‘How did your mum die?’ My mouth spoke these words while my head was trying desperately to move on to something neutral, something that didn’t keep reminding me that he had a life before that night. A life that I had played no part in.
He told me.
‘It must have been a terrible time for you,’ I said. ‘I’m so sorry that you had to go through that.’
But I’m still here. I’m always here for you. I’m your mum.
My heart was once again breaking as I watched this young man cry. Crying for the woman who had taken my place all those years ago. The woman he knew as his mum.
After he had told me of her death, he wanted to talk about me, about my life. Not about his birth, not about what had happened, but about my life. And so I told him. I told him about meeting and marrying Daniel, about the book I had written, about my pets. I sensed that tonight was not the right time to talk about his sisters, his birth and his adoption. That was fine with me. I wanted this to be a time for us.
At the end of an evening that was, in fact, quite long but seemed so short, I took him back to the station. Although it was late and dark, I still had the roof down on my little convertible car.
He stood up in the car, towering above me, and said, ‘Thanks for coming, thanks for seeing me. Can we do this again some time?’
Of course we could, of course we will, I told him, and he said goodnight and made his way into the railway station.
I wanted to scream out for him to come back and we would go home together, but I didn’t. I was seeing him and that had to be enough. I didn’t want to spoil anything.
We met on our own once more and then he asked to meet his sisters. It was arranged that he would come to our house and Lucy insisted on going to meet him at the station. I watched them walking up the road hand in hand, very slowly, deep in conversation, and my heart lurched at such a wonderful, unbelievable sight. The daughter who was becoming my best friend and the son who had been lost from our lives were walking along as though it was the most natural thing in the world.
That evening was strange. The atmosphere in the room was almost dreamlike. At first Melissa didn’t say a word. I could see tears in her eyes, but she didn’t say anything. Lucy and Jack were already very relaxed in each other’s company. We talked about their childhoods, their hobbies. There were a few funny moments to recall and eventually everyone was talking freely. At the end of this visit, Jack asked to talk to me on his own.
‘I’m so glad you let me meet them,’ he said, slightly tearful. ‘I’ve always wondered if I had any brothers or sisters. I was never told.’
Why on earth hadn’t he been told, I wondered?
‘I knew nothing, nothing about you, why I wasn’t able to stay with you or anything. Just that you didn’t want me.’ He was looking at the floor.
Didn’t want you? How could they have said that? How dare they?
‘Did you get the poem I wrote?’ I asked, not wanting to hear the answer. ‘And the elephant from your pram? Did they give you the clothes I bought for you to go to them in?’ My voice was getting louder, perhaps a bit hysterical. ‘You must have had those? They promised.’
I knew before he shook his head. They hadn’t.
This news felt like a real betrayal. The one thing that had kept me sane after the awful time when he was taken away from me had been the promise they made to me. Now, I found they had betrayed me. Betrayed Jack. He had grown up thinking I hadn’t wanted him. That I didn’t love him.
‘I think we need some time together so that I can explain everything,’ I said softly. ‘So that I can tell you how it really was.’
And then I said it. Said the one thing that I had wanted him to know since the very day I had given him life.
‘I have always loved you. I loved you even before you were born. I have always regretted the day I lost you and will regret it until the day I die.’
This beautiful young man leaned forward and took me in his arms.
That’s when I cried.
‘It’s OK,’ he said, ‘it’s OK. I’m here now and I will always be here for you.’
I couldn’t take in what he was saying. I should have just let him continue and to hell with anyone else. Promises? What promises? Did they keep theirs to me? No. I should have just let him carry on. But I am my own worst enemy.
‘What about your dad?’ I asked. ‘He doesn’t want you seeing me, does he?’
‘Blood’s thicker than water. You’re my mum,’ was all he said.
That’s all I heard. I was his mum.
After that evening I allowed myself to hope that his dad would be OK with us staying in touch. After all, I was no threat to him. All I wanted was to get to know my son.
