Chapter 49
FORTY-NINE
For quite a long time, I was unaware of what was going on between Beatrice and Orla. Their relationship had been tense for so long that the new, additional tension passed me by unnoticed. Besides, Rachel’s revelation and the shockwaves it had sent through my relationship with Luke took up almost all my attention. With the end of the year approaching, work was busy and I was getting back to the house later than usual in the evenings, and Orla herself was absent more often.
That is, until one Friday night. I’d managed to leave the office on time – the first time in a while – and returned home just before seven. Orla had mentioned that she had been persuaded to go to the pub with the committee of the historic buildings Preservation Trust, which had roped her in as a member. Beatrice, I presumed, was still at work, and as for Luke – I didn’t particularly want to speculate about where he might be.
So, unusually, I had the house to myself. With winter drawing in, it was cold – the sort of cold that seeps into your bones and can only be banished by getting into bed or having a hot bath. I opted for the bath.
For once not having to worry about hogging the bathroom, I filled the tub with hot, scented water, watching in satisfaction as steam rose up to the high ceiling, fogging up the mirror and probably adding to the damp problem. I lowered myself in and wallowed, in between shaving my legs and putting a treatment on my hair, for almost an hour until I’d exhausted the boiler’s supply and my fingers and toes were shrivelled like prunes.
Finally warm, I got out, wrapped myself in my dressing gown and hurried along the chilly landing to the relative warmth of my bedroom.
Beatrice was there. She was sitting on my bed, still in the jeans and red wool jumper she must have worn to work. Her feet were tucked under my duvet and she was crying.
‘Hey.’ I paused in the doorway, dismayed. ‘Are you okay?’
She shook her head mutely.
‘Can I get you anything?’
Again, the head shake.
‘Do you want to talk?’
I made the offer somewhat reluctantly. Any hopes I might have had of Beatrice and me becoming friends had come to nothing, and her behaviour over the past weeks had made my wariness of her sour into something more akin to dislike. But I couldn’t ignore someone so clearly distressed – especially since she was on my bed.
Beatrice nodded, and I stepped over and sat down on the end of the bed by her feet.
‘Did something happen at work?’ I asked.
‘No.’ She took a tissue from the box on the floor and blew her nose. ‘Well, yes, actually. I’ve been let go. Peter and Frances are leaving London.’
‘Oh, no. I’m so sorry. That’s awful. What are you going to do?’
‘Probably go back to the States and move back in with my parents.’
‘You’ll miss the kids, I guess,’ I hazarded.
That seemed to hit a nerve. Beatrice put her hands up to her face and started to cry again. I reached out and patted her knee in what I hoped was a reassuring way.
‘What about them missing me?’ she said, taking a couple of goes to get the words out between sobs. ‘They’ll think I didn’t want to be their nanny any more. They won’t understand.’
‘Oh, Beatrice. Of course they’ll miss you and they’ll be sad. You’ve been an amazing nanny.’ I had no idea if that was true, but I said it anyway. ‘But their mum and dad will explain why you couldn’t carry on working with them, right? They’ll understand. Maybe you can even visit them.’
‘That’s not how it works.’ She looked at me, her tear-stained face furious. ‘You can’t explain that shit to kids.’
Taken aback by her vehemence, I said lamely, ‘Well, they’ll try, I’m sure.’
‘Like my parents tried to explain to me.’
I had no idea what she meant, but I could tell that there was deeper hurt at play here. ‘Explain what? I’m sorry, Beatrice. I don’t understand.’
‘I’m adopted.’ She almost spat out the word. ‘I was the most wanted baby in the world ever, my mom and dad always said. But that wasn’t true, because before I was wanted, I wasn’t. And that never goes away.’
Her revelation blindsided me. Everything she had told me about her family – which admittedly hadn’t been a great deal – had suggested a life of adored privilege as the only child of doting, if overprotective, parents. But it made sense – of course it did.
Only child of doting parents and an adoptee – both things could be true at once.
‘I didn’t realise,’ I said gently. ‘I totally get why that would make leaving Slate and’ – I couldn’t remember the other child’s name – ‘leaving the kids harder. You poor thing.’
But it seemed like Beatrice wasn’t thinking about them any more – or not only about them. She lifted her face and looked not at me but past me at the wall, and carried on as if she was talking to herself.
‘My father worked in Ireland for two years, before I was born. He and Mom had been trying for a baby for ages but it wasn’t happening. There weren’t that many newborns you could adopt in the States by then – women were already keeping their babies if they could, or having abortions if they couldn’t. But in Ireland it was different. So Daddy found a baby in Ireland, through some nuns or something, and when they went back home they took me with them.’
‘Wow. You must have made them so happy.’
