Chapter 46
FORTY-SIX
Beatrice might have burst out of the house on Damask Square, but she didn’t go far. Her keys were in her pocket but she didn’t have her phone, bag or a coat, so she let herself into the garden square, sat down on a bench and cried.
All this – all her work, her research, travelling halfway around the world – and it had come to this. Orla hated her. She didn’t blame Orla for hating her. She’d behaved terribly, alienating the one person in the world she most wanted to have close to her.
But she hated Orla, too. She hated her for reacting the way she had – for trying to explain and justify what she had done. She hated her for all the months she had spent preferring Livvie to Beatrice. Most of all, of course, she hated her for that first, irrevocable abandonment twenty-two years ago.
It was over. She would have to leave Damask Square and move into the spare room in Frances and Peter’s apartment, if they’d still have her there. She’d have to explain to her parents what had happened – or alternatively lie to them and say that she hadn’t been able to trace her birth mother and had decided to give up trying.
There was nothing here for her any more. Nothing left.
Half an hour later, she was still sitting there. She’d stopped crying and was beginning to shiver with the cold, but she barely noticed that, like she barely noticed the fox that drifted past, its rough coat amber in the light that fell from the windows of the flats opposite. She didn’t respond when a group of young men called out, ‘All right, darling?’ to her. A light came on in the upstairs room of one of the neighbouring houses but she didn’t look up to see who was there. The sky lanterns hovering in the darkness from a Diwali display somewhere might as well not have been there.
It was only when a man sat down next to her that she jerked back to consciousness, the awareness of potential danger tensing every muscle in her body.
‘Beatrice? I thought it was you. Are you okay?’
‘Neil.’ He was like an apparition from another world – a world before she had confronted Orla in the garden. A world where there had been hope instead of only despair. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘Been visiting Gramps. Mum made chicken soup and I took him a load for the freezer. I thought I’d come by and see if you were okay, because you didn’t answer my text.’
His text – the one with the kiss at the end.
‘My phone’s indoors,’ she said.
‘You must be freezing.’
Beatrice realised she was shivering. ‘I guess so.’
‘You look like you could do with some chicken soup yourself. Has something happened? Did you speak to Orla?’
Beatrice nodded.
‘Here. Take my gloves.’ Neil slipped them off and handed them to her. The warmth from his hands enveloped hers as she fumbled her stiff fingers into the rough wool. ‘Do you want to get a cup of tea somewhere? Or a drink?’
Beatrice shook her head. The thought of being somewhere with bright lights, other people, the world carrying on as if nothing had changed, was overwhelming.
‘I told her. Well – I asked her, first, whether she’d been married and whether she had a sister. She never had a sister, and she married some guy called Clifford years ago and kept his last name when they split up.’
‘And so is she…?’
‘She gave birth to me.’ Beatrice found she couldn’t use the word ‘mother’.
‘How does that make you feel?’ Neil asked gently.
Guess he’s had some therapy in his time , Beatrice thought.
‘Honestly? Messed up. Not anything like I thought I’d feel.’
‘Go on.’ His steady gaze remained on her face.
‘I thought… All my life, when I imagined I might meet her one day, I thought there’d be this instant connection. You know, you read stories and it’s all fairy tale and heartwarming. Like recognising yourself. But I’ve lived with her for months and there’s been nothing.’
‘You’ve lived a whole life apart from her,’ Neil said. ‘And fairy tales aren’t real. Relationships take time.’
‘That’s with other people, though. People you date, friends, colleagues. Not your own fucking?—’
She stopped, holding back the wave of rage that threatened to overwhelm her. She hadn’t wanted it to be like this – she still didn’t want it to be. She wanted the moment she’d imagined so many times, looking up into a pair of eyes as familiar as her own, saying the words she’d dreamed of saying, feeling warm arms enclose her as if they’d never, ever let her go.
She remembered the two women she’d seen in the Dublin hotel all those months ago – Haven’t I waited twenty years to buy my daughter tea and scones at Bewley’s? Orla had offered tea and she’d rejected her.
That was what she’d yearned for, that touching reunion, that promise of future closeness. But it was too late. Orla already knew her. She knew the sides of Beatrice that Beatrice hadn’t wanted her to see – her anger, her insecurities, her deceptiveness. Orla hadn’t recognised her when she’d met her, hadn’t loved her at first sight – so how could Beatrice expect her to love her now?
