say it was a topsy-turvy sort of house, and they would have preferred the living area to overlook the front garden rather than the rows of cabbages and potato haulms that most people grew in the vegetable plots to the rear, but since the Edgells'gardens, both front and back, were identical – uncultivated wastelands of weeds and rubble left over from the time when the houses had been built, with sparse patches of field grass that had sprouted from seed blown in on the wind and a rusty bicycle and old gas cooker as ornamentation, this was hardly a consideration where she was concerned.

Having the kitchen at the front meant that when she was working at the sink, which in spite of her slovenly habits she had to do surprisingly often since she did not own a washing machine, she was able to watch all her neighbours'comings and goings.

One Saturday morning in late June as she plunged socks and underwear into a sink of soapy water she saw Joe come out of the Simmons house and ride off on his bicycle and a little later Carrie and David emerged and got into David's car, which he kept parked on the Green.

Joyce didn't agree with people parking their cars on the Green. Once upon a time, when they had first moved in, only Tom Glass at Number 22 had owned a vehicle – a small blue van that he used in his business as a jobbing builder. Now the cars were springing up like mushrooms and for some reason their owners had taken to driving them up over the low kerb and on to the grass, where they left ugly tyre tracks and got in the way of the children who wanted to play football. Served them right if the cars got scratched or had a window broken, Joyce thought, and she always smiled with satisfaction when she heard the thud of a football on metal.

This morning she had seen David paying close attention to one of his wheel arches – a dent perhaps – and Carrie too had a look before she got into the front passenger seat. She had her shopping basket with her and Joyce guessed David was taking her down to market.

At this distance Joyce had been unable to see the expression on Carrie's face, but she could picture it. Worried. Carrie always looked worried these days – and with reason. Joyce pulled a handful of socks out of the water and wrung them out with gusto. How she'd enjoyed that altercation with Carrie! She only wished she could think of a way of getting more mileage out of it. As yet, she'd said nothing to anyone, not spread the gossip at all. Once it was common knowledge she would lose the lovely sense of power that came from being the only one who knew. She was not ready to relinquish that until she was sure there was no better way of eking out her pound of flesh.

She rinsed the socks, sniffing them to see if they had lost their cheesy smell, and took them through to the back garden where her washing line looped and sagged between two poles. Her basket of pegs was on top of the old cooker. She hung out the socks and went back inside. Nothing for it, she'd have to do the sheets next – a chore and a half that was! Joyce never washed sheets if she could help it. A quick airing on the line usually did the trick, but every so often the time came when they had to be introduced to soap and water, and unfortunately she didn't think she could put it off any longer.

She was hauling a sheet in and out of the sink, swishing it round a bit so that the dirtiest patches came into contact with the soapy water when she heard a motorbike in the road outside. She looked up and saw it stop outside Number 27. She didn't recognise the lad riding it – at least, the crash helmet and leather jacket were unfamiliar to her – and when he removed his crash helmet, balancing it between seat and tank, she didn't think the rider looked like anyone she knew. He had fair hair cut quite short, a good deal shorter than was fashionable, anyway, and he looked tall and well built. Curious, Joyce watched as he went up the path of Number 27 and knocked on the door. After waiting a few moments he knocked again, then retreated back down the path between the borders of French marigolds and snapdragons, looking up at the windows of the house.

Unable to contain herself a moment longer, Joyce went to her own door. The young man had come back out on to the pavement and was standing beside his motorbike, hovering uncertainly and still looking back at the house.

‘There's nobody in,' Joyce called.

He didn't hear her and she called again.

‘They're all out!'

This time she had attracted his attention, and to her gratification, he came across the Green towards her. Encouraged, Joyce went down her path to meet him.

‘Who was it you were looking for? The Simmonses?'

‘Yes.'

‘I think they've gone to shop. Well, Carrie and David have, anyway. And Joe went off on his bike. Or was it
Jenny
you wanted?'

‘Jenny – yes.'

Joyce experienced a thrill of triumph. She'd known it! The minute she'd seen him, she'd known it! He could have been a friend of David's, but her first gut feeling hadn't let her down.

‘Oh – she's away,' she said smugly. She saw his face fall and added: ‘She's been away a month and more now.'

‘Away? Away where?'

‘Well, none of us knows that for sure. It's all a bit of a mystery. But … well, there's talk.' She folded her arms across her chest and made a knowing face, hoping he'd ask her what kind of talk, but he didn't.

‘You a friend of hers, are you?'

‘Yes.'

‘You're out of luck, then. No, judging by the talk that's going round, it'll be another month or more before she's back here. You know what I'm saying, don't you?'

‘No. No – I don't.'

‘Ah. Well …' Joyce twisted her face into a knowing expression, ‘let's put it this way. When a girl disappears like Jenny has, you can more or less say it'll be that the nine months is up before you see her again.'

‘Nine months … ?' He sounded puzzled but she could see from his expression that he understood her all right. Only his brain hadn't quite caught up with itself. He was shocked and in denial of what he was hearing.

‘Well, there you are,' she said triumphantly. ‘It's always the quiet ones, isn't it? That's what I always say.'