That was at the time when I was particularly obsessed with butterflies. Back then, I would have the same recurring dream that I was in a park full of butterflies. I would be surrounded by hundreds and hundreds of them, all different, all beautiful, but I wouldn’t notice any of the creatures around me because I was frantically, desperately searching for my baby. I had lost my baby in that park and I needed to get him back. It was obvious what that was about. I use my foot to slide my butterfly-covered toolbox under the table, out of Mrs Lehtinen’s line of sight.
‘Shall I photograph some pieces and photograph you and then go away to think of some ideas?’ I say.
‘Why don’t you go and talk to Abi? She is down the corridor in the office. She is the deputy manager. She is a lovely girl. Always so helpful to everyone, but especially to me because I know her grandmother. I’m sure she’ll tell you all you need to know about the baby boxes.’
‘I’m more interested in your jewellery and how I can make it work for you, to be honest,’ I say to the woman in front of me. ‘And I have other people to see as well. There are two more after you. So I … erm … don’t really have time to do that.’
‘You will come back to see me?’ she asks.
‘Erm … yes, if you want me to. But do you think you will want any of your jewellery remade?’
‘I’m sure I will. Take your photographs, and come back to see me with your ideas.’
I’m shaking too much to lay out the jewellery properly. I take a few of the pieces out, but mostly I photograph them in situ in the box. With my hand still tremoring, I snap her picture, the flash causing me to jump a little each time I take a shot.
I know it’s a coincidence because that’s what happens to people like me.
With Dad, June 1982, Otley
‘Dad, why don’t I look like you and Mum?’
‘Ah, Clemmy, that’s a good question.’ Dad’s large hands picked me up and sat me on his lap. From the glass-fronted sideboard beside his chair, he plucked the picture of us from when we went to Blackpool for the day. Dad had to ask somebody he didn’t even know to take a picture of us all. ‘The thing of it is, everybody is different. We all look different in our own ways. See, here, your mum and I, we look different. She’s got blonde hair – it mostly came out of a bottle but I didn’t tell you that – and I’ve got dark hair. And you’ve got black hair. We’re none of us the same.’
‘But why is my skin different to yours? You and Mum have the same skin.’
‘We don’t, actually, Clemmy, but I know what you mean.’ Dad stopped talking and stared at the photo for a long time. I was scared he would do what Mum did and look like he was going to cry. ‘The thing of it is, Clemmy, I was meant to tell you this with your mum here. She’ll be raging at me for not waiting for her, but I’ll tell you anyway. You know how a baby grows in their mum’s tummy?’ I knew that. I was four but I knew that. I still didn’t know how the baby got out of the mum’s tummy and into the baby pram, but I thought I would ask Dad that another time. ‘You didn’t grow in your mum’s tummy.’
I was frightened suddenly: why didn’t I grow in Mum’s tummy like everyone else? ‘Why not, Dad?’
‘Mum can’t grow babies in her tummy, nobody knows why. You grew in another lady’s tummy but she couldn’t look after you. And the lady who was a social worker said that we could look after you if we wanted, and we could be your mum and dad. We really wanted to. When we first saw you in that butterfly box we knew that we really wanted to be your mum and dad.
‘You have the same skin as the lady whose tummy you grew in, but we have the same smile, me and you, and you laugh at the same things your mum does. And we all like to throw stones in the sea. We don’t look the same but no one does, not really. We have more things that make us the same than things that make us different.’ His finger, which was big and fat like a sausage, pointed to the picture again. ‘You see how we’ve all got the same type of ears? Round, not pointy. And my curly hair is a little bit like yours. Your mother’s would be curly a bit like yours if she didn’t put those damn rollers in every night. And here, look at our hands: square at the end of our fingers. We’re the same and we’re different. And being different is just as good as being the same.’
