Julie Wassmer - More Than Just Coincidence

The remarkable story of how a mother and daughter were reunited in one astonishing twist of fate

Harper NonFiction

An imprint of HarperCollins Publishers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF

www.harpercollins.co.uk

First published by HarperTrue 2010

© Julie Wassmer 2010

Julie Wassmer asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

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Source ISBN: 9780007354313

Ebook Edition © SEPTEMBER 2010 ISBN: 9780007354320

Version: 2017-05-04

For my family

Margie and Bill

Sara

Caden and Tallulah

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—Itook the one less traveled by,And that has made all the difference.

‘The Road Not Taken’ Robert Frost

Title Page More than just Coincidence The remarkable story of how a mother and daughter were reunited in one astonishing twist of fate

Copyright

Epigraph

Prologue

Chapter One Black Plimsolls Tied With Ribbon

Chapter Two The Number 8 Bus

Chapter Three By Hope, By Work, By Faith

Chapter Four Rebel Without a Cause

Chapter Five Keeping Secrets

Chapter Six Ten Short Days

Chapter Seven Afterbirth

Chapter Eight The Road Out

Chapter Nine Into the Westy

Chapter Ten A Clock Stops Ticking

Chapter Eleven Tramontana

Chapter Twelve A New Tack

Chapter Thirteen 18 Jermyn Street

Chapter Fourteen Three O’Clock at the Pagoda

Chapter Fifteen Emotional Journeys

Chapter Sixteen Full Circle

Epilogue

Acknowledgements

About the Publisher

Close to the sea, near my home, I have a small wooden beach hut, where I spend long summer days with my husband, daughter and grandchildren. It is also the place where I write. Sometimes there is little more to distract me than the cry of seagulls and the turning of the tide. Sitting on the verandah, looking out at the horizon, I have a sense of completeness and calm, of everything being just as it should be. It is a feeling that eluded me for so long. Wherever I went, and however happy I was, I knew that within me there was an empty space. I was sure that one day the missing piece would be restored, but until then my heart would never be quite whole.

As a television scriptwriter I have countless plotlines to my credit but still none so extraordinary as the drama I experienced in my own life almost twenty years ago: an apparent coincidence so remarkable that many people have been compelled to search for more complex explanations as to how it could have happened.

Certainly it is hard to believe that mere coincidence could have brought together the disparate strands of my life in such an astonishing way, or provided me with the signposts that led me, at a precise time, on a precise day— 5 November 1990—to a door on a busy street near London’s Piccadilly. Even then I could so easily have turned away. But I didn’t. And by crossing its threshold I came face to face with my long-lost daughter—without either of us knowing who the other was.

Two decades have now passed since that meeting. The fireworks that followed when the truth was revealed are long over but the emotions that overwhelmed me then are still just as poignant as they continue to reverberate through my life. How can I possibly describe what it feels like to abandon a child to strangers in a blind leap of faith, believing that they would be better parents than I could ever be? How can I explain the profound sense of loss; the absence so great that it becomes a haunting presence? How can I define the lasting joy brought by a reunion that seemed so random and yet so well timed?

Some have attributed this event to synchronicity, some to serendipity; others have seen it as fate. On a hot summer’s day in 2010, as I gaze out from the verandah of my beach hut at my daughter, playing with her own two children at the water’s edge, I know, as sure as my beating heart, that what drew me to her that day was more than just coincidence.

It is time to share my story.

I was an only child and likely to stay that way. My mother often remarked that, while she loved me dearly, she would have been just as happy with a litter of puppies. It was a sentiment that shocked friends and neighbours but I understood it completely: there were animal people and there were children people. My mother belonged in the first camp. For that matter, so did I.

At four years old I mothered my own ‘family’—hamster, tortoise and a tabby cat unimaginatively named Tiddles (I never knew an East End cat called anything else) who allowed me to dress him up in dolls’ clothes. I also trained our hen, Ada, to pick up washing in her beak from the laundry basket for me to peg on to the clothes line and rescued many a tiny sparrow, setting them carefully into cardboard boxes lined with cotton wool. Human babies, however, held no more fascination for me than they did for my mum.

While other mothers cooed over babies in prams, mine sat with me in the Rex picture house in Roman Road market, sobbing over the death of Shep or Old Yeller. When my father returned from work one evening to find us yet again red-eyed with grief (this time over Bambi’s mum), he insisted that enough was enough. From then on there would be only happy endings.