Karen Clarke - The Secret Sister

Greg threw me a perplexed look. ‘But why didn’t she ever say anything?’ He’d been close to my mum. They’d shared a dry sense of humour, as well as a love of art, and would sometimes meet for coffee in the city if it was one of her days at the gallery where she occasionally worked before she became too ill.

‘I don’t know,’ I said, not wanting to dwell on the ‘why’.

‘Maybe it’s a friend’s baby.’

I jabbed the letter I was holding. ‘It says in here, “we did the right thing”,’ I repeated. I’d read it out once, but unusually for Greg, he hadn’t taken it in. As a lawyer, he was used to absorbing all sorts of confidences, but perhaps this was too personal. ‘I think she had a baby with this Reagan and they gave her up for adoption.’

‘It doesn’t seem like something she would do, that’s all.’ Shaking his head, Greg looked down at the garden. ‘Do you think your dad knows?’

‘Probably not.’ I tried to imagine it. There’d always been something self-contained about Mum that suggested she might be good at keeping secrets, and Dad had a jealous streak. ‘If it happened before they met, she might not have wanted him to know.’

‘Pretty big secret to keep from your husband.’ Greg’s tone held an undercurrent that annoyed me, considering he’d once kept a secret of his own for months. ‘What if this Colleen had tried to find her?’ he continued. ‘How would your mum have explained that?’

‘Well, maybe he does know,’ I said, changing tack. ‘I’m just getting to grips with all this.’ I gave an incredulous half-laugh. ‘Perhaps they made a pact never to talk about it.’

He glanced at the photo again. ‘So, she’s your half-sister.’

‘She’s still my sister, Greg.’ I couldn’t hide the bite in my voice. ‘I want to find her.’

‘Whoa, hang on.’ He came and sat beside me, dislodging the shoebox, which slid off the bed and scattered its contents on the floor. ‘Let’s take a minute to think this through.’ He reached for my hand. ‘You’ve had a shock,’ he said with a worried smile. ‘Christ, even I can’t take it in.’

‘It’s more of a nice surprise than a shock.’ I pulled away from him, poking around my feelings. It was as if a switch had been flicked inside me, lights going on. I wanted to bounce on the bed, to run up and down, to rush off and find her immediately. ‘It’s a wonderful surprise.’

‘Aren’t you angry with your mum?’ He picked up the letter and squinted at the tiny script. ‘This writing’s awful.’

‘Maybe she didn’t want to hurt me and Dad,’ I said, chewing my thumbnail – a childhood habit I couldn’t shake. ‘Or buried the memories so deep she kind of forgot.’

‘Forgot?’ Greg pulled a face. ‘Would you forget if you’d given Maisie away?’

‘It sounds awful when you put it like that,’ I said, suppressing a flutter of anxiety.

‘Why do you think she did it?’

‘I don’t know, Greg.’ There would be plenty of time to consider why Mum had hidden something so important – so life-changing. Right now, all I could think about was how I’d longed for a sibling growing up, and now it appeared I had one; half-sister or not, we shared a mother. We had her blood running through our veins. ‘Oh, Greg, this is the best news I’ve had in ages.’ Unable to sit still any longer, I skirted the mess on the floor and dashed to the window, my heart beating too fast. ‘Maisie has an auntie,’ I said, watching my daughter circling the lawn, her arms stretched out to the sides. Charlie was chasing her, his pink tongue lolling out, while Dad watched, hands dug deep in his corduroy trouser pockets. Seeming to sense my gaze, he turned and raised his arm in a wave.

‘I need to talk to Dad,’ I said, with a rising sense of urgency. ‘Now.’

‘Ella, wait.’ Greg’s hands circled my upper arms. ‘You’re getting ahead of yourself,’ he said. ‘Your dad’s still grieving, and there’s a lot we don’t know. There’ll be hoops to jump through before you can think of finding this … finding her.’

‘Colleen,’ I said, already possessive of her name, liking the feel of it on my tongue. My sister, Colleen.

‘She might not be called that anymore.’ He turned me to face him, sounding more like his assured self now that the shock was wearing off. ‘Most adoptive parents give the child a new name.’

‘I didn’t think of that.’ I felt a sagging inside. ‘There must be a record somewhere, of the adoption.’

Greg hesitated. ‘Yes … if it was done formally,’ he said, sliding his hands down my arms and wrapping his fingers around mine. ‘The truth is, Ella, we don’t know what happened back then. It could have been a casual arrangement, or money might have changed hands.’

‘Oh, don’t say that.’ I wrenched away from him. Squatting down, I began rifling through the items on the carpet. ‘There might be something else here.’

There was a tortoiseshell hair slide, a train ticket, a theatre programme, a pressed rose – its crispy petals the colour of blood – but apart from the wristband, photograph and letter, there was nothing else linking Mum to the baby.

I read the letter again, my eyes sliding over the words, and turned it over as if there might be some new ones on the other side. ‘I could write to this address,’ I said, looking up at Greg. ‘Explain who I am.’

‘They’ve probably moved by now. That letter was written years ago, and they might not want to be found.’ He knelt beside me, a dark stain on his jeans where the coffee he’d brought me had spilled. ‘She might not even be alive, Ella.’ His voice was sombre and I felt a pinch of hatred at him for spoiling things.

‘You’ve got a sister and a brother,’ I said. ‘You’ve no idea about being an only child.’

‘Hey, steady on.’ He held up his palms. ‘You’ve always gone on about what a happy childhood you had. Don’t start twisting things.’

‘But I still used to wish I had a big sister.’ I wanted him to throw caution to the wind, to be excited for me, instead of the voice of reason. ‘I just want to try and find her, that’s all.’

‘I will help, of course I will.’ He plucked the letter from my hand, his gaze unbearably gentle. ‘But maybe we should sleep on it first.’

‘I’m not going to change my mind,’ I said, my brain tingling with questions. Did she look like me, or Mum? Or her father, Reagan? Was she happy; married with children? Tall or short? Outgoing or quiet?

I leaned against the bed and hugged my knees. ‘This kind of makes up for losing Mum.’ I felt a wobble in the pit of my stomach as I said it.

Greg’s eyebrows lifted. ‘You think you’re owed a sister to make up for losing your mother?’

‘Why not?’ I countered. ‘There’s a kind of balance, don’t you think?’

He exhaled, seeming lost for words. ‘I think you’ve had a shock.’ He rose and dusted his hands on his jeans. ‘I’ll go and make some more coffee while you finish up here.’ He touched my hair. ‘We’ll talk again at home.’

I sat for a while when he’d gone, listening to him moving in the kitchen below, calling something to Dad through the window, and I heard the low rumble of Dad’s response. Greg was right, this wasn’t something to be rushed into, but nearly thirty years had gone by without me knowing my sister and I couldn’t bear to waste another minute.

I tried to locate some outrage – some horror even – but the truth was, I felt elated. Feelings that had been lying dormant since Mum’s funeral were flowing back to life. I could feel the blood fizzing through my veins, like champagne. I wanted to know … everything .

Scrambling up, I rummaged past the detritus on the bed for my bag and yanked out my phone. After switching it on, I drummed my fingers while it connected to the inefficient Wi-Fi, then signed in to my Facebook account.