Chapter 33
AFTER THE SUN ROSE ON THE NEW YEAR
Sheena
In the early hours of the morning, Sheena had wondered if there was anything that could top the heights of emotion that she felt after giving birth to Flynn and holding him in her arms, knowing that she could keep him.
Now she knew that there was one thing. Or rather, one person.
And her cousin, Nula, had promised to bring her here this morning.
Although, when she’d spoken to Nula last night, they’d worked out that Sheena already knew the daughter she’d given birth to twenty-nine years ago.
Orla. The strange feeling of familiarity that she’d had when they’d met at ante-natal classes made so much sense now.
And how had she not noticed the family resemblance?
She’d registered that they both had wild red hair and green eyes, but when she thought back, she could see more things.
Her own mother’s nose. Her grandmother’s smile.
Sheena’s grandmother and Nula’s mum had been sisters, but the red hair had only made it down Sheena’s side of the family tree.
All those years ago, when her parents had pushed her and Gregor to have their baby adopted, Nula had begged them to let her take the child.
She was about to turn forty, still single, and she’d recently lost her parents, leaving her with no other family, other than her Scottish cousins.
She was a nurse, a kind, decent person with a huge heart, and Sheena’s only consolation was that she knew Nula would love the baby as if she was her own.
That’s why she’d agreed to hand Orla over, and gone along with her parents’ decision that there should be no contact.
Rightly or wrongly, and looking back now, it had been such a mistake, but they’d been young, and scared, and they’d done what they were told.
Now, they were about to come full circle, to find their daughter again on the day she’d given birth to their son.
With Flynn still in her arms, she reached over for Gregor’s hand.
He was as pale as he’d been when he’d bumped into Nula in the corridor last night, but there was something else there too – a nervous smile and a tenderness in his eyes that she hadn’t seen for a long time. They would be fine. She felt that now.
The clock on the wall ticked to eleven o’clock, the time Nula said she’d come back.
‘Are you ready?’ Sheena asked him, squeezing his hand.
He nodded his head. ‘I’m ready.’
And at that, they both heard the door opening, and turned to face their past and their future.
* * *
Orla
5 p.m.
Orla still found it amazing that she hadn’t realised the significance of the comment her mum had made to her in the hospital in the early hours. ‘I’ve so much that I want to say to you, Orla.’
This morning, her mum had come back to the hospital, held her granddaughter as she’d told Orla about meeting Gregor in the corridor the night before. She’d recognised him, even though she hadn’t seen him for twenty-nine years, since the day that he and Sheena had handed over their daughter to her.
‘My love, the story I told you before wasn’t completely true.
You didn’t come to me through a charity.
Sheena’s mum was my cousin. I’d visit her every year in Glasgow for a holiday and when Sheena fell pregnant, I asked to adopt you.
But the rest of the story was true. The minute I met you, I knew that you were mine. ’
‘I still am, Mum. And I always will be.’
‘I know that, darling. But your biological parents want to meet you. Properly, that is. If you’d like to.’
Orla hadn’t hesitated. In future years, people would no doubt ask her if it was awkward or strange meeting her birth parents for the first time after learning that they were related, but she would tell them honestly that it wasn’t.
Nula had carried Cara, and when they’d gone into Sheena’s room, there had been tears, and hugs, and apologies from Sheena and Gregor, that Orla had gently dismissed.
‘You have nothing to apologise for. My life has been exactly as it was supposed to be. I truly believe that.’
They’d sat together for a couple of hours, swapped stories, held each other’s babies and made plans, until the new midwives on duty had done their rounds and let them know they’d soon be moving to a communal ward.
Orla had gone back to her room, just as Kyle arrived to swap places with her mum. That’s when he’d finished the story that he’d started the night before. Told her about his son and the child’s mother.
An hour or so later, she’d left Kyle to bond with their daughter, and she’d asked a midwife if she could go speak to a mum who was sitting with her premature baby on the neonatal ward. After a call to check, the nurse had taken Orla upstairs to meet Sharon.
There had been a few seconds of silence as the two women had stared at the tiny little boy in the incubator.
‘He’s beautiful,’ Orla had spoken first.
