The Day She Came Back(23)
Jumping up from the table, Victoria crashed out through the hallway and on to the driveway, ignoring the bite of small stones on the soles of her feet as she frantically looked up and down the lane. There was no car and no sign of Sarah Hansen. With weak legs and a racing heart, she closed the front door and walked back into the kitchen. Daksha was sitting in uncharacteristic silence.
Victoria looked at her in disbelief. ‘I can’t believe she came here again! I can’t believe it! She actually came back to the house!’
‘Who did? Weird woman?’
‘Yes!’ She waved the paper towards her friend.
‘Shit!’
‘What should I do? Do you think I should call the police?’ Victoria bit her lip and fingered the note before flinging it at her friend, aware of the rising panic in her voice and not sure of quite what she should do or say; this was an entirely new and frightening situation.
Daksha tilted her head and read the words Sarah had written. ‘No, Vic. No, I don’t think you should call the police.’
‘Okay, maybe not the police, but I have to do something! Who the hell is she?’ She opened up the paper and re-read the note, twice. ‘I am so freaked out right now!’ She knotted her fingers in her hair.
‘Do you think . . .’ Daksha began, her voice quiet.
‘Do I think what?’ Victoria pushed as she went to the sink and ran a long glass of water, sipping it, trying to calm down.
‘Do you think she might be telling the truth?’
Victoria laughed loudly and spun around, slamming the glass on the countertop. Her laughter stopped when she saw her friend’s expression. ‘Really, Daks? Really? What, you think she actually is my dead mother, come back from the grave on the day of her own mother’s funeral to give me a new name and drag me to Oslo? What the fuck is wrong with you?’ The tone and language she used rarely enough, and this was the first time ever towards her very best friend. The exchange bruised the air around them, which now hung heavy with the echo. But the truth was, despite her best efforts to the contrary, Victoria half believed it too.
‘I do. I think she . . .’ Daksha swallowed. ‘I think she could be your mum.’ She held her ground, her voice steady.
Victoria knotted her hair loosely and fastened it on the top of her head with a band, then folded her arms across her chest in the hope it might stop them shaking, curling her fingers tightly until she felt them cramp in response.
‘I don’t know what to say to you. I swear to God, I actually do not know what to say to you right now! Why? Why do you think that?’ There was a tremor to her voice.
‘Because . . .’
‘Because what?’ She was almost shouting now.
When Daksha spoke, her voice was steady and Victoria envied her the apparent calm with which she viewed the situation. ‘Because thinking about when I saw her yesterday – her posture, her manner, the way she kept out of the way – and this note, quietly dropped and putting you in control.’ She shrugged. ‘And the way it’s affected you – like you might have seen something that makes you believe it’s true but are not saying. I don’t know, I guess it’s just a gut instinct. You know how you can be told something and you either believe it or you don’t for no other reason than how it feels inside? That almost inexplicable sense of a lie or the truth? Well, it feels like it might be the truth to me.’ Daksha held her gaze.
Victoria walked backwards until her legs found a chair and slumped down, shaking her head. It was one thing to have contact from a nutcase, but quite another for Daksha, one of the few people in the whole wide world she relied on – the person who had her back – to be adding credence to the mad, mad suggestion. For mad it must be, because the alternative was . . . the alternative was . . . unthinkable.
‘But my mum died,’ she managed. ‘My mum died when I was a baby and I have missed her every single day of my life!’ It felt cruel and wearing to have to be repeating this to her friend. ‘I missed having a mum. They say you don’t miss what you never had, but I know that’s not true because I have missed her. I’ve missed her so much.’
‘But what if she didn’t die? What if Sarah Hansen is your mum?’
Victoria let her thoughts race.
‘It’s just not possible, Daks! It’s not! It’s completely ridiculous! It wouldn’t make any sense! Because if she wasn’t dead, why would Prim tell me she was? Why would Prim not want to see her in all that time? And if she were my mum, why would she stay away from me? Why would Grandpa and Prim lie to me? Why would everyone lie to me?’ She returned to this, the most hurtful premise of them all.
‘I don’t know. I don’t know!’ Daksha stood and wrapped her friend in a hug. ‘I don’t know, Vic, but I don’t think you should let this woman go back to Oslo without seeing her, even if it’s just for five minutes, to try to get to the bottom of it.’
‘I don’t like it. I’m scared, Daks,’ Victoria whispered, gripping her friend around the waist.
‘Because it’s scary, that’s why. Really scary.’ Daksha kissed her scalp and once again the dam broke its banks and Victoria’s tears flowed. It seemed her sad system of woe was filling almost faster than she could cope with today.
She didn’t confess to her friend that buried beneath the total confusion that the woman’s arrival had brought her there was a sliver of happiness at the prospect that this woman just might be telling the truth.