What She Never Told Me (12 page)

Chapter Fourteen

It’s now several days since my visit to David Prescott and my mind is still in turmoil. I’ve woken up in a state of confusion every morning, briefly forgetful as I lie for those few minutes in that comfortable space between sleeping and being fully awake. After that, it’s downhill, as the marauding ghosts of my mother’s past trample through my head and my body. My stomach writhes and knots every time I try to make sense of what David Prescott has told me, which is pretty much all the time. It’s as if there are pythons in there, wrestling with each other. I feel sick. The flat is a mess.

I’ve cancelled my lessons for a week, texting my students to tell them that I have some kind of summer flu and promising to be in touch when I have recovered.

I don’t remember much about the journey back to London, beyond getting into the car in Friars Ashby and getting out of it again on Ladbroke Grove. One thing I do recall is hoping that Sandy would be in the flat and then remembering that he was away at his conferences in Vienna and Prague. Maybe it was just as well, because he would have thought I was mad. I’m beginning to wonder about that myself, whether David Prescott really did show me my own death certificate. But I can see the piece of paper clearly in my head, every word etched into my brain. I can see the white casket. I can remember everything he said to me, his voice raised in anger initially and then softening as he talked about what had happened to the child he said was his daughter.
Louise
.

I haven’t been back in touch with him since my visit. I want to believe that what he told me was a bag of lies, prepared years ago in case I tracked him down. But even as this scenario takes shape in my mind, I know I have to discount it. It’s too fanciful, too far beyond the realms of possibility. And there are the photographs of my mother with him and that child, who, even with the dark blonde hair, looked so much more like her than I ever did.

I know what I have to do, even if the thought of it sends a chill through me. I must check whether the death certificate is genuine. Not now, though. Tomorrow or the next day. What difference will a day or two make? I know I was born on 11 December 1969, in Dublin. I’ve been able to obtain copies of my birth certificate, with David Prescott named as my father, in the past. I know I exist as Louise Redmond, my mother’s daughter. For a moment, I reassure myself that everything can be explained. But then I see the death certificate again in my mind, with all its troubling details – the name, the date of birth and my mother’s name. I see the photographs of my mother with the child who isn’t me. I hear every one of David Prescott’s words ring like gunshots and ricochet around my head until I have to press my hands to my forehead and close my eyes. Sleep is the only refuge and I retreat to the bedroom and, still fully dressed, bury myself in the duvet.

I wake to find Sandy gently shaking me.

‘What’s the story, hen? You’re in a right state, by the looks of things. Come on, you can tell your uncle Sandy,’ he says, lying down beside me and drawing me in to him.

So I do, even though I’m afraid he’ll be angry with me for not having told him about my scheme to track down my father, for having given a false name and email address to the brewery and for having tricked an old man. Because, as I tell him about everything that’s happened, I see how underhand it must all look.

He doesn’t give any indication that my behaviour has disappointed him, though. He keeps me folded in his arms as he listens, asks questions, tells me to run over this bit or that bit again.

‘How genuine did the death certificate look?’

‘It looked genuine. I mean, it didn’t look quite like the one I got for my mother, but hers is an Irish one and this is an old English one from the 1970s,’ I say, and I hear that my voice sounds calm, normal, that I am making sense, and I feel relieved to be talking about it. ‘And, Sandy, the photos . . .’

‘Is it possible that your mother had twins, you and another girl, and that this other child died but your name was put on the death certificate by mistake?’

I’m about to say,
Not a chance
, and then I stop myself, because, even if it sounds extraordinary, it does offer a glimmer of hope that there is an explanation.

‘I suppose it has to be possible,’ I say, but then I shake my head. ‘No, it can’t be. David Prescott didn’t say there was another child.’

‘Okay, what about two children, not twins, one he didn’t know about because the baby was conceived before your mother went back to Dublin?’

‘But what about the date of birth? The eleventh of December, 1969. It’s on my birth certificate and it’s on the death certificate that David Prescott has,’ I say.

And then I find that I can’t think any more, can’t cope with having to deal with all these outrageous possible explanations. I drop my head into my hands.

Sandy gets up and lifts me off the bed.

‘I think you’ve had enough for now, hen. We can revisit this tomorrow. You need food and I need a drink. But, first, you’re in dire need of a shower. Off you go,’ he says, steering me into the bathroom.

Oh, the relief of having Sandy look after me! We walk down to one of the Italian restaurants on Kensington Park Road and lose ourselves in the boisterous, noisy atmosphere. I eat the first proper meal I’ve had in days – and with my husband, whose presence in the flat has been erratic. He has many claims on his attention. Now he’s focusing only on me.

