Chapter 8 Twelve History Projects, Nineteen Hundred Babies, and One Cheat Code
We are holding a meeting of the history club, which is always an entertaining experience. This time, Katie is not in fancy dress but is wearing a T-shirt that bears the slogan “History Repeats Itself,” with the word History written five times beneath it. Funny.
She has already settled into the group and chats to the other pupils with a sense of ease that is infectious. One of them is giving her Scouse lessons in Liverpool slang so she doesn’t get confused as a big southern softie. Among the usual “go ’eds” and “made ups” are more specific additions, such as “ket wig,” “jarg,” and “trabs.” I don’t even know what some of it means and I live here.
“So,” she says, frowning as she tries to take in all the information, “if I got some boss clobber and found out it was jarg, I’d be proper devoed, lad?” I think this means “if I got some nice designer clothing and found out it was fake, I’d be devastated.” She receives a round of applause and takes a small bow. I have worked in many different places, and they all have their own slang and dialect—but Liverpool really does take it to the next level. There’s a whole different language out there.
I smile and let them carry on chatting while I arrange my pens. I count them, several times, as though somehow they might have either bred or escaped in the last five minutes. Without any of the students noticing, I take some deep and calming breaths and prepare to begin.
It is Monday, and I have survived the day only through rigid compartmentalization. I have neatly cordoned my brain off into different sectors, putting everything to do with Katie into one room and locking it tightly. I needed to do that so I could focus on work, and also so I don’t actually pick at it all so much that I have some kind of meltdown.
My mum, I remember, used to have meltdowns that started over something trivial—like losing a coin, or running out of cigarette papers for her roll-ups—and escalated with bewildering speed. I think as an adult I’d be able to spot the signs, maybe help her, calm things down. Or maybe not—who knows? My heart breaks for her now, knowing what she must have gone through, knowing how scared she must have been. That she was all alone, dealing with illness and addiction, raising a child.
As that child, though, I was helpless and afraid. I would see those signs—a sideways look, a sudden change in tone of voice, a clenching of fists, a certain way she had of clearing her throat that was quiet but somehow still sounded angry—and know what was coming. Straightaway, I’d feel a tiny seed of tension growing inside me. That seed would grow and expand and blossom into a full-blown poison ivy, until I could barely move or speak.
I’d watch and listen and try to make myself as small as possible, and hope it would be over quickly. I’d know that I would be left alone or, even worse, taken with her when she went off on random visits to friends, to the shops, to the park. I’d look on as she harassed everyone around her for whatever she thought she needed, as she shouted and yelled and became a whirlwind of pointless fury. Of course nobody did help her. She was terrifying. I’d be her shadow, silent and still, having learned from experience that anything I did to intervene would result in some of that fury being turned on me.
Instead, I would gaze around and count how many trees I could see, or how many red cars I could find, or time how long it took for the traffic lights to change. I would use what I later learned were breathing techniques, without even knowing what they were called—I just knew they helped.
I still do all of those things now. I count, I breathe, I close down the parts of me that are soft and vulnerable. I give myself the space to function.
Sometimes I wonder if that ability is a curse—if it has held me back in ways I can’t even let myself imagine, including my failed relationships. But at times like this, it is a blessing. I have had a busy day, and I have promised myself that once history club is over, and I am alone and the world around me is quiet, I will get the information I need. I will check Katie’s date of birth.
I could have done it at the start of the day, but I forced myself not to. There may be a tiny part of me that simply wants to carry on enjoying the fantasy that she is mine. There may be a part of me that is scared to find out she is—but either way, I knew it was going to shake my world and render me useless for the rest of the day. If I’m going to have a meltdown, it would be better done on my own time. History club, then knowledge, then home to deal with whatever it is I discover.
“So,” I say, standing up to gain their attention, feeling twelve pairs of eager eyes turn toward me. “How are we all getting on with our research projects?”
I’d set them the topic at the end of the last term, before the summer holidays, though I am under no illusions that they will have been feverishly working away on it during their break—it was more so that they could think about it, explore some ideas.
I hope it’s going to be both fun and useful, develop their research skills, help them become better historians. I’ve asked them to present a short talk on the history of their own families, and the way it illustrates historical events and the society of the day, in a format where we can all share their findings and learn about different aspects of life and the past.
We are going to make an event of it, combining it with a tour around the Royal Albert Dock and inviting friends and family to the actual presentations, which we’ll hold in a small function room that I’ve booked in one of the museums.
“Miss,” says Hannah Maguire, hand in the air, “I found out that my great-granddad was at Dunkirk! He’s dead now, obvs, but nobody in the family had ever talked about it much, said he hated even mentioning it.”
“So it’s like a story that’s been passed down?”
“Yeah, but kind of in whispers? Because my grandma knew not to talk about it, because it upset him, so she didn’t exactly hide it but also didn’t say much. Apparently, he was never the same after.”
