Chapter 33
33
‘I still don’t get why you snuck off like that,’ Blessing said, for about the tenth time, as we sat in the tiny back garden of the cottage, watching the bumblebees flitting between the foxgloves lining my back fence.
When I’d left a week ago, the outdoor seating had consisted of a half-rotten, moss-covered bench with a broken back. Now, we lounged in matching reclining chairs with plump, stripy cushions that Blessing assured me she’d got for next to nothing from a preloved furniture website, on the basis that if we were going to live with the inconvenience of being in the middle of nowhere, we might as well be comfy. I had to agree.
‘What else was I going to do? I had a plane to catch.’
‘Emmie, your flight was at twelve-fifteen. You messaged me from the airport at eight-twenty.’
I wriggled on my seat, taking a sip of Blessing’s ‘signature weekend cocktail’ as I tried to come up with a plausible answer. It might have been the extra splash of gin that persuaded me to simply go with the truth.
‘The way they all looked at me, once they knew I’d been hiding who I was, I couldn’t bear to face that again.’
‘Pip, too?’
‘Especially Pip!’ I sank lower in the chair, flicking a tiny spider off my knee. ‘He only came after me to double-check that I was leaving and apologise for his mum. He didn’t once try to convince me to stay. He was so angry when he heard I’d been hiding the truth.’
‘That can’t be true,’ she protested. ‘You said his dad explained that he was the one making you keep it a secret.’
‘Maybe. But he was also mad that I didn’t tell him about the milk, or the other stuff. He thinks I jeopardised his sister’s wedding because I didn’t trust him.’
Blessing blew a raspberry. ‘The only person doing that was his mum.’
‘Exactly. It’s a lot easier to blame a woman you barely know than your own mother.’
‘He’s not contacted you today?’
I shook my head. ‘I told him not to. There’s nothing to say apart from, “Sorry, that all turned out a bit crappy”. Why would he bother when it’s such a complicated mess?’
‘Um, because you’re gorgeous and awesome and totally worth it?’
‘Clearly not, because the only messages I’ve got are from Sherwood Airport staff freaking out about how they can’t live without Parsley’s coffee or pasties. Not one of them has mentioned missing me.’
‘Hmm.’ Blessing looked pensive, before topping up both our glasses from the jug she’d balanced on the wooden crate temporarily acting as a garden table.
‘Seriously, though, you have to feel proud of yourself. For someone as untravelled as you to catch a plane on the spur of the moment, find yourself a place to stay, make friends, get invited to a hen do and a wedding. Have someone offer you their airport business! I’d never have had the guts to buy the ticket in the first place, with no hotel waiting for me on the other side. You are one fierce woman hiding behind that sad little ponytail.’
‘What?’ I spun my head around to face her. ‘You were the one who badgered me into it!’
She beamed. ‘Yeah. I had a feeling you’d do okay. And look what happened – instead of slaving away in that giant aluminium shed, you’re here, with me, enjoying Blessing’s sunshine happy hour, the world at your feet, endless possibilities just waiting for us to smash the hell out of them.’
‘I am. And I’m very grateful.’ I held up my glass. ‘Here’s to being unemployed, completely messing things up with my two-year crush and having a whacking great fine to pay for my defunct business.’
‘Cheers.’
As we whiled away the rest of the day, chatting about ideas for the cottage, idly discussing grandiose plans about a future business and where we’d go for our first joint holiday, the island began to fade into something of a distant dream. Now I was surrounded by oak trees, squirrels rustling in the summer leaves, the extraordinary events of the past week already started to settle into the story that Blessing assured me we would laugh about one day.
My life was here, for now at least, and there was something wonderful about being with someone who’d known me for longer than anyone, in the place I’d always been, while so aware that things had changed forever.
For that, if nothing else, I would be forever grateful to the Isle of Siskin.
Saturday, we both slept in, ate scrambled eggs with leftover guacamole and sour cream for brunch and then got down to business.
Not actual business yet. We’d agreed a weekend off before we started making serious plans about that. In the meantime, there was a cottage that needed a makeover even more badly than its owner.
Blessing had been sleeping in my bedroom, as using Mum’s felt wrong before I’d sorted through it. The only issue with this being that her promise to bring the ‘bare essentials’ with her until we’d redecorated the larger bedroom included so many bags, cases and piles of random clutter there was only space in my bedroom for one person at a time.
I’d slept on the sofa the past two nights, despite Blessing forcefully trying to insist I had my room back. I’d eventually convinced her that the sofa was infinitely preferable to squashing myself in with her stuffed-animal zoo, risking a bruised shin or broken toe if I needed to negotiate the slalom getting to the bathroom in the middle of the night.
Today, Blessing had driven to the nearest DIY shop. She had initially been shocked to hear that I’d never done any painting, until I asked her to name a room in the cottage that looked as though it had been decorated in the past quarter of a century, and she had to admit that my lack of experience made sense.
While she stocked up on paint, rollers, brushes and whatever else we might need, I started clearing out Mum’s wardrobe and chest of drawers, separating clothes into rags and things worth donating to the local clothing bank. It didn’t take long. Neither did sorting her two pairs of shoes.
