Coincidences (15 page)

‘But she’s my mum, not you,’
said Alice, feeling as if the space around her had now become hollow, as if she
were floating in a dream. She sat down; the light-headedness was unnerving.

‘Alice, are you okay?’ Stephanie
ran towards her and put an arm around her.

She looked at Stephanie, the
woman she had called “Mum” for so long.
How can she not be my mum?
She
began to cry, unable to stop the flow.

‘Oh, Alice, don’t cry, I love
you. I’ll always love you.’ She stroked Alice’s hair and gave her a tissue to
dry her eyes. ‘Sweetheart, go into the front room, and I’ll make us both a cup
of tea. We’ll talk about this properly. I’ll explain everything.’

Alice stood up and walked out of
the kitchen door, wanting to carry on walking out of the front door and to
wherever the road would lead. The shattered pieces of her world remained on the
kitchen floor where they had fallen, and she felt that she was trampling on the
fragments of hope that lay under her feet. The unexpected revelation had left a
bullet hole in her soul. There had been no warning; she had not been able to
prepare. How could things ever be the same again?

***

Stephanie walked into the living room carrying two cups
of tea. Her hands shook. Alice was on the sofa staring straight ahead. The news
had hit her like a thunderbolt. Nothing could have prepared her for hearing
that Stephanie was not her real mother. Stephanie was all she had known. Having
no father, Alice had felt that the bond between herself and Stephanie was even
greater, as they had both been abandoned. But now nothing made sense. There
were so many questions in her mind.
Why didn’t she ever tell me this before?
If I didn’t ask her about my dad, I would never have known.

Stephanie placed the cups of tea
on the table in front of Alice. Alice leaned back on the sofa. She didn’t want
tea. She looked at Stephanie from the corner of her eye. Stephanie’s eyes were
red. She was wiping the corners with a tissue, sniffling. Alice remembered what
she had said to her; words floated back into her mind:
Your father and I
tried to have children for so long.... as I got older it seemed that my dream
would pass me by... don’t h... hate me... The woman who gave birth to you
didn’t want you. It was a surrogacy agreement. I paid her to have a baby for
me... It was only because I wanted a child that you came into the world.

‘How much money did you pay?’
asked Alice.

‘Wh... What, dear?’ Stephanie
twisted around on the armchair to face her.

Alice played with the tassels on
the cushion that sat beside her on the sofa. ‘You said you paid my mum to have
me. How much?’

Stephanie sighed. ‘Why... Why
would you want—’

‘Just tell me!’ said Alice,
annoyed.

‘One thousand pounds, I think it
was...’

‘That’s all? That’s all I was
worth? One thousand pounds—’

‘That was a lot of money in
those days.’

‘Was it common to buy and sell
babies in those days, too?’

‘No.’ Stephanie reached towards
the table to get her cup of tea. She didn’t want to drink it and felt sure that
even a sip would cause her to throw up, but she felt nervous. It was a
distraction. Alice was not taking this well. Stephanie felt almost frightened
of what she would do next.

Alice picked up her own tea cup,
not knowing why. Then she put it back down on the table abruptly, spilling some
of the contents onto the clean white tablecloth below.

Stephanie gasped almost
inaudibly.

Alice watched as Stephanie held
her cup of tea in her hands; she was visibly trembling.
It can’t be easy for
her
. The thought came into Alice’s mind as she felt a pull of empathy
towards Stephanie, but immediately she pushed the emotion aside. Her feelings
battled inside her. She loved Stephanie; she had brought her up as her own—but
the other side of that story was that Stephanie had lied to her; kept the truth
from her. The trust was broken.

‘I am really having a hard time
understanding all of this,’ said Alice, holding her forehead.

Stephanie put her cup down on
the table. ‘I know. Can you understand why I didn’t tell you before?’

‘No!’ screamed Alice.

‘Alice, please. What I meant to
say was... this is why I didn’t tell you. It’s such a hard thing to have to
tell someone.’

‘I just feel so unwanted,’ said
Alice, standing up. ‘Not only did my dad leave me, but my own mum sold me.’

