Coincidences (12 page)

‘What about it?’ asked her
mother, but Alice could see she felt uncomfortable.

‘She looks like me. You have to
admit.’

‘Well, yes, she does look a bit
like you. A lot of people look like other people, it doesn’t mean they’re
related. One of my clients told me I look like Angela Rippon, that doesn’t mean
we’re related!’

‘Okay, listen to this.’ Alice
felt she had to try to convince her mother to take her seriously. ‘This girl,’
she pointed to the picture of Jane Forester, ‘was in the plane crash last
Sunday night. I woke up at exactly quarter past twelve on that night, and I
thought I heard a loud bang. I’d had a bad dream. I felt really scared and
couldn’t sleep for ages. The next night, I had a dream about a plane crashing
and me drowning, then I saw the picture of Jane, and well... I became more
convinced that maybe the dream and the plane crash were linked in some way. If
we’re related, maybe I could sense something was wrong? Remember how you told
me that your mum used to know when people in the family were going to die
because she used to dream about them?’

‘You’re getting carried away.’

‘No. What if I’ve inherited
something from Nan, and I can sense these things?’

‘Really, Alice, you’re making
too much of this. If you woke up in the middle of the night and thought you
heard a bang, of course you’d be scared, living alone. Maybe it’s about time
you moved back here. I hate to think of you on your own and frightened.’

‘It was because of the dream
that I was frightened, Mum. I like living alone.’

‘Living alone isn’t that great.
It’s lonely sometimes. It would make more sense if you moved back home with me.
You have too much time to think when you’re alone, and you’ve always had a
vivid imagination; no wonder you’re creating all these fantasies in your head.’

‘Fantasies? You’re not listening
to me!’ Alice stood up. ‘I don’t know why I even bother to tell you anything.’

Stephanie looked at her and she
shook her head slowly; her eyes appeared sad. ‘This is all my fault, Alice.
Please sit down.’

Alice felt concerned that her
mother may now start to cry. She sat down and fiddled with the edge of the
newspaper nervously.

‘You’re lonely. Of course you
are. You’re an only child. I was lonely. Do you know, I used to tell people I
had a sister. I always told myself that I would have more than one child, or
none at all. I thought my parents were cruel not to have given me a sister or a
brother.’ She reached out and took Alice’s hand. ‘You have to understand,
darling, it’s just the way things turned out. I would have loved to have had a
lot of children. But I couldn’t.’ She took a deep breath, feeling that now may
be the time to reveal all. ‘I couldn’t have children, Alice... I...’ She pulled
her hand away, tears of frustration filling her eyes. She felt unable to go
through with telling Alice. It seemed like an impossible task.

Alice stood up and walked over
to her, putting a hand on her back to comfort her. ‘Mum, don’t cry. This isn’t
about me being lonely, or wanting a brother or sister. It’s not your fault.’

‘But I’ve failed you,’ said
Stephanie, holding on to Alice’s arm as she looked up at her. Mascara had run
down Stephanie’s face, making two, uneven black lines on each of her cheeks.
Alice sighed and handed her a tissue.

Stephanie blew her nose and
wiped her face. ‘Not only are you an only child, but you’ve only got one
parent. I never meant for that to happen.’

‘None of that matters,’ said
Alice, playing with the sleeve of Stephanie’s blouse as she spoke. ‘I’m not
looking for a new life. I just want to know more about my background.’

‘But... But, this is a dream.
The plane crash; the girl in the paper... it’s all a fantasy.’ Stephanie had
put on her gloves again and now began mopping the floor as she continued to
speak: ‘I’ve heard about this. Children, like you—’

‘I’m not a child,’ interjected
Alice.

‘Well, okay
young people
like
you, who don’t know one or other of their parents; they often fantasise about
who their parent might be. It was on one of those shows—Oprah or Ricki Lake.
It’s quite common for someone like you to create weird and wonderful
connections between themselves and their absent parent. I mean, some believe that
their parent must be rich or famous, or something like that.’

‘What has that got to do with
me? I haven’t fantasised about anything.’

