The Forgotten Sister Page 7

  ‘So, she was a lazy cow? They don’t take your kids away just because you aren’t keeping up with the hoovering. Why couldn’t she cope? What was wrong with her?’ Cassie could hear her voice vibrating with emotion, but she was powerless to rein it in. Neither of her parents spoke for a few seconds, but Cassie caught Tom glance at Erin and realised that having her sister present was inhibiting their responses. They were giving her the PG-rated version, to save Erin’s feelings. A sharp tine of frustration pushed into Cassie’s skin. ‘Tell me! I have a right to know. If you don’t want Erin hearing this, then we can go in the other room.’

  Erin pushed her chair back and stood up. ‘No. I’ll go. I’ll be upstairs.’ She walked out of the room, her face averted so that they couldn’t see her expression. The sense of betrayal burnt in her chest. No one tried to stop her leaving. She pulled the door shut behind her, quietly, already forgotten.

  Grace very slowly and self-consciously placed her hand on the table, the upturned palm only a few centimetres away from Cassie’s closed fist. It was a gesture of affection. Cassie ignored it. Grace took a breath. ‘Okay.’ She drew her hand back onto her lap. ‘All we can tell you is what we were told at the time. It isn’t much.’ There was another pause. ‘Your birth mum apparently came from quite a chaotic background herself. Her family was known to Social Services. She did well, comparatively, for a while. She finished school, got a job, sorted out somewhere to live, away from her parents and her brothers, and was doing okay. But after a series of casual jobs she ended up unemployed. She started having money troubles, rent arrears, payday loans and suchlike. That’s when she had her first…’ Cassie didn’t see Tom start, it was so slight a movement, ‘brush with the authorities. She got caught shoplifting. There was some sort of altercation with a security guard at a supermarket. The police were called. The shop wanted to press charges. That triggered Social Services getting more involved. They helped her, gave her some support, sorted out some of her debts. They apparently kept her on their radar for a while. It all settled down. She had you a few years later. She wasn’t on anyone’s list any more. No one thought to check how she was coping. She was just another single mum – one of thousands. Then one day someone reported her, a neighbour, I think it was. They said they had some concerns about what was going on in the house where she was living. Someone visited to check up on her, and on you. She was deemed to be coping. A few more months went by. By then there’d been a number of disturbances at her address. The police got involved. They brought in Social Services, again. That’s when the decision was made to remove you.’

  Suddenly Tom spoke up, a rush of words. ‘Apparently there were people coming and going through the house, at all hours. They found drugs. It sounded like things had spiralled completely out of control. She wasn’t looking after you, protecting you as she should have done. You were at risk. Probably had been for a while.’ He drew breath. ‘I’m sorry, I know it’s upsetting, but they did the right thing taking you out of there.’

  Grace reached out and took Cassie’s hand. ‘Cassie, I know it’s hard, but you mustn’t think badly of her. She had a poor start in life. I don’t think it was wilful neglect. I think she lost control of what was going on. It sounded like people preyed on her vulnerability. And I think she knew, deep down – when you were taken away – that it was for the best. She gave her blessing to you being adopted. She never opposed it. Many of them do. Changing their minds months, even years, later. We were warned about it. We were told not to think of you as ours until the court made the final ruling. But she didn’t object to your adoption. Not once. If you think about it, that’s the most selfless thing anyone can do – put someone else’s happiness in front of their own. I believe she wanted you to have the kind of life she’d never had, and couldn’t give you.’

  ‘Or maybe she was just glad to get rid of me.’

  Grace was about to argue the point, but Tom cut her off. ‘It’s possible, Cassie, but either way, the outcome was a good one. Wasn’t it? Without her, you’d never have been our daughter. We will always be grateful to her for that.’

  Cassie suddenly felt tired. Bone-weary. ‘Okay. Thank you for being honest with me.’ She saw them both relax, ever so slightly. ‘Do you know where she is now?’ The tension returned to their faces.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Okay.’ She hauled herself out of her chair.

  It was enough, for now.

