Chapter 24
24
The house was silent when she woke, suddenly, at half past five. Her heart was pounding and she could feel her chest and hair damp with sweat. Instinctively she clicked on her bedside light and let the comforting electric glow drive the shadows to the edges of the room. Then she shifted herself back until she was sitting up slightly against her pillow and tried to still her racing thoughts. Whatever it was, it had been in her imagination. There was no need to chase the dream through her subconscious and bring it up again.
She reached for her phone – something she’d vowed not to do on sleepless nights – in an attempt to find some sort of normality to help her fears subside. Perhaps reading the news or checking the weather would get her back into the moment. Her eyes and body felt tired, but she was too full of adrenaline to sleep, at least for now.
Unlocking her phone, she started by flicking through the headlines on her chosen news site, but they were all distressing and depressing; not the best thing for her to be looking at for distraction. Instead, she brought up Facebook and was pleased to see that she had a message from Chris.
So, now you’re back online, are you going to update me on all the news? How’s France? How’s Lili? Any handsome Frenchmen on the horizon? Seriously, we need to catch up x
It was short, sure, but it was nice that someone was thinking of her. She wondered how to get even a fraction of what she was going through into a suitable message. It just wasn’t possible. Besides, she wasn’t sure her thumbs would survive if she truly updated her friend on everything going on. Perhaps she’d call her at the weekend. It seemed an odd thing to do, making an actual phone call. For a while, she’d barely had time to remember her friend, when Mum and her illness dominated her every waking thought and action. Short messages had been a way to jot down a couple of lines whenever she had the opportunity, their friendship reduced to brief soundbites.
She realised, suddenly, that the last proper phone call she’d made had probably been to Monique, when she’d rung about the job. Yes, she’d called booksellers and the odd customer since, but nothing personal, meaningful.
I’m good thanks. How are you…
She started to write. Then deleted and started again.
So much has happened recently. I can’t even begin to write it here! I’m good. But it would be lovely to chat properly. If you have a moment sometime soon ?
It would be four thirty in the morning in England. She doubted her friend would be that pleased to speak to her now. And besides, she knew how busy Chris could get. But hopefully they could chat soon – re-establish the kind of closeness they used to have.
She wondered why it had taken her rushing to France and working in a bookstore with a possibly psychic boss to realise that she needed to start reaching out properly and restocking her life with people who cared about her.
With a jolt she realised suddenly that she hadn’t replied to Kevin’s email yet either. And he’d been so touchingly open about his feelings. She clicked on her email icon and began to scroll through the various spam missives she’d received over the past twenty-four hours, looking for his name.
Only something else caught her eye.
DNA RESULTS IN! the heading read.
Shaking slightly, she tapped the heading and opened the email which congratulated her again on her results, and gave her a link to find out more.
Taking a deep breath and glad, for once, that she was alone and Lili was asleep, she clicked on the link.
After ten feverish minutes of forgetting her password, trying different versions of it, being locked out and finally resetting the whole thing, she was able to bring up her report.
And her life changed the moment she read it. Because the email revealed that she had matches.
Genetic matches.
And there was a link.
It took her a couple of minutes to work up the courage to click on it. Whatever it contained would be a partial answer to the questions she’d had since finding out she’d been adopted. A sibling, a cousin… possibly even a parent. She hadn’t known, in th e past, but Lili was the only genuine blood relative she had in her life. Now, there might be something new.
Two matches came up.
One, identified as a second cousin.
The other, as a parent.
A parent!
Her initial instinct was to throw her phone across the room – partially out of fear, partially out of shock. But instead, she steadied herself. This is what she’d wanted, wasn’t it? That her mother, or possibly her father, had taken a DNA test. Had opted to make their findings available to people who might show up as DNA matches. It was wonderful. But she was utterly terrified.
‘Sorry, Mum,’ she whispered to the woman who had raised her, as she clicked on the parent icon and waited for the page to appear. And there it was. A woman called Sophia; her mother. And there was more – a photograph and the option to get in touch. Somehow so very ordinary and everyday. Yet earth-shattering too.