‘Well, it wasn’t quite like
that—’

‘Well, what was it like then?’
She looked down at Stephanie, who appeared small suddenly; sitting there on the
armchair, her arms crossed in front of her. ‘You bought me. I was born to be
sold!’ She walked towards the window as if in need of air.

‘Alice, you were born because I
wanted a child. I love you with all my heart. I couldn’t have children of my
own.’

‘Surely there were other ways!
Adoption. Did you consider that?’

‘Your father didn’t want to
adopt.’

‘But he had a child with a
stranger... Wait... was she a stranger? Did you know my mum? What’s her name?’

Stephanie stared at her hands,
picking at the corner of her nails where some of her red nail varnish had begun
to peel. ‘Her name is Miranda Carey.’

‘Miranda Carey,’ repeated Alice.
‘Where is she now?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Stephanie,
holding her breath. This was one of her fears; now Alice would want to find
her
too. She sighed. ‘Miranda was a student, I met her through Rita. One of Rita’s
friends knew her.’

‘Rita knows about this? I thought
there was something odd about the way she looks at me.’

‘Rita convinced me to tell you
the truth,’ said Stephanie. ‘I was all alone all these years, bringing you up.
I didn’t know what to do for the best. If I’d thought it was the right thing to
do, I would have told you sooner.’

Alice walked over to the sofa
and sat down.

‘Drink your tea, dear; it’ll
make you feel better.’

Alice looked at the two cups of
tea on the coffee table. She wanted to scream.

‘So, why did Miranda agree to
have a baby for money? Why would someone do that?’

‘She was young... A student. She
wanted to travel the world, so she needed money.’

‘What was she like?’

Stephanie thought back to when
she had first met Miranda. ‘I can’t really remember much about her.’

‘Do I look like her in any way?’

‘No. You look like your father.’

‘Does Rita still know her?’

‘I don’t think so. She hasn’t
mentioned anything to me. But it was one of Rita’s friends who knew Miranda.’

‘You must have got to know
Miranda.’

‘I didn’t. She kept herself to
herself.’

‘Did you keep in touch with her
after I was born?’

‘No. That wouldn’t have been
right. Anyway, she went off to travel the world with the money we paid her...
at least that’s what I heard from Rita.’

‘Do you think Rita still keeps
in touch with the friend that knew Miranda?’

Stephanie closed her eyes
briefly. ‘Why do you want to know that?’

‘Well, maybe that friend would
know where Miranda is.’

Stephanie pursed her lips. She
lowered her eyelids, and once again began to pick at her flaking nail varnish.
‘So, do you want to look for her too, as well as your father?’ she said, not
looking at Alice. She could almost feel Alice slipping away from her. She had
been her whole world for so long; now it felt like she may lose her for ever.
Her eyes filled with tears.

‘I think I’d like to meet her,’
said Alice. ‘If only to find out if we’ve got anything in common.’

Stephanie nodded and forced a
weak smile.

‘You really should have told me
all this before,’ said Alice, shaking her head.

‘Maybe.’ Stephanie held back her
tears.

Alice stood up. ‘I have to go. I
need to get my head around all this.’

‘Darling, why don’t you stay
here tonight? You can sleep in your old room. I don’t want to think of you
alone when you’re in this state.’

‘No, Mum, I’ll be fine.’ She
paused and looked at Stephanie, realising she had called her “Mum”. But she
wasn’t her mum. ‘Oh, I don’t know what’s real and what’s not anymore,’ she
said, thinking out loud. ‘I’ll call you tomorrow. I have to go.’

Stephanie stood at her front
door and watched as Alice walked along the street towards the Tube station. Her
heart felt torn apart inside. The cold look in Alice’s eyes as if she were
looking at a stranger when she left the house—that was the worst part.
Something of the trust between them had been whittled away tonight.

***

Jumbled thoughts floated around Alice’s mind as she lay
in bed staring at the ceiling. The tears kept up a constant flow, but she
hardly noticed them anymore. Thoughts of her early childhood haunted her mind;
Stephanie was always there in every memory, but now that had all been tainted.
She had never doubted for one moment that Stephanie was her mother. Now a
faceless individual, Miranda, took her place. A woman who had sold a child.