  Chapter 12

  GRACE AND Tom didn’t speak about their conversation with Cassie until late that night, when they felt sure both girls were asleep. ‘Do you think that’s the end of it?’ Grace rubbed moisturiser into her elbows, smoothing the cream into her skin in small circles.

  ‘God knows. Something must have set her off. She’s always been so disinterested before. At least it explains why she’s been so quiet this past fortnight. She must have been stewing about asking us. She’ll feel better, now we’ve spoken about it.’

  Grace looked at her husband. ‘But we hardly told her the whole truth.’

  ‘No. And we mustn’t. We agreed.’

  ‘It feels wrong,’ Grace said.

  ‘What good can telling her do? Did you see her face when we were talking? She hated hearing what sort of background she very nearly grew up in. And she is happy – normally. I think it’ll settle down. I just wish she’d say what set her off thinking about it.’ Tom pulled a fresh T-shirt over his head. ‘She hasn’t said anything to you, has she?’

  Grace screwed the lid back on the tub of cream and shook her head. ‘No.’

  ‘Let’s wait and see then. Keep an eye on her. Let her ask anything else she wants to.’ Tom got into bed, ‘But let’s not encourage it, either.’ He pummelled his pillow into a better position behind his head.

  Grace got into bed beside her husband, her expression clouded with anxiety. Tom clicked off the light. They lay side-by-side, reliving their shared but very personal memories of the long, hard path they’d had to travel to become a family, and the decisions they’d had to make along the way – decisions that, at the time, they truly believed were in Cassie’s best interests, and their own.

  It began in earnest when they put their names down on a sheet of paper on a table in an echoey room in the Town Hall at an ‘Introduction to Adoption’ session. That was the day they first met Estelle, Kev and Lynne, Di and Mario, Natasha and Sanjuy, Emma and her morose partner whose name no one could ever remember and, of course, the unforgettably irritating Nina and Lewis. People with whom – despite the long hours of mutual soul-baring and the emotional protestations of staying friends for ever – they had long since lost touch. A random group forced together by their willingness to put themselves through the arduous, invasive screening process, just to have the slim chance of adopting some else’s child.

  The training sessions took place every other Tuesday, between 7 p.m. and 9 p.m. A strict, compulsory schedule, which was blocked out on all their calendars months in advance. People rarely missed a meeting; in fact most of them arrived early, having done whatever preparation had been asked of them. It was important to demonstrate wholehearted commitment at every turn. Only Nina and Lewis seemed indifferent to the rules. They often arrived late, unrepentant and ill-prepared because they considered themselves special. In one very significant respect they were. They already had a child; a foster daughter, little Gwen, who came to them as a tiny dot with a mop of dark hair at two days old. A child who had been filling their lives with joy ever since. The group, secretly, jealously, collectively resented Nina and Lewis with a passion.

  The night of the drawing exercise was no exception.

  Everyone was there, settled in their usual places, ready to get going, but Nina and Lewis were running late – again – due to some incident involving Gwen and Nina’s best nail polish. Tom sat checking his emails, trying to distract himself from his rising frustration with the whole painful, painstaking process. Staring at his phone had the additional benefit of allowing him to avoid conversation wit
h the other attendees. The room’s layout, with its ominously arranged chairs, was designed to encourage interaction. It was yet another aspect of the sessions that made Tom feel tense. He hated the enforced camaraderie, the sharing, the empathy, the knowing, sympathetic smiles. In reality they had nothing in common, except one thing – their failure to conceive a child.

  Grace felt differently. She sat on Tom’s left, chatting happily to Estelle, the lone female in their cohort. The lone black female. The lone black, lesbian female. A woman with a steel spine beneath her calm, gentle demeanour. How she was coping with the process on her own, Tom didn’t know. He remembered Estelle walking up to the desk at the first meeting in the Town Hall and adding her solitary name to the growing list of couples, looking as relaxed and unconcerned as if she was strolling across a park on a sunny day, with twenty-four pairs of eyes watching, judging, sizing her up. It was a first taste of the scrutiny that was to become a feature of all their lives.

