A Proper Family Christmas (28 page)

‘She is. I know she can sometimes come across as a bit hard before you get to know her, but she is the softest person you could ever hope to meet under all that. And she’s so generous.’

They raised a toast to Ronnie. Chelsea with white wine. Annabel with sparkling water.

When lunch came to an end, Sophie and Izzy announced that they wanted to hit Selfridges. Because Izzy still got tired so easily, Richard volunteered to go with them to make sure they didn’t come to any harm. He promised that he would lurk behind the rails so that no one had to know he was with the girls at all.

‘Dad, that’s even worse,’ said Izzy. ‘You can’t
lurk
in the women’s fashion department. Someone will call the police.’

Sophie, fortunately, was not as embarrassed by the thought of being seen with Izzy’s father as she was about being seen with her own. Richard was so worldly and cool.

‘Are you kidding?’ Izzy rolled her eyes when Sophie suggested as much to her. ‘Dad’s a dork.’

Annabel and Chelsea stayed behind in the restaurant. Chelsea had done Selfridges a thousand times and Annabel was only too happy to stay put, cradling her bump while the baby inside turned somersaults as was its new habit after every meal. It got very excited after eating.

Now that they were alone together, the conversation could go a little deeper. Emboldened by the wine Richard had pressed on her over lunch, Chelsea asked a question to which she’d been longing to know the answer. She knew that Jacqui, Dave and Ronnie all wanted to know the answer as well.

‘Why didn’t you look for us before?’ Chelsea asked. ‘Why did it take Izzy getting ill to make you find us?’

Slightly taken aback by Chelsea’s directness, Annabel put down her teacup and looked into space for a moment, as though hoping someone would prompt her with what she should say next.

‘You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to,’ Chelsea back-pedalled.

Annabel shook her head. ‘No. It’s fine. I can understand why you’re asking.’

They waited while a waitress cleared away their plates.

‘Well,’ Annabel began when they were alone again. ‘For a start, I didn’t know there were so many of you. I had no idea that Jacqui and Dave would have married and that I would have two full siblings. Had I known that, then I might have looked sooner, but …’

Chelsea leaned forward to hear.

‘Maybe that’s not the truth.’

Annabel sat back in her chair and continued to speak without looking at her new sister, as though making eye contact would render her unable to speak again.

‘It was a strange feeling, you know, finding out that Jacqui and Dave got back together and went on to have more kids. In some ways it made things worse. It made me feel as though I’d been a trial run that didn’t work out. It added what I can only describe as another layer of rejection, to find out that they’d raised two daughters after giving me away.’

‘Dad didn’t know about the adoption,’ Chelsea reminded her. ‘And Mum wouldn’t have given you away if she could possibly have looked after you on her own.’

‘I know,’ said Annabel. ‘I know. And I understand. But what you have to remember is that growing up, all I heard was that I was the child of teenage parents who gave me up. That wasn’t a lot to go on. And my imagination filled in the rest in a variety of dark and unhappy ways. Mum and Dad claimed, and now I’ve seen the files, I believe, that they weren’t given much information. But I decided that there were things they did know and were keeping from me because they were too awful. I’d have a flash of irrational anger – just hormones probably – and wonder if it was because my father was really a violent psychopath. Or maybe I’d been taken away from my mother because she was mad and one day I would end up like that too.’

Chelsea shook her head. ‘That’s crazy.’

‘I’m serious. When you’ve never met your biological family, these worries seem very real.’

‘How could you ever have thought you might have a psychopath for a parent?’

‘You haven’t seen me with PMT,’ Annabel said with a smile.

‘So, wouldn’t delving into your past sooner have set your mind at rest?’ Chelsea asked.

‘Perhaps. But I couldn’t take the risk that one of my fears would be confirmed instead. It seemed safer not to know. And I had happier fantasies too. Like my parents were Charlotte Rampling and Bryan Ferry. Or Mick Jagger and Princess Anne.’

Chelsea laughed.

Annabel looked down. She picked at a hangnail and made her next pronouncement very quietly. ‘And I wanted to punish them.’

‘Punish them? Who?’

‘Jacqui and Dave. Jacqui especially. I know that must sound awful to you but she gave me away, Chelsea.
Gave. Me. Away
. I can’t explain how profound an effect that’s had on my entire life.’

