Chapter 15
FAYE
I spend a sleepless night replaying what my birth mother said to me: Get out before I say something cruel to you.
Every time I consider those words, I take a different meaning from them. Either she knew who I was, recognised her own limitations and wanted to spare my feelings, or she took a dislike to me and felt the urge to be cruel to me. Or both.
My mind swims with impressions of her face. I do resemble her. Not only in our facial features, but the tone of our voices too. There were times when it all felt a bit uncanny valley.
There were also incredible similarities between me and Dina. I pull up the photos I got from Jason, wondering if it’s possible that the picture that went viral is of her and not me. But it’s obviously not her. We look alike, but not that alike.
Before I left, Dina gave me her number and we’ve promised to stay in touch.
I complicate everything, and not just on a personal level, but legally too.
Rachel is nearing the end of her life and I’m sure Dina now has worries that I might be entitled to inherit part of her estate.
If we can carefully navigate our way through that minefield, I hope that a relationship may bloom.
Obviously, I don’t want anything of Rachel’s.
What I want is something she can no longer give me, because I left it too long. Answers.
After hours of tossing and turning, I eventually give up trying to sleep at 4 a.m. and head down to my office to type out some notes about what it was like to meet Rachel after all these years.
Memoir writing is a new medium for me and is so different from my fiction.
I keep waiting for a character arc to emerge but that feels strange when I am the character and I’m living it right now.
I will have to be patient and let events take their course. I just hope I can afford the time.
After about half an hour my attention span fades and against my better judgement, I check social media.
The viral image of me is now being used as a meme.
I scroll through a set of videos created from the photo with various captions written across the image.
Me the day after Coachella, Me with my girls at bottomless brunch, How I’ll really look when I’m eighty and in the nursing home.
It’s callous mockery. I can’t bring myself to read any more, so I put my phone away and go for a walk.
I head along the coast and up to Seeley Moor.
A magenta sky licks the landscape, disappearing behind a cliff to reach the sea beyond.
I’m alone, watching the heather shiver with the morning breeze.
Even in summer there’s a cool tinge to dawn up here.
But that’s okay. I run so warm with hot flashes these days that the chill feels good.
I close my eyes and meditate for a minute or two and when I open them again, the sky is blue and my mind is clear.
I haven’t been sundowning since the drama with the photograph prompted me to find my birth mother. Perhaps having a goal is helping to slow down the degeneration of my mind. Or maybe that’s wishful thinking.
The doctors who tested me discovered that over my lifetime, I’d experienced a series of TIAs, or transient ischaemic attacks – mini strokes – that had gone unnoticed until they caught up with me, instigating young-onset dementia.
Before the day I was diagnosed, I’d considered my divorce to be the hardest thing I’d had to go through.
But in one moment that all changed. Heartbreak was suddenly insignificant when compared to the disintegration of my mind.
The organ responsible for who I am, my personality, the essence of my being.
And yet I have now revisited a part of myself that I’ve denied for decades. I’m finally serving the teenage girl who never knew her birth parents. I’m finding more of me. Not less.
Stretching my arms up tall and then wide, I let the early morning breeze pass through my hair.
Slowly, the stretch helps loosen taut muscles.
I take in the craggy coastline, the foam of the sea and the seagulls circling overhead one more time.
Then I make my way back from the moors, walking through the village so I can grab a pint of milk.
Exhaustion washes over me like cold water when I reach Summer Lane, the site of my first episode. Images of me disorientated and tearful flash through my mind. I’m not even sure if they’re all real. They could be from my imagination. But the emotion feels real. The fear, the confusion.
I pull in a deep breath and head home. Completely and utterly simple.
There’s really nothing to it. All I do is put one foot in front of the other.
But I can tell I’m frazzled by the time I get back, from the sweat across my forehead.
I put the milk away, take my medication and then sit down on the sofa to tune out the anxiety with sitcom re-runs on TV.
I put my feet up and bundle the cushion under my cheek.
Then I fall asleep.
When I wake, I’m in my bed, and my phone is ringing. I grab the clock on my bedside table and stare at it. It’s lunchtime.
What the fuck?
I answer the phone, croaking down the line.
