Chapter 18
When Gemma got home from work one night, there it was on the floor with two other pieces of post and a glossy flyer from the Indian place down the road. She immediately knew what it was because of the little black crown symbol next to the words ‘’ at the top of the envelope.
Gemma took it, and the rest of the post, to the kitchen and flung it onto the table, as though it was too hot to hold.
Or rather, as if she didn’t want anything to do with it anymore.
She felt breathy and light-headed. She stared at the envelope but didn’t think she could open it.
Instead, she walked smartly out of the kitchen and up the stairs.
Firstly, she had to get out of her nursing uniform.
Comfort is imperative when opening mail that makes you nervous, she decided.
That’s what she told herself when she’d delayed opening the electricity bill she received earlier in the week.
It meant contacting el cabrón, because most of the period it covered was when Adam was still living at the house.
Gemma damn well wasn’t going to pay for his long hot showers, so she happily messaged him about it.
He was brief and curt in his response, as he was in his last exchange about starting divorce proceedings (he asked nothing about how she was!).
Thankfully, he didn’t protest the payment.
After a prolonged shower, she remembered to reply to the message Simone sent at lunchtime inviting her to her four-year-old daughter’s birthday celebrations, which sounded like more of an excuse for the adults to party.
Even so, Gemma wasn’t sure she wanted to be around adorable children and married couples.
She said she’d pop in as she had other commitments, so that she didn’t appear churlish if she didn’t stay long.
Then, eventually, Gemma returned to the kitchen.
But in her absence, the envelope seemed to have taken on a personality all of its own.
Lying, seemingly innocuously on the table, it mocked and teased.
It dared her to ignore its presence knowing that it made her giddy wondering what information it held inside.
For it, and only it, was the segue between one life and another.
It was symbolic – if not indeed the reality – of who she was and how she’d come into being.
She leant against the kitchen bench to steady herself.
All she had to do was open it. But the more she procrastinated, the harder it became.
She couldn’t do it on her own. She decided to call Anushka.
‘Hi, Gemma, how are you?’ Anushka answered. She sounded a little breathless and Gemma could hear muffled noises in the background.
‘I’m good …’ Gemma said, even though she wanted to say so much more, but she didn’t know where to start.
‘Hang on, I’ve just got to pay for the Tube.’
Gemma waited for her friend to be focused again on their conversation.
‘Sorry,’ Anushka said. ‘I’ve got work drinks and I’m running late. I should have worked at the office today but it was my turn getting the kids from school. I don’t even want to go to this thing.’ She groaned. ‘Are we still going to organise a movie night?’
‘Yes, I’m keen.’
‘Great! I haven’t had a look at what’s on, but I will.’
‘Me too.’ Gemma sighed. She suspected it was never going to happen.
‘Are you all right?’
‘Yeah, fine,’ Gemma said reluctantly. Anushka was clearly distracted, and this wasn’t the time to bother her with any personal problems. ‘I’ll let you get back to your night. Hopefully, it’s not too unenjoyable.’
‘Thanks!’
Gemma didn’t put her phone down. She still wanted to talk to someone. She decided to video call her mother.
‘Oh, Gemma, do you really need to see me?’ her mother said curtly.
She was wearing a pale-pink satin dressing gown and her skin glistened with face cream.
‘Nice to see you, too, Mum.’
‘I’ve just got out of the bath.’
‘You look very shiny.’
‘Don’t be cheeky.’
‘Sorry …’ She glanced at the envelope. ‘Guess what came in the post?’
‘Goodness, I don’t know.’
Gemma held up the envelope to the screen. ‘My birth certificate. I don’t want to open it on my own.’
Her mother put a hand to her chest. ‘Oh, darling.’
‘I can’t bear it.’
‘I thought you’d be excited.’
‘I want to be, but I also feel terrified.’
‘Just rip it open, get it over with.’
Her mother was right, but she seemed unable to do it. Her stomach flapped like a trapped bird.
‘I know it’s daunting,’ her mum said, softening. ‘But whatever you find out, you don’t have to do anything with it. It will just be. What’s in there are facts that exist whether you know them or not. And didn’t you decide that you wanted to know them now?’
‘I suppose.’
‘I’d sit down if I were you.’