I didn’t understand why the mum who grew me in her tummy couldn’t look after me, and I didn’t understand what he meant about there were more things the same than different. But I did understand that he couldn’t say we had the same nose because we didn’t. And not the same mouth. And not the same eyes. And definitely, definitely not the same skin colour. His was peach, mine was brown. Dad thought that was good. It made Mum nearly cry, but Dad thought it was good. I didn’t understand why they didn’t both think it was good or they didn’t both want to cry. Maybe that was another different thing that was good.
I gave Dad a hug. I thought he needed one.
12
Smitty
There are moments in your life you can’t plan for.
They happen, hit you, render you incapable. I am in the middle of a moment where nothing I do will stop it from happening. Every second that passes is another step closer to that moment.
In my mind, in the sequence of freeze-frame moments that I see the world in sometimes, I am heading back to Lottie. I have my butterfly-covered toolbox of tricks in one hand, my green, many-pocketed bag is slung across my body, and in my other hand I have my car keys. I am walking away from this place and I am going to my van for a sit down and a think. I am not doing this. I am not standing outside a door that has a brass plate emblazoned ‘OFFICE’, contemplating knocking.
Only a silly, deluded person would do something like that. I am not a silly, deluded person. Much.
I’ve probably violated all sorts of security protocols and I’m almost certainly being watched on a camera right now as I stand here, hand raised to knock.
This is an ordinary corridor in an ordinary and strange building. This probably shouldn’t happen in an ordinary corridor. On television, when this happens, the people involved meet in places of significance or a café or a park. Wherever it is, there is usually some kind of sentimental memory attached. Also, probably most importantly, they have prepared themselves, they have thought about what they’re going to say. They don’t take the word of an old woman they’ve never met before and decide to do this.
I am being ridiculous. It’s understandable, but ridiculous nonetheless. The promise I remade my mother four weeks ago comes to mind, rising up like a phoenix from the depths of the flames of what I am doing. I promised her I wouldn’t do anything like this while there was even the slimmest of chances that my biological family would take me away from her. The promise phoenix beats its wings at me and I know I can’t do this. I can’t do this to my mother. She’s too fragile to be able to handle this. Whatever this is.
Imagine, too, Smitty, what you would actually have to say: ‘Excuse me, I think you may be my sister. I’m the child your parents gave away before you were born. Yes, that’s right, you call for security and call for a psychiatric assessment, too, because that’s exactly what I would do in your position.’
Before anyone can see me, I snatch up my toolbox and get the hell out of there.
With Dad, February 2015, Otley
Dad was weak some days, so thin and fragile, his skin translucent with a blue-green-black network of veins beneath the surface, and his body so obviously wracked with pain. Other days it all seemed like some awful mistake, that the doctors were all wrong and he was on the mend. He had little appetite, little thirst, and every time I tried to get him to take something in, he would refuse, or ‘Later, quine, later’ me.
‘Have you ever thought of finding your first parents?’ Dad asked me. Today was one of those in between days, where he seemed to hover almost comfortably between waning and might improve. He had probably been waiting for one of those days to ask me that, although I wasn’t sure how he managed to fix it to land on a day, like today, where Mum would be out for a long p
eriod of time.
‘No. I don’t generally think about them, Dad.’
His face made a smile, one that I’d become so accustomed to over the years, and I struggled again to believe what was happening, what I’d one day have to live without. I had pictures of Dad, so many pictures, but none were good enough, none captured the perfect symmetry of his smile, the way his top lip would move upwards a fraction more, the way the smile would connect with his blue eyes. ‘Smitty, I’m not your mother. You don’t have to pretend with me.’
They were so together, Mum and Dad. The kind of couple who never seemed to argue for long, who were openly devoted to each other and really would only be parted by death. Yet, they dealt with the whole ‘adopted daughter’ issue so differently. Mum never wanted it mentioned, like she could pretend away the fact I was not biologically theirs, and Dad, he was like this: always willing to talk about it.
