Sometimes he seemed angry with me too. I’d catch him watching me, grey eyes narrowed like a sniper’s, and wondered if I reminded him of her – though I looked more like him than Mum. I’d asked him once what was wrong and he dropped his gaze and said curtly, ‘Isn’t it obvious? I’ve lost the best thing that ever happened to me,’ which had left me wondering where I stood in his affections.
I glanced sideways at a silver-framed photo of them on the windowsill; Mum, an elegant figure in an A-line denim skirt and flowery blouse, smiling with friendly reserve, and Dad in his rimless glasses, an old wool jacket over a checked shirt, looking every inch the college lecturer he was. I’d taken the picture with a new camera on my sixteenth birthday, and they looked relaxed and happy.
Dad had been strong during Mum’s illness, but since her death seemed half the man he’d been. The double chin he’d developed over the years had vanished and his clothes hung off his lanky frame. Even his reddish hair looked thin and lifeless and he’d grown a straggly beard that aged him. Worse, he’d applied for early retirement from the university, and spent most of his days either walking Charlie, his old spaniel, or slumped in an armchair in front of the television.
Eyes stinging, I turned back to the job I’d begun two hours ago. At least the wardrobe was empty now, apart from Dad’s few clothes. They looked lonely, taking up barely any space.
As I went to close the door, my eye was drawn to a shoebox I’d missed on the floor of the wardrobe, at the back. I bent to retrieve it, impatiently pushing my hair back, and carried it to the bed. I sat on the floral duvet, wondering whether Mum had kept her wedding shoes in the box. It was a nice cream one, with a silver band around it, and a picture on the side of some strappy, open-toed shoes in her size.
Hoping for a glimpse of a younger mother on her wedding day, I removed the lid and peered inside, hit by a musty smell. There weren’t any shoes, but my initial disappointment gave way to an unexpected burst of excitement as I delved inside and drew out a faded Polaroid photograph. It was of Mum, cradling a newborn baby wrapped in a lacy white shawl. She looked different than in other photos I’d seen of her with me when I was a baby. She was wide-eyed, her black hair a wild mass of tangled curls around her heart-shaped face. I couldn’t make out what she was wearing. It looked like a nightdress, and she was sitting on a bed that could have been anywhere.
Why wasn’t the photo in the album with all the others? Why shove it in a shoebox? I flipped the photo over and read the words scrawled on the back in blue ink.
Colleen.
My heart gave a thud.
Colleen?
So, the baby wasn’t me.
I looked closer, but there were no discerning features, apart from a swirl of fair hair. Could it be Aunt Tess’s baby, Mum’s niece? But her name was Rosa, after their mother.
I plucked out a tiny wristband, almost identical to the one I’d kept after leaving hospital with Maisie. Only this one had Colleen Brody written on it, along with a date of birth: five years before I was born.
I felt as if someone had squeezed all the breath out of my lungs.
A vision of Mum, just before she died, swam into my head. She’d started apologising to Dad and me, her eyes cloudy from the morphine. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she kept saying, clutching at our hands, blinking too much, as if she was trying to bring us into focus. ‘I should have fought harder. I’m so sorry. Forgive me, please forgive me.’ We’d assumed she was talking about the cancer that had fatally spread.
‘Oh my God.’ Forcing myself to breathe, I dug out a square, dog-eared envelope addressed to Anna Harrison. Mum’s maiden name. The address on the front was my grandparents’ house in Hampshire, where she’d grown up.
The letter was crumpled, and soft with use, and the writing was tiny and sloping – almost impossible to decipher. The word Reagan leapt out. A man’s name. Irish? My eyes jumped to the address at the top of the page. Cork, Ireland. Underneath, were the words:
Anna, I thought you should have Celia’s new address. She doesn’t want any contact right now, but might change her mind. We did the right thing, you know. She’ll have a good home with a mother who loves her. I’ve been abroad more or less since you left and will be returning to America at the weekend. Hope all’s well and that you’re on your way to becoming a famous artist! Reagan. PS: The baby’s well.
The words slammed into me like a punch. I stood up, my thoughts simmering and darting, and finally grasped the only possible conclusion – the one I’d suspected the second I saw the picture of a mum I barely recognised, holding a baby that wasn’t me.
‘Ella, what is it?’ Greg manifested in front of me, coffee slopping out of the mug he was holding onto the cream carpet. ‘What’s wrong?’
