The kettle began to whistle and she turned off the gas. Her mother came in rolling the hoover. ‘I’d love a cuppa, Nina.’ She pushed the pantry door open and put the hoover away.
Nina poured water into the pot and swilled it round, went to open the caddy.
‘How was town? Did you get anything?’
‘No.’ her skin prickled and her breath caught in her throat. ‘No, I didn’t see anything.’
The following day she tried to make sense of the notes but she wasn’t sure which place to start with.
‘Ring Social Services,’ Chloe said when she told her. ‘They’ll know.’
She found the number in the phone book but it was another two days before she got the house to herself and a chance to use the phone. It was engaged at first, then she got passed on to a different department.
At last she spoke to someone who could deal with her. The woman asked her if she had her original birth certificate.
‘No.’ Mum and Dad might have it but she couldn’t ask them.
‘Do you know what your name at birth was?’
‘Yes.’ Claire Driscoll.
‘Good. If you know your name you can buy a copy of your original birth certificate. I’ll tell you where to write. When you’ve done that it will give you information about your birth mother and where she was living when you were born. Then, if you wish to, you can apply to see your adoption records – they are usually kept by the agency who arranged the adoption. But those aren’t automatically handed over, you have to see a social worker before you get them. We make sure everyone has that basic counselling before they have access to their records. A lot of people find it very helpful.
Nina was scribbling down as much as she could.
‘So, first I need my birth certificate?’
‘Yes, you write to the General Records Office and they will send you a form. I’ll give you their address in a minute. They make a small charge, a few pounds or so, for a copy.’
‘Right.’
Nina wrote the address down.
‘When you’ve got your birth certificate you can ring here again and we can make an appointment with a social worker.’
‘Thanks.’
She dropped the receiver as she replaced it, her hands were trembling. God. Maybe she should just leave it? She looked at what she had scrawled on the paper. If she just got the birth certificate, it didn’t mean she had to do anything else. Before she could get any more confused about it all she went up to her room, got out notepaper and an envelope, wrote asking for her birth certificate, sealed the letter and addressed the envelope. She sent it that afternoon, a sense of occasion. She would have to watch the post. A thrill made her want to run, or jump up and down. It was exciting, there was an undercurrent too, a pull of guilt as though she had done something naughty and might get caught. But it was done now. No turning back.
They told her to apply again when she was eighteen. Nina was furious. ‘I can get married,’ she ranted to Chloe, ‘leave home, work in a poxy little job for forty hours a week, but I can’t find out who I am!’
‘Could you find her without those papers?’
‘Chloe, I don’t know her full name. I can’t do anything till I have that. I’ll have to wait. They said it might be different if I had my parents’ permission but there’s no way I’m asking them. They’d go mad.’
‘You don’t know that.’
‘I do know that. But the day I’m eighteen I’ll do it.’
Chloe leant forward into the mirror and applied thick black mascara to her lashes. ‘What if you don’t like her?’
Nina shrugged. ‘It’s all right for you, least you know where you come from, who you look like.’
‘Yeah, the bloody Adams family!’
‘Give over.’
‘Pink or yellow?’ Chloe held up eye shadows.
‘Pink – and you should do your mascara last.’
‘Says who?’
‘Well, you’ll get pink all over it now, and then you’ll have to do it again.’
‘Are you coming like that?’ Chloe raked her eyes over Nina’s unadorned complexion.
‘No.’
‘Well, get a move on. It’s a pound more after nine o’clock.’
Marjorie
She loved this place. And it was always such a contrast with home. Each summer she’d be surprised afresh at the rough plaster walls, the stone-flagged floors, the simmering views over gauzy hillside terraces and fields. The hillsides were mauve and olive from the wild thyme and lavender. She relished the sound of cowbells in the air and the incessant chattering of the small birds that swooped in and out of their nests under the eaves, the smell of sun-baked pine.
They had all their holidays in southern France.
It had been an idyll, but now . . .
She waited in the sitting room, close to the drive for any sound that would interrupt the shrilling of the cicadas, swivelling the bracelet on her wrist. Moths batted against the windows, crazy for the light.
At last she heard the crunch of gravel and hurried to the door. It was Stephen on his butcher’s bike. He slithered to a stop and propped the bike against the wall.
‘She’s in the square,’ he said. ‘She’s been drinking. She was in the fountain.’
‘Oh, God!’ Marjorie closed her eyes at the thought.
‘Dad’s bringing her back.’
‘Come in.’
‘I hate her, Mummy,’ he blurted out, his normally placid expression twisted with dislike. ‘She ruins everything. She doesn’t care about anyone but herself. Her top was all wet. Everyone could see.’
She shared his shame and anger. ‘Oh, Stephen!’
‘Why do you let her do things like that?’
What do you expect, she wanted to say, what can we do? If she’s hell-bent on raising Cain how can we stop her. Lock her up?
‘I’m sorry. You mustn’t let it spoil the holiday.’
‘Frederique came out of the restaurant and asked her to get out and she just made fun of him. You could see how upset he was.’
He began to cry and she pulled him close. He was taller than she was now, his chin on her head as he cried. Compassion choked her. And guilt. Could they have done more? What, though? Oh, my poor boy. It’s so unfair. Thank God he was off to university in October. Away from all the awful arguments.