She grimaced. ‘When I started talking about wanting to track down my birth mother, not so much. But they kind of went along with it. I guess they thought I’d never manage it.’
Did you find her? Have you found her?
But before I could ask the question, I realised I already knew the answer: it had been there all along, right in front of my eyes. The only reason I couldn’t have realised was that, until now, I simply hadn’t been aware that Beatrice was an adopted child.
Still, wanting to give her space to tell her story in her own way, I kept my question vague.
‘Does Orla know?’ I asked.
‘I wanted it to be her, but also not. I imagined she might have had a sister – someone else, anyone but her.’
In spite of Beatrice’s distress, I felt a stab of jealousy. It took me a moment to work out why. If I could have exchanged my own mother for Orla, I would have done in a heartbeat. The squalor of the house where I grew up, my mother’s obsession with the piles of meaningless stuff that surrounded her which took precedence even over her own daughter, the way she passively let everything sink into chaos and decay – compared to Orla’s serene resilience, compared to this house emerging into its rightful beauty, compared to the certainty that, here, I was someone who mattered.
Then I tried to see things from Beatrice’s point of view, and it was with a guilty, sinking heart that I realised how it must look.
Still, I asked, ‘Why do you think that was?’
‘Because Orla doesn’t like me,’ Beatrice said in a small voice. ‘I made her not like me – it was my fault. It could have been different. I’d thought that when I told her, she’d change her mind about me.’
‘You knew, Beatrice,’ I said, ‘but she didn’t. It would have been a total shock for her. She’d have needed time to process it all.’
Beatrice shook her head, tears starting again in her eyes. ‘I’ve fucked it up. It was what I always wanted and now…’
‘Hey, don’t be mad. It’s not too late. You just need to give it time, let her get used to the idea. It’s hard for her, too.’
Beatrice looked at me and I saw a glimmer of her usual confidence.
‘You might not look that similar to her,’ I went on, ‘not on the surface, anyway. But there are things about you that are just the same. When I hear you walk across the landing, it often takes me a few seconds to realise it’s not her. Your singing voice is the same, even though you can hold a tune and she can’t. Your hands are the same. She’s your mother. You’ll get there.’
A smile appeared on Beatrice’s face, sudden and shining, the way Orla smiled.
‘You need to give each other a chance,’ I urged.
‘I was so angry,’ Beatrice whispered. ‘About her having given me away. I was horrible to her. And I was mean as hell to Neil, too.’
Neil? She’d mentioned going to Dublin with someone called Neil – presumably her boyfriend.
‘If he knows what you’ve been going through, he’ll understand,’ I said. ‘And if he doesn’t, then he’s not worth having, right? Talk to him. Say you’re sorry. It’ll all work out. I promise.’
‘Really?’ She looked up at me, hopeful as a child. Then her face fell again. ‘But – Slate and Parker. Nothing can make that work out.’
‘Beatrice.’ I tried to keep my voice gentle, to scrape together reserves of kindness and wisdom I didn’t know I had. ‘Sometimes things change. Sometimes you lose people not because you’ve done anything wrong but just because stuff happens. Life happens. And then you just have to make the best of it.’
Abruptly, she pulled her feet out from under my duvet and stood up, leaving the wad of damp tissues on my bed.
‘Thanks, Livvie. Thanks for listening.’
‘That’s okay.’
‘I should let you go to bed.’
‘It’s fine. Honestly, you can talk to me any time you want.’
‘Thanks,’ she said again. ‘I’m glad I came. I’m sorry I haven’t been a better friend.’
She hasn’t really been a friend at all , I thought. But that hadn’t only been down to her.
‘Me too,’ I said.
She reached down and gave me an awkward half-hug, her long hair brushing against my lips.
She doesn’t much like touching people , I thought. Same as Orla.
‘Goodnight, Livvie.’
She left. I heard her bedroom door open and close, and I was alone. I’d planned to make myself something to eat, but I didn’t feel hungry now. I turned out the light and lay on the bed in the warm place Beatrice had left, staring up at the ceiling in the dark.
I couldn’t heal the wounds that had been left on Beatrice’s and Orla’s hearts. But I felt the beginning of a realisation that hurt so badly I almost started crying myself: if they were to reconcile, salvage any kind of relationship as birth mother and daughter, the relationship I’d come to cherish between Orla and me would be a barrier between them.
My own words, uttered on the spur of the moment like an agony aunt on a deadline, came back to me: Sometimes you lose people not because you’ve done anything wrong but just because stuff happens.
Things change , I’d said. Things were going to change for me – it was inevitable. For me and for Luke and for Orla as well as for Beatrice. They’d have to change.
I would have to leave Damask Square.