‘I
said
“first” year,’
said Miranda, quickly. ‘Didn’t I?’
‘No,’ said Alice, ‘You said
“final” year.’
‘Oh, dear. I meant first year.’
She sighed. Then she added, ‘You’ll have to excuse me, I sometimes get my words
mixed up; it’s my age.’ She giggled.
Ken shifted in his seat, his
false smile rearing its head again as he looked at Alice.
‘Well, it is quite a coincidence
that we both chose to study law, isn’t it? I’m sure me and Jane would get on
well; she seems really nice,’ said Alice, still sure her parents were on the
defensive as if they hadn’t told her the whole truth. Perhaps they were just
uncomfortable meeting the child they’d abandoned years before, she reasoned.
They definitely seemed uncomfortable.
‘As we discussed on the phone, I
think it would be better for things to go back to how they were. I don’t want
you to keep in touch with us, or Jane,’ said her father.
‘I agree,’ said Miranda.
Although not entirely
unexpected, considering the cold way they had been acting towards her, Alice
still felt shocked and offended by this. ‘Why?’ she managed to say, her mouth
remaining open.
Her father stood up as if
preparing to show her to the door. ‘As I explained to you on the phone, it will
do no one any good to rake up the past now,’ he said.
Alice felt a lump forming in her
throat, but she fought back the tears. She didn’t want them to see her cry.
‘It’s for the best, Alice. Think
of Stephanie,’ continued her father.
‘Stephanie is all right with
this. She knew I was coming to see you,’ said Alice. ‘She understands that I
would want to get to know my real parents.’
‘It’s been too long,’ chimed in
Miranda. ‘You have to understand; your father and I accepted long ago that you
were going to live with Stephanie. We never saw you as our child, and I
suppose, well, we can’t just start thinking of you as our child now. It’s too
late.’ Miranda stood up too.
Alice looked at Miranda’s face.
There appeared to be tears forming in her eyes.
‘Alice, you'll have to try to
understand: we don’t want you in our lives. Sorry.’ Her fathers words boomed
out much louder to her than they were in reality
“we don’t want you in our
lives”
.
She felt stunned at how quickly
their conversation had turned from him asking her about her studies, to him now
making it more than clear that they were just not interested in her at all. It
seemed incomprehensible. They were both so openly, and obviously, trying to get
rid of her.
‘I’ll show you to the door,’
said her father, formally.
Alice was still, at that moment,
seated on the armchair looking up at her parents, unable to believe that they
had no feelings for her whatsoever.
‘I’m sure I can find my own way
to the door,’ she said, bitterly.
She stood up and walked away
from the people who were once her parents but were now just strangers, her head
bowed low.
How can this be happening?
she wondered.
Surely it should
be me unable to forgive them for leaving me; they should be begging me for forgiveness.
Instead, they just seem to have no remorse and no feelings at all. It’s like
they are made of stone.
As she approached the front
door, she heard their footsteps behind her on the wooden floor. She didn’t want
to turn around and give them the satisfaction of seeing they had upset her.
She reached towards the door to
open it, but just as her hand touched the handle, she heard the sound of a key
being placed in the lock. She pulled her hand away instinctively and the door
opened.
Jane walked in and closed the
front door.
Alice turned around sideways to
give her room to enter, and she then caught sight of her parents’ faces. Her
father’s eyes were wide in shock. Miranda’s face had turned pale.
Ken and Miranda seemed frozen.
Alice realised that they now feared she would tell Jane everything. They feared
she would tell her that her parents had given away their eldest daughter for
money, and had never cared about her.
Alice just wanted to get out of
the house. She didn’t understand why, when she had reached out to her
parents—even after they had given her away—they had rejected her again. They
seemed heartless. Surely, Jane was adult enough, now, to understand what had
happened all those years ago? She wouldn’t hold it against them. Maybe, Jane
would have looked at the situation, positively—as
she
had done—and seen
that she now had the opportunity to get to know her sister. As Alice stood
staring at the two cold faces, she knew that she didn’t care if she never saw
them again.