Gemma sat at the table and rested her phone against a plastic container of found buttons to free up her hands.
‘Imagine you’re taking off a plaster. You’ve got to do it fast, without thinking.’
Gemma picked up the envelope.
‘One, two, three,’ said her mother.
A quick tear and the envelope was open. Her mother clapped. Gemma pulled out the certificate. She skim-read it, as if to linger on the words would be to learn too much.
‘What does it say?’
‘Well …’ she began. ‘My birth name was Hayley Rita.’
‘Hayley.’ Her mother said the word as if playing with the letters with her tongue.
Gemma didn’t know how she felt about once being a Hayley.
She couldn’t relate to the name in any way and felt so removed from it that she almost felt nothing at all.
In some ways, she felt unsettled and both displaced and misplaced.
Yet, it was reassuring to think that her birth mother had named her at all.
‘Carry on,’ her mother said.
Gemma looked back at the birth certificate. ‘My birth mother’s name is Claire Rita Munroe.’
Claire. Rita. Munroe. Gemma recited the words slowly in her head as if it might conjure up a picture of what her mother looked like and who she was.
‘Rita’s a family name then …’ her mother said.
Oh, yes, her mother had passed on part of her name! Gemma’s heart skipped. That had to mean something, didn’t it? That she’d cared about the baby she’d just given birth to, even if she was going to give her away.
Gemma continued. ‘She was born in 1969.’
‘Which makes her …’ Her mother did the sum in her head. ‘Seventeen when she had you.’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘So, is that Monroe as in Marilyn?’ Her mother asked as if there was any chance she could be related to a film star.
‘Mum!’
‘You’ve got to check these things.’
‘Well, you’re going to be disappointed. It’s with a “u”.’
‘Ah.’ Her mother sighed. ‘And the father?’
‘He’s not named.’
‘Which is what I thought. What’s the place of registration?’
‘East Sussex.’
‘By the sea, where we liked to go for summer holidays when you were kids. How funny.’
Gemma thought back to childhood days at the beach: Rich obsessed with making sandcastles and Gemma collecting shells for decoration.
Had they once shared the beach with her birth mother?
Had they swum in the sea at the same time as she had?
Had they stood together in the ice cream queue?
Just imagine if they had. But as Gemma did, she felt adrift again.
Fabricating your back story was futile if it was littered with fantasy.
‘Anything else?’ her mother asked.
Gemma looked at the occupation column. ‘She was still at school.’
‘Gosh.’
‘Yeah.’
For a moment, neither spoke. The reality of what she was reading out loud was beginning to sink in.
Her past was slowly coming to life and she wasn’t sure what to make of it.
There were still too many gaps, and a name and an age could only conjure so much.
It was like being teased with half a joke and never learning the punchline.
Had Claire Rita Munroe held her baby after she was born?
How long was the labour? How much had baby Gemma weighed?
Did she have hair or none at all? And where was her father during all of this? Did he ever know of her existence?
Her mother said gently, ‘How do you feel?’
‘I thought I’d be excited to find these things out, but I’m shaken.’
‘It’s a lot to take in. As I said, you don’t have to do anything else just yet. Take your time to let the information sink in.’
‘She’ll be fifty-three now,’ Gemma said suddenly.
‘So young,’ said her seventy-four-year-old mother.
‘Oh, God, she’ll still be alive.’
‘Still alive,’ her mother repeated, as if she’d never considered the possibility either.
One minute her birth mother was a word on a piece of paper, the next she was a living human being, out there in the world right now. Wow, as Nick would say. Just wow.
‘Maybe you’ll be able to meet her …’ her mother suggested.
‘But what if she doesn’t want to meet me?’
Over the weekend, Gemma found she couldn’t stop looking at her birth certificate, as if to reassure herself that it was real and it was hers.
It was concrete evidence that she had a life before the one in the photo on the fridge.
Nor could she shake Claire Rita Munroe from her mind.
Who was she and what had her life been like?
In the end, Gemma couldn’t resist googling.
Who could have? There was a Claire Munroe doctor, a financial services adviser, a photographer and more.
On Facebook, there were pages and pages of them.
So many! But it was pointless and overwhelming.
Her birth mother could have been any one of them or none.
She put her computer to sleep and tried to stop putting a face or a profession to her birth mother’s name.