Much as she wanted to defend the only mother she had known, Chelsea let Annabel carry on.

‘I know, rationally, that Jacqui did what she did with the very best intentions. But when you’re a six-year-old child and your school friends are calling you a bastard and telling you your beloved mum and dad aren’t your “real parents” and someone’s going to come and take you away to a children’s home, it’s frightening. And later you start to believe that you must have been given up because of something you did. And it doesn’t matter how often someone tells you that’s ridiculous. You were just a few weeks old. What could you possibly have done? That feeling of being bad or somehow lacking is so strong and so deep.’

Chelsea nodded.

‘I blamed Jacqui for that. And I wanted her to know some of my pain. Even though, objectively, I had the best childhood I could have hoped for and I would not have changed a thing. I’m glad I was adopted but there were still moments …’ Annabel sighed. ‘I was terrified of being taken away from Mum and Dad and as a result I built up a kind of armour that affected all my relationships. I was a prickly child and a nightmare teenager. All because I wanted to be safe and thought that keeping everyone at arm’s length was the best way to protect myself from being abandoned again. I always felt like I needed to hold something of myself back. I didn’t even tell Richard I was adopted until Izzy got ill and I had to.’

‘Oh Annabel,’ Chelsea whispered. ‘I didn’t know.’

‘He’s taken it very well, thank goodness.’

‘It must have been hard to have to tell him under such circumstances.’

‘It was … When I became an adult, I read a lot about adoption and how having children of their own can mellow an adoptee’s feelings towards their birth family but that didn’t happen for me. The moment they put Izzy in my arms, I knew that the only way I could ever be parted from that baby was if someone shot me in the head first. That only made me angrier still towards Jacqui. What kind of unnatural woman was she to not feel the strength of maternal love I did? So, even when Mum – I mean, Sarah – suggested to me that Jacqui might like to know how I’d turned out because surely she must have spent all those years wondering what became of me and maybe I should put her out of her misery, I continued to hold out. I didn’t want Jacqui to share my happiness. I didn’t want her to turn up and try to be Izzy’s grandma when Mum was the one who had been there all those years. After all, Mum was the one who had rocked me to sleep when I was a baby and dried my tears and kissed me better. Not Jacqui.’

Chelsea felt tears spring to her eyes.

‘You might think I’m a bitch,’ said Annabel. ‘I know Ronnie did. Probably still does! But more than anything, my decision not to track you down was mostly about self-preservation. I didn’t want Jacqui to have the opportunity to reject me all over again.’

Annabel closed her eyes and smiled sadly, holding in the emotion. Chelsea dabbed a napkin at the corner of her own eyes. She wished that Ronnie might have heard Annabel’s speech. It was hard for Chelsea to imagine Jacqui, her ‘Mum’, as the awful rejecting monster of Annabel’s nightmares but what Annabel had said did make a lot of sense. Chelsea suddenly saw her big sister as the small child she had been, struggling to understand her painful backstory.

Annabel opened her eyes again and smiled more widely. A happy smile. After a fashion.

‘But now we’re here and you’re not anywhere near as bad as I imagined.’

She gave Chelsea a playful punch in the arm.

‘And neither’s Ronnie. She’s one of the kindest, loveliest women I’ve ever met.’

‘She is,’ Chelsea agreed.

‘I wish I’d met you both years ago.’

It almost sounded true.

After that, Chelsea suddenly felt that she could tell Annabel her own truth. Since Ronnie had been found to be a match for Izzy and the transplant was going ahead, what Chelsea had to say didn’t matter anywhere near as much as it might otherwise have done. And Chelsea wanted to say it. She didn’t want Annabel to have the wrong idea about what had actually happened since she made her request.

‘I have a confession to make,’ said Chelsea. ‘Since we’re sisters now and sisters aren’t supposed to keep secrets from one another.’

‘Go on.’ Annabel looked bemused.

‘Annabel, I didn’t ever get tested to see if I was a match for Izzy. I know I said I was going to and I did go to see my GP to get things started. But you see, the thing is, I’ve been facing a few problems of my own. And when I talked to my GP and afterwards to my counsellor, they thought that perhaps I shouldn’t put myself through it. Not right now at least.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I’m being treated for bulimia.’

