In Her Mothers' Shoes (19 page)

‘He’s so insular. Always has been.’

‘I wouldn’t miss this for the world.’ Liz smiled, indicated the bustling tearoom, and patted her daughter’s hand.

‘It’s good to see you smile, Mum.’ Jessie put her hand over her mother’s and looked concerned. ‘You don’t seem to have been very happy since you arrived.’

‘Me? I’m fine. I’m perfectly happy.’

‘Is something wrong?’

Liz took her hand away and fiddled with the sugar bowl. ‘Of course not.’

‘Mu-uum.’

She didn’t dare look at Jessie. Her eyes might give her away. Of course she wanted to see her new granddaughter when she was born. Of course she wanted to be with her daughter at this precious time. But she hadn’t told Jessie the real reason she’d come to London. Jessie would never know. Nor would their son Richard. Now both her parents were dead, Steven was the only one in the family who knew. She planned to keep it that way.

She could feel Jessie’s eyes piercing into her. She needed some sort of excuse for her behaviour. What could she say?

‘It’s just being in such a different place, I suppose,’ she said at last. ‘It’s so vast, and there are so many people.’

‘I don’t believe you. You seemed fine when we were driving around yesterday.’

‘I like being driven by you, Jessie. I loved watching you negotiate your way through the traffic, so confident, you seem right at home here. I had a lovely day yesterday, driving past all those places I’d only heard the names of before – St Paul’s where Diana was married, and Kensington Palace where she lives. The bus went all over the city, but those were the two places I really wanted to see.’

‘But when we got home, you just went up to your room.’ Jessie rolled her eyes. ‘You were up there for ages.’

Liz felt cornered; she didn’t like talking about herself. She tapped the side of the sugar bowl, wishing their tea would arrive so she could talk about something else. ‘I wanted to get a letter off to Steven. And I started one to Richard.’

‘Mum, you’re changing the subject again. Something’s really wrong, isn’t it? You seem depressed.’

‘Heavens, I’m not depressed. Just a bit homesick, that’s all. And I worry about your dad on his own.’ She looked around the tearooms. Every table was full; people were crowded in. But there was no sign of a waitress. Where was their tea?

‘Dad is perfectly capable of looking after himself.’

‘I wouldn’t be so sure. He can’t even boil an egg. I’ve always been there to look after him. And Richard promised to keep an eye on him.’

‘Richard? He can hardly boil an egg himself. Besides, he and Dad don’t always get on.’

‘I think they get on a lot better when I’m not around. They can talk about men things, like fishing and cars.’

‘Richard doesn’t know the first thing about cars. Besides, he’s working three jobs. I can’t see him having time to even go and see Dad let alone cook for him.’

‘He won’t need to cook for him. I left Dad a meal for every day in the freezer.’

‘I still can’t see why he didn’t come with you.’

‘He’d hate it here. All these women in black hoods …’

‘Burkas.’

‘… yes, all them, and all the crowds, and the underground. He’d hate it. You know Dad. He likes to be in the outdoors, not cooped up in a tube train rushing through smelly, sooty tunnels where you get black stuff up your nose.’

Jessie laughed. ‘You’re an expert at changing the subject, Mum. You always were good at tricking me and Richard into thinking about something else when we wanted lollies.’

‘Really, I’m fine. Just give me time to get used to it here.’ Liz recalled the disbelief of her friends that she hadn’t travelled abroad before. But she’d never wanted to. There’d always been so much to do at home, with holidays camping by the sea in their caravan. But the time had come to get further away, to get out of New Zealand, to escape.

Jessie put her hand below her pregnant belly. ‘I’m going to have to find the Ladies again.’ She winced. ‘It’s such a pain.’

‘I think I saw one just before the tearooms.’

‘Good. I shan’t be long. Hopefully the tea will have arrived by the time I’m back.’

‘I expect there’s a wait with all these people.’ Liz looked around at the crowded tearoom again: still no sign of their tea.

‘Try and cheer up a bit while I’m away. You’ve such a long face.’ Jessie was gone before Liz had time to reply.

Cheer up? Impossible, under the circumstances.

It was unfair, she knew, to burden Jessie with her in such a mood. But she would have been worse if she’d stayed at home. Steven just didn’t understand.

‘What does it matter?’ he’d say. ‘No one’s going to care.’

‘But I care. It would be terrible if Richard or Jessie found out.’

For thirty-six years, the secret had remained in its closet. With time, it had faded in its intensity; eventually she had been able to get through days at a time without thinking about it. For years now she’d been fine, had focused on her family, on ensuring they had a good upbringing, had filled the tins with baking, knitted sweaters, supervised homework and music practice. And when the children had grown up and left home, she’d kept the tins full for Steven, helped him with his photography, sewn for his operatic society productions, got a part-time job in the local bookstore. She’d kept herself busy and had almost forgotten about Katharine. Almost.

