The Day She Came Back(84)

Jens too took his time and, when he did speak, his voice was calming. ‘Sarah wasn’t hiding from you. She was waiting for you, waiting for either the right moment or the sad loss of Prim or something, I don’t know . . .’ He bit down on his tucked-in lips. ‘But I do know that she has waited your whole life, never giving up the idea that one day she would get to make you a birthday cake and start over.’

‘It’s not that simple.’ I wish it was . . .

‘Of course it’s not that simple!’ He took a deep breath and knitted his fingers. ‘It is a delicate situation, I know. And I cannot begin to imagine what you are going through. There is no right or wrong way to do things, no blueprint for this, there is only what works for the two of you. But I can tell you, hand on heart, that Sarah told me about you on the first day I met her. She was working in a coffee shop in Soho and one of the first things she said was, “I am a mum.” Like it was her proudest achievement, and then she cried and the whole story tumbled out, and not a day has gone by that she hasn’t spoken about you in some way, even if it was just to wish you goodnight through the window before she drew the curtains. “The same moon,” she’d say. “We look at the same moon.”’

Victoria pictured her doing just that and her tears came afresh.

‘And I can tell you, Victoria, that despite what you might think or how hurt you might feel, you are still her proudest achievement. And she has a lot to feel proud about: her legal work, of course, which changes lives, and beating her addiction, which is tougher than you can know, but they pale into insignificance when she talks about you.’

‘Thank you for saying that. It means a lot.’

‘It’s the truth.’ He held her gaze.

‘The trouble is, I have spent my whole life coming to terms with the fact that my mother took drugs and died. Despite me being just a tiny baby who really, really needed her. Have you any idea what that did to my self-esteem? I clung to my gran like a little bookish limpet. I never did anything! Scared the world would reject me, the way my mother had. I found it hard to understand how someone could make the decision to leave her three-month-old baby. I believed that she pushed the contents of a toxic syringe into her veins rather than hang around to see me grow up, and it has taken me my whole life to get it straight in my head and now? Pfft!’ She made her fingers into star shapes. ‘I just have to forget all of that and blow out the candles as if nothing is amiss? And the way you talk about her sounds to me like you are talking about a stranger. I don’t know her! And I can’t help it!’ She cursed her sadness, which now slipped down the back of her throat and nose. ‘And now I have ruined the evening. After such a lovely day and all you have done for me, Jens.’

‘No, you haven’t.’ He spoke kindly. ‘There is plenty of evening yet. I’ll go and see if she is okay.’ He stood and smoothed the creases from the thighs of his jeans. ‘I know it’s your birthday, but I am going to tell you of my wishes: I wish one day that things might become clearer for you. I wish that one day you might call my wife Mum and not Sarah; I wish that one day you will refer to her as your mother; and I wish that one day, just once, you might acknowledge the name she gave you. A strong name: Victory. The name she gave her daughter. Because I know that this would all mean the world.’

‘That’s a lot of wishes,’ she whispered, feeling the weight of pressure.

The bathroom door opened and in walked Sarah, her eyes red and puffy. She sat down and folded her hands on the tabletop. Jens squeezed her shoulder in solidarity before sitting back down. Victoria hated that she was the cause of this distress.

She felt the prickle of her own tears, wishing she had never come to Oslo; like Jens, wishing many things . . .

‘Okay, okay.’ Jens tried to calm the tense atmosphere. ‘How about we all just—’

‘Actually,’ Sarah cut in, ‘I want to talk to Victoria. Do you mind?’ She smiled at her husband.

‘Of course not!’ He leaned over and kissed his wife on the forehead.

‘Come on,’ Sarah instructed. ‘Let’s go sit on my bed.’

Victoria left the table and wiped her eyes before walking into Sarah and Jens’s bedroom, which was as sparse as hers, the furniture and walls white, but with a pretty quilted silk counterpane on the bed, the colour of a summer sky, embroidered in a variety of flowers that lifted the whole space.

‘This quilt has always reminded me of the lake at home and the planting around the edge.’ She ran her fingers over the irises and reeds that sat in a neat border.

‘I can see why.’ Victoria felt sad that this quilt was as close as Sarah had got in all these years to going home and again pictured her by the side of the lake on the day she first saw her.

‘Get comfy. I shan’t be a mo.’

Victoria sat back on the pillows and thought how many times she might have sat on her mum’s bed if she had grown up with her – countless times, after bad dreams, before going out, Christmas morning . . .

Sarah came back into the room clutching the bundle of letters.

‘We need to figure this out, Victoria. We need to go back to the beginning and figure this out, because I tell you now—’ Sarah kicked off her shoes and climbed on to the bed, coming to rest right next to her, both of them now leaning against the headboard with their toes flexing inside their socks. ‘I have waited too long and missed too much of your life to let you walk away. To not smash down the walls. We are going to figure this out, do you hear me?’ Her tone was sharp and yet wavering as distress plucked her vocal cords.