Annabel opened her mouth as if to say something but thought better of it. Chelsea carried on.

‘I’m sure that had Ronnie not tested as a match, I would have found the guts to do it but I’m not certain that Izzy would want one of my kidneys anyway. I must have given them a bashing over the years.’

Chelsea chuntered on to cover the silence that she started to take for disapproval.

‘Anyway, I’m sorry and it goes without saying that if it doesn’t work out with Ronnie, I’ll do everything I can. It’s just that at the moment—’

‘It’s OK,’ said Annabel at last. ‘I understand. When did … when did you start?’

‘Sixth form. At least that’s when I started to be more careful about what I ate. But I didn’t start throwing up until I was at university. I don’t think I would have guessed it was a possible strategy but there was another girl on my corridor in the halls of residence who told me that was what she did when she’d eaten too much.’

Annabel nodded.

‘I’ve never enjoyed doing it,’ Chelsea continued. ‘I’m always disgusted in myself. I’m disgusted with the puking and I’m disgusted with the lack of willpower I sometimes have around food.’

‘I know how that feels.’

‘It’s all about control, isn’t it? I was so unhappy and I felt like I would never be as good as Ronnie or the other girls at school or university. But I could be the thinnest. Now I know I’ve got to kick it. I can’t be like this for the rest of my life. I shared a room with Jack in Lanzarote and he noticed I was always throwing up. You can’t imagine how bad that felt. The thought of letting him down is one of the things that is going to get me through this.’

‘Jack’s a thoughtful child.’

‘Funny how it sometimes takes a child to point out the obvious. He told me I had to see a doctor, though I hope he didn’t know that I was making
myself
be sick.’

‘You’ll be able to talk to him about it when he’s older.’ Annabel squeezed Chelsea’s hand. ‘But I’m glad you told me now. Anytime you need to talk, please know that you can call me, won’t you?’

Chelsea felt sure Annabel meant it.

‘And this is just between us.’ Annabel confirmed what Chelsea dare not ask. ‘I understand why you perhaps don’t want to tell Ronnie.’

At that moment, Sophie and Izzy returned to the restaurant with Richard in tow.

‘There is
nothing
in Selfridges. Nothing,’ Izzy announced.

‘Did you go round the whole shop?’ asked Annabel.

‘Felt like it,’ Richard confirmed.

Shortly after the girls’ and Richard’s return, Chelsea left them to do her own thing. She had a date with Adam that evening. His parents were kindly babysitting Lily again. If Chelsea was honest, she was nervous. Though she and Adam had been seeing each other for a couple of months now, they hadn’t ever spent the whole night together. Lily’s presence had been a very effective form of contraception.

But that night Lily would not be there. She would be staying with her grandparents at their house and Adam and Chelsea would be at his place alone. They had until teatime on Sunday.

After leaving Annabel and the others, Chelsea caught a bus to Knightsbridge and Harvey Nichols. There she treated herself to a new set of La Perla underwear. Well, it was not so much a frivolity as necessary armament. Though he had seen her in her bikini on holiday, Adam had not seen Chelsea anywhere near naked since. She wanted that night to be special. Her stomach churned and gurgled with anticipation and by the time she arrived at Adam’s house at seven thirty, she was just about ready to faint with excitement.

Adam cooked. While he chopped onions and crushed garlic, ingredients forbidden when Lily was in the house – ‘You have to have some too or you won’t be able to kiss me’ – Chelsea told him about the conversation with Annabel. Not the gory detail of it. Certainly not the stuff about her bulimia or her not having been tested. Just that they had finally had a chance to talk one-to-one and get to know each other a little better. It simply hadn’t been possible before. Jacqui monopolised Annabel whenever she was around.

‘And I think we understand each other,’ Chelsea said. ‘I think the whole posh thing is a bit of an act. It’s a way of keeping people at arm’s length.’

‘Good,’ said Adam. He took a spoonful of sauce from the pan and asked Chelsea to taste it.

‘Delicious.’

‘Like you,’ he said, kissing her long and hard.

Later that night, they made love for the first time.

‘You are beautiful,’ said Adam. ‘Every bit of you. Inside and out.’

In the darkness, Chelsea snuggled into Adam’s side and allowed herself to believe it.