Occasionally she’d look at Jessie and wonder if she would look like her. Sometimes at home she wondered if she might pass her in the street, if she would recognise her, if she would look familiar, or would she just keep walking by without realising?

Did she have a good life? Would she have had a better life if Liz had been allowed to keep her?

And now, would Katharine try to track her down, now that the law was about to change?

She was adamant that the secret remain locked away forever; she couldn’t bear to relive the shame.

But how could she be sure? Her past could come knocking at the door. Everything could change in the stroke of a parliamentarian’s pen.

She still had the newspaper clipping in her wallet, but she didn’t need to read it to see what it said; she knew it by heart.

‘ADOPTION LAW REFORM’ the heading said.

‘A Bill before Parliament proposes a change to New Zealand’s adoption laws,’ it went on to say. ‘If passed, the new law would give adopted children the right to trace their birth parents, and parents to find their children. The Bill is expected to go before Parliament before the end of the year.’

The newspaper article went on to quote various politicians about whether the law change was a good idea, and the effect it would have on adopted children and the women who had given them up for adoption twenty or more years ago.

But it was the comment from one of the Adoption Law Reform spokeswomen that was closest to the bone. She pulled the well-thumbed clipping out from the back pouch in her wallet and read it again: ‘At last, adoptees like us will be able to find out where we come from. The question ‘Who am I?’ we have been asking all our lives will at last be answered’.

Liz rubbed her forehead distractedly. A law change was the last thing she wanted. What if her daughter decided she wanted to make contact? What if she turned up unannounced on the doorstep one day? It would be a disaster; it would bring it all back again, that terrible time after the baby had been stolen away, with only a lock of hair to remind her. Unconsciously, she touched the silver locket around her neck. She had worn it for thirty-six years, only taking it off to go swimming for fear of losing it in the sea. She’d never told anyone what was in it, or even that it had a clasp; it remained the only tangible reminder of the past and she wanted it to stay that way.

She knew she’d been different since she’d read that newspaper article, but she couldn’t help herself. She was terrified. She found it hard to talk to people, even to Steven; she found it hard to get up in the morning. Fleeing to London had been the only way to escape the consequences of the law-change.

‘Here you are, madam, your tea.’ The waitress delivered a silver tray with silver teapot and hot water jug, china cups and saucers, scones, cream and jam, all on china plates covered in lush red painted roses.

Liz slipped the newspaper clipping back in her wallet and dropped it in her bag before Jessie came back then turned her attention to afternoon tea. How grand! She could pretend, for a few moments anyway, to be a real lady, taking tea in Harrods.

Jessie insisted on paying for the taxi home. ‘We earn plenty, Mum, you don’t have to worry. Besides, the New Zealand dollar is only about a third of the pound. Save your money for a sightseeing trip.’

The cab delivered them outside Jessie’s compact flat, located at the top of a three-storey brick row in St John’s Wood, with Liz carrying a green and gold Harrods Food Hall bag bearing the ingredients for a special dinner – fresh pasta, which she’d never seen before, mushrooms, bacon, spring onions and a ready-made sauce. If she hadn’t had Jessie to take her by the arm, she’d probably still be there, such was the magnificence and bounty all around her - so many different meats, row upon row of whole fish, prawns, shellfish, vegetables and fruit, many of them unknown at home. She’d had no idea so many cheeses existed; at home, she and Steven had only recently ventured from colby to edam but here there had been hundreds of varieties, some soft and runny, some with mould, some with big red and yellow rinds. Jessie had bought a selection for after dinner. 

There was very little preparation needed for the dinner so Liz accepted a glass of chablis from Michael, who was home from his commute to the new Docklands development where his computer firm was based.

Liz didn’t understand computers but Michael said they were the future. He’d tried to explain it to her last night on the heavy little flat box he had at home, but try as she might, it was beyond her, all those code words and blinking white ‘curses’, as he called them, on the screen. She couldn’t see the point.

‘And for you, Jessie, a ginger ale again?’

Jessie nodded, yes. ‘They seem to help my digestion.’

Liz sipped the chablis and tried not to pull a face. It was much drier than the sweeter wines like Blenheimer she’d been used to at home. She nursed the glass and hoped he wouldn’t notice her not drinking much of it. She felt his opinion of her was already low enough. Perhaps he thought her a bit dull?

She had to admit she wasn’t her usual lively self, even though she’d tried to pass it off to Jessie in the tearooms as a bit of homesickness.

Her son-in-law was an unusual fellow she thought as she watched him holding up the wine bottle, reading the label, twisting and turning it against the light bulb before recorking it painstakingly. She wouldn’t have been surprised to see him stroking it. A bit of a fusspot, Michael Pearson, and a bit up himself, really, no doubt due to his excessive Englishness – he came from a family somewhere north of St John’s Wood who were extremely well off and had sent him to one of those plummy public schools where he’d learned how to speak like the Queen and affect a reticence that must surely drive her daughter crazy. Although, to be fair, Jessie was so gregarious, she’d fill any conversation gaps without anyone noticing his silence.