I ask him about Vienna and Prague, about
Rosenkavalier
. His face lights up.

‘It was terrific. Great production. I called you afterwards, several times. You didn’t answer. It went straight to voicemail. I thought you must be out on the razzle with Ursula.’

My earlier suspicions fall away.

Later, at home, I lie awake for a long time, a new torment having taken root in my mind. Perhaps the death certificate and the truth about my father can be explained. Perhaps there really was a sister, or a half-sister, of whom I have no recollection. But what I’ll never be able to understand is why my mother kept so much from me, why she lied. Did she really think I was so lacking in curiosity that I might not some day try to find out more about my father and, in doing so, discover her lies?

And if she had kept secret something so fundamental and important as another child, what else had she kept from me?

It strikes me now that I never once saw my mother shed tears, not even when Dermot died. I was the one who wept as his coffin was lowered into the grave, while she stood tall and straight, her black clothes emphasising the pallor of her skin. But there were no tears. It was around then that the need to contact my real father became stronger. I used to talk about it to Sandy. At first, he listened and was sympathetic. After a while, he started becoming irritated whenever I brought up the topic.

‘Look, Lou, it’s not me you should be talking to. It’s your mother.’

‘You know she won’t talk about it.’

‘And you know that I can’t help you. Why is it so important to you now?’

‘It always was.’

‘Was it? We’ve been married seven years and it’s only now that you’ve started going on about it. Look, hen, it’s not great, not having contact with your father, but you’re not a child. You’re forty—’

‘Thirty-nine.’

‘Okay, thirty-nine. As I was saying, it’s not ideal that you have no contact with him or even a clue where he is, but it’s not as if you had a terrible childhood, is it?’

‘No, but—’

‘Lou, your mother did a pretty good job of bringing you up. And Dermot was as good a father as you could have had. I understand that you want to know your real father, but what are you actually doing about it? Nothing. I can only listen to you. Your mother is the one who can tell you everything, but she won’t. So you have to get a grip on this or it’ll do your head in,’ he said. And then he added, under his breath, ‘Not to mention mine.’

*

Sheila is silent for what seems like a long time after I give her an account of my trip to Northamptonshire. I’ve missed two sessions without telling her. I just haven’t turned up. I feel I’ve disappointed her. After all, not only did I lie to Tennyson’s in order to find my way to David Prescott, but I also lied to her by letting her think I’d written an honest letter to the brewery. I feel relieved that I can’t see her face and register her disapproval.

When she finally speaks, however, there’s no reprobation. She asks how I feel now about what happened.

‘I don’t know . . . a little bit panicky. Sandy has put in an online application for a copy of the death certificate because I couldn’t face doing it myself. He says it shouldn’t be a problem because it’s a document of public record. He doesn’t even have to explain why he wants it.’

‘Have you thought about what will happen when the certificate, assuming there is one, arrives?’ she asks.

‘All the time. And that’s part of the panicky feeling. If the certificate is real, then who am I? I’m afraid I’m never going to find out the truth about anything.’

‘Shall we talk a bit about your mother, what she was like when you were very small, what you were like then? What’s the first thing you remember?’

I struggle with this question. No single thing leaps out at me. When I think about my childhood, I see a series of still photographs, so many different images. No one image is dominant. I see myself in a little smocked dress, my hand in my mother’s as she takes me about with her. I see her holding her face up to the sun with her eyes closed as we sit on a bench on St Stephen’s Green. We’re always together, my mother and I. There’s rarely anyone else in those early scenes.

My memories become heavily populated by other people only when we move to Drogheda and my mother, though still there, moves back from centre stage.

The only memory that persists over the years is the postbox memory, and yet I can’t identify myself as the little girl stretching upwards. But if I’m not that child, who is she? Is she Ailish, the little girl who wrote to Santa Claus in Lapland? Or is she the little girl who died, the other little girl called Louise Redmond?

‘It’s as if it’s all part of a jigsaw that I can’t put together because most of the pieces are missing. But I feel I should be able to, if I can just find one piece.’

Sheila asks me whether I think the postbox memory has something to do with wanting to find my real father.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Is it possible that it isn’t a memory at all? That it’s part of a story you put together in your mind a long time ago?’

‘A story about my father? Something I made up? Something to make him real?’

‘Or a way to reach him.’

‘And that’s me posting a letter to him? I’ve invented a whole story, but that’s the only bit I remember?’

‘Maybe it’s something we should explore.’

I say nothing. I just stay quiet for a long time and think about what she has said. It sort of makes sense, and I tell her so, eventually, but I have nothing to add, nothing more to offer.

