Five Winters(53)

But this was no good. No good. I had to focus. Put any negative thoughts behind me. This woman had the power to make or break my dreams. Besides, it was hardly a controversial question, was it? What makes you want to adopt a child now?

“Well, I’ve always wanted to have children, and I’m thirty-seven now. Mentally and financially, I’m ready for it. I don’t have any debts, and my job is secure . . .”

God, I sounded as if I were speaking in support of a bank loan application. I’d put all this across much better in the written application I’d agonised over for a week—the one I’d read snippets of to friends, tweaking the tone, triple-checking spellings and grammar.

I sighed. Dried up.

Clare Carter smiled. “Take your time.”

“I suppose I thought I’d have a family by now, but for one reason or another, that hasn’t happened, so I thought . . . Well, I’m sure you’ve read about my situation. My childhood. I was practically adopted myself after my parents died—my Aunt Tilda and my friend’s parents shared care of me. So I thought . . . well, you’re always hearing about children needing families, aren’t you? I thought maybe I could put my experience to good use. To help a child.”

It sounded frustratingly lame to my ears. Certainly, I’d done little to convey the exciting light-bulb moment I’d had in the bath one Sunday night, lying in the bubbles contemplating my childless state. Why not adopt? Christ on a bike! I could try to adopt!

“Thank you,” said Clare, jotting a note down on her pad. “There’s a lot to unpack there. Why don’t we start by discussing that distressing time in your life when you lost your parents? How did you find out about their accident?”

My stomach clenched. I wasn’t sure what to do with my hands. I generally play with my hair when I have to talk about this kind of heavy stuff, but I was trying really hard not to fidget like a nervous wreck.

“I was at school. In a science lesson. We were doing an experiment to learn about electric currents. The school secretary came to fetch me out of class. When I got to reception, there was Aunt Tilda, standing with the head teacher. They took me into the office, and then . . . well, they told me.”

I hadn’t wanted to leave that experiment. Mrs. Hounslow, my teacher, had put me in charge of my group, and we were about to be the first group to connect up the light at the top of a model lighthouse. No doubt my expression had been surly as hell as I followed the school secretary out to reception. I had no idea why I’d been called out of class. Mum and Dad were still away, so it wouldn’t be my mum waiting to take me to the dentist or some other forgotten appointment. It was Aunt Tilda. And Aunt Tilda as I’d never seen her before, her smart black jacket done up on the wrong buttons, her eyes red rimmed as if she’d been crying.

“So you went to live with your aunt?”

I nodded. “Yes.” If it had been anybody else, I’d probably have changed the subject at this point. Offered them another cup of tea or a biscuit. Asked them a question about themselves. Anything so they’d take the hint and drop it. I’d been a very miserable young girl for quite a long time after my parents died, and I didn’t like to dwell on it.

But if I wanted this application to work, I didn’t have a choice, did I? If Clare Carter wanted me to talk about the day I lost my virginity or my first experience of smoking, I would have to talk about it, wouldn’t I? She called all the shots.

“And what was Tilda like?”

I thought about it for a moment. “‘Worried’ probably describes it best. Stressed. But that’s hardly surprising, is it? She was a single woman with a high-powered job in the city, without much experience with children, and suddenly she had complete responsibility for the well-being of a nine-year-old child. It was no wonder she was worried and stressed . . .”

Clare’s pen was writing, writing, her bobbed hair swinging as she bent over her pad of paper, and it suddenly occurred to me that—leaving the high-powered City of London job aside—I had, in fact, pretty much described my own situation. Single. Little experience with children. Worried. Well done, Beth. Well done.

“And how, in your view, do you think your aunt coped with this situation?”

“She did her very best. Aunt Tilda was like that—thorough in everything. With hindsight, I can see she probably had to make a lot of sacrifices for me. Cut down on her social life and her holidays, that sort of thing. She was interested in archaeology, but she couldn’t drag a young child along on digs. We went a few times when I was a bit older, but . . .”

I had a sudden flashback to a holiday in Scotland volunteering on a dig when I was twelve. How utterly bored I’d been. How sulky, stomping about the place in my Doc Martens while the rain slashed down outside all week long. I doubted whether Tilda would have repeated the experiment had she lived to do so, but in fact, it proved to be the last holiday we had together. Because she died the following year, and I went to live with Richard and Sylvia permanently.

“Tilda sold her house in Hampstead so I could go back to my school in Enfield and my friend’s mum and dad could look after me sometimes.”

Tilda sold her house in Hampstead so I could go back to my school in Enfield . . . The short sentence made it sound so easy. As if Aunt Tilda had put her house on the market right away. But it hadn’t quite happened like that. Well, not at all like that, in fact. At first, Tilda had tried to make things work by moving me in with her in Hampstead, uprooting me from everything familiar and everyone I loved who I hadn’t actually lost. She had her spare bedroom decorated in a way she thought I’d flip out about and enrolled me at her local primary school.