We spent more time together. I gave him the poem that he should have had whilst growing up and I told him my side of what had happened when he was a baby. I was careful not to malign his adoptive parents. I thought he understood. I thought we were OK.
This went on for about a year. He rang now and again, even asking for ‘Mum’ when my husband answered. This was joy to my ears. But after a while I realised that I had become a secret. He hadn’t told his father about me. For all he knew, we had only met once. I should have left it at that. I should have been satisfied with what I had. But I wasn’t. My life had been haunted by secrets, and very few of them were good. When I asked Jack about it he said it was the only way he could keep seeing me, ringing me. His father had forbidden him to have contact with any of us and my son had agreed.
I suppose I thought at that time that I deserved all of this. I had let my son down when he was a baby, so I deserved it. We kept in touch for a while and then he just stayed away. No visits. No phone calls, nothing.
Melissa still saw him, and I was pleased for her, but he had no contact with Lucy. I suppose because she was still living with me, this would have been too difficult, but I was pleased for Melissa. Jealous, yes, but pleased for them both. A few years went by and thoughts of this young man, my son, out there having a life without me, made things worse for me. When I thought about the baby that had been taken from me, those thoughts were painful enough. But now that I knew Jack and could picture him, this was much worse.
He married and went on to have a child, a baby girl, my grandchild. A child I could never know. It felt that I was being punished for letting him go all those years before. I hadn’t had a choice but I wondered how much he had believed of what I had told him.
I should have left it there. I met him, I loved him, I lost him again. I should have left it.
But I didn’t.
One day, a year after I had heard about his daughter, I rang his home. His wife answered. She said she understood why I had rung but wasn’t sure if he would speak to me. Jack’s father had found out about us and he had again forbidden his son, my son, from contacting me. This wasn’t enough for me. I had to speak to him. I was still hoping that as God had listened and I had seen my son again, didn’t he owe it to me to let me make it
right? Would he really have allowed us to meet just to take this away from me again? Hadn’t I suffered enough?
I was only thinking of myself at that time. I desperately needed to make things better. I wasn’t thinking of anyone else, so perhaps I deserved what happened next.
His wife promised to ask him to ring me and at 3.30 that afternoon the phone rang. I was almost tempted not to answer because then I wouldn’t have to know what he was going to say.
‘Is that you, Cassie?’ he asked in a voice I hadn’t heard before.
Why not ‘Mum’? ‘Yes, it’s me. Are you OK?’ I croaked down the receiver. ‘Did you get my message?’ Of course he had; that’s why he was ringing.
‘It’s difficult,’ he said. ‘I don’t know how to say this.’
‘You know you can tell me anything,’ I whispered, while thinking please don’t say it. Don’t say the words that will mean goodbye.
‘You know it’s always been difficult with my dad and you. I had to make a choice and I have grown up knowing him and not knowing you.’
I didn’t speak, I couldn’t speak.
He went on calmly. ‘There’s no room in my life for you or your daughters.’
By this time I had started to blubber down the phone. ‘Don’t say that, you can’t say that. I’m your mum,’ I cried, not sure he could understand me through the tears and sobs.
‘Look,’ he said, as though he were talking about the price of bread, ‘I don’t need you. Everything I need is in my life now. The past has to stay where it belongs. In the past.’
I was a wreck: crying, sobbing, begging him to think again. I don’t know what I expected. Perhaps I thought that his saying about blood being thicker than water would come into his mind and he would stop. Stop this awful conversation that was to leave me broken. Again.
But he didn’t.
His voice became firmer; he was adamant that this would be the last conversation that we would have. He had made his choice. He would keep his promise to his dad. He wouldn’t see me again.
He put the phone down.
I was on the floor, crying the tears that I had held on to for many years. Tears for the loss of my baby and tears that I had held onto since I met Jack again. That’s where Daniel found me.
