Cath Staincliffe - Trio

‘Why didn’t she tell me?’ Pamela, still pale with shock and sick with the upset, demanded of her aunt. She had driven straight round there.

‘I don’t know. I don’t think she ever set out to keep it from you. When you were very small I remember she and Peter talking about explaining to you when you were older. Then, with your father dying.’

Except he wasn’t even my father, she thought bitterly.

‘It must have got harder as time went on,’ Sally said.

‘You knew. Who else?’

‘Just close family.’

‘I can’t believe it!’ Her face stretched with indignation, her indigo eyes glinted. ‘You should have told me, she should have. I’m almost thirty-one years old. Can you imagine what it’s like to suddenly find it’s all been a sham?’

Sally looked worried, her brow creased. She caught her lip between her teeth. ‘She was a mother to you, that wasn’t a sham.’

‘But she let me go through my whole life thinking I was theirs, and I wasn’t.’

‘You were all she wanted. She’d been to hell and back before they got you.’

‘What do you mean?’

Her aunt sighed. ‘She lost three babies, miscarriages. The last was very late on.’

‘Oh, God!’ Pamela put her face in her hands.

‘They said if she fell pregnant again it could kill her.’

‘Tell me about it, everything you can remember, please, all of it.’

Joan

The clinic was crowded and far too hot. Joan craved some fresh air but was worried that if she left she might miss her name being called. There were women of every age, shape, size and colour. All here to see Mr Pickford. She no longer pretended to read the magazine on her lap but rested her head back against the wall and closed her eyes, imagining the bay, the way it looked, not yesterday with a summer blue sky and white caps on the waves, but on a calm November day, a sea fret curling from the water, the gulls arced like nail marks in the sky. Visualisation, they called it in the support group. It was supposed to help in the healing process; a calm place to take yourself. Along with raw food and aromatherapy and the more toxic treatments that Mr Pickford provided. But was she healing, or dying?

She steered her thoughts away, to work. Good news. There was a chance that ‘Walk My Way’ would be used for a new television drama series; the ’60s were back in fashion. Her agent was cautiously optimistic but these things took forever, it seemed. Even if that didn’t come off, Paramount – well a company who worked for Paramount – had commissioned an original slow ballad for a bittersweet romantic comedy. She’d read the treatment and put a few ideas down on tape. They’d liked two of them and asked her to develop them. Plus she’d sold several recent songs to the pop market.

‘Joan Hawes.’

She put the magazine on the low table and followed the nurse along the corridor. She suspended her thoughts, focused on the carpet, the paintings hung on the wall.

Mr Pickford shook her hand warmly and gestured that she should sit. He took a moment to check her notes. He drew a small breath and looked across at her and she knew. A flutter of compassion in his eyes told her everything. She blinked hard and pressed her knuckles to her lips as he spoke. The words bumped past her – secondary, extensive, chemotherapy, hard to say.

She didn’t need the words anyway, the message was clear. She was dying. They could poison her and chop at her and hook her up to pumps and tubes but they would only be prolonging her illness.

‘I want to go home,’ she said when he had finished. ‘I don’t want any more treatment. I want to be at home from now on.’

He nodded. ‘You have support?’

‘Yes. What about medication… if… when…’

‘Your GP will be able to prescribe. I can write.’

‘Yes.’

She was relieved he offered no opposition to her quick decision, that he had no desire to push desperate last treatments on her.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

She bit her tongue and nodded. Sniffed. ‘Thank you.’

The nurse knew or else he’d sent some sort of signal to her. She asked Joan if she would like to make an appointment to see the counsellor. She shook her head, her eyes swimming over all the women in the waiting room: the young girl with the dreadlocks and her mother, the one with the wig, the woman in the sari whose little boy had fallen asleep on her lap, the very old woman with skin like crêpe, the business woman concentrating on her laptop. All the women. ‘Can you call me a taxi? To the station.’

‘You’ve come on your own?’

She nodded. Penny came when she could but today’s appointment clashed with her school inspection. She had considered ringing in sick but Joan had persuaded her to go. ‘If I need more treatment I’d rather you took the time then.’ And if I’m dying.

‘Yes, my friend couldn’t come today.’

‘I’ll get you that taxi.’

It ran in families. They’d talked about that in the group, fearful for their daughters and grand-daughters. They implied she was lucky, no children to worry about. She had thought about owning up but it didn’t seem fair. Their children were real, they had names and faces, they came to the hospital and saw their mothers, they shared their lives, they heard them throwing up after radiation treatments, saw the clumps of hair in the bathroom bin, heard the talk of biopsies and percentages, prosthetics and remission. They loved them. Her daughter was barely fact, someone else’s daughter now.

Pamela

The waiting room was decorated in pastel colours. The walls held a display about adoption – clippings from recent newspaper articles, child’s drawings, poems. A leaflet rack had caught her attention on her first visit. Tracing Your Family, Sibling Attraction (oh God!), How To Search.

She had found out about the adoption charity in a leaflet from the library. She had spent most of the first session in tears and inarticulate, and when she had managed to talk it had been about the deaths of her father and mother rather than about discovering she was adopted. The second session had been just as harrowing, though she’d talked more about the adoption.

Today she would see her adoption records. They had been easy to get hold of. The counsellor, Donna, had been surprised that Lilian had Pamela’s original birth certificate.

‘It’s most unusual. Someone must have given it to your parents. Anyway, it means we have the details we need if you decide to send for your records.’

Donna had talked about tracing too but Pamela would never do that. It would be like a betrayal.

‘Pamela.’ Donna invited her through to the room. There were couches and easy chairs, a box of tissues prominent on the low table. Her hands felt clammy as Donna talked about having the records and drew them from a folder.

Pamela read the details.

Joan Hawes, shorthand typist, aged nineteen. Father unknown. Baby expected April, possibly later. Family don’t know she is pregnant. Plans to move away after baby is born. Baby girl born May twenty-fourth. Baptised Marion. Sixth July, baby placed for adoption with Mr and Mrs Gough, 8 Skinner Lane, Chorlton.

‘What’s this -’ Pamela pointed to a sum: two figures added up to make £4.10s.6d – ‘her bill?’

‘Yes. There would be a charge for the nights she stayed there and the smaller figure would be for the baby.’

Me. Sudden tears blinded her. She pulled out a tissue. Donna said nothing. Pamela wiped her eyes and read on.

Discharged, July tenth. Four days later.

‘I can’t imagine it.’ She blew her nose. ‘I know I’ve never had a baby but walking away…’ She blew her nose.

‘It’s very difficult. We see birth mothers who tell us it’s affected their whole lives.’