Chapter 15
15
Sunday had become her favourite day. Not because she didn’t enjoy her time at the shop, but because it was the only time she had just for her and Lili. On Saturdays, when Adeline was working, Lili would come to the shop and sit quietly, reading or colouring before, more often than not, venturing up to Monique’s flat to watch TV. Monday afternoons and Wednesdays, Adeline would have time off, but often Lili was at school or Adeline was too tired to play.
So Sunday had become their day – and Adeline found that she looked forward to it each week.
This morning, they were lying together in Adeline’s double bed – Lili had joined her under the soft, feather eiderdown sometime during the night and was snuggled up against the pillow, lost to sleep. Adeline lay on her back and looked at the patterns the sunlight made on the ceiling, thought to the day ahead and what they might do.
When she heard the car, she didn’t think much of it. The road through St Vianne was often quiet, especially on a Sunday morning, but there was always the odd car, the odd motorbike, making its way past. In London, the traffic had been a constant backdrop to their lives – the peal of a siren, the persistent trundle of buses and cars – and she’d blocked the noise out as best she could. Here she liked the sound of tyres on cobble, reminding her that, although she was tucked away, there was still life out there.
The car engine stopped and there was the slam of a door, the murmur of voices, then the sound as a car drove off. She stretched luxuriously in her warm bed, wondering whether it might be time to get up and make a coffee.
The knock on the door downstairs startled her and she sat up, suddenly alert. She called out a loud ‘ J’arrive!’ and swung her legs out from under the covers, feeling the cool of the room on her skin. She grabbed her towelling robe and wrapped it around herself as she raced down the stairs, stopping briefly to smooth her hair – but really there was no hope – before reaching the front door and opening it onto the street.
She’d barely had time to consider who might be on the other side. It was Sunday, so it wouldn’t be the postwoman, or any sort of delivery. Perhaps Monique – although surely she’d have called? Adeline didn’t really know anyone else well enough for them to call on her. Perhaps it was a neighbour with a question, or someone who’d knocked on the wrong door entirely.
She gasped when she saw the man standing outside, looking uncertainly around him. His light brown hair and well-groomed beard, sweatshirt and jeans, looked incongruous in this setting. As if he’d been taken out of a completely different picture and dropped into her world from somewhere else entirely. The little yellow man on Google Maps placed in her French town and looking around, trying to establish where he was.
Their eyes met and her hands flew to her face. Then instinctively, she rushed forward and wrapped her arms around him, not caring that she was in the street with bed hair and wearing a dressing gown.
‘Kevin!’ she exclaimed. ‘What are you doing here?’
He laughed, and squeezed her back. ‘I wouldn’t be much of a big brother if I never visited my sister, would I?’
Moments later, he was installed in the armchair in the living room and the kettle was on. She brought one of the wooden chairs through from the kitchen and pulled it close to him so they could talk.
‘Where’s Lili?’ he asked.
‘Asleep, upstairs.’
‘Wow. At eight thirty?’
‘I know. Don’t knock it. Once she’s up and sees you, you won’t stand a chance!’
They smiled at each other; Adeline felt the mood shift as if they were both allowing for a more serious topic.
‘Thanks for coming,’ she said, more quietly.
‘It’s OK. I just…’ He looked at his hands, turning them over as if he were an ill-prepared actor and might find the right words scribbled on them. ‘I had to see for myself that you were OK. That we were OK.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t be.’ He looked at her, their eyes meeting, all seriousness. ‘You’d had a shock. I get it. And there’s no one else there to…’
‘To blame?’ she said softly.
‘Well, yeah,’ he said with a shrug. ‘I’m it, I’m afraid.’
‘Still,’ she said, reaching out and touching his hand. ‘It wasn’t your fault and it wasn’t fair of me to act as if it was.’
He nodded, once, apology accepted, subject closed. ‘Anyway, I’d be mad not to take advantage of the chance of a free holiday in France. ’
‘Free?’ she joked. ‘The rooms are very expensive in this hotel, I’m afraid.’
‘Is that so?’ He cocked an eyebrow and they both laughed.
It was wonderful how easily their relationship settled back into its habitual groove. She’d missed him more than she’d realised.
‘Still,’ she said, patting his knee.
‘I just asked myself what Mum would have done,’ he said. ‘She would have come.’
‘She would have,’ Adeline replied, her voice suddenly thick, her throat feeling restricted.
She excused herself and went to make coffee, pouring hot water into her steel coffee pot, then waiting before she pushed the plunger down to remove the grounds from the water. Then she brought him back a steaming mug, a couple of yesterday’s pastries on a tray, and a little jug of milk.
‘Thank you. How the other half live, eh!’ He nodded at the pastries.
‘They’re a bit dry,’ she said apologetically. ‘Try dipping them in the coffee.’
‘Seriously?’ He seemed dubious.
‘It’s the done thing around these parts.’