‘Nothing,’ I managed, knowing how crazy I must look, standing there clutching a wristband and a letter in one hand, and waving a photograph with the other. ‘Oh, Greg,’ I spluttered, laughing and crying at the same time. ‘You’ll never guess what.’
His look of bemusement only made me laugh harder, even though my eyes were leaking tears. ‘What? What is it, Ella?’
‘Something wonderful,’ I burst out. ‘Greg, I have a sister.’
Chapter 3
Ella
‘I can’t believe it.’ Greg studied the photo with a furrowed brow, turning it over and over, as if doing so would reveal answers. ‘It doesn’t make sense.’
‘Why not?’ I said, dropping back on the bed. ‘Do you remember I told you how Mum kept apologising right at the end? Well, I think this is what she was talking about.’ My cheeks were burning, as though I were running a fever. ‘I think she had a baby girl before me and gave her up for adoption.’
Greg threw me a perplexed look. ‘But why didn’t she ever say anything?’ He’d been close to my mum. They’d shared a dry sense of humour, as well as a love of art, and would sometimes meet for coffee in the city if it was one of her days at the gallery where she occasionally worked before she became too ill.
‘I don’t know,’ I said, not wanting to dwell on the ‘why’.
‘Maybe it’s a friend’s baby.’
I jabbed the letter I was holding. ‘It says in here, “we did the right thing”,’ I repeated. I’d read it out once, but unusually for Greg, he hadn’t taken it in. As a lawyer, he was used to absorbing all sorts of confidences, but perhaps this was too personal. ‘I think she had a baby with this Reagan and they gave her up for adoption.’
‘It doesn’t seem like something she would do, that’s all.’ Shaking his head, Greg looked down at the garden. ‘Do you think your dad knows?’
‘Probably not.’ I tried to imagine it. There’d always been something self-contained about Mum that suggested she might be good at keeping secrets, and Dad had a jealous streak. ‘If it happened before they met, she might not have wanted him to know.’
‘Pretty big secret to keep from your husband.’ Greg’s tone held an undercurrent that annoyed me, considering he’d once kept a secret of his own for months. ‘What if this Colleen had tried to find her?’ he continued. ‘How would your mum have explained that?’
‘Well, maybe he does know,’ I said, changing tack. ‘I’m just getting to grips with all this.’ I gave an incredulous half-laugh. ‘Perhaps they made a pact never to talk about it.’
He glanced at the photo again. ‘So, she’s your half-sister.’
‘She’s still my sister, Greg.’ I couldn’t hide the bite in my voice. ‘I want to find her.’
‘Whoa, hang on.’ He came and sat beside me, dislodging the shoebox, which slid off the bed and scattered its contents on the floor. ‘Let’s take a minute to think this through.’ He reached for my hand. ‘You’ve had a shock,’ he said with a worried smile. ‘Christ, even I can’t take it in.’
‘It’s more of a nice surprise than a shock.’ I pulled away from him, poking around my feelings. It was as if a switch had been flicked inside me, lights going on. I wanted to bounce on the bed, to run up and down, to rush off and find her immediately. ‘It’s a wonderful surprise.’
‘Aren’t you angry with your mum?’ He picked up the letter and squinted at the tiny script. ‘This writing’s awful.’
‘Maybe she didn’t want to hurt me and Dad,’ I said, chewing my thumbnail – a childhood habit I couldn’t shake. ‘Or buried the memories so deep she kind of forgot.’
‘Forgot?’ Greg pulled a face. ‘Would you forget if you’d given Maisie away?’
‘It sounds awful when you put it like that,’ I said, suppressing a flutter of anxiety.
‘Why do you think she did it?’
‘I don’t know, Greg.’ There would be plenty of time to consider why Mum had hidden something so important – so life-changing. Right now, all I could think about was how I’d longed for a sibling growing up, and now it appeared I had one; half-sister or not, we shared a mother. We had her blood running through our veins. ‘Oh, Greg, this is the best news I’ve had in ages.’ Unable to sit still any longer, I skirted the mess on the floor and dashed to the window, my heart beating too fast. ‘Maisie has an auntie,’ I said, watching my daughter circling the lawn, her arms stretched out to the sides. Charlie was chasing her, his pink tongue lolling out, while Dad watched, hands dug deep in his corduroy trouser pockets. Seeming to sense my gaze, he turned and raised his arm in a wave.
‘I need to talk to Dad,’ I said, with a rising sense of urgency. ‘Now.’