“That’s really interesting, Hannah. Maybe you could do some work around Dunkirk and how terrible it was—a lot of men were left traumatized by it; they lost friends and comrades, probably even felt guilty for surviving.”
“I watched the film the other night,” she says in tried-and-tested teenage form. “The one with Harry Styles in it.”
“Well, that’s a good start, but maybe do some reading as well?”
She pulls a face but nods, and I hope she does. There’s been a distinct reduction in attention span over the last few years, and I do sometimes worry that if the entire history of the world can’t be compressed into a TikTok video, then it is too difficult for them.
One of the other students puts his hand up and says: “Miss, I want to do something about immigration. My grandparents moved here from Hong Kong in the sixties.”
“Great idea,” I confirm, knowing that his family started off working in restaurants, eventually opened their own, and are now hoping that the current generation will be even more successful. “If they’re willing, perhaps you could interview them? Make it an oral history project? Storytelling is one of the most important parts of this subject—today’s stories are tomorrow’s history.”
A few more ideas are discussed, and I try to steer them in the right direction, offering suggestions and ways to find out more. Katie simply tells me she’s “still working on it,” and I do wonder if this is hard for her—the assignment was set before she was at this school, and before I knew about her being adopted. It might also be painful because of her dad, and I feel a rush of protective sympathy.
“Katie,” I say, quickly making up an excuse for her, “you’ve only just started here, and the others have had months to think—or not—about this. I know it takes a while to settle in and find your feet—so really, if you don’t want to do this project, it’s absolutely fine.”
She looks surprised and shakes her head, red plaits swaying.
“No, miss, it’s okay—I’m enjoying it, honestly. Besides, I wouldn’t want you to think I was a slacker.”
I smile at that, because we both know she is a million miles away from being a slacker. Her grades are right up there in the top percentages, in history and her other subjects. She is a brain pie with a cherry on top.
We wrap up the meeting, arrange the next one, and I wave goodbye as they trail out of the classroom, backpacks hoisted onto shoulders. I hear them chatting and singing as they wander down the corridor, a minor scuffle of feet on linoleum, one of them suggesting a trip to the local milkshake place. They are young, and the world lies ahead of them, and they will soon be drinking milkshakes while they sit at a table together looking at their phones in a communal trance.
I sit, and I wait. Eventually, their cloud of activity is gone. The school is far from empty; there are other clubs being held, after-school lessons, meetings, music rehearsals, sports practices. I know Karim will be out there on the field, in his tracksuit uniform, refereeing football or coaching rugby. I’ve only seen him briefly today, on purpose, coming in later than usual and avoiding the staff room. I don’t have space in the sectored brain for anything extra today, and promise myself I will talk to him properly tomorrow.
But here, now, in my quiet room, there is only me. Me and a suitcase full of wishes—I wish that I didn’t have to find out. I wish that I didn’t know that Katie was adopted. I wish that I knew more, and that I knew less. I wish that she could be mine, even while telling myself that she never can be—she will always be Erin’s daughter, no matter what biology might say.
I pick up the phone and dial the extension for the school office staff. I make small talk with Cheryl, who looks after our information management system—an almighty affair that records details of the students’ achievements, targets, personal circumstances, and shoe size. That last one isn’t true, by the way.
I explain that I need to know Katie Bell’s date of birth for a project I’m planning. Another lie, and completely unnecessary as well—I’m hardly asking for state secrets here. I could have just asked Katie, but I couldn’t bear the thought of putting her in that position, because I don’t know how I am going to react, whichever way this goes.
“Ooh,” exclaims Cheryl after a few moments of tapping away on her keyboard, “she’s got a birthday soon! The third of October.”
I already know that the year is right. Now I know that the day is right: October 3.
The day that everything changed.
I somehow manage to finish the conversation in a reasonable way, or at least I think I do, and I put the phone down. It has only taken around ninety seconds to turn my world upside down.
I lean back in my chair, and I bite my lip so hard it bleeds. I don’t even feel the pain, just taste the metallic tang of blood. I realize my whole body is numb, like I’m in shock.
She was born on the same day as my baby. She could be my baby. It is too huge to process properly, and I am frozen in place.
I shake my head, as though that will help, and start to rearrange my pens. I start to rearrange a lot—internally and externally.
I tell myself that this isn’t proof. That this doesn’t mean that Katie is my daughter. I remind myself yet again that around one thousand nine hundred babies were born that day, and decide it would be useful to know the statistical probability of them being redheads. My fingers are too fat and slow to work my phone, and maybe that’s a good thing. There is a rabbit hole out there with my name on it.
I wipe the blood from the lip that I am still chewing and wonder what to do next. I have to pack up, drive home, see Margie. I have to walk Bill, and cook dinner, and prepare for tomorrow’s department meeting. I have to vacuum the bedroom carpets and I have to watch The Bridge and I have to reply to Karim’s messages.
I have to do all these things, but right now I am incapable even of moving. I am rooted to my chair, my mind well and truly blown, a river of emotions bursting through carefully erected dams.