‘I do think about it sometimes, but not all the time. Or even often. Or very much at all. It’s not as if they’ve made great moves to find me.’
‘Would you want that? To be tracked down like they do on those television shows?’
‘No! I can’t think of anything worse. I can’t explain how I feel, Dad,’ I admitted.
It’s always there – you don’t grow up like I did and simply forget how different you are from your family and most people around you – but it’s simply that the sense of difference sometimes recedes to the back of my mind and I’m not bothered about finding them. And, sometimes, my curiosity bubbles over, like a pot that has simmered for too long and the gentle blue flame is edged up and up until it is orange and fierce.
‘I should want to find them, and I do,’ I said to Dad. ‘I also think about what it would do to my life, having to get to know people who I should want to know. I worry about what it would do to you and Mum to think I’m looking elsewhere when I have you at home. I also think about them and how they’ve probably got lives that are sorted, and the last thing they need is to have me turning up wanting in on that. If it was as simple as searching and being a fly on the wall of their homes so I could see what they were like but only engage when I want to, I’d do that.’
‘I hate this disease, Smitty. It’s robbed me of the time I should have spent telling you …’ His eyes were heavy, his frailty acute and overtly torturous. ‘I should have encouraged you earlier to find them. To know where you come from … I didn’t do right by you.’
‘Please don’t say that, Dad. You’ve done everything right by me. All my life you’ve always been there. I can’t stand to think that you feel you did me wrong. I don’t want to find them at the moment. I may change my mind in the future, I may not, but right now I’m happy as I am.’ Even though I hate being untethered, feeling as though I don’t belong anywhere, I couldn’t be that unhappy if I wasn’t actively trying to change that.
‘When you were little, you used to say to me that you were from Scotland, like me.’
‘I don’t remember that.’
‘You would tell me all the time, “I’m from Scotland, just like you”.’
‘That does sound like something I’d say.’
‘Quine, I would burst with pride knowing that you felt that way.’
Inside Lottie, my balance returns. Calmness descends. My heart stops turning over itself in my chest, my lungs remember how to slowly draw in oxygen and carefully expel carbon dioxide.
What I was about to do … That isn’t like me. I have never been that impulsive. I plan, I think things through, I visualise and prepare. I’m not sure which would have been worse: her being my half-sister or her not. Either way, I would have had to tell a complete stranger that her mother has been lying to her for most of her life. This would have been based on nothing more than the word of another complete stranger, who spent most of her time thinking and speaking in Finnish.
‘Stupid, stupid, stupid, stupid,’ I tell myself. I hang on to the steering wheel, bending forwards. My stomach is not settling, it isn’t as easily soothed and fobbed off as my heart and my lungs. My stomach believes Mrs Lehtinen. My gut is telling me that she is right. I am the little girl who slept in the butterfly box, whose mother went on to give birth to another girl sometime later. ‘Stupid, stupid, stupid.’ Even if it is true, there is nothing I can do about it. Simply thinking about it causes the phoenix, fiery and burning, of that promise I made my mother to beat its wings at me, the heat flashing through me. I can’t do it to her. I can’t break her heart when she’s only at the beginning of the journey of the grief of losing my dad.
Tap, tap, tap against Lottie’s window. So quiet and hesitant it takes a few moments for the sound to properly register.
Tap, tap, tap again. More certain, more sure this time. I do not need company right now. If there is one thing I do not need it is to speak to someone. What I need right now is to be left alone, to have a breakdown on my own before I go home and pretend to my mother that I haven’t inadvertently broken my promise and I haven’t almost ruined the life of some poor woman who happened to work in the same nursing home as a potential client.
Tap, tap, tap. Again. This person should have got the message that I’m not up for talking. Although, to be fair to them, they may think I’m dead or something and want to be sure.
The bones in my neck click as I raise my head and turn in the direction of the tapping.