Sheila starts speaking again.

‘We’ve done a lot of work together over the past couple of months,’ she says, and, as I hear this, I feel an initial spike of panic, because I’m seized by the conviction that she doesn’t want to continue to see me, that she’s going to hive me off to someone else.

‘But the kind of work we do takes time and I wonder whether we might consider something that could speed things up for you.’

I sit up again, panicking now for sure, waiting for her to elaborate.

‘I’m talking about hypnotherapy.’

I don’t like the sound of this and I say so.

‘It’s not something I would recommend as a matter of course, and it certainly has come in for criticism,’ she says. ‘But I think, in your situation, there may be a strong case for using it. We don’t have to do anything straight away, and you have every right to say no. Who knows, you may find a lot of answers as you follow the paper trail. But I want to leave the idea with you. Go home and think about it. Discuss it with Sandy. Take your time. And, in the meantime, we’ll carry on here as normal. Is that all right with you?’

I nod. ‘If I agree to hypnotherapy, will you do it or will I have to go to someone else?’

‘Yes, I’ll do it.’

‘Okay. I’ll think about it,’ I say. But, by the time I leave, I’ve already made a decision. I’m just not sure it’s the right one.

Chapter Fifteen

I have a session with Julia at the studios and, as usual, I’m waiting for her to arrive. I don’t mind her being late. It’s hot – the kind of London heat that builds up through June and, by July, has driven the air away. I’m wilting. I’ve had a busy morning and I’m still thinking about the hour I’ve just spent with an ageing amateur whose rendition of an English folk song, sung in a high, clear, girlish voice, has deeply touched me.

Julia turns up with the usual fanfare – a clatter of kitten heels on the stairs, an apology ringing out even as she turns the door handle.

She looks very pleased with herself. I’m sure I’ll hear all about whatever it is later.

We work on technique for a while and, eventually, I move my hand to the pile of songs by Schubert, Fauré and Reynaldo Hahn that sits on the top of the piano.

‘Oh, Louise, would it be all right if we tried this? It’s really beautiful,’ she says, reaching into her music bag and handing me a volume of songs by Puccini.

The song she has chosen is ‘Sogno d’Or’ – early Puccini, but it already contains some exquisite phrases that will show up again in later works.

We run through it a couple of times, stopping frequently to discuss phrasing. But it’s not working. She’s not really engaging with it and I wonder why she has picked it.

‘Why don’t we do it again, all the way through? But this time, take some time to think about what you’re trying to get across. Try to imagine you’re this young mother, soothing her baby to sleep.’

‘Actually, I don’t have to use my imagination,’ she says. ‘I don’t have to use my imagination because . . . well, I’m pregnant.’

With her widely spaced eyes and air of complete self-satisfaction, she looks like a cat. I almost expect her to purr.

‘Oh,’ I say. I hadn’t expected this. ‘Congratulations.’

I look at her trim little figure, her flat stomach. She doesn’t look particularly pregnant, but she’s probably the type of woman who won’t put on much weight at all.

I don’t feel I can ask who the father of her child is. But, as if she can read my thoughts, she tells me who it isn’t.

‘It’s not Ben,’ she says, with emphasis. ‘It’s someone else. Someone I’ve been with for a while, on and off.’

I’m convinced she’s lying about Ben. I feel anger towards both of them. Most of all, I feel a surge of sympathy for Ben’s wife, who’s about to be cast into that terrible state of marriage breakdown, with all the feelings of despair and worthlessness that I felt. Only it will be worse for her. At least Sandy didn’t leave me for someone else. At least, that’s what he told me at the time. He and I are fine now. We’re close. We share a bed and we have sex. But there’s still that big question mark in my mind over what happened to drive him away from me. I can change my behaviour, if I know where I’m at fault. But I still don’t know what made Sandy leave or what made him come back, and that’s why I can’t stop worrying about the future, about the possibility that he may leave again.

‘When is the baby due?’ I ask Julia, who seems to have abandoned the session in favour of leaning forward onto the piano and having a chat.

‘I’m not quite sure yet. I’ve been far too busy to go to the doctor.’

How extraordinary, I think, that she’s telling me all this when she hasn’t even confirmed the pregnancy with a doctor. But, then, this is Julia, isn’t it? Always upbeat, seemingly frivolous on the outside, but confident about where she’s going and what she’s doing, and happy to talk about it with anyone in a mood to listen. She has, though, rather taken the wind out of my sails.

‘And your, er, partner . . . Is he happy about the baby?’ I ask. ‘Actually, I had no idea you had one. A partner, I mean.’