For the first time in many years, I simply don’t know what to do. Should I talk to Erin? Should I try to find out more about where my adopted child went? There is a register you can sign up to, I know, where you can leave your details, and if they come looking for you, they can find you once they are over eighteen.
I have never signed up to that, for many reasons. Eighteen has always seemed a long way off, and I have never been sure that I am strong enough to confront my own past. I am strong enough to suppress it, to ignore it, to function despite it—or at least I used to be.
Now I feel small and weak and scared and elated. I need a plan, but right now I cannot formulate one.
I am vaguely aware of the real world around me, the familiar sights and smells and sounds of this room, of this building—but I feel apart from it as well. I am inhabiting my own strange space and am taken aback when I hear a voice. At first it seems to come from a distance, a whisper or an echo, irrelevant and temporary.
Then it becomes more insistent, and I look up to see her. Katie Bell. Born on October 3. Standing before me, looking worried.
“Miss, are you all right?” she says in a tone that implies it is not the first time of asking. I gaze up at her, drinking in the deep red plaits and the multiple ear studs and the history nerd T-shirt. I drink it all in like I have just emerged from a desert and into an oasis.
“Yes!” I say eventually, a delayed reaction that does nothing to erase her frown. “Yes, I’m fine, Katie—sorry, I was just in a world of my own.”
My hands go automatically to the pen parade, pushing them fractionally to make them all touch.
“Okay. I know that feeling,” she replies, noticing my movements, noticing the bitten lip, noticing my emotionally disheveled state. This isn’t fair, I tell myself—she is innocent in all of this, regardless of who she is or who she isn’t. She is still a seventeen-year-old girl watching an authority figure dwindle into a pile of scattered sticks. I pull myself together, sit up straighter, reconnect to reality, and force a smile.
“Did you forget something, Katie? Can I help you with anything?”
A look flickers across her face that I read as “It doesn’t look like you can help anyone with much at all right now,” but she replies: “Yeah, sorry. My mum asked me to tell you to text her. She accidentally deleted your number, which isn’t a surprise to anyone who knows her because her technological expertise seems to have ended at vinyl. She wondered if you wanted to come round to ours for dinner or something. By ‘something’ she probably means margaritas, and by ‘dinner’ she probably means a takeaway, I warn you.”
I blink and feed the words through the processor that is my mind.
“Right, I will. But would that be okay with you?” I ask. “I mean, would it be a bit weird having one of your teachers in the house? It might be, and I wouldn’t be offended if you said so. I could just meet your mum for a drink instead.”
“Nah, it’s cool. It’s not like you’re my math teacher from year eleven or anything. I hated him. Anyway, it’s nice for my mum to make friends her own age.”
The way she says that last part makes me laugh inside—she sounds more like the parent than the child. I have an image of the teeny-tiny dynamo that is Erin, hanging around with teenagers drinking cider on the beach.
“What, you mean complete geriatrics?”
She scrunches up her eyes and looks at me intently, as though she’s really looking at me for the first time.
“Actually, you’re not even that old, are you?”
“I’m thirty-four,” I respond. “Is that old enough to be your mum’s friend?”
“Well, she’s forty-nine, so I’ll let you be the judge of that.”
“Wow. She looks a lot younger.”
“I know, right?” Katie says, grinning. “And acts it. I kind of wish we were genetically related so I could inherit that fountain-of-youth thing she’s got going on. Anyway. Mission accomplished. Off for milkshakes!”
She walks away and pauses in the doorway, gazing back at me. I wonder what I look like to her now, whether she would want to be genetically related to me as well, or if she’d run screaming from the room.
“Have you heard of the Konami Code, miss?”
“No, what is it?”
“Look it up. The way you’re jiggling everything around on your desk reminds me of it. Maybe you’ll unlock the secrets of the universe if you get it right.”
Finally, she leaves, and I manage to function well enough to google Konami Code. I don’t know why I do it immediately, but I feel like I have to because she has suggested it. Because it is something she is interested in, because it is a link between us. Because I am desperate to feel closer to her while also keeping my distance. Huh, I think as I scroll through the results. It’s a cheat code for eighties gamers that seems to have become something of a legend, a pop-culture reference in films and movies and on memes. Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A.
I was never a gamer, but the code appeals to me. I like the idea of a secret set of buttons to press that gives you a power-up or extra lives. I wish you could do that in real life, and it occurs to me that in my own way, I do. All my counting and lists and memorizing of dates—it’s like my very own Konami Code, keeping me insulated, keeping me secure.
I move my pens around, down, down, left, right, left, right, but nothing happens. There is no electronic ping, no animated confetti cannon, no superstrength neon light or celestial choir. I do not unlock the secrets of the universe. I suppose it must be because I didn’t have a way to do the A and the B. I pack up my pens, my notepads, my phone. I stand up and decide to go home, get changed, and go for a run. Sometimes the only way to cheat-code your mind is to exhaust your body.