From there, I quickly binned the scant remaining toiletries, and her cheap, plastic hairbrush. She had a few more utilitarian items lined up on top of her chest of drawers, which I relocated elsewhere in the house, including a box of tissues, nail scissors and packet of painkillers. I also moved a hot-water bottle, the small suitcase containing a washbag and, unsurprisingly, very little else.
I replaced the letters in their original box along with the photograph and dried flowers, and moved that downstairs for now.
By the time Blessing returned (with a distinct whiff of McDonald’s fries clinging to her T-shirt), I was done. Under two hours and the room was emptied of anything reflecting the woman who’d slept there for three decades. I stood there for a while, feeling a sudden rush of grief for, not only the mother I’d lost, but any chance to discover who else she’d been. The letters had helped fill in some missing pieces, but the thirty-seven years prior to those were a mystery that, thanks to her disdain for sentimentality, I would never find the answers to.
‘That’s not quite true, though, is it?’ Blessing said, when I expressed this while in the process of dismantling the old MDF wardrobe.
‘What do you mean? If there was anything stored anywhere else in the house, I’d have found it by now.’
‘But she isn’t the only person who can answer those questions. Contrary to the rumours, she wasn’t an android built in a lab. And despite being the toughest, most independent person ever, she didn’t bring herself up.’
I sat back, wiping the sweat off my face. Who knew unscrewing screws was such hard work? ‘You mean her family?’
‘I mean your family.’
‘You know my birth mum died when I was tiny.’
‘Yes, but what about your grandparents? Her aunt, whatever you want to call her. Did your mum have brothers and sisters?’
I frowned. ‘Which mum?’
Blessing looked up from where she’d been working on a door hinge. ‘Either.’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Okay, so what do you know?’
‘I know Mum decided none of them were worth knowing. She left strict instructions in her “death folder” not to invite any of them to her funeral.’
We put down our screwdrivers and sat back against the dusty wall.
‘Did she explain why?’
I shrugged. ‘She used to say that the only limit to her family’s depravity was their own laziness.’
‘What does that even mean?’
‘Kennedy, my mother, had been to prison a couple of times.’
‘How did she die?’
I leant my head back until it rested against the wall. ‘I’m not even sure. As I got older, I assumed it was drug-related. But we never talked about these things. I learned very young not to try. I know Nell’s and Kennedy’s mums were twins.’
‘So they’re likely to have been close?’
‘And likely to have also died. Mum’s birth certificate says her mother was eighteen when she was born, so they’d be, what, in their early nineties now?’
‘Do you want to know if you have a family out there, somewhere? Who they are, what they’re like? Whether they love reading and dreaming about adventures in far-flung places? Because you definitely didn’t get that from Nell.’
‘I don’t know. I used to fantasise about Kennedy, invent a personality that explained why I was so different from Mum, but as I got older, it felt less and less relevant. I thought about it when Mum died, obviously, but while Kennedy was still only a name on a piece of paper, it was easy to put her out of my mind. That time was hard enough without stirring all that up.’
‘Of course. So, what about your dad?’
I shook my head. ‘That’s a mystery that will never be solved. Short of doing one of those DNA tests and miraculously finding a paternal match.’
‘Sounds like you’ve thought about it.’
‘And dismissed it. Whoever he was, he either never knew that the mentally ill, drug-addicted woman he slept with had given birth to his child, or he didn’t care. I have no desire whatsoever to know more about a man like that.’
‘Fair enough.’
My mind kept drifting back to our conversation as we cleared out the dismantled furniture, wiped down the walls and prepped the room for painting. I kept coming back to the same question.
What’s the worst that can happen if I contact my family?
Once we’d eaten a bowl of pasta while Blessing introduced me to her favourite gruesome crime box set, and then four episodes later said goodnight, leaving me to get comfy on the sofa, I made a rough mental list of the answers.
They might turn out to be as bad as Mum said – in which case, I’ll simply walk away.
They might reject, or dislike, me. But if they don’t want to give me a chance, then that’s their loss, not mine.
I might find out a load of awful things about Mum. Which I can live with. Whoever she was before, the woman she was for her last twenty-four years is what matters to me.
I might love them. And they love me, too. Maybe Mum exaggerated, or perhaps they had a questionable past, but have become great people. In which case, we have to grieve all those lost years.
And the best that could happen?
I’d have a family. A place to belong. People who cared. Who could help me understand Mum better, why she was that way. Why I wasn’t.
I decided that maybe I should do some tentative investigating. I would proceed with caution. Protect myself at every step. Expect nothing.
I’d start soon. Maybe once the decorating was finished, or the new business had got under way.
Was it a little pathetic that when I opened up Instagram, dilly-dallying about whether to start searching for other Browns and Swans, I instead found myself scrolling through Iris’s wedding photos, heart scrunching up as I zoomed in on Pip, the devoted brother sandwiched between four sisters with a huge grin on his face?
And, then – oomph .
There I was, fairy lights glinting off my mussed hair, Aster’s dress swishing flatteringly, eyes dancing as I walked across the grass, Pip’s hand in mine. The photograph had caught us exchanging animated glances. He was laughing, completely at ease, as if we’d strolled together countless times before.
I looked… happy.
Together, we looked like a couple utterly in love.
I put down my phone and watched two more episodes of the crime box set before I calmed down enough to even pretend to try getting to sleep.