Chapter 37
37
Adeline felt a wave of exhaustion wash over her as she finally sat back into her allocated seat early the following morning. Moments later, the train began to pull out of the station and along the almost invisible track that snaked away in the grey light of the early morning. Lights, people, the platform and the scenery appeared to move away from them as they began their journey back; it had all happened in less than forty-eight hours, yet all of their lives had changed in ways they could barely have imagined.
After the two women had met, Adeline had taken herself off with Lili to give them time to talk.
When she’d finally seen Monique emerge through the doors, she’d stood up and almost called across the wide reception area. But Monique had seen her and walked quickly to her, taking both her hands. Lili had looked up interestedly before returning to the picture of a school she was colouring in on a low table.
‘Are you OK? Did it…? Was it…?’ Adeline asked .
Monique nodded. ‘We have said many things, and we have many more things to say. But things are good. We are happy.’
They’d all said goodbye shortly afterwards, as Sophia – the person who bound them together – left to return home. But it wouldn’t be forever. In fact, plans had already been mooted. They’d come to her here, she’d go to them there.
As soon as Sophia had gone, Adeline had finally felt how much her legs ached, how tired her body was, how heavy her eyelids had become. She’d lived several years in those two days, but the excitement and fear and turmoil of it all had kept her mind buzzing. Then it was as if a rug had been pulled from under her and all she wanted to do was sleep. Yet they were four hours from home, and hadn’t even booked their journey.
She’d slept fitfully, getting up earlier even than her alarm. Then after a hurried breakfast, they’d taken the short walk to the station, and were en route to Avignon, after which a taxi would pick them up. Adeline stared at her reflection in the glass of the train window – a rough outline of her face, a ghost floating over the scenery. But there was a lightness there too, and she felt it – a kind of release that perhaps she’d been waiting for all her life.
She turned to Monique suddenly; her grandmother – and it was going to take a long while to think of her this way – looked equally tired, her expression distant, her eyelids heavy. ‘Monique,’ she said. ‘Do you mind if I ask you something?’
‘ Mais oui , of course.’
‘What I don’t understand is how… how I ended up working at your shop in the first place? I applied for one job in France, on a whim, and it happened to be in my grandmother’s shop. It’s just too…’ she tried to find a word to fit, ‘unlikely.’
Monique smiled, kindly, as if to someone much younger. ‘Ah mon coeur , I have wondered this too, many times. I posted the advert many months before, but couldn’t find anyone suitable. But I felt it – that someone important was coming. That I had to wait. And perhaps there was a little magic too, a little manifestation. I knew I wanted to find family, to make connections, but I did not know how. I know you do not like this – but I tied a knot of finding in cloth and buried it, and asked the universe to answer my prayers. Then you came.’
‘I’m sorry, I just can’t…’ Adeline shook her head. ‘It makes me feel strange, uncomfortable.’
‘Then don’t think of it. Think of it as a wish, a prayer that was answered.’
‘But what were the chances of me even seeing that advert? Of it being that particular week when I decided to google the area, just to see what it was like?’
Monique nodded. ‘I had never sought my daughter, I believed she was dead long ago. But when you arrived, I had this strong pull. I cannot explain it. I started to believe that perhaps you were my daughter – or perhaps I let myself believe this delusion because for the first time when I was with you, I didn’t think so often about the baby I had lost. That is why Michel and I argued. He thought I was crazy. And perhaps I was.’
‘Do you think it’s something scientific? That kind of primitive recognising that a person is connected to us through blood? Something we don’t understand, but is there anyway?’ Adeline mused.
Monique leaned forward and took her hand. ‘We cannot understand everything. I do not really understand what it is that draws me to people, that helps me to read their pain, to find a solution sometimes. But I know that this is something I can do. You can too, I think. Some people might call it science – want to study it and work out the way in which it all works. Other people would call it magic.’
‘And what do you call it?’
Monique smiled. ‘Ah, I think you know. And Adeline, it is not something you should fear. There are always things we can’t quite explain. We think we see something. We sense something about another person. We take a remedy not because the doctor says we should, but because our grandmother swears by it. We seek to understand, but I have learned that sometimes you can just accept. That maybe it is science, this connection, this pull between us. Or maybe it is magic. Or maybe there is something else. But whatever it is, it is a good thing. And we can embrace it, even if we can’t give it a name.’
Adeline nodded.
All her life, she’d tried to find ways to make sense of her world. But as she’d grown, more and more things had happened that she didn’t understand. Lili’s father not wanting to know her. Her own father dying. Her mother’s illness. Then finding the papers. Now, her journey to France and a brand-new family to get to know.
Life was messy. It didn’t fit neatly into a box. And nor did she, she realised. Perhaps she would never find a place where she felt she truly belonged, because there were several places where she could live and be happy and find connection. Perhaps the problem wasn’t as she’d thought – she had questions, but perhaps it wasn’t always necessary to have all the answers.
‘Thanks, Monique,’ she said.
‘For what?’
‘For all of it. For being my friend, my support, and now my family. For what it’s worth, and although I don’t believe in it, really, I do feel that all this was meant to be. ’
Monique smiled, a little like a teacher at a pupil who’d finally figured out algebra. ‘Well, I am glad,’ she said.
Their smiles softened as they both relaxed and began to let sleep take over. Beside them, Lili was still snuggled up, oblivious to the world. And while they all slept, Adeline felt a sense of peace that she hadn’t experienced for a long time.