‘He is,’ Sharon had agreed softly. ‘And I need you to know that I’m sorry. I didn’t know. I believed him when he said he was no longer married and when I found out he wasn’t, I cut contact. I never meant to break up your family.’
Orla shook her head. ‘You didn’t. He’d already broken it.
’ She’d thought about that, then corrected herself.
‘Or maybe he just changed it to what it should be. Our babies are going to be brother and sister. I grew up unaware of the full story about my family, so if it’s okay with you, I’d like them to know each other. ’
Sharon had reached out and taken her hand. ‘I’d like that very much.’
* * *
Maddie
11 p.m.
Maddie had been sad to leave the bubble of her private room, but then happy when she saw that she’d been put on a ward with Orla and Sheena.
It had been chaos at evening visiting time, with half of Weirbridge taking turns to come in, adhering to the ‘two visitors to a bed’ policy.
Thankfully, the rules weren’t too strict because Dylan had sat by her side the whole time, cradling his daughter when Maddie wasn’t feeding her.
On that note, she’d had a word with both Val and Jessie and chided them for not warning her about the pain of the first day of breastfeeding.
‘It gets better, pet.’ Val had promised, solemnly.
‘You’ll have forgotten about it by the time they’re eighteen.
’ Her chuckle had made all of the other visitors smile.
Sheena had introduced her friends, Chanel and Martha.
And Orla’s pals, Yvie, Keli and Emmy had done the rounds of all the babies too.
Maddie wasn’t sure she’d ever stop grinning again.
She had her girl, and Dylan was here. Last night, he’d come back to her room and sat with her until dawn.
She’d spent the best part of nine months trying to work out their future, and now they’d made the most important decisions in just one night.
They were going to be together. They were going to be a family.
The details didn’t matter. Tomorrow they were going to decide on a name for their daughter, and then, they’d figure everything else out.
Tonight, as all the evening visitors had been shooed out, and Dylan had kissed her goodbye and promised to return in the morning, then Val, Jessie and Alyssa had squeezed her tight before leaving, she’d cast her eyes heavenward and thanked the woman that she felt sure had given her all these people to love.
She didn’t care if anyone thought she was crazy for believing that.
Besides, after spending the last couple of hours, catching up with everything that had happened between Sheena and Orla, she knew she wasn’t the only one who believed in some kind of celestial powers.
She’d listened, chin dropped, as they’d told her their story, and her first response had been astonishment.
‘Wait, wait, wait… So Orla, you and your biological mum…’ She’d nodded to Sheena at that point.
‘…live in the same city, and you both gave birth on the same day in the same hospital. Do you think that’s the wildest coincidence you’ve ever heard of? ’
* * *
Orla
11 p.m.
When Maddie had asked the question, Orla had thought back to all the other coincidences that had shaped her life.
Meeting Kyle on a night that she wasn’t even supposed to be working.
Striking up a conversation with a table of nurses in a café, and learning that there was a vacancy on their ward that would lead to a wonderful job and lifelong friends.
Bumping into Kimi that day and finding out about Kyle’s affair.
Sitting next to Sheena and Maddie at the antenatal classes.
And she hadn’t even shared Kyle’s confession last night that he’d fathered a child by a midwife on the ward that she was sitting in now.
That was Sharon’s story to tell. And then she’d thought about some of the other wild coincidences that she’d heard of over the years.
The couple who fell in love and discovered they were born on the same day in the same hospital.
The old man who’d been treated in a different hospital by a doctor who turned out to be the son he’d lost touch with as a child.
The woman who’d found a gold ring in the basement of her new home, and who’d been astonished to see that it was engraved with her grandmother’s name.
The grieving parent who’d donated their child’s organs, and then met the recipient by chance a decade later.
A million wild coincidences happened every day, all over the world.
‘Maybe,’ Orla had conceded. ‘But I choose to believe they’re not coincidences at all. It’s just the fates, taking us to where we should be.’
And now, as Orla glanced from Maddie’s beaming smile, to the tears of happiness in Sheena’s eyes, and felt the incredible, overwhelming happiness in her own heart, she knew that all of them felt they were exactly where they were meant to be.