‘Ella, wait.’ Greg’s hands circled my upper arms. ‘You’re getting ahead of yourself,’ he said. ‘Your dad’s still grieving, and there’s a lot we don’t know. There’ll be hoops to jump through before you can think of finding this … finding her.’
‘Colleen,’ I said, already possessive of her name, liking the feel of it on my tongue. My sister, Colleen.
‘She might not be called that anymore.’ He turned me to face him, sounding more like his assured self now that the shock was wearing off. ‘Most adoptive parents give the child a new name.’
‘I didn’t think of that.’ I felt a sagging inside. ‘There must be a record somewhere, of the adoption.’
Greg hesitated. ‘Yes … if it was done formally,’ he said, sliding his hands down my arms and wrapping his fingers around mine. ‘The truth is, Ella, we don’t know what happened back then. It could have been a casual arrangement, or money might have changed hands.’
‘Oh, don’t say that.’ I wrenched away from him. Squatting down, I began rifling through the items on the carpet. ‘There might be something else here.’
There was a tortoiseshell hair slide, a train ticket, a theatre programme, a pressed rose – its crispy petals the colour of blood – but apart from the wristband, photograph and letter, there was nothing else linking Mum to the baby.
I read the letter again, my eyes sliding over the words, and turned it over as if there might be some new ones on the other side. ‘I could write to this address,’ I said, looking up at Greg. ‘Explain who I am.’
‘They’ve probably moved by now. That letter was written years ago, and they might not want to be found.’ He knelt beside me, a dark stain on his jeans where the coffee he’d brought me had spilled. ‘She might not even be alive, Ella.’ His voice was sombre and I felt a pinch of hatred at him for spoiling things.
‘You’ve got a sister and a brother,’ I said. ‘You’ve no idea about being an only child.’
‘Hey, steady on.’ He held up his palms. ‘You’ve always gone on about what a happy childhood you had. Don’t start twisting things.’
‘But I still used to wish I had a big sister.’ I wanted him to throw caution to the wind, to be excited for me, instead of the voice of reason. ‘I just want to try and find her, that’s all.’
‘I will help, of course I will.’ He plucked the letter from my hand, his gaze unbearably gentle. ‘But maybe we should sleep on it first.’
‘I’m not going to change my mind,’ I said, my brain tingling with questions. Did she look like me, or Mum? Or her father, Reagan? Was she happy; married with children? Tall or short? Outgoing or quiet?
I leaned against the bed and hugged my knees. ‘This kind of makes up for losing Mum.’ I felt a wobble in the pit of my stomach as I said it.
Greg’s eyebrows lifted. ‘You think you’re owed a sister to make up for losing your mother?’
‘Why not?’ I countered. ‘There’s a kind of balance, don’t you think?’
He exhaled, seeming lost for words. ‘I think you’ve had a shock.’ He rose and dusted his hands on his jeans. ‘I’ll go and make some more coffee while you finish up here.’ He touched my hair. ‘We’ll talk again at home.’
I sat for a while when he’d gone, listening to him moving in the kitchen below, calling something to Dad through the window, and I heard the low rumble of Dad’s response. Greg was right, this wasn’t something to be rushed into, but nearly thirty years had gone by without me knowing my sister and I couldn’t bear to waste another minute.
I tried to locate some outrage – some horror even – but the truth was, I felt elated. Feelings that had been lying dormant since Mum’s funeral were flowing back to life. I could feel the blood fizzing through my veins, like champagne. I wanted to know … everything.
Scrambling up, I rummaged past the detritus on the bed for my bag and yanked out my phone. After switching it on, I drummed my fingers while it connected to the inefficient Wi-Fi, then signed in to my Facebook account.
I tapped in Colleen Brody Ireland knowing it was silly – pointless, in fact. It was an Irish name, there were bound to be hundreds and I remembered Greg’s comment about her maybe having a different name altogether.
A whole list of Colleens sprang up and my breathing grew shallow as I scrolled through them, hands shaking. There was a learning consultant, a teacher, an artist and a lifeguard. One was even a man, and several of them were too old. A couple had no identity at all – no photos, no details, just a blank avatar.
I mainly used social media for keeping up with old friends and for networking in my job as a food photographer, but I hadn’t posted anything for a while. My profile picture was a professional shot that deepened my eyes to a smoky grey and made the most of my cheekbones. My hair looked sleek and shiny and my smile mysterious; not like my usual sunny self – ‘sunny’ being the word most often used to describe me.
I wondered what Colleen did for a living. The possibilities seemed endless.