There was no point in coming here
anymore. She would leave, and hopefully be able to scrape back together the
shattered pieces of her life. She realised now that her life had really been
fine until she started wanting to find her father. She had always been happy
with Stephanie.
‘Hello,’ said Jane, cheerfully,
looking directly at Alice. Jane seemed pleased to see her.
‘Hello,’ said Alice, tears
forming in her eyes.
‘Darling, you’re home early,’
interrupted Miranda.
‘Yes.’ Jane nodded. ‘Why didn’t
you tell me Alice was coming?’ She smiled at Alice.
‘She’s leaving,’ said Ken,
bluntly.
Alice looked at his hard stare
and closed her eyes briefly, sighing, wishing she had the guts to punch him.
‘Oh?’ Jane seemed disappointed.
‘Why don’t you stay a little longer? I’d love to hear what you’ve all been
talking about,’ she said.
‘Alice is in a bit of a hurry,
aren’t you?’ Her father walked quickly past Alice and Jane, almost pushing
Alice sideways into the wall. He opened the front door.
‘I could stay a little bit
longer,’ said Alice through gritted teeth.
Ken’s arm reached out and pulled
her towards the front door and then he forcibly pushed her out of the door. She
looked back towards where Jane had been standing hoping she would say something
else, but Miranda had pulled Jane towards the living room door and was now
whispering something into her ear.
‘Go now,’ said Ken to Alice.
‘And don’t come back.’
Alice looked up at his face. His
cheeks were bright red and she could not tell whether it was anger or
embarrassment at Jane having turned up unexpectedly.
She turned away from him without
saying a word and walked towards the gate.
The sound of the front door
slamming shut behind her, reverberated in her ears.
Walking along the street, she
felt as if her world had taken another drastic turn for the worse. The meeting
with her parents was meant to be a new start but now it had come crashing down;
an ending instead of a beginning. Their behaviour had been irrational at best,
and downright evil at worst. How could they behave like that towards their eldest
daughter who had come to see them after so many years apart? She searched her
soul for a way to forgive them but could not find a reason. Her thoughts turned
to Jane. Jane was the one saving grace of the afternoon. At least she had
smiled at her; had seemed pleased to see her. Just as that thought came to
mind, she heard someone call her name.
Turning around, she saw Jane
running towards her. ‘Alice, wait!’
Jane was a little out of breath
when she caught up with her. ‘I’m so glad I managed to catch you,’ she said,
smiling.
Alice could only stare at her,
open-mouthed.
‘Alice,’ said Jane, ‘give me
your telephone number and I’ll call you, and arrange a date for us to go out.
I’d love to introduce you to my friends. I’ve already told a couple of them about
you. Anyway, we’ve probably got some friends in common, because you were at
Tony’s party.’
‘But... have you spoken to your
parents?’ asked Alice.
‘Look, I think things are a bit
awkward between Dad and my mum since you’ve returned. Dad didn’t tell me about
his previous marriage. My mum’s finding it all a bit much. It can’t be easy to
find out that your husband has a child from another marriage that you knew
nothing about. I can’t really blame her for not wanting me to get to know you.’
‘Miranda... er.... your mum did
know about his previous marriage,’ said Alice.
Jane frowned. ‘Oh... Oh well,
maybe she’s just jealous. Who knows?’ she said, shrugging. ‘Anyway, I don’t see
why it should stop us getting to know each other. Er... that’s if you still
want to?’
‘Yes,’ said Alice quickly,
nodding.
‘Good.’ Jane smiled.
Alice took her notebook out of
her bag, and wrote down her telephone number. She tore out the page and handed
it to Jane.
‘Thanks. I’d better go back to
the house; Dad will be on the warpath if he realises I’ve come out to see you.’
She rolled her eyes. She turned to walk away and then twisted back towards
Alice. ‘Look, don’t worry, they’ll come round. I’m sure Dad will want to get to
know you. He’s just worried about how it will affect me if we get close, and
maybe worried about upsetting my mum.’
Alice nodded.
‘I’ll phone you,’ said Jane,
holding up the sheet of paper with Alice’s telephone number written on it.