I’ve never imagined being electrocuted before, but this feels like it. It feels like all the volts that used to pass through the power station where Dad once worked have been sent through me at the same time. Even through the grimy, salt-splattered window, the person is clear to me. My gaze does not move from the window while my fingers grope around for the window handle. With the grey plastic grip in my fingers, I slowly slide it open. The person in front of me is immediately crystal clear and I am looking into a mirror.
It’s a mirror that can take away the years, hide your wrinkles, change your hairstyle, give you spots and blemishes in different places, but it’s a mirror all the same. I am looking into my own face as it probably looked ten years ago.
‘Are you OK?’ she asks. ‘Mrs Lehtinen said you seemed upset and would I mind coming to check on you before you left.’ She sounds nothing like me, of course. She’s from here and I’m from nowhere. She pauses, stares at me like she’s only just seeing what I’m seeing. ‘I’m guessing she meant you as you’re the only person in this car park.’ This is said distractedly – the mirror is starting to work for her, too. She’s looking into it and she has more wrinkles around the eyes, more blemishes on her cheeks, her face is filled out a little more, her hair isn’t sleek and straight to her shoulders, but curly and shorter. But the eyes are the same in this mirror, the nose is the same shape, the lips are the same size, the forehead has the same curve. ‘I only do these things for her because she’s an old family friend.’
I don’t speak. My mouth does not know what to say. My brain knows what it should say but that would be ludicrous. She would probably freak out if I told her.
‘Sorry,’ she says after her eyes have repeatedly examined every part of my face, each time finding more and more similarities: the imperfection in the slope of my left eyebrow, the slight indentation at the tip of my nose, the way my right ear is a tiny bit more curved at the top. ‘Sorry for staring, but why do you look exactly like me?’
‘I don’t look like you,’ I want to say. ‘You actually look like me because I was here first.’
My shoulders shrug at her first of all. Then my mouth decides it needs to speak. It needs to do something because staring and shrugging aren’t the way to resolve this.
‘I look like you because I think I’m your sister,’ I say. And it takes all my strength not to burst out laughing because it’s the most ridiculous, unbelievable thing I’ve ever said in my life.
13
Smitty
When we breathe it’s almost synchronised, only a fraction of a second keeps us apart. A lifetime and a fraction of a second’s breathing
time separate us in these quiet, uncertain minutes. I want to say something. Something pithy and clever, something that’ll cement me in her mind as someone she’d like to be connected to. My mind isn’t working like that: its fingers keep reaching, grabbing at words, phrases, sounds, even, to piece together and say, but those things keep slipping away, out of reach, unobtainable.
We are sitting in the flower garden as it’s time for afternoon tea and most of the residents who are able will be having tea and cakes down in the rec room where I was with Mrs Lehtinen.
‘This can’t be happening, right?’ Abi says. ‘Cos if you ever met my parents, my mum, you’d know that this couldn’t ever be happening.’
‘I’m guessing your mum never mentioned me. Not to you or her husband.’
‘Husband? My dad, you mean. My mum’s been with my dad since she was seventeen. She came to Brighton to start university, and stayed with my dad’s parents cos they knew her parents back in Nihanara, you know, the country in Africa?’
I nod, I’ve heard of it. If I’d had any idea that was where my DNA came from I might have paid more attention in my geography classes.
‘They fell in love after a few months of knowing each other, and just before my dad finished his first law degree they got married.’ She recites the story as though she has heard it several hundred times. I used to be the same. I’d ask Mum and Dad about how they met, when they got married, over and over again. I used to pore over their pictures, looking at their clothes, their faces, the faces of the people around them. I wanted to know everything about their love and their life before me.
‘My mum and dad did everything so right, they always do everything so right, that’s why this can’t be happening. Cos my mum? Sex before marriage? In the same house as my grandmother? Giving a child up for adoption? No way. NO. WAY.’ She shakes her head. ‘They still say a prayer before dinner. Even now. There is no way.’