Currently her settings meant her results were kept private from matches. Sophia wouldn’t yet be aware of her existence. Everything was still in Adeline’s hands. She could close the page, pretend nothing had happened; be one of those people who chose not to find out. Or she could enlarge the photograph and see her birth mother’s face – right now. And write her an email that perhaps she was longing for.
Sophia wouldn’t have taken a DNA test and made the results searchable if she hadn’t wanted to be found.
It seemed bizarrely easy, and utterly terrifying all at once.
Shaking, Adeline enlarged the photo.
The woman looked young – much younger than the mother who’d raised her. In her forties perhaps. But it wasn’t this that struck her first of all. It was the fact that the face – one she’d never seen in her life – was almost as familiar to her as her own. There were similarities in their features – she could already see they shared the same eyes, the same lips. But it was something else. Something that went beyond the simple matching of facial characteristics. Something inside her, in her heart, a feeling that she’d known this woman her whole life. ‘Mum,’ she said, touching the woman’s face and feeling the tears come.
A sudden thudding made her jump and Lili entered the room, the door banging against the wall as she violently pushed it open. Instinctively, Adeline closed the window she was viewing and put her phone on the bedside table. She tried to smile.
‘Why you crying?’ Lili asked, more interested than sympathetic.
‘Oh, it’s nothing,’ she lied. ‘Just had a bad dream.’
‘About dragons?’
‘No. About… well, it’s complicated,’ she said, putting out her arm for Lili to nestle beneath.
It was still only six o’clock. In half an hour her entire life had been rocked on its axis. She had woken up without a mother, but now, suddenly, she had one.
She just wasn’t quite sure what to do about it.
Two hours later, walking a chattering daughter to her playscheme, she made the right faces and noises to demonstrate enthusiasm to Lili and hide the turmoil inside. She’d decided to wait until she was at work, on the PC there, and look at the picture properly. Decide whether to write a note to her mother. Her mother!
She arrived at work early; Monique had just opened the shop which was empty of customers. ‘Would you like a coffee?’ her boss offered, and she gladly accepted. With Monique upstairs in the flat, this really was her chance.
She typed in the complicated link from her email and brought it up again. A picture of the woman – bigger now – the familiarity even more striking. Sitting for a moment, studying it, and feeling a rush of unfamiliar feelings – love? Fear? Shock? – she didn’t hear Monique’s feet on the stairs behind her.
So it was even more of a shock when she heard the coffee cups clatter on the wood behind her, spilling their content onto the shop floor, one breaking, the other rolling across the room and settling under a shelf.
Letting out a little cry, she turned to see Monique on the bottom stair, both hands over her mouth, her face pale and her eyes staring.
‘Why do you have that?’ Monique asked, her voice full of an emotion it was impossible to place.
‘What?’
‘ Mon Dieu , you have a picture of my sister!’ Monique rushed to the screen, touching the face that was displayed there.
‘Your sister?’
‘ Oui ,’ she leant forward. ‘I have not seen her for years, but I would know her face anywhere. Where did you get this?’ she demanded. Then there was a moment of silence. Her fingers traced the outline of the woman’s face. Then her shoulders slumped. ‘ Non , it is not her,’ she said. ‘But it looked like… I was so sure…’
‘I’m sorry,’ Adeline said. ‘I shouldn’t have been looking at this at work. But Lili…’ she trailed off. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said again.
‘But who is this, this woman?’ Monique asked. ‘Where does this picture come from?’
Adeline looked at Monique’s face – still pale from the upset. She could still smell the coffee, its strong scent mixed with the smell of damp wood as it seeped into the floorboards. She felt a well of sympathy for this woman, whose own baby had been lost not once, but twice; whose questions would never be answered as Adeline’s might.
‘Well, I think…’ she said, ‘in fact, I know – she’s my mother.’