‘Oh, hello,’ she said in a posh
voice, trying to disguise her own. ‘Can I speak to Jane?’
‘She’s out, I’m afraid. Can I
take a message?’ It was Miranda.
‘No, it’s okay. I’ll call back,’
said Alice.
‘Well, she won’t be back until
tomorrow. She’s staying with a friend,’ said Miranda.
‘Okay, I’ll call tomorrow.’
Alice hung up the phone.
She felt disappointed that she
wouldn’t be able to tell Jane that she already knew about the surrogacy
agreement, and the fact they were sisters. However, in a way, she felt pleased
that at least this meant that Jane would be coming to her flat tomorrow. If she
had told her, there would have been no need for Jane to visit her.
She was looking forward to
seeing Jane again. She began to imagine how much fun it would be to have a
sister around. They could get to know each other, tell each other their
secrets, gossip about things. It would be great. She could hardly wait to see
her. For as long as she could remember, she had always envied people who had
siblings, and often wished that she could have had a sister or a brother. Now
she had found Jane, it was like having her wish granted. It was like having a
dream come true.
Chapter Seventeen
Wednesday 27th August 1997
Alice sat in her living room. It was 6.15 p.m. She stared
at the clock.
She had been excited all day at
the prospect of Jane coming to see her. Although she had already met her a few
times, this time would be different, because Jane would be visiting her flat. She
was slightly nervous about whether the flat was tidy enough, or whether it
would be what Jane expected.
When the shop was quiet at work,
Alice had told Charlotte about Jane. At first, Charlotte had seemed really
interested:
‘Oh, you’re so lucky, Alice! I’ve always wanted a
sister. I’ve only got three brothers,’ said Charlotte.
Alice noticed that the
newspaper she had hidden under the counter two weeks ago, was still there; the
newspaper with Jane on the front page. She took the paper out and placed it on
the counter. ‘That’s my sister,’ she said proudly. ‘Can you believe it?’
‘Yeah, right,’ Charlotte
laughed. ‘So, you’ve just been having me on about having a sister. You
definitely fooled me! But what was the point? Alice, you can be so weird
sometimes.’ She giggled and shook her head.
‘I’m not having you on.
It’s true! Remember you were saying she looks so much like me?’
‘Yes... but... Alice, I know
it’s probably lonely being an only child, but it’s just weird trying to pretend
you’ve got a sister.’
‘I’m not pretending,
Charlotte.’
Charlotte sighed. ‘Okay,
Alice, if you say so.’ She rolled her eyes.
‘You don’t believe me, do
you? Look, her name’s Jane Forester, it says it here. Didn’t I tell you my
dad’s surname was Forester?’
Charlotte frowned and picked
up the newspaper. She looked up at Alice after scanning the paper with her
eyes. Shrugging her shoulders, she said, ‘Well, it sounds so unbelievable, I’m
not sure whether you are telling the truth or not. You’ll have to bring her in,
and introduce her to me one day.’
‘Okay,’ Alice said, grinning.
For once, Charlotte seemed speechless.
***
As she sat waiting for Jane to arrive, Alice tried to put
all the negative thoughts out of her mind. At the end of the working day, she
became a little nervous; after all, she didn’t really know what Jane was coming
to talk to her about, and she had sounded serious on the telephone. Alice had
begun to imagine that perhaps she had some bad news for her. Maybe she was
going to tell her that she didn’t want anything more to do with her, just like
her parents had. Maybe they had spoken to Jane and somehow convinced her not to
become friendly with her.
Surely Jane wouldn’t come all
the way here to tell me she doesn’t want to see me again. She could have said
that over the phone.
There was something that had
disturbed her about the sound of Jane’s voice the previous night, however, and
so she knew she wouldn’t really be able to relax fully until Jane arrived.
At 6.35 p.m., the front doorbell rang. Alice realised she
had been sitting staring at the clock for the past twenty minutes or so. She
decided to switch on the television before opening the door to dispel a bit of
the tension from the room.
As Alice walked towards the
front door, she noticed the torn pieces of the photograph of her father. They
were still lying on the floor, where she had thrown them the night before. She
picked them up and threw them in the wastepaper basket that sat next to the
sofa.