‘Oh, it’s been one of those on-and-off things. We don’t seem to be able to live with each other, but we don’t seem to be able to stay away from each other, either. He doesn’t know yet, but I don’t think he’ll be surprised. I’m going to tell him today at lunch. Le Caprice – I managed to get a table at the very last minute. We’ve talked about babies in the past and I know he’ll make a wonderful father. Oh, goodness me, is that the time? Would you mind if I shot off now?’

‘Of course not. Off you go.’

‘See you next week.’

After she leaves, I can hardly think straight. Her announcement has confounded me. It still seems bizarre that she should tell me – someone she hardly knows – about this pregnancy, which is at such an early stage. There’s something else bothering me, too, a twinge of something I don’t quite understand. And then it all becomes clear. Julia is everything I want to be. She stands for everything I’m not. She’s the full package. I’m jealous of her beauty and her vivacity, and I’m jealous of her pregnancy and of the baby that will give meaning to her relationship with her partner, whoever he is.

And then, before I can stop it, another memory bursts through the iron bars I’ve built against it in my brain, and I see the shocking red of the blood that brought the realisation of Sandy’s dream to an end, without him ever knowing it had existed. And I remember the grief I felt for all of us. But, most of all, I remember the relief.

*

All the early signs were there, but I ignored them. I think I must have been hoping that they didn’t really amount to anything, that the reason all my bras seemed to be uncomfortable was because the washing machine had shrunk them, and that I was feeling queasy because I was just plain tired. It was only when I realised that I hadn’t had a period for a while that it occurred to me I might be pregnant.

‘You’re looking a bit peaky, hen,’ Sandy said one evening. ‘You okay?’

I wasn’t okay. I was quietly frantic. I hadn’t had a period in at least three months and I was still praying it was just one of those blips in my cycle that happened every so often. But I knew.

‘I’m fine. A bit tired, that’s all. I probably need to catch up on some sleep.’

‘You sleep like a log!’

‘How would you know, Mr Rip Van Winkle?’ I said, laughing. ‘You fall asleep as soon as your head touches the pillow.’

I should have told him then, but I argued with myself that there was no point in getting his hopes up until I was sure. I would buy a test kit the following day.

That night, I lay awake into the early hours, veering back and forth between all the scenarios that played out in my head. The pregnancy would be confirmed. Sandy would be the happiest man on the planet and I would bloom into the mother he wanted me to be. I would love our little baby and we would live happily ever after. But, no matter how much I tried, I couldn’t imagine this baby as a real person, a girl or a boy, and then the other thoughts would take over, the ones that came out of some part of me that was full of fear for reasons I couldn’t explain. Maybe I was terrified that the abortion I had when I was young threatened the pregnancy.

I did the test the following day and it was positive. I would tell Sandy that night, I told myself. But I didn’t. I had planned to, I really had. I was going to cook something out of the ordinary. I was going to open a bottle of some really good wine and I would pour a glass for him but not for me. That would be the first hint. He would lift his brows and say, ‘You’ve forgotten to pour some for yourself,’ and I would smile and say nothing. And then his face would flood with delight. But I couldn’t get my act together to cook anything fancier than pasta with prawns and chilli and garlic, and when Sandy opened a bottle of wine and began to pour it into my glass, I didn’t stop him.

‘I think I might go to Ireland for a few days,’ I said. ‘I haven’t got much work lined up for the next couple of weeks.’

‘It’ll do you good,’ Sandy said. ‘When are you thinking of going?’

‘I might as well go tomorrow, if the prices aren’t astronomical.’

‘Do you want me to go over at the weekend? I can, if you like?’

‘Ah, no . . . I think I just want to hang out with my mother. I haven’t seen her at all so far this year. She’ll be delighted to have me all to herself. And it’ll be lovely to see Dermot.’

My mother was surprised when I called her the following morning and told her I would be on a flight to Dublin that afternoon.

‘Is everything all right?’ she asked.

‘Of course. I just thought it would be nice to see you.’

She told me later she had known I was pregnant the moment I walked into the arrivals area at the airport, but had waited for me to tell her in my own time. Back in the house with her and Dermot, I reverted to being a child. Over the next few days, I went to bed early and got up late. When I wasn’t sleeping, I curled up in a big armchair, reading or watching television. Sometimes I went out by myself, walking all the way into town along the riverbank, or in the other direction, towards the sea. I didn’t think about the baby at all. It was as if it didn’t exist now that I had come home to my mother; as if, by getting on to an aeroplane, I had left that baby behind in London.