  Tom recognised that this access to the innermost truths of other people’s souls should have engendered empathy in him – surely that would have been the normal reaction? They were all in the same boat, after all, chasing the same dream: a child to love. That it didn’t, worried him. At times, especially when the group was together doing one of the endless self-examination exercises, he worried that this lack of connection pointed to some emotional flaw in his make-up. Maybe there just wasn’t enough kindness in him to care properly about other people’s feelings. If that were true, what sort of father would he make for a child who wasn’t his own? That was the problem with these bloody sessions, they made you second-guess yourself – about everything.

  At last Nina and Lewis arrived and they were good to go. Lee, the course leader, called them to order. Matching pairs – more couple’s work. Great! Grace immediately asked Estelle to join them, thereby avoiding the usual awkwardness that occurred when they did partnered exercises. Large sheets of paper and startlingly childish packs of felt-tip pens were passed to each group, then Lee briefed them. ‘What I want us to spend this evening focusing on is the future.’ He left a slight pause. ‘I want you to think about the impact that a child coming into your lives will have. A real flesh-and-blood child. It may feel uncomfortable at first, but I want you to articulate your innermost hopes and dreams about that child. This applies equally to you guys.’ This was aimed at a questioning Nina and Lewis. ‘I want you to talk openly, be honest, put it all down: the ideal age, gender, personality traits, what they will grow up to be. Think about your own lives, your interests, your personalities – what will this child be coming into? What will they have to be like, to fit in?’ He glanced at his watch. ‘Shall we say thirty minutes, then we’ll share?’ He turned away from the group and started talking to Steph, the other course moderator.

  Silence.

  Lee glanced up. ‘Oh, come on, guys, how many times have we been through stuff like this in the past few months? The same rules apply: no judgement, no interrupting, no wrong answers, no fudging.’

  And so, as commanded, each little huddle turned in on itself and set about disembowelling another soft, vulnerable part of their lives.

  Tom, Grace and Estelle were sitting with Kev and Lynne, the oldest couple in the group. Kev, who seemed to dislike the soul-searching as much as Tom, thankfully volunteered to go first, wanting, as always, to get his contribution over with. ‘As you guys already know, we want a boy.’ Lynne had already drawn a neat outline of a little boy on the sheet of paper, as Kev spoke she added shorts, curly hair and a big smile. ‘Young, ideally – maybe up to three or four, at a pinch. We’re used to boys. We’ve got lots of nephews. We seem to breed boys in our family.’ Lynne lowered her head over the sheet and kept on adding to her drawing. ‘We wouldn’t really mind, but I wouldn’t have thought they’d offer us a coloured kiddie.’ Tom, Grace and Estelle made no comment. ‘We’d want a child who likes the outdoors. A robust, healthy type. A lad who’d want to come fishing with me, play football, that sort of thing.’

  Lynne finally looked up. ‘And I’d teach him to cook. He’s not gonna be just a mini-Kev. I can at least move evolution on a tiny bit.’ Kev smiled at his wife.

  Estelle’s wish list was surprising. ‘I’d happily take a boy or a girl, I really don’t mind, but not a baby. I can’t see me doing the baby-thing very well. I wouldn’t be patient enough.’ Grace’s face gave away her thoughts. Estelle seemed to be one of the calmest people on the course. ‘No, seriously,’ she continued, ‘I don’t want a baby. Besides…’ she hesitated, but only slightly, ‘with a child, you’d know for certain if everything was all right – developmentally, I mean. I’d worry with a baby. You just can’t know what damage has been done before they come to you.’ Estelle continued unabashed, leaving the cold draught of her logic to blow across them, ‘Ideally, five or six. Started school. I’ll take parental leave, of course, but I’m going to need to get back to work fairly quickly, for my sanity and for the salary. I’d love them to be chatty. A talker. Sociable. That’s what I really want: a child I can talk to…about everything, and anything. Oh, and they’re going to have to like music, if they’re going to be living in my house. How cool would it be if they turned out to be musical?’ She looked down at her piece of paper and laughed, loudly, causing the couple-huddles closest to them to look up. Estelle’s sketch was an indecipherable scatter of squiggles and lines, all intersecting and arcing across the paper. ‘I’d best not show this to Lee. He’ll think I’m certifiable.’ She smiled at Tom and Grace.