“Mum?”
“Who else would it be?” I quip.
“Were you asleep?” she asks.
It feels like some sort of accusation but before I answer, I check myself. That’s the pride speaking. “Yes, sweetheart. The insomnia was bad last night so I took a nap. How are you?”
“Good,” she says. “I’m just on my lunch break. It’s so cold today, it doesn’t feel like summer, does it? I miss London.”
I rub sleep from my eyes. “You do? I thought you liked it up here. How’s work going? Do you like this one?”
“The hours are good,” she says. “And it’s in Malton so I don’t have to go far. But the office is kind of boring, you know?”
I make a non-committal sound. Penny leaving her apprenticeship didn’t bother me at all. But I just wish she could find something that fulfils her and actually involves using her brain. I know she has one.
But the subject is a tricky one to tread around. I can’t help but worry about Penny at times, but she’s still young and has plenty of time to figure things out. The last thing she needs is judgement from me.
“What do they do again?” I ask.
“Mum, I told you,” she says impatiently. “They supply schools with those plastic chairs. You know, the ones with the bendy backs.”
“Right,” I say.
“Anyway…” I hear Penny chewing on something. When she speaks again it’s with a mouthful. “Can we come for Sunday dinner? I’ll help cook.”
“We?” I ask.
“Me and Nathan,” she clarifies.
I hesitate for a moment. “Nathan wants to come? All the way up from London?”
“He hasn’t seen you since the divorce,” she says. “I think he misses you. Mum, I know things between you and him can be a bit tense at times, but he found that guy on Twitter. He wanted to help.”
“I know,” I say. I think about the insensitive way he sent me the photo in the first place. And everything that went on before. Pretty much our entire relationship as stepmother and stepson has been difficult.
“So, can he come?”
I force myself to smile. “Of course he can come.”
“Good,” she says. “Oh, and do you mind if I bring Tim?”
“Tim?”
“My boyfriend,” she says, as though it’s information I already know.
“I didn’t know you had a boyfriend.”
“Well, I do and I want you to meet him.”
“Okay, sure. I’ll look forward to it.”
I hear Penny exhale with relief. “Great. Thanks, Mum. It’ll be so nice for us all to hang out. It’ll be like… like when me and Nathan were kids.”
I don’t think it will, but I agree anyway.
“So, what’s Tim like? What does he do?” I ask.
“He works at an insurance company, which sounds stuffy, I know. But he’s pretty fun. We have loads in common.”
“Oh, that’s nice,” I say.
“Shit,” Penny says. “I need to go. I went for a wander and now I have ten minutes to get back to work. I might have to make a run for it.”
“All right, sweetheart.”
“Speak soon! Love you!” she says.
Before I can reply, she’s gone. I didn’t even get a chance to tell her about Rachel and Dina Lacey. Maybe such a huge topic should be handled face to face.
I think about Tim, the new love interest. I’ve met plenty of Penny’s boyfriends over the years.
Older men with motorbikes. Baby-faced boys in skinny jeans with spiky hair.
There are rarely any similarities between them except that she jumps into relationships fast, lets them burn out and then moves on.
It’s all par for the course with her and I’ve just learned to be happy when she’s happy.
There have been times when her spontaneity leaves me riddled with anxiety.
Impromptu holidays I don’t hear about until she’s home, like that boozy trip to Ibiza when I so nearly reported her missing.
I’d had my hand hovering over the phone ready to make the call when she finally replied to me with one text.
Clubbing in Ibiza. Mad times.
It’s been a while since I last saw Nathan.
It was about a month before the divorce was finalised.
He’d made some comment about how I’d never want to see him again and I’d reassured him that wasn’t true.
But the truth is somewhere in the middle.
Nathan reminds me of many things. I see Scott in him.
Too much of Scott. That superiority. Wanting his own way.
Even as a child he knew how to control people.
But I also see the hurt little boy who had just lost his mother.
I see all the rage and spite he showed me as a child, and a teenager, and, to a certain extent, an adult.
Penny loves him. He’s her brother after all, and it’s good that they have that relationship. But I’m not sure I could ever love him as a mother. Not after everything he did.