‘The girl in the paper,’ said
Stephanie as she kept her eyes down whilst mopping the floor, hoping this
conversation would soon be over. ‘The vivid dream,’ she went on. ‘This is some
sort of fantasy you’ve created. You saw the picture of the girl in the paper
and you’ve somehow made the connection between that and your dream about the
plane crash... Which may or may not have been a dream about a plane crash...
You might have imagined that after you read the paper—’

‘I did dream about the plane
crash. That’s what’s so weird about all of this. That’s why I’m trying to make
sense of it. I haven’t imagined anything,’ said Alice, sitting down, arms
folded in front of her, feeling furious with her mother.

‘Oh, Alice... you’ve tried to
make it all fit together so that your imaginary half-sister is this person
you’ve seen in the newspaper. Anyway, there’s no point going over and over it.
You have to try to find something else to occupy your mind. I blame these
universities with their long summer breaks. Your mind has been working so hard
all year and then suddenly you have nothing to occupy it. You’ve always had a
wild imagination. Something like this was bound to happen eventually.’

‘You can be so condescending at
times!’ said Alice, pouting. ‘I’ve decided to look for my dad. That will clear
this up. Then we’ll see whether this is fantasy or not.’ She stood up and
picked up her bag from the kitchen table. As she placed the newspaper back in
the bag, she shook her head.

Stephanie stopped mopping and
stood staring at her. ‘Darling, please forget about this. You need to
concentrate on your studies. You’ll be going back to university in a few weeks;
you don’t have time for anything else. Please be sensible.’

Alice looked again at the
photographs of her father. ‘Can I have this photo?’ she asked, picking up the
one in which her father was holding her.

Stephanie looked at the floor,
her face reddened. ‘Yes, of course.’ Then, looking up at Alice, tears in the
corners of her eyes, she continued: ‘Now, promise me you’ll forget about
looking for your father. You can’t rush in and do something like that just
because you’ve had a silly dream. It was just a coincidence, darling, nothing
more than that. Plane crashes happen all the time; it just happened that you
dreamt of one on the same night. I mean, think about it: you’ve had dreams of
plane crashes at other times—’

‘No, I haven’t as far as I can
remember. And, I don’t believe in coincidences. Things happen for a reason.’

‘This girl,’ continued
Stephanie, as if she hadn’t heard her, ‘she doesn’t even look that much...
Well, just forget about her.’

‘I’ve got to go now,’ said Alice
walking out of the kitchen door. As she stormed through the hallway, she
spotted the pile of telephone directories under the telephone stand. Bending
down, she picked up the one that had “A-N” on the spine and took it with her.

***

Stephanie was trembling as she heard the door slam shut.
She’s
going to look for Roger.
The thought stunned her. It had been years since
she’d had any contact with him; and now, suddenly, he was going to be back in
her life.

The idea of seeing Roger again
almost frightened her; and the fact that Alice might see him before she did was
even more of a concern.
What will he say to her?
She feared he could lie
and turn Alice against her. And he might think she already knew about the
surrogacy agreement. Stephanie felt her throat tighten. She gulped for air.
What
can I do?
She paced the kitchen, then saw the telephone from the corner of
her eye.
Maybe Rita will know what to do?

She dialled her friend’s number
with shaky fingers, hardly able to keep control over them. The numbers on the
telephone appeared blurry through her tears.

‘Hello,’ said Rita, sounding in
high spirits.

‘Oh... hello, Rita... it’s me,
er... Stephanie...’ she said between sniffles.

‘Steph, you sound upset. Are you
all right?’

‘I’m in such a panic. I don’t
know what to do. I’ve... I've just seen Alice... She wants to find Roger.’ She
spoke quickly, almost stumbling over her own tongue trying to get the words
out.

‘Calm down, Steph. Do you want
me to come over?’

‘No. Yes... Oh, I don’t know.’

‘Listen, I’ll come over to your
place. I’ll be there in about an hour. In the meantime, please try to relax...
Everything will be okay.’

Everything will be okay.
The words resounded in Stephanie’s head when she put down the phone. She turned
around and the first thing she saw were the photographs lying on the kitchen
table. She ran over and grabbed them, not looking at them, not wanting to see
them again; then she rushed over to her bedroom and opened the wardrobe taking
out the old shoe-box. She stuffed the photographs back in there and began to cry
again.