I blamed myself. I was so afraid of making a mistake, so wanting to get it right, that I got it wrong. I should have forgotten everyone but the two of us. I should have followed my heart. At that first meeting, when Jack asked me to take him home with him, I should have done it. At the second meeting, when he came out of the station, I should have run up and taken him in my arms. I shouldn’t have honoured my promise to his dad. My beloved son, whom I lost so many years before, must have felt rejected: totally rejected, in his eyes, for a second time. I should have been true to my feelings and showered him with all the love I felt, instead of holding back and waiting to see what he wanted. I blamed myself, just as I had always taken the blame for everything in my life. Somehow it must be my fault. I understood and accepted that he was loyal to his dad,
but I could have handled the whole reunion so much better than I did. I wish with all my heart that I had.
Melissa said Jack had told her that he never really understood why I hadn’t kept him when he was a baby. I think he blamed me, found it hard to forgive me. She didn’t think he really understood any of it. And now I had lost him again.
It took a long time for me to accept what had happened. I took a lot longer to come back from this pain, this hurt. But come back I did. Eventually.
When the pain got less, I carried on my life with my husband and daughters. I think I was still growing, gaining my strength, learning about myself. I was happy, yes. I suppose I thought I could have been happier with Jack in my life, but I will never know.
Acceptance of Jack’s choice eventually came and I was happy. I loved my job and enjoyed my life. My marriage was wonderful, Daniel was wonderful and Lucy had become my best friend. Melissa had moved away and had her own life by this time, but we were still close.
Why did I ever think that this calm, comfortable period would last? Yes, I had changed and I was stronger than I had ever been in my life. After the last hurt, I began to think that nothing could ever hurt me again. But I was wrong. Oh so wrong. My past was about to come back and cause me more pain that I had thought possible. Pain that would bring everything out in the open, for all the world to see.
And this time I told!
I
heard that Gwen, Uncle Bill’s wife, was in a rest home and decided to visit her. This lady had been kind to me in the past and I now realised that she needn’t have been. I had met her a few years before in the shopping centre where we lived and she had seemed so pleased to see me that I decided to contact her and say I was sorry for the pain she endured at the hands of my mum and Bill. I wanted it all brought out into the open at last.
When I arrived at the home, I was told that she had dementia and wouldn’t know who I was, but that was OK. It wasn’t important. In fact, it might be for the best. She was asleep when I got to her bedside. She was tiny and frail, but she looked at peace. I couldn’t help thinking about how hard it must have been for her when I was born and she had been told I was her husband’s child. Although I knew she couldn’t hear me, I sat down and whispered how sorry I was for all the pain that my mother had caused her. Then I left, comforted by the fact I had made my peace.
A couple of years later when I saw the notice in the local paper saying that she had died, I wanted to go to her funeral. I didn’t want to upset anyone, but I just wanted to be there.
On the day of the funeral, I arrived just before the service started. In my naïvety, I believed that if I went in at the back of the crematorium chapel I could quietly slip away through that same door, before the mourners came out. Stupid me. I forgot that, because of the steady flow of services, once in the chapel, the only way out was through the other door, at the front. That meant following the family mourners and friends out into the memorial gardens.
A few months earlier we had moved to a new house and Lucy had changed schools. One day she brought home a new friend called Anita and we started talking about the area we lived in, then I asked her last name. I couldn’t believe what she replied. Her surname was a very unusual one, the name that had destroyed my childhood, the surname of my abuser. His name.
Uncle Bill had had four sons, one of them Steve, the boy I had fallen in love with at the age of seventeen. This could be Steve’s daughter.
I was careful not to show how shocked I was at the revelation as I asked the name of her dad. I hope the relief didn’t show when she named one of Steve’s younger brothers. Still, it meant that Anita was related to us. And Gwen, Uncle Bill’s wife, was her grandmother.
I went to the funeral of this new friend’s grandmother, my godmother. I don’t know why I thought I could get away without
being seen. When the service was over, I had no choice but to follow the mourners, the family and friends, my half-brothers, out into the gardens. I didn’t want to look for Steve, the young love of my life, I didn’t want to. But I did. I recognised the two older boys because one looked just like his father, and I shivered with memories.