I met up with Claire while she was holidaying close by and I drove to the place she was staying. Bar the odd grey hair, she had hardly changed from the days when we were kids trying on lipstick together in Littlewood’s. We both stood, staring in wonder, then fell into each other’s arms. We laughed and cried and talked and talked. After lunch in a local pub I took her home to meet my family and they were happy to make her welcome, having often heard me talk about my extra-special childhood friend, my bestest friend.
Eventually I met Claire’s parents again when I surprised them by turning up at their ruby wedding party. Her mum cried and said how much she had missed me. She had also tried to find me through my mother, to no avail. Over the next few months we talked a bit about the past and Claire’s mum told me how worried she had been about me when I was a child. She knew something was very wrong in my life, and that Mum had a very cold attitude towards me, but there wasn’t much she could do to help, short of making me welcome at their house whenever I was allowed to stay. Getting back in touch with them was like putting a missing part of my family back in place and I knew we would stay in touch for life now.
There was just one more bit of my family that still had to be put in place, and the call to fix that came on a Friday afternoon in July
1993.
It was from Sally, the social worker.
‘Do you remember that I said I would try and find out anything I could about your son?’ she asked, as though I was ever going to forget such a thing. ‘We said we would wait a
year, and that was thirteen months ago. I sent a letter to the adoptive father last week and he showed it to his son, your son.’
I held my breath. And?
‘He would like to meet you.’
I couldn’t believe it. I was shaking with excitement, fear, apprehension, and a combination of twenty-one years of emotion and love.
‘Would you like to see him?’ she asked.
Did she really have to ask? Did she think that I wouldn’t want to see him? I couldn’t speak. I just cried down the phone. All she must have heard was unintelligible sobbing.
‘Of course I want to see him,’ I said at last, so softly that she had to ask me to repeat it. ‘Yes, of course I want to see my son.’
Sally went on to tell me that Jack had read my letter and told his father that he wanted to see me as soon as was possible. His father wasn’t best pleased to hear this but had said that we could meet once, just once, and then it would be over.
I should have backed out then. I should have realised that once wasn’t going to be enough, that I would want more than one meeting with my son. But I didn’t.
‘When does he want us to meet?’ I asked quickly, as though if I waited he might change his mind. ‘When will I see him?’
‘Next Wednesday.’ She said it as though it was a normal arrangement between two people, as though this happened every day of the week. Next Wednesday? Only a few days away!
‘Yes, that’s fine,’ I heard a voice say. My voice. Surprisingly calm. Surprisingly together. I didn’t feel calm or together, but my voice had spoken.
When I put the phone down, I couldn’t stop shaking. Lucy sat and held me. She was so happy for me and, I think, for herself. She hoped that one day she would meet her half-brother, the child she had known about all of her life. But for now, this was mine. I didn’t want to share any of it. I was going to see my son. Be reunited with the baby I had had to give up twenty-two years ago.
When my husband came home, I told him. I rang Melissa, the only other person in my life who had seen my baby, had shared a few precious weeks with him. I tried to stay calm, tried not to be too optimistic. For a while, the old fears came back into my life, from way back there. Fears that something would stop this from happening. I even wondered, that night in my bed, whether this was real. Could it have just been a dream? Had that phone call really happened? Of course I had always hoped and prayed that one day I would see him again. But hope and prayer had not often come through for me. Could I possibly be that lucky? I had a good marriage, a man who loved me just for me, I had two healthy daughters and I was free from my past. So wasn’t I being a little selfish expecting more? Should I not have been content with what I had?
But God must have been listening. Perhaps not twenty-two years ago, but some time between then and now.
The next few days were like a dream. I asked for the day off work, and when my boss asked why, I told him.
‘I’m going to see my son,’ I said in a small voice, afraid that if I voiced it any louder, it wouldn’t be true.
‘I didn’t know you had a son,’ he said, surprised. ‘I thought you only had the girls.’
I told him the whole sorry story and he just stood there, staring at me. At first I thought he was angry with me—for what, I didn’t know. But he wasn’t. He came over and put his arm around my shoulder and smiled.