Sitting on her knees next to the
old box that contained the remains of her life with Roger, she began to ponder
how she could stop Alice.
I need to get to him first
, she thought. She
rooted through the box and found some of the correspondence she had kept from
the divorce. Roger’s address was on one of the documents. She held it up and
took a closer look to make sure she’d remembered it correctly. She felt sick to
the stomach thinking that she would have to speak to him; but something told
her that was the only option she had left if she didn’t want to lose Alice’s
trust for good.

***

When Rita arrived at Stephanie’s flat at 2 p.m., she
could see the remains of her tears strewn across her face; like blemishes
scarring her make-up.

‘Steph, I came as soon as I
could. Are you okay? Listen, let me make you a cup of tea and we will talk
about everything.’

Stephanie’s eyes seemed distant,
and she stood unmoving, almost as if she were in a catatonic stupor.

Rita took her arm and led her
through the hallway into the kitchen.

‘I don’t want any tea,’ said
Stephanie, pulling away from her grip and making her way into the living room.
She slumped down onto the sofa. ‘I think I’m going to have to contact Roger.
It’s the last thing I want to do, but if Alice finds out I’ve been lying to her
all these years—’ She looked up at Rita, who was standing at the entrance to
the living room. ‘That’s what I’ve been doing, isn’t it? Lying to her. I’m not
her mother. She still thinks I’m her mother. Oh, what have I done?’ She began
to cry again.

Rita took off her jacket and
threw it over the armchair nearest the door. ‘Oh, Steph... don’t be so hard on
yourself.’ She sat next to her friend on the sofa and hugged her. ‘You’re the
only mother Alice has ever known. Even if she found out the truth, she would
still see you as her mother. You were only doing what you thought best.’

‘But I lied. I was too much of a
coward to tell the truth,’ said Stephanie, reaching for a tissue to wipe her
nose.

‘Perhaps you should explain
everything to Alice before she meets Roger. That way, you won’t have to worry
about contacting him yourself.’

‘But... If there’s a way... If I
can... I want to keep this from her. I wanted to tell Roger that she doesn’t
know about the surrogacy.’ She looked into Rita’s eyes to try to find some
indication that she agreed with her. ‘That would be the right thing to do, in
the circumstances... wouldn’t it?’ She nodded, hoping that Rita would do the
same.

Rita sighed and turned away.
When she looked back at Stephanie, her forehead was creased into a frown. She
reached over to the box of tissues on the coffee table and handed another
tissue to Stephanie. ‘Of course it’s up to you,’ she began, ‘but in my opinion,
this is your opportunity to tell Alice the truth. It must have been hard
keeping it secret from her all these years. She should be told.’

‘But she’ll hate me for not
telling her before, won’t she?’ Stephanie blew her nose and wiped her eyes.

‘It might come as a shock to
her, but she won’t hate you. I mean, at the end of the day, her real mother
never wanted her, did she? Why would Alice want to know her?’

‘But I’ve been keeping the truth
from her...’

‘She’ll understand.’

‘I only did it for
her
...
I thought it was in her best interests. I...’

‘I’m sure you’ve been a
wonderful mother, Steph. Alice seems like such a lovely girl; she goes to
university. You must be so proud of her.’

Stephanie nodded. ‘I am proud...
but even though I brought her up, I’m not her mother, am I? The whole idea of
the surrogacy agreement was that I would be able to have a child of my own. Her
real mother never wanted her. If I didn’t want her, she would never have been
born. If Roger and I hadn’t split up... who knows? Would we have told her? I’m
so confused, Rita.’

‘This is definitely a situation
where you couldn’t really have planned anything. You should just explain to
Alice that you never saw a reason to tell her, because her real mother didn’t
want her.’

‘But that sounds so cruel.’
Stephanie stood up. ‘My poor little Alice. She’s always been my princess. I...
I wanted to be her real mother. It wasn’t my fault I couldn’t have children.
She’s more than a daughter to me. I couldn’t have loved her more if she was my
own. I don’t want to lose her.’

‘You won’t lose her—’

‘But how can you be so sure?’
She looked down at Rita on the sofa.