The Day She Came Back(72)

‘Oh no, Vic . . . Victoria. Our initial separation had nothing to do with money and everything to do with the fact that neither Prim nor I expected me to live. I wanted heroin more than I wanted anything, even you.’ Her face crumpled in tears at this truth. Her words were like rocks, which pounded Victoria, hitting her full in the chest, making breathing tough. ‘And that’s a hard thing for me to say, to admit, but it’s the truth. The only way money came into it was that I knew I could afford to buy the stuff to put into my veins and end my life.’

‘So what stopped you?’ She looked at her squarely.

‘Jens.’

‘Jens?’

‘Yes, ultimately. He was the reason I came to Oslo.’ Sarah smiled. ‘He is everything.’

‘Jens,’ Victoria repeated. Who is everything. But me, your daughter, for eighteen years I have been nothing . . . ‘Do you . . .’ She hesitated. ‘Do you have any other children?’ Victoria held her breath, wondering how it might feel to know that there were other people on the planet who Sarah got to mother and who were mothered by Sarah.

‘To my mummy, Sarah, on Mother’s Day . . .’

‘Can my gran run the Mummy race?’

‘No, my mum’s not picking me up. I don’t have a mum . . .’

Sarah shook her head. ‘No. Just you. Just you.’ She reached for a tissue to blot at her tears. Victoria exhaled, unable to hide her relief.

‘Jens has worked with me, helped me, and he got me clean one day at a time, and we have been together for sixteen years and we are still keeping me clean and keeping life on track, one day at a time.’

So you loved the stranger who came into your life more than you loved me . . . you could do it for him, but not for me . . . Victoria hated the feeling in her gut that her self-worth, her value, was draining away.

‘So when you stopped taking drugs sixteen years ago, I would have been, what? Two, nearly three – why didn’t you come and find me then?’ She hated the pleading tone to her question.

Sarah looked over her head, along the track towards the dark tunnel, and her brows knitted, as if to recall that time was not easy. ‘I did write to Prim, but she was doubtful of my sobriety, said she would only risk giving you her mother back if there was a cast-iron guarantee that I wasn’t going to disappear, relapse or kill myself, as she would not put you through that. But I told her there were no cast-iron guarantees, and she said it wasn’t worth it as you were happy. And she was right.’

‘God, you were as bad as her!’ This news was monstrous. Sarah had asked for contact and Prim had denied them . . . a simple decision that had shaped her whole life.

‘She wasn’t bad.’ Sarah let her eyes mist as they spoke of Prim, who they clearly both missed. ‘She wasn’t bad, not at all.’

And in that moment it felt like a connection, both of them, Victoria knew, picturing the woman who had mothered them and who she knew, deep down, had loved her so very much. Sarah took her time.

‘She was just doing what she thought she had to. Figuring it out, like we all do, every day, working with what we have in front of us and hoping it all turns out all right in the end. It’s so easy when you can look back and point out where bad decisions were made or where you went wrong, but at the time, in the thick of it, you just have to make a choice and go with it. That’s what I did and that’s what Prim did.’

‘I see that, but I didn’t get the chance to make a decision and go with it. I was told you had died, completely irreversible, no chance for me to take a second look or change my mind – dead, Sarah! That’s for ever. And my grief has cut me to the bone. All that I missed, all that I longed for, it shaped the person I became. And the crazy thing is, I would have been an entirely different person if only you had both trusted me with the truth!’

‘Do you think you would have been a better person?’ Sarah asked.

Victoria shrugged. ‘I don’t know, but probably a happier one, certainly right now. Because it’s having to deal with the dishonesty, the lies, that is the very worst part of all this.’ Her voice was small.

‘I think . . . I think it’s important that you look at all the letters. I think it might explain, way better than I am able, what it was like for me, for her and for you.’

She took a deep breath; they were, after all, still on the platform, which was filling once again. ‘How did you get the letters you had sent to Prim?’

‘She sent them back to me when I moved to Oslo. I think she felt safer having them out of the house. And I had kept hers and’ – she opened her palms as another train came and went and once again the crowd on the platform thinned – ‘I guess I hoped one day to show them to you. I had never shown them to another soul, kept them locked away until a few weeks ago, when I gave them to Jens to read.’

‘Oh, you did? What did he think?’ She felt her jaw tense at the thought of another highly personal aspect of her life being shared with strangers before she was made aware; even this most precious correspondence was coming to her second-hand.

Sarah drew breath. ‘He thought they were unbearably sad but honest, and I think it made him proud of how far I have come.’

Well, good for you and Jens! Victoria nodded.

Sarah tucked her hair behind her ears. ‘I haven’t looked at them. I can’t. I vaguely know what’s in them, but I guess I feel nervous because I can’t truly remember what I wrote, the detail. Not only was it a long time ago, but also I don’t think I was always in my right mind. In fact, I know I wasn’t. Even the thought of them is painful.’