Alice recalled how she had once
thought she looked a bit like Stephanie’s mother. Stephanie had mentioned to
her one day that her own mother’s hair had been blonde and she had shown Alice
a photograph of her. It was a black and white photograph. Upon looking at it,
Alice remembered saying: ‘I look a bit like her, don’t I?’ She also remembered
her mother saying: ‘Hmm... you look like your father, Alice.’ But Alice had
gone away with a feeling that she had inherited some features from her maternal
grandmother. Now, that was all dissolved. There was no way she could have
inherited anything from Stephanie’s mother.

This thought stirred up other
feelings that were bubbling below the surface. She began to wonder whether
Stephanie had ever really loved her. After all, she was not her real mother.
She had seemed sincere when she told her she loved her, but somehow Alice felt
a detachment, as if she no longer belonged with Stephanie. It was almost as if
an invisible wall had taken away the closeness they had once shared; the
closeness that Alice believed could only exist between a mother and her real
daughter.

She pondered as to whether she
would have stayed with Stephanie if she’d found out at a younger age that she
was not her mother. Then she recalled that her father had left
her
as
well as Stephanie. She would not have been able to go to him. She didn’t want
to think about that, it made her feel as though she didn’t belong anywhere.

She lay awake for hours, unable
to close her eyes; almost as if she thought that by closing her eyes she would
be losing control of an already turbulent situation. She wanted to keep a tight
grip so that nothing else would change.

Alice wished that she had never
thought about looking for her father. Her life had been so much easier before.
She had opened a door into a world which had been left abandoned for years.
There were secrets, dark shadows and uncertainties behind the door. Alice was
gripped by fear. She knew she could not go back now. She needed to find out
about her father. It had changed from a want to a need. She would have to face
her fears...

Chapter Nine

Tuesday 19th August 1997

When Alice awoke, her thoughts immediately went back to
the night before. She could not escape the memory that entered her mind, like a
heavy weight landing on top of her. The strongest emotion she could feel was
helplessness as if she were floating in a vast empty space with no control over
where her life was going. Anxiety consumed her, and she felt afraid to face the
day.

I’m not your mother... I’m
not your mother...
the finality of those words, the absurdity of the words;
they circled around in her mind, taunting her.
But how could that be?
Surely it had been a dream?

Forcing herself out of bed, she
went to the wardrobe and opened it trying to concentrate her mind on doing the
normal things; getting dressed, having breakfast—but those words were still
there. Stephanie’s eyes, red from crying, were clear in her mind.
Maybe it
was a dream
, hope battled against hope.
Maybe I’m still dreaming?
Turmoil
raged through her mind.
What is real? Who am I?

Looking through her wardrobe,
but not really looking, her hand touched the soft velvet of her favourite black
dress, and suddenly a memory sprang to mind, waking her from her semiconscious
state. She remembered that she had agreed to go to Frank’s friend’s birthday
party this evening; she had planned to wear this dress. Walking over to her
dressing table mirror, the only thing she could think of was that she had
hardly slept...
I’ll look terrible.
Thoughts of Andrew appeared in her
mind—perfect, handsome Andrew. She sat in front of the mirror and saw that she
looked pale and tired. Her eyes were red and puffy with dark circles
surrounding them.

Up until yesterday evening, she
had been looking forward to the party... to seeing Andrew again. Now, she
wanted to hide away.
He can’t see me like this.
Depression overwhelmed
her. Through her eyes, the ghosts of her feelings were transparently gazing out
at the world. The shock, disillusionment and disappointment were obvious and
etched into her face. She was a portrait of her anguish.

She stood up and approached the
phone at her bedside table. She resolved to call Jenny and tell her she was too
ill to attend the party. It would help that she had been crying so much; her
voice would sound suitably croaky.

‘Hello.’ Jenny answered the
phone in her jovial voice.

‘Oh, hello, Jen, it’s me.’

‘Alice, hi! Have you just woken
up? Your voice sounds different!’