‘Go for it, girl,’ he said in a strong voice. ‘You go for it and enjoy.’
I shopped for a new dress. I had to look right. I wasn’t sure what looking wrong was, but I had to look right. I chose a navy-blue fitted dress that didn’t make me look too matronly but also didn’t make me look too young. I wasn’t dressing for a date; I was dressing to see my son.
The day came. I couldn’t eat and hadn’t slept the previous night. This was no ordinary Wednesday. This was a huge Wednesday.
We were to meet him, my son, in another town, on neutral ground. Daniel drove me because I couldn’t have driven myself if I’d wanted to. We were taken upstairs into an office and sat talking to the social worker, or rather she was talking to us. Suddenly I knew he was in the building. I don’t know how, but I knew.
‘He’s here,’ I said quietly. ‘I know he’s here.’
As the door opened, I looked up. There he was. My beautiful son. Standing right in front of me.
I couldn’t move, I couldn’t stand, but I looked at him. It was the strangest feeling ever. He looked like both my daughters, like a boy with all of their features blended into one wonderful young man. He was slightly taller than Lucy, who was the taller of my daughters and taller than me, and his hair was the same dark, dark brown as my daughters’ hair. He was wearing
smart jeans and what looked like a new casual shirt. And suddenly, he was standing right there. My son. My Jack. I still couldn’t speak. The air in the room was charged with raw emotion. You could feel it, almost touch it.
He didn’t look at me, not at first. He looked at the social worker, he looked at my husband, but he didn’t look at me. What if he doesn’t like me? What if he thinks this is a mistake?
The social worker walked him over to where I was sitting. Daniel stood up and they shook hands, these two much-loved people in my life. And then he was there. Right in front of me, his mother.
What do you say to someone you lost a lifetime ago? I didn’t know, I couldn’t speak. So I said nothing. He sat down at my side and told me his name.
I know! I gave it to you. Of course I know your name!
I had made up a photo album, starting with images of my life in the present: my house, my husband and my dog. I showed this to him, explaining who and what everything was. Then we moved on to the pages that held photos of his sisters and he began to
cry.
‘I’ve never looked at a picture and seen myself looking back,’ he said between the tears. ‘I have never seen any similarities with me.’
I wanted to hold him, wanted to hold him so close that he would never leave. But I couldn’t. I was too afraid. Afraid for myself and afraid for him. I mustn’t touch him. Touching would be too painful. I felt I couldn’t get that close.
I had made his father a promise that this would be a one-off meeting and then I would disappear out of my son’s life forever.
Again. I had made a stupid, stupid promise. So I couldn’t touch him and then let him go again.
I sat there, while he cried.
I then moved on to a photo of myself when I was pregnant with him. And then one of the only ones I had of him as a baby, before he was taken away.
He gasped and grabbed my hand. It was as though time had stopped. He was there, looking at me with the same beautiful blue eyes that had held my gaze the day he was born. We didn’t speak; there was no need. We sat and held hands. I couldn’t cry. What must he have thought? I hadn’t cried about him and my loss for years. I had trained myself not to cry. His birth and losing him had been boxed away and was so tightly shut that I could only open it a little.
So I didn’t cry. I just sat there telling him anything that he needed to know.
After what only seemed like minutes but also seemed like a lifetime, the social worker said that she had to shut the office. She had opened the rooms we were meeting in and had to return the key to the caretaker. I realised with a shock that it was almost midnight. We went outside and Daniel offered to drive my son home, but he said no. We were still holding hands and I tried to say goodnight. Suddenly he was in my arms. In the arms that had ached for him. The arms that should never have let him go. He was in my arms, where he belonged, and he started crying.
‘Please take me with you,’ he begged.
I should have held on to him. Held on and never let go. I know that now. Oh, how I have regretted that night. Regretted
keeping a promise. A promise that was impossible to keep. I should have taken this beautiful young man home with me, where he should always have been—but I didn’t.
I didn’t, because I had made a promise.