The bleeding began a few days after I arrived. I bought sanitary towels and said nothing to my mother. It was probably my period, after all. But then, a couple of days later, the pains got worse and the bleeding became a torrent. My mother called an ambulance and was about to call Sandy when I stopped her.

‘Please . . . please . . . don’t,’ I begged her.

She gave me a dark look, but she didn’t call him. Not then, anyway. When she did phone him, once I was back in the house, she said I was in bed with a stomach bug that was doing the rounds.

‘We’ve all had it, but poor Louise seems to have got the worst of it,’ I heard her say. ‘I think she’s going to have to stay here for a few extra days. No, no, really, don’t worry, Sandy, she’ll be fine. We’ll look after her. There’s no need for you to come over.’

When she put the phone down, she sat on the side of the bed and gave me that look again.

‘Are you sure about this? Are you absolutely sure you don’t want Sandy to know anything about what has happened?’

I nodded miserably, filled to the brim with guilt and sorrow, but aware, too, of another feeling, a swell of relief that I couldn’t suppress.

‘I’m sure.’

I told her about the relief I felt at losing the baby and asked her whether it was wrong to think that way.

‘No, it’s not wrong,’ she said. ‘If that’s what you feel, it’s not wrong.’

*

I hand the envelope to Sandy when he returns from the hospital. I’ve been staring at it since I found it downstairs with the other post.

‘Took them long enough,’ he says, tearing it open. ‘You could have opened it, you know.’

‘I know. But I couldn’t do it by myself. I needed you to be here.’

He scans it quickly, frowns and holds it out to me.

‘I’m sorry, hen. It looks genuine. It’s what’s registered. But there has to be some explanation somewhere.’

The details are exactly the same as those on the death certificate David Prescott showed me. Louise Redmond, who was born on 11 December 1969, died on 30 April 1973 at Northampton General Hospital. The cause of death was meningitis. The death was registered by Marjorie Redmond.

The sight of the certificate is too much for me and I sit down and weep because I have no other response. It’s a dead end – in every sense of the word.

Sandy waits for me to stop crying, stroking my head but saying nothing. When he does speak, it’s to tell me that he has come up with a plan.

‘Here’s what we’ll do. We’ll go to Ireland for a couple of weeks. We’ll go through your mother’s stuff and maybe we’ll find something. We’ll go and see your uncle. We’ll go to the old brewery. We’re going to sort this out,’ he says.

‘You can take time off?’ I ask, wiping my eyes and blowing my nose. ‘When will we go?’

‘The sooner, the better. I’ll have to give a few days’ advance warning and I’ll probably end up having to fly back and forth, but how about next week or the week after? I think this counts as urgent, don’t you?’

‘Yes,’ I say. I’m not looking forward to this trip, but it has to be done. And if Sandy is with me, I feel I can handle it, no matter what it throws up. ‘And thanks.’

I still haven’t agreed formally to the hypnotherapy. It’s something left dangling, to be used as a last resort, and I don’t feel I’m at that stage. Not yet, anyway. When I mentioned Sheila’s suggestion to Sandy, he was less than keen, said he was slightly surprised that she was advocating something like this. But he didn’t dismiss it out of hand. I’m still hoping it won’t be necessary.

Sheila looks worried when I tell her, as we enter her therapy room, that I’m going back to Ireland, but her concern visibly lifts when I add that Sandy will be with me. It turns out that she has something to tell me, too. August is holiday month for psychotherapists and it’s just a couple of weeks away, which means that, if I go to Ireland next week, this is our last session until September.

‘How do you feel about that?’ she asks.

‘It’s fine,’ I say.

And it is. I’ve come to rely on our twice-weekly sessions a great deal more than I ever dreamed I would. I feel safe in that room where I can say what I want, stay silent if I don’t want to talk. And when our fifty minutes come to an end, I still feel safe because I know I’ll be back in just a couple of days’ time. Now, it’s going to be a lot longer than a couple of days before I see her again, but it’s all right. I know she and I will be back in this room in September.

‘Sandy will look after me.’

She smiles and I go to the couch and lie down.

‘There’s something else,’ I say. ‘You know Julia? Well, she’s pregnant.’

‘And how do you feel about that?’

‘Peculiar . . . envious.’

‘Why do you feel envious?’

‘Because it’s as if . . . as if she has everything my life needs.’

‘Do you mean a child?’

‘Yes. No . . . I don’t even know! I can’t help feeling that, if I’d had kids, things would be different.’

‘Do you mean that, if you and Sandy had children, he wouldn’t have left last year?’

‘I don’t know. I suppose we’d have had a different kind of life.’

‘A better life?’

‘No . . . just different.’

‘We haven’t talked much about children, have we?’

‘No.’