Michelle Vernal - The Traveller’s Daughter

I think it will be the cleansing of a troubled soul that lost its faith a long time ago, this business of sitting here putting my story down on paper. I’m hoping that in doing so, I will finally be able to let go of the past that has never been very far behind me. For you though my lovely girl, hearing what I have to say might be similar to a child finding out they are adopted years after the event. It might seem like a betrayal of sorts, and perhaps, as I now wonder, you might think that it was an unnecessary secret to have kept from you. I couldn’t go back, though, and I knew if I told you where I came from, you would want us both to do just that.

Kitty

“Oh, Mum, who were you?” Kitty Sorenson whispered out loud to the empty room as she stared at the Facebook message blinking back at her from her phone. Only a moment before she had been thinking that she would have to get around to changing her profile picture. The selfie had been posted, as all good selfies too often are, after a few wines one evening. She’d taken it last year before the proverbial shit had hit the fan. Her grin was huge. She had been happy that day; she thought with a pang conjuring up the carefree feeling of warming up to dance the night away.

It felt like a lifetime ago now. If anyone had told her as she’d twirled to the music that night what lay ahead for her and Damien, she would have told them they were bonkers. Nor would she have believed that she would be sitting here at her mother’s house at 66 Edgewater Lane on this gloomy afternoon. She was waiting to hear from the Estate Agent handling the property’s sale, and the shadows were beginning to stretch long.

The message had pinged its arrival and startled her from her thoughts. She had been wondering how Yasmin was getting on without her at the market. She had assumed the message would be from the agent, Mr Baintree because a quick glance at the time confirmed that the auction should be just about done and dusted by now. She had contacted the firm when her mother’s estate had been wound up. The oily proprietor, the one and the same Mr Baintree had rubbed his hands together at her listing. He had assured her that with its stone’s throw location from the café lifestyle of Wigan Pier, the house would fetch a pretty penny. She had raised an eyebrow at that. A stone’s throw if you had an arm on you like a champion discus thrower perhaps, but still, if that was how he chose to market the property then who was she to interfere?

The two-up two-down where her mother had lived up until her death five months ago was quite at home in the sea of red brick that made up the old part of the town of Wigan in the north of England. Rosa had mumbled something about the house being low-maintenance and close to the town centre when she’d bought it. Kitty could tell from her tone that she knew full well her daughter wouldn’t like it. Still, it wasn’t her that had to live in it, she’d told herself when she’d come to visit. It was the third house in four years her mother had moved into since Kitty’s father had died. She hadn’t been seeking her daughter’s approval of it, though, and she didn’t get it because Kitty had thought this latest house with its modern renovations, characterless.

It hadn’t felt like a house her mother should be in. It didn’t suit her or her ways. Rosa needed a house that was quirky and full of character. A house like Rose Cottage stuffed with books and treasures that made it a home. Okay, so Kitty got that with her illness, her mother had wanted something low-maintenance and close to the shops. Of course, when she’d been busy passing judgment on Edgewater Lane she hadn’t known how ill her mum was. Sitting here now, though, she couldn’t conjure up any real sense of Rosa ever having lived here. It wasn’t just because her mother, ever mindful of not making Kitty’s life harder, had packed up all her belongings in anticipation of this. She’d sent all her worldly goods except for a box of treasured photographs and her engagement and wedding rings to charity before she’d moved into a local hospice. There, it transpired later, she was on good terms with a woman called Sandy, who was by her side instead of her only child when she slipped away.

Kitty twisted the rings she now wore on the middle finger of her left hand, an understated gold band and the solitaire diamond engagement ring that shone blue in certain lights. She knew Rosa had done things the way she’d done them because she hadn’t wanted to burden her by telling her she was nearing the end. Not when Kitty had been so desperately trying to pick up the pieces of her life and soldier on down in London. Still, it wasn’t fair leaving her like that without giving her the chance to say goodbye and to tell Rosa that she loved her.

Rosa hadn’t even had a funeral service – choosing instead to be cremated like one of those people with no known family or money. Kitty had collected the ashes after the event; stored in a sealed, nondescript urn from the hospice where she had died. She had met with Sandy, who, as much as she hadn’t wanted to admit it to herself, had been very nice. She’d made her a cup of tea and opened a packet of chocolate biscuits. Then, resting her hand on Kitty’s, she told her that her mother’s death had been a good one. She had slipped away peacefully and free of pain.

Kitty had wanted to scream at her that it couldn’t possibly be a good death because her mother was only sixty-five years old. It was an unfair death; that’s what it bloody well was. She hadn’t said a word though because there was something so calming and dignified about Sandy with her soft and soothing voice. She could see why her mother had wanted a woman like her by her bedside.

Sandy informed her that just as she’d promised Rosa she would, she had held her mother’s hand until the end. But it should have been me, Kitty said silently removing her hand from beneath this stranger’s. As if reading her thoughts, the older woman had said in that same calming tone that sometimes people didn’t want their loved ones’ last memory to be of them dying. By not asking her to be with her in her final hours, it didn’t mean her mother loved her any less. Kitty had felt uncomfortable then thinking about her mother confiding in this woman and had put the biscuit back on the plate. She had picked up the urn and clasping it to her chest made her excuses to leave.

It wasn’t fair that her mother kept her impending death from her, not when there was so much unsaid between them, but then she shouldn’t have been surprised. Rosa had spent Kitty’s whole life keeping things from her; she thought, her eyes sweeping the room. It was a soulless space; there was no essence of her mother etched into its walls as there had been at Rose Cottage.

This house lacked the warm, homely feel of the semi-rural property in which she had grown up on the outskirts of Preston. It’s headily-scented rose garden a riot of colour in summertime had given the cottage its name and Kitty had been heartbroken when her mother decided to sell it shortly after her father’s death. She hadn’t sought her daughter’s approval then either. It still rankled, she realized, feeling simultaneously guilty for the anger that surged even now with her mother gone because if Rosa had held onto the cottage, then she wouldn’t feel so alone. Rose Cottage had been her home too. She knew that were she sitting in its cosy, familiar living room instead of this bland space, then she would still feel she had a part of her mother and father with her.

She had just wanted Mr Baintree to call and tell her the deal was done. To her mind once the proceeds of the sale were sitting in her bank account this final phase of winding up her mother’s affairs would be complete. Then she could begin to figure out how she was going to move forward now that she was officially orphaned. She’d heard it said somewhere at some time that when you lost both your parents, you truly knew what it was to feel grown up. Kitty sighed for the umpteenth time that afternoon; she didn’t feel grown up, just awfully alone.