Alice opened the door and saw
that it was raining heavily outside.
‘Hello,’ said Jane, smiling.
‘Hello.’ Alice forced a smile
although inside she was still nervous.
Jane seemed to be having trouble
closing her umbrella, as she still had the plaster-cast on her right arm.
‘I’ll do that,’ said Alice,
taking the umbrella, shaking the rain off of it, and closing it. She placed the
umbrella just inside the front door.
She helped Jane take off her
raincoat, and hung it on the coat-stand.
‘I can’t wait until I can have
this plaster-cast removed,’ said Jane. ‘It’s such a pain. I can hardly do
anything on my own.’
‘Yeah, it must be a nuisance,’
said Alice. ‘Are you all right though? I read all about that plane crash you
were in. You must have been really scared.’
‘Yes, I was. I still have
nightmares. It was so frightening. I go to counselling sessions at the
hospital. One positive thing is that I’ve made some really good friends. It was
such a traumatic experience that it brought all the survivors together. It
almost feels like we’re family.’
‘I can’t imagine what it’s like
to go through something like that,’ said Alice, latching on to the word
“family” which reverberated in her mind. Was Jane about to accept her or reject
her from her real family?
The two girls were standing by
the front door. Jane seemed nervous. Alice wondered whether she should tell
Jane about her nightmares around the time of the plane crash, but it didn’t
feel like the right time. She was still anxious to hear what Jane had come to
tell her.
‘This is a nice flat,’ said
Jane. ‘Do you own it?’
‘No, I rent it.’
‘I wish I was living on my own.
You
do
live on your own?’ Jane’s eyes peered around the room, as if
trying to work out if anyone else was in the flat.
‘Yes, I live on my own.’
An audible sigh left Jane’s
lips. Then she smiled and looked at Alice. ‘I still live with my parents, as
you know. They mean well, but they can get in the way sometimes.’ She giggled.
Another brief moment of awkward
silence followed. ‘Um... please sit down,’ said Alice eventually, leading the
way to the sofa.
Jane followed her and sat down.
‘Would you like a cup of tea?’
‘Er... yes, that would be nice,’
said Jane, looking at the floor.
Alice could not tell from her
expression whether she was happy or sad, or if she had come to relay good news
or bad news. She had smiled at her a couple of times and they’d had a
relatively pleasant exchange of words so far, but there was an underlying
current of tension which Alice hoped she was imagining.
‘Do you take milk and sugar?’
‘Just milk, please,’ said Jane,
as if she were ordering from someone in a café.
Alice went into the kitchen and
switched on the kettle. As she looked for the mugs and spoons, random thoughts
ran through her mind. She pondered how she and Jane were strangers; they had
lived for years without knowing each other.
Will it ever be possible to make
up for the lost time, or will there always be this distance between us?
She
could tell that whatever Jane had come to relate to her, she was not finding it
easy; she seemed to be finding it difficult to even look at her.
Alice took the tea into the
front room and handed a mug to Jane who took it and held it, staring into the
mug as if she were trying to read her fortune from the tea leaves.
‘So,’ said Alice, trying to
think of something to say to break the silence, ‘did you have any difficulty
finding my flat?’
‘No, it was easy to find.’ Jane
looked at the television as she spoke. She did not appear to be watching the
television programme, but seemed to be in a world of her own, as if she were in
a trance.
‘I was so surprised when I found
out your address. We live so close to each other; only a few miles away,’ said
Alice, trying to start a conversation.
‘Yes.’ Jane’s expression
remained unchanged.
‘Jane, yesterday, when you
phoned me, you said we had to talk.’
‘I know. We do have to talk,’
she said, now looking at Alice pensively. ‘There is something important I have
to tell you, but it’s difficult to know where to start. You see, I don’t know
how much you know about the circumstances of your birth, about...’
Alice interrupted, with a sigh
of relief: ‘It’s okay, I already know everything.’
‘But... But, when we first met
you said we were half-sisters, so I thought—’ started Jane.
‘I know I did, but the reason I
didn’t let on to you before was because I knew that your parents hadn’t told
you the truth.’