‘It’s not the same, I know,’ Neil said. ‘But my sister’s baby – Aaron, my nephew – he was the most wanted kid ever. Claudia and her other half tried to get pregnant for ages, but it didn’t happen. They had IVF and all sorts. It took years. When Claudia finally got pregnant, she couldn’t believe it. She was so happy, but super worried, too. She obsessed about eating all the right food, doing exercises, all that stuff, so that the baby would be okay. Jon basically wouldn’t let her wash a plate the whole nine months.’
Beatrice listened impatiently. Neil must have been telling her the story for a reason, but she couldn’t see what relevance it had to her. But listening was easier than talking.
‘Aaron was born just over a year ago,’ he went on. ‘My first nephew. My mom and dad’s first grandchild; Gramps’s first great-grandchild. The whole family was doolally over him.’
‘That’s nice,’ Beatrice said.
‘I’m sorry.’ In the half-light from the windows of the flats, Beatrice could see that Neil was blushing. ‘You don’t want to hear all about my family.’
‘It’s okay.’ Beatrice felt a stab of guilt. She hadn’t meant to sound contemptuous, but she had. Neil was being kind to her, trying to help, and she’d made him feel bad. Him, on top of everyone else.
That was the kind of person she was – someone who took advantage of others’ kindness, threw it back in their face. Her mother and father had loved her unconditionally for twenty-two years, but that hadn’t been enough for her. Orla had treated her with nothing but generosity and respect, giving her a place to live, cooking meat for her in her vegetarian kitchen, and how had she thanked her?
But her guilt was short-lived. Nothing Orla had done for her over the past months could ever outweigh the first thing she had ever done to Beatrice: rejecting her, abandoning her.
Giving her up.
‘I was just going to say,’ Neil was ploughing on, knowing his story wasn’t landing well but not knowing what else to do, ‘Claudia told me, just a couple of months ago, how hard she found it with Aaron at first. She didn’t bond with him right away. It took months and months. That was my point – you have to give it time.’
‘I’ve waited twenty-two years,’ Beatrice said furiously. ‘How much time does she need? She could’ve tried to track me down, and she didn’t. She could’ve applied to be on that register thing and she never did. I’ve been living in the same fucking house as her for months and she hasn’t even recognised me.’
‘I get it,’ Neil said. ‘I understand how much it must hurt. It’s hard. But she didn’t know who you were. How could she have known?’
Beatrice didn’t want to hear that, even though she knew it was true.
‘She should have known. She should have asked. She never asked me anything about myself. She was never interested in me.’
‘Now that she knows, she’ll be interested,’ Neil said. ‘Of course she will. She’ll want to hear all about your life. I bet she’s been wondering, all these years, what happened to you. Now she’ll be able to find out. She’ll be massively relieved. It must have been…’
‘It must have been what?’
‘It must have been hard for her, too,’ Neil muttered.
Part of Beatrice – the rational part, the part who’d been through years of therapy – understood that. But there was no way she was ready to hear it, especially not from Neil.
‘What do you mean, hard?’ she demanded. ‘Hard would have been keeping her baby, bringing me up like I was – you know – her literal daughter. Having the courage to do that. But she didn’t. She was just like, “Take my baby away and I’ll get on with my life.” She’s lived all over the world, for God’s sake. She’s had all these experiences she wouldn’t have been able to have if she’d actually had the balls to stick around and be a mother.’
‘I’m sure it wasn’t as easy as that,’ Neil said. ‘If it had been, I’m sure she would’ve done it. I don’t know what it was like, in Ireland back then, but it was very religious, very Catholic, wasn’t it? I’m sure she never wanted to give up her baby. I’m sure if she could have, she would’ve?—’
‘Why are you defending her?’ Beatrice exploded. ‘Whose side are you on? You asked me if I was okay and I’m not. I’m telling you I’m not. I never asked you to come and sit here – you chose to. And now you’re lecturing me about the Catholic church and telling me all about your sister’s baby.’
He looked mortified. ‘I didn’t mean to?—’
‘I don’t care what you meant.’ Beatrice stood up. Her legs were so numb with cold that she almost fell over, but she regained her balance and turned away from him. ‘I’m going home.’
Then she realised where home was. Home was the house on Damask Square – the house her great-grandparents had bought, the house that had led to the death of her great-grandfather. Home was where Orla was.
She couldn’t face being under the same roof as Orla. Or worse, watching Livvie with her – seeing the easy affection between them, the natural understanding she’d never managed to achieve. The kind of relationship that should have been her birthright but somehow wasn’t there at all. Every shared smile between them felt like another door closing in her face.
Orla loved Livvie. If she could have chosen, she would have wanted Livvie to be her daughter, not Beatrice.