Reluctant to log off, I scrolled up and down the list again more slowly, examining each face. One in particular leapt out. I hadn’t looked properly the first time, but now I felt a flash of recognition.
It’s her.
She was gazing directly at the camera with a serious expression, and something about her reminded me of Mum – the same long straight nose and curve of her upper lip. Her hair was the same pale honey-blonde shade as mine, but wavy where mine was straight. She looked about the right age too and although it could have been an old photo, I felt a deep connection in the pit of my stomach that was almost chemical.
This is my sister.
My fingers felt fat and clumsy as I tried to access her page, but it was set to private.
Downstairs, Maisie was calling. ‘Mummy, Mummy, I want you!’
‘Coming, darling!’ I was rigid with excitement and couldn’t stop looking at the picture, searching for clues to her personality. Who had taken the picture? A husband, a relative, or had she taken it herself?
I clicked on the message box and quickly typed: You don’t know me, but I need to talk to you. I think we might be related. I hesitated. What if she didn’t know she was adopted? It might come as a massive shock for her and her family. I didn’t want to be responsible for dropping such a bombshell, but what else could I do?
Go through the proper channels, I imagined Greg saying.
‘Mummeeee!’ Footsteps pattered up the stairs.
‘Won’t be a minute!’ I chewed my knuckle then typed Please, please reply to this. I have reason to believe you’re my sister. Oh God, what if it was the wrong Colleen?
But somehow, I knew that it wasn’t.
I pressed Send, and was almost sent flying as Maisie charged in and flung herself at me.
‘Mummy, I missed you,’ she said, winding her arms around my neck as I fell back and I held her close, breathing in her smell of sunshine and innocence, wondering for the first time how Mum could have given up a child, whatever the circumstances.
‘I missed you too,’ I said, nuzzling her neck until she giggled, quelling a surge of apprehension when Greg appeared with more coffee. He wouldn’t approve of what I’d done. The thought of keeping something from him was a new one and not entirely unpleasant.
‘Still not finished?’ he said, eyeing the clothes-strewn room.
I settled for widening my eyes in a way that made him smile.
‘Don’t worry, I’ll give you a hand,’ he said, ruffling Maisie’s hair. It was almost as if our previous conversation hadn’t happened. ‘We’ll be finished in an hour.’
‘Grandpa’s making a peanut butter sambich,’ Maisie said, leaping up and throwing herself at her grandfather as he appeared in the doorway.
‘It’s ready,’ he said, smiling thinly as she let go of his legs and ran along the landing. He looked tired, deep lines bracketing his mouth. ‘I don’t know where she gets her energy.’
‘From Greg,’ I said lightly, as he put the coffee on the bedside table.
Dad avoided looking at the paraphernalia on the bed and floor and it hit me afresh how sad it was that he wanted to get rid of Mum’s things. He’d loved her so deeply, almost painfully. I’d sometimes felt left out when I was younger. Though he’d been affectionate enough with me, Mum had been his world in the same way I’d been hers.
‘What’s that?’ he said, spotting the open shoebox.
I caught Greg’s horrified stare and looked away.
‘Just some of Mum’s bits and bobs,’ I improvised, smiling. ‘Hair slides and … jewellery – costume stuff, not the nice bits.’ I snatched up the lid and placed it back on the box. My heart was banging my chest hard enough to leap out. ‘Nothing important.’
His gaze landed on the letter, which I’d forgotten to put back.
‘That’s mine,’ I said, slipping it in my bag.
He was clutching the doorframe, the tendons in his hands standing out, but he didn’t respond.
‘Let’s get that sandwich,’ Greg said, moving onto the landing and scooping Maisie up as she passed.
‘What’s wrong, Dad?’ I said, when they’d gone downstairs.
‘Why do you keep asking me that?’ The edge in his voice made me flinch. Mum’s death had roughened his boundaries. He never used to speak to me like that. He glanced at my phone, where my Facebook page was displayed, and I had to resist the urge to switch it off.
‘I was just checking my messages.’
He hesitated. ‘I’m going out for a bit. Lock up when you leave, Ellie.’ He spoke more gently, reverting to my childhood name. ‘Thanks for doing this, I know it can’t be easy.’
‘It’s OK,’ I said, but we both knew it wasn’t.
I sat on the edge of the bed when he’d gone, sipping my lukewarm coffee, feeling adrift in the sea of my mother’s belongings.
Slowly, the elation I’d felt ebbed away and I had the feeling my life was about to slide out of control.
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