He looked at her, then dipped the very end of a croissant into his drink, watching as the hot coffee flooded into the parched pastry. Then he bit it, chewing thoughtfully. ‘Not bad,’ he said. ‘Could get used to this.’
She smiled and a comfortable silence settled around them as he sipped his drink and took a few more bites.
Then: ‘I wanted to ask—’ he began.
‘Uncle Kevin!’ a little voice shrieked from the doorway, and he was hit full-on by a tiny girl in a nightie, almost upsetting his coffee and very nearly causing him to tip sideways as she flung herself into his arms.
He laughed, passed his coffee to Adeline with one hand, then wrapped his arms tightly around his niece. ‘Hello to you too!’ he said.
She pulled back. ‘Why are you here?’
‘Your mum was just asking me the same thing,’ he said, grinning. ‘I guess I just missed you both too much.’
Lili giggled and cuddled into him again, planting an enormous kiss on his cheek. ‘Do you want to see my bedroom? And I go to school here. They all talk French! I can show you my books. And I’m reading bigger books now – did Mum tell you? And here we eat chocolate for breakfast, and I read books after school and Mum lets me sit in her shop and draw on Saturdays. And there’s a market and the people are lovely and I have a best friend…’ she rattled, barely stopping for breath.
‘Come on, let Uncle Kevin drink his coffee,’ Adeline laughed, peeling her daughter from her brother and sitting her on her lap instead. ‘I expect he’s tired after his journey.’
Kevin looked grateful. ‘Why don’t you go get your schoolbooks and you can show me once I’ve finished my breakfast?’ he suggested.
Lili didn’t need telling twice. She raced from the room and they chuckled together at the sound of her little feet pounding up the stairs.
Silence descended around them, broken only by Kevin slurping his coffee in the way he always had done. It was funny, the sound had used to annoy her as a child and teen, but now, far away from home, there was something comforting about his inability to consume a hot drink without making a ridiculous amount of noise. Adeline found herself smiling at him.
‘What?’ he asked .
‘Oh, nothing. Just missed you, I suppose. And you were right. What I found out. It doesn’t change anything. Not between us. You’ll always be my weird, disgusting big brother.’
‘Glad to hear it.’ He gave her a grin. ‘And on that note, I wondered whether… well, I kind of hoped that I might persuade you to come home.’
‘Come home?’ Something dipped inside her chest.
He shrugged. ‘This seems lovely, for a break. But you rushed here without a thought. Ran away, kind of. You’re so far away from your family – well, me – and your old life. Lili’s friends. I wondered if maybe it was time to knock this French thing on the head; to come back to reality.’
It was like a slap. ‘This is reality!’ Adeline said, her voice sounding sharper than she’d intended.
‘I know, sorry, this is coming out all wrong.’ He pulled his backpack towards him and began to open the zip one-handed, before setting his coffee down and opening it properly, rummaging through. ‘What I meant was, you found this shocking, awful information. This job came up… somehow. You rushed off. And I completely understand you wanting to find out more about this area, about your… well, your roots. I’m all for it. But is tucking yourself away here… Well, you’re not going to find any answers working in a little backstreet bookshop are you, Addy?’
She opened her mouth to say something, but closed it again.
Kevin was still intent on his bag. ‘I get it,’ he said, glancing up before returning to the messy interior of his backpack. ‘I understand that you want to find out who you are. Well, who else you are. I thought about it a lot over the last few weeks and I reckon I’d be the same. But I hate thinking of you living alone here, trying to find that missing part of you.’ He was gabbling slightly and her anger subsided; she felt his discomfort and was sorry for him.
‘Spit it out, bro,’ she said lightly. ‘I can handle it.’
He grinned as he finally found what he was looking for and drew a white envelope out of the bag.
‘Anyway, I was racking my brains, because I knew it was a closed adoption. I mean, I think there are ways of finding things out these days; but the French element, well, it makes it all so complicated. And then I thought “Ha! Science”.’ He handed her the envelope.
She turned it over, confused, then opened it, drawing out the papers inside, the tiny plastic vial. A DNA test.
‘Oh,’ she said.
‘If your birth mother’s out there, it could be a way of actually finding her. Your birth mother. Answering some of the questions.’ He shrugged. ‘I think Mum would have been all for it. If she’d had time to… well, if she were here.’
They looked at each other in mutual grief.
‘Thank you,’ she said, looking at the little container, the instructions written on glossy paper – the words ‘Priority processing’ in French showing that he’d paid for a rapid test and even gone to the French website on her behalf. ‘But Kevin, do you really think she’s going to have put herself on this DNA database? The adoption was closed; everything was secretive. Signed. Sealed. Why would someone in that situation risk putting herself out there?’
He shrugged. ‘I thought of that,’ he admitted. ‘But there might be other relatives… other routes of finding out. And I thought…’
‘Thought what?’
‘Well, you’re right. She might not be on the database. But…’
‘But…?’
‘What if she is ? What if she wants to be found?’