Jane stared at her, with wide
eyes. ‘And you thought it was okay that they hadn’t told me?’
‘No, of course not. But, your
dad said he wanted to tell you himself.’
‘He’s your dad, too,’ said Jane,
correcting her.
‘Um.’ Alice looked at the ground.
‘No, actually, I don’t consider him to be my dad. Your parents practically
threw me out of your house on Saturday. They told me they don’t want to know
me. They don’t want me to contact them, or you, again. Didn’t you notice how
keen they were for me to leave when you came home?’
‘That was because I didn’t know
the truth on Saturday,’ said Jane. ‘They were worried you would tell me. When
they finally told me everything, they said that they were afraid that if they
didn’t tell me, I’d find out from you anyway. They didn’t want to tell me at
first. They were worried about what my reaction would be. But, Alice, are you
sure you know the
whole
story?’ Jane wore a frown.
‘Yes, of course; they told me
everything on Saturday. Well, I’d sort of guessed everything anyway,’ said
Alice.
Jane raised her eyebrows and
seemed surprised.
The two girls sat in silence and
drank their tea, staring at the television screen. There was a quiz show on,
but Alice wasn’t really watching it, she was just staring straight ahead, a
million thoughts buzzing through her mind. She wondered whether Jane was really
watching it, or whether she was just as overawed to be sitting on a sofa
drinking tea with the sister she had never known.
When the programme finished,
Alice decided she would have to say something. ‘So, Jane, when I spoke to your
parents on Saturday they said you were going to go to university to study law,
as well. Isn’t it funny that we chose to do the same thing?’
‘I wish you wouldn’t keep
calling them, my parents,’ said Jane, agitatedly.
‘We... Well, they are your
parents.’
‘And they’re your parents too.’
She placed her mug on the coffee table and leaned back on the sofa, her arms
folded, legs crossed. ‘You’re calling them
my
parents, as if they’ve got
nothing to do with you.’
‘Well, they made it clear that
they don’t want anything to do with me,’ said Alice, glumly.
Jane uncrossed her legs and
leaned towards Alice. ‘That was before they told me the truth. Now, I’m sure
they’d love to get to know you.’
‘I’m not so sure. And anyway, I
don’t know if I really want to get to know them.’ She avoided Jane’s eyes.
When she looked at Jane, she saw
she was staring at the floor. She seemed offended.
‘Look, Jane. It’s different for
me and you. You have had a long relationship with your—okay
our
parents—you weren’t the one that they gave away or the one that they rejected
again after twenty years.’ Alice placed her empty mug on the coffee table.
‘You sound angry,’ said Jane.
‘I’m not really angry.’ She took
a deep breath in an attempt to calm herself down, as memories of the meeting
flashed through her mind. ‘I just didn’t feel very welcome when I went to your
house, that’s all.’
‘I know. I’m sorry they behaved
that way. I think they were just trying to protect me. All I’m saying is,
they’re not
that
bad. Give them another chance.’
Alice shrugged her shoulders and
forced a smile at Jane.
The uncomfortable silence
resumed.
‘I didn’t know you were studying
law,’ said Jane after a couple of minutes, picking up the thread of the earlier
conversation.
‘Yeah.’
‘It is a coincidence; a bit
eerie,’ said Jane.
Alice giggled. ‘Yeah, I suppose
you could say that.’
‘I’m not really looking forward
to going back to university, I quite enjoy all the time off.’
‘Yeah, the holidays always go
too fast,’ said Alice. Then, she realised what Jane had said. ‘Hang on, you
just said you’re not looking forward to going
back
to university.’
‘That’s right,’ said Jane,
frowning. ‘Don’t tell me you are?’
‘No, but your—our parents—said
you were only going to start university this year.’
‘Why would they say that?’ Jane
shook her head. ‘I’m going to start my final year this year.’
‘You can’t be,’ said Alice. ‘I’m
going to start my final year this year.’
‘Yes. And?’ Jane was looking at
Alice as if she had just said something stupid. ‘Er... why is that so hard to
believe? We
are
the same age.’ Jane laughed.