The Day She Came Back(28)

What the hell . . .

In the light of this new day, with her head not full of a church service and the sermon of Jim Melrose ringing in her thoughts, and without the awful, awful tiredness pawing at her senses, she saw that the eyes of the woman in the photographs around the house and the eyes of the woman standing in front of her were, indeed, if not the same, then very similar. She felt herself sway.

Mum! Mummy! My mum! This was immediately followed by the questions, pushed forward by anger. Why? How? How and why would you and Prim and Grandpa do this to me? They can’t have known, they missed you too! It can’t be real. It can’t be! Get a grip, Victoria, it can’t be real.

‘This is harder than I thought,’ Sarah whispered.

Victoria nodded. It was.

‘I have thought about this moment so many times, and now it’s here I can’t quite believe it. I want to take you in my arms, but I know I can’t. I want to hold you because you have lost Prim and I want you to hold me because my mum has died, but I know that’s too much to ask. Too soon.’

Victoria held her gaze and listened to the accent – British, but with a hint of Scandi around the vowels. ‘I . . . I don’t even know who you are.’

‘I am your mum,’ she mouthed. ‘And I feel adrift right now. This is surreal and wonderful and sad and a whole host of other emotions. I know I won’t ever forget this day, or yesterday, seeing you for the first time in all these years.’

‘How you feel is how I have always felt. Because my mum died. I felt it every day.’ Victoria too whispered, as if both were aware that the exchange was too important, too personal, to share. It was a strange thing; Victoria knew no different, had never had a mum, and yet had keenly felt the Sarah-shaped hole in her life . . .

Sarah closed her eyes as if the very thought of this was more than she could stand. ‘I am so glad you came, Victory.’

‘Don’t call me that! How did you know that Prim had died?’ Her bottom lip quivered. She tried her best to keep her tone level, still undecided on how to act, hesitant, and all of her thoughts were bookended by understandable fury at the fact that if this were true, she had been abandoned by this woman.

‘Bernard. He was my friend – is my friend.’

‘I saw you with him at the church.’

Sarah nodded. ‘It was the first time I’d seen him in a very long time. He has fed me bits of information for years, secretly of course. I don’t think I would have been able to get through without that.’

This news another gut punch of betrayal that left her feeling sick – even Bernard was in on the secret! She felt her legs sway a little.

‘He was always very chatty and nice to me. And to think all the time he knew you were alive! Bernard-the-bloody-handyman knew, and I didn’t!’

‘I am so sorry. It’s an inadequate word, but it’s—’

‘It’s the worst kind of conspiracy, Sarah.’ Victoria cut her short, her voice trembling as her anger rose.

‘I can see how it would feel like that,’ Sarah answered drily. ‘I shouldn’t say it, but to hear you call me Sarah is odd, it hurts. When I chat to you in my daydreams, you always call me Mum.’

‘Well, this is not a daydream,’ Victoria reminded her through gritted teeth.

‘It is a dream for me, Victory-ia, sorry. I never imagined I would see the day . . .’

Victoria’s mouth felt dry and her tongue stuck to the roof of her mouth. She felt weak and light-headed, and a lot like she was dreaming. Maybe she was, but it was a nightmare.

‘I’m sorry!’ Sarah was flustered, flexing her fingers. ‘I’m not really sure what I am supposed to say or do. And I have spoken to you every day in my mind since the day you were born and I always use your name and it will take a bit of getting used to, calling you something different.’

‘Did—’ Victoria drew breath, steeling herself to ask the question. ‘Did Prim know you are alive?’

‘Yes.’

And there it was, the killer word that was a dagger to her chest. Oh my God, no, no, no, no, no . . . ‘Can you . . . can you tell me who it was that decided to lie to me? How it happened? How you all agreed on something so . . .’ She took another deep breath. ‘So fucking awful!’

Sarah looked at the floor, her eyes brimming. ‘There was no plan as such. No conspiracy, as you see it. I was broken. The one thing Mum and I agreed on was that we couldn’t allow you to get broken too.’

‘So you gave me away.’

‘I gave you to Prim.’

‘When is my birthday?’ she fired.

‘October the twelfth, and you will be nineteen this year,’ the woman answered quickly, and Victoria thought of all the birthdays where Prim had dressed her in a frothy frock and watched as she sent wishes up to heaven, chatting to the woman above the clouds who had missed out on eighteen birthday cakes, eighteen cards, eighteen rounds of exaggerated applause when she blew out the candles . . . She gave a dry laugh. Ridiculous, really; there she was, sending thoughts and prayers up to heaven when this woman was suggesting that, in reality, all she had to do was pop them in an envelope, lick a stamp and send them to Oslo. She thought she might throw up and placed her hand on her stomach.

‘Shall we sit down?’ Sarah pointed to a vacant table with two tub chairs either side and took a step towards it.