‘You have to go home,’ I said. ‘I promised your dad.’ I tried to loosen his grip on my shoulders. I couldn’t look at him. He was still sobbing.
Did he think I didn’t want him? That I didn’t care? I don’t know. I did know that I had to hold on to my emotions, that somehow I had to be strong whilst he was falling apart in front of my eyes. It was one of the hardest things I had ever done. I just knew that I had to keep my promise.
In my naïvety, I thought that if I let him go home to his father, then his father would let us meet again. That he would see I wasn’t a threat and realise how much it meant to his son, my son. I told Jack this and eventually he let go. My heart was breaking in two. No one could see it. I thought they might hear it. This isn’t what I planned. This wasn’t how it was supposed to be.
He asked if he could ring me later. I said that if it was OK with his dad, of course he could. Really what I wanted to say was ‘Ring me, please ring me.’
Still shaking, and feeling very sick, I watched for the second time in my life as a social worker walked away with my son.
That night had been the best and the worst night of my life. When you make a memory, you don’t just box away the good; you box away the good, the bad and the ugly. The good was having a beautiful baby boy, the bad was the grief and pain of
having to give him up, the ugly, well that was everything else that happened around that awful painful time. And here on this night, everything came flooding back.
I don’t remember the journey home. I do remember that when we arrived I was shivering and feeling very ill. I hadn’t had a panic attack so that was a relief, but now I felt terrible. Lucy greeted us and wanted to know everything, but she could see that I wasn’t up to talking and went to bed.
The following day I was exhausted. It felt like a dream, but the pain I was feeling was very real. It felt as it had felt when I had lost my baby son all those years ago. A pain so huge that it took over my whole being. I felt bereft, just as I had before, certain that last night was all I was going to have. One evening, one precious evening, where I was unable to speak, unable to tell Jack how I felt. Where I was not able to reach out and hold my son and keep him there. My arms had held him but my heart I kept at bay. I knew I couldn’t take this pain again.
A day went by, and then another, and then the phone rang.
‘Is that Cassie?’ he asked. ‘Is that you?’
I stood in disbelief; he was on the end of the line. The child I had once lost and thought I had lost again was at the end of the phone. What should I do? I mustn’t blow it. I mustn’t put him off.
‘Yes, it’s me. Where are you?’ I asked, again quite calm. I don’t know where that calm came from. But I was calm.
He told me that he was at work and would like to meet me that evening. Was that OK?
OK? Try and stop me. I didn’t know what else to say in that call but yes. I think I kept it short so that he couldn’t change his mind. My voice was calm but my heart and mind were racing.
We were to meet at the local railway station. He had broken his wrist and couldn’t drive. I was trying not to think of the promise that I had made; I couldn’t give up this chance. So I went to meet him.
I saw him come out of the station door and my heart said run to him. My heart said, take him in your arms and never let him go. But I couldn’t listen to my heart. Couldn’t take the risk.
I stayed in the car.
I called him over and he got in beside me. Nobody spoke at first. I suppose we were both as nervous as each other. We decided to go to a nearby pub, in an area that had been a favourite place of mine as a child. I told him this and wasn’t ready for what he said next.
‘Mum and Dad used to bring me here in the holidays. I came here a lot as a boy.’ He said it as though it was no big deal. But it was. It was a very big deal! This was one of my places. Somewhere I still came to, to think and look into my memory box. He was telling me that he had come here many times as a child. That he had come here with his parents.
How could we both have visited the same place and I not have known? Why didn’t we meet? How cruel is fate when it goes against you? I didn’t know how to react to this earthshattering bit of insight into his life.
‘What kind of childhood did you have?’ I asked, as if I were asking how his day had been.
He told me about his sister, about how his mum had been a worrier, a very anxious parent, sometimes too anxious. He told me of an incident when he was about eight years old when he almost drowned.
I should have been there to help you, I thought. Why wasn’t I there?
By this stage I was beyond wanting answers. I couldn’t take any more of his life, his far-away-from-me life. I had to change the subject; this was far too painful.