‘Great,’ said Alice, smiling.
As she watched Jane walk away,
she was left with mixed feelings. It was good to know that Jane wanted to get
to know her, but the treatment she had received from her parents left a bitter
taste in her mouth; and knowing that Jane still didn’t know the whole truth was
also a worry. Would that change everything again when she found out?
Alice turned around and began
walking towards the Tube station, confusion uppermost in her mind: why did her
parents hate her so much? Was it because they didn’t want Jane to find out
about the surrogacy agreement? But Jane seemed to have accepted her without
asking for any specific details. She had just seemed to be happy to have found
out that she has a sister; surely her parents could see that? Jane seemed such
a nice girl, surely she would understand her parents’ reasons for giving Alice
away; for not talking about her? But it seemed to Alice that her parents were
just not willing to welcome her to the family. They seemed to resent the fact
that she had looked for them. She had shaken the foundations of their happy
home—the happy home they had built on lies.
It seemed to Alice, that Ken and
Miranda weren’t really worried about the effect all this would have on Jane,
they were just being selfish, not wanting her to find out the whole truth
because they were worried that she would hate them. If Jane found out they had
lied to her for so long, how would she ever be able to believe anything else
they said? Alice had no sympathy for them.
Travelling home on the Tube,
Alice’s thoughts turned to Stephanie. She couldn’t wait to see her again,
especially after her experience today. She needed a familiar face, a smile from
someone who cared. As she sat on the Central Line Tube train on that fateful
Saturday afternoon, she had an epiphany of sorts; all her life she had defined
a mother as someone who gives birth to you, but she knew now that a mother is
not someone who gives birth to you, but someone who loves you, and looks after
you.
Stephanie is my mum, not Miranda.
Strangely, Alice had now
managed, after meeting her real parents, to almost put herself back into the
position she had been in before she had started looking for her father: she was
now aware, and accepted, that Stephanie, was, in every true sense of the word,
her mother; her father was now unimportant in her life, just as he had been
unimportant throughout her life—it had all come around, full circle. The only
thing that had really changed for her was that she had now found her sister;
Jane.
As Alice stepped off the train,
she found some comfort in the thought that at least she now had the opportunity
to build a relationship with her sister. If her parents didn’t want to know
her, she would have to live with that.
***
Alice felt happy when she opened the door to Stephanie’s
flat, that evening. It felt as though she had just returned home after a long
time away. The feeling was a million miles away from the sense of isolation she
had felt in her own parents’ house.
‘Hello, darling,’ said
Stephanie, cheerfully, as Alice walked through the kitchen door. Stephanie had
been standing at the cooker, stirring a saucepan of pasta. She was now walking
towards Alice with the wooden spoon still in her hand. Stephanie kissed her on
the cheek, and went back to her cooking. ‘I’m making pasta with an Italian
sauce. Rosie, from the salon gave me the recipe, I told her I wanted to cook
something special for you.’
‘Oh,’ said Alice. ‘That’s nice.’
When she heard Rosie’s name, her mind went back to their recent chat at the
salon. A cloud of insecurity descended. She imagined that Stephanie and Rosie must
have discussed everything about her search for her father. Alice could picture
the scene clearly in her mind...
‘Oh, poor Alice,’ said Rosie. ‘It must have come as
such a shock to her finding everything out in this way. I mean, she believed
for all these years that you were her mum.’
‘Yes,’ Stephanie nodded, an
upside-down smile on her face, ‘I never wanted her to find out. I never wanted
to hurt her. She’s coming round to dinner tonight. I want to cook her something
special, to cheer her up. Do you know, she wants to go and visit her real
parents. I don’t think it’s a good idea. I’m going to try to persuade her not
to.’
‘Oh, poor, poor Alice. She
will need cheering up. Well, if you want to cook something really good, I’ve
got a recipe for a lovely pasta dish.’
Yes
, thought Alice,
Rosie and Stephanie
probably had just that sort of conversation over a cup of tea at the salon.
The feeling of humiliation would not go away. ‘Mum? Does Rosie know about the
surrogacy agreement?’