She heard the sound of a car drawing closer. Stephen pulled away. ‘I’m going to bed.’
‘There’s milkshake in the fridge if you want to take some.’
She let him go and watched as the car headlights swept in at the end of the drive, picking out the Bougainvillea that scrambled along the wall. Her stomach fluttered with dread at the shouting match to come.
Robert cut the engine and snapped off the lights. Nina was still. Thank God she’s not singing.
Robert opened his door. ‘Get a towel,’ he called.
She went in and fetched one of the beach towels from the drying rack in the kitchen. When she returned, Robert was by the house. He took it from her and opened the passenger door. Marjorie half-expected Nina to fall out like some comic drunk but she didn’t move.
‘Get out,’ Robert said coldly, holding the towel up, the gesture at odds with his tone.
Nina got out slowly. As she stepped away from the car the light from the lantern by the front door fell on her.
Marjorie gasped.
Nina’s face was cut, an angry gash bled below one eye, her eye half-shut. Her upper lip was split and swollen. Her wet blouse was torn and Marjorie could see another mark on her upper arm. Her hair was plastered to the side of her head. The cloud of moths batted against the light, casting shadows over Nina’s wounds. A bat flew swiftly above.
‘What on earth’s happened?’
Nina looked blankly at Marjorie.
Robert draped the towel around her.
‘Nina?’
‘Leave her,’ Robert instructed.
‘Robert?’ She didn’t understand.
‘Go to your room,’ he told his daughter.
She began to move slowly, walking stiffly, her face still expressionless.
‘But she’s hurt.’
‘Let her go.’
‘What on earth has happened?’
‘She’s had a bloody good hiding, that’s what. Knock some sense into her. And not before time.’
She stared at him incredulous, felt the hairs on her arms prickle.
He gave a short humourless laugh and shook his head. ‘She’s had it coming, Marjorie. There are limits. Should have done it years ago.’ He went inside.
She moved, balanced against the little archway to the side of the door. Traditionally a shrine to the Virgin Mary.
She looked up at the sky but in place of the stars she saw only the brutal damage that Robert had done. It was wrong. No matter how far Nina had pushed him, to do that . . . break her face, beat her up. She covered her mouth with her hand. She felt sick. She closed her eyes and prayed: Sweet mother of God, help me. Oh, God, help me.
Nina
Life was a mix of work and waiting. She’d got taken on by British Home Stores at the Arndale Centre. She knew her parents were disappointed. They had wanted her to get more qualifications. ‘I’ve five O levels,’ she told them.
‘Well, why stop now?’ Robert Underwood demanded. ‘You’re a bright enough girl, if you’d only apply yourself . . .’
‘I don’t want to. I’ve had enough of all that.’
‘You could even go to art school,’ he said in desperation. He’d always regarded her success in art as an amusing but essentially irrelevant achievement.
‘I’m not going back, I’m going to get a job.’
‘You’re cutting your nose off to spite your face!’ he shouted.
‘You don’t even listen. You never try to see my side of things!’ She had slammed out of the room. Silence clouded the days that followed. Cold disapproval. She comforted herself with the thought that she would save once she was working and she would get enough to put a little deposit down on something. And before long she’d have a place of her own and he’d have to eat his words.
But saving hadn’t been easy, she didn’t know where all the money went. She gave Marjorie some for her bed and board and she bought quite a lot of clothes from work, where they got staff discount. She got the chance to move into window dressing after her first three months. A chance to use her eye for colour and design.
On her eighteenth birthday she wrote again for her birth certificate. It took almost six weeks for it to come after she had returned the fee and the application form. Nina had stopped watching the post quite so avidly. It was Stephen who brought it into the kitchen, where Marjorie was clearing up the breakfast post and Nina about to leave for work. It was a training day.
‘Official letter for Nina.’ Stephen waved the brown envelope.
She snatched it from him. She saw the postmark and her stomach swooped.
‘Who’s it from?’ Marjorie asked.
‘Work, something to do with the tax office. I’ll be late, better go.’
She didn’t dare open the letter on the bus, she needed to do it in private. She was eager to know what it said but also frightened. It was like opening a Pandora’s box.
She tried to pay attention as they went through the forthcoming season’s plans, stock returns and health and safety but her mind darted back to the envelope all the time. She waited until after tea at home to go up to her room and open the letter. She used her nail file to slit it open. She drew out the certificate and unfolded it. Pink paper, the headings all in red ink. Her eyes flew across the columns. Megan Driscoll . . . Collyhurst . . . Claire. She forced herself to stop and read it slowly. When and where born – Twenty-fourth May 1960, Withington Hospital, Nell Lane, Withington. Name, if any – Claire. She had looked up Claire and it meant clear or bright, a nice name. Sex – girl. Name and surname of father – just a dash across the page. Name, surname and maiden surname of mother – Megan Agnes Driscoll (factory worker), 14 Livesey Street, Collyhurst. An address, a proper address. Some places put down the mother and baby home, she’d read, but this was her real address. She couldn’t sit still, she jumped up and walked slowly about, continuing to read. Occupation of father – another line struck through the column. Signature, description and residence of informant – Megan Driscoll, mother, 14 Livesey Street, Collyhurst. When registered – Twentieth June 1960. Signature of registrar – D.H. Coombes, Registrar. And at the edge of the page, D.H.Coombes had written Adopted and signed it.