The Day She Came Back(35)
This she knew, both that her friend was worried – the give-away being the frequent petting of her hair and the making of cups of tea, which she delivered with a small smile of concern – and that she had been quiet, unable to settle.
She had spent more minutes than she cared to admit poring over the photograph of her as a baby lying in her mother’s emaciated arms with her gran standing to one side, complicit. She toyed with the idea of devouring the remaining letters and then calling Sarah to rage at her, her mind fraught with conflict. Part of her wanted to delete the woman’s numbers and punish her in the way she felt she had been punished – banished with silence for so many years. And the other part wanted to jump on a plane and rush into her mother’s arms, where she would lay her head on her chest and never, ever leave . . .
But it wasn’t Sarah who bore the brunt of her anger – it was Prim. Her thoughts were vignettes of all the platitudes offered by her gran in her moments of distress, many when she was a small child and her sadness was more honestly expressed:
‘But I don’t want to make a Mother’s Day card for you, Gran – I want to give one to my mum!’
‘Oh, I know, darling! I know! But it would be wonderful for me. Don’t forget I don’t get a Mother’s Day card now either . . . your mummy was my little girl . . .’
You liar! How could you? You liar!
Daksha arranged a final bundle of twigs and looked more than a little chuffed with her handiwork.
‘Eat your heart out, Bear Grylls! So, come on, it’s not like you to be so quiet, Vic. Talk to me!’
‘I just feel like being quiet.’ She spoke softly, a little irritated by her friend’s line of questioning, no matter how well intentioned. ‘I think everything that’s happened is percolating. I can’t stop thinking about all that I’ve read in the letters: replaying them in my mind.’
‘Of course.’ Daksha struck a match from the large box of Cook’s Matches and knelt low, carefully touching the little flame to several points on the paper spills. She then sat back and watched closely with a fixed look of determination. ‘How are you feeling about it all?’
Victoria stared into the grate as small flames flickered and the fire began to cradle the kindling.
‘It changes. I think about the fact that Prim lied to me for all this time and I go nuts, even swear at her in my head.’ She winced with the shame of this admission, knowing she would not have conceived of such a thing when Prim was here. Her tears were, as ever, not that far from the surface. ‘I can’t stop crying! I’m sad because she died, and I love and miss her so much. And that feeling of missing her is mostly greater than my anger, but not always. Like, right now, I also wish she were here so I could yell at her!’
Victoria bit her fingernail, a new and pleasing habit.
Daksha blew into the fireplace and the flames flickered and flared, starting to take hold before she carefully placed a cut log on to the fire, watching as they licked up the sides of the dried bark.
‘Do you understand what happened that made Prim lie to you?’
Victoria took her time in responding, liking the crackle of the fire. ‘Not really. But in some ways, it’s like they are two different people. There’s my Prim, who baked me cookies when I got in from school and who made my costume for the summer play, and the other Prim, who took me from my mum and lied to me; lied to me about the very worst thing I could imagine. I think I need to let everything settle and try not to think about it all so much. I need to calm down and try to make sense of it when I’m not freaking out.’
‘I like the sound of her.’ Daksha turned in the hearth to look her friend squarely in the face.
‘Who?’ Victoria knew who she meant but wanted to give the impression that Sarah was not the first and last thing she thought about each day and night and every minute in between.
‘Sarah!’ Daksha tutted.
Victoria nodded. ‘You do?’
‘Yes, the way she’s handled things since making contact, like sending everything through to you immediately and the way she was at the hotel – I mean, what’s not to like, right? She’s very elegant, attractive, a lawyer, lives in Norway, which is always voted one of the happiest places to live.’
‘Yes, Daks, she’s a regular Wonder Woman. You’ve not met her properly; she could be a total cow when she’s got her guard down. She abandoned me, don’t forget!’ There it was again, the anger that bubbled in her throat.
‘She doesn’t seem like a total cow,’ Daksha offered quietly.
‘That’s right, because only a total cow would choose drugs over her baby, would still mourn a bloke she knew for the equivalent of five minutes, would choose to have no contact with her elderly parents, have the bloody nerve to pitch up on the day of her mother’s funeral and tell her long-lost daughter, who believed her dead, that her name is in fact Victory! A fucking stupid name if ever I’ve heard one!’
‘I just . . . I just thought she seemed nice.’
‘It’s bullshit, all of it! What if the vicar’s right? What if she is after the house?’
She didn’t believe this, not for a single second, but was running out of verbal ammunition to fling in the direction of Sarah Hansen’s reputation.
‘Did she mention the house?’ Daksha asked almost sheepishly.