  ‘We want a girl,’ they said in unison. Again Kev, Lynne and Estelle laughed, and again the other couples glanced over, put out that fun was being had in the midst of such a serious exercise. Tom leant forward in his chair and squared the paper on his lap, ready to draw, cueing Grace up. She obliged, looking at him as she spoke, silently seeking his agreement with her version of their envisaged child, the wraith-like daughter who, until that moment, had only ever breathed in their dreams and in their whispered conversations in the dark. ‘We’d really like a baby. I know everyone says not to hold out for one, but it would be lovely if we could get…’ she stumbled, ‘… adopt a little one. It would just feel, for us…’ she added, sensitive to Estelle’s feelings, ‘better somehow. I think she’d feel more ours, if we could have her from near the beginning. She could grow up with us. She’d be her own person, obviously, but I guess she’d absorb a lot of stuff from us. We’re not that bothered about her ethnic background.’ Was this true? Grace looked at Tom and was disconcerted when he didn’t look up. ‘We’d just hope for her to be healthy…and happy. And we’d want her to grow up to be self-confident, for her to know that she was loved enough to be brave.’

  ‘And with Tom’s creative skills, hopefully,’ Lynne chipped in. He looked up, caught off-guard, having been lulled into reflection by the eloquence of Grace’s description. ‘Show them,’ Lynne prompted. He turned the paper round so that it faced Grace. They all looked.

  Tom’s sketch was of a young woman, not a child; tall, strong-featured, staring out from the page, defiant. It was Estelle who said what they were all thinking, ‘And she’s going to look just like Grace.’

  This time, when they laughed, Lee decided to call time on the exercise.

  They dragged their chairs back into the dreaded circle and prepared to share, the pictures clutched in their hands. Steph and Lee looked around the group, waiting. Steph took the lead this time. ‘Okay. Thank you for that. It was good to hear you all being so open. There are some quite amazing pictures.’ Everyone holding a piece of paper looked down. ‘Now, what I’d like you to do…’ she paused, checking that she had their attention, ‘is to take your picture – and rip it up.’ The atmosphere in the room shunted. They all looked at Steph, who stared back at them, unsmiling. ‘I’m serious, guys.’ The silent response was hostile. ‘No?’

  ‘Come on, what’s this about?’ Lewis was at least ballsy enough to say something.

  ‘I’m not joking,’ Steph responded.
‘I want you to take your pictures and tear them into tiny pieces.’ Still no one moved. Her tone was firm, but it was shot through with understanding. ‘Trust me, there is a point to this, and it’s important. We need you to look at the images you’ve drawn, and think about all the things you talked about in your groups – all your dreams and long-cherished fantasies – and you need to take that child and…let them go. You have to say goodbye, for ever, to that ideal child.’

  The mood in the room softened slightly, losing some of its sharpness, but none of its wariness.

  When Steph spoke again, it was with kindness, but also with clarity and force. ‘There is no such thing as the perfect child for your family. They do not exist.’ She stressed every word. ‘There are only children who need adopting, and your need to adopt. That’s all there is.’ Tom’s grip on his picture tightened. ‘And if you can’t accept that, then it’s very unlikely you’re ever going to make it through to the end of this process.’

  The sound of paper tearing filled the room like rain.

  And yet, despite the heartache and the frustrations, and the rigorous testing of their faith and commitment, they did make it to the end. They completed the required training modules and they passed all the background checks. They examined their motivations and they readjusted their unrealistic expectations. They prepared for, and survived the stress of, the final panel interview, and they were, eventually, unequivocally approved to adopt – one child, under five, possibly from a mixed-race background.

  They were, officially, potential parents.

  But after all that work on themselves, and their souls, and their aspirations – there was no child for them. Not in that the first heady month, when they held their breath every time the phone rang, or the second month, when Grace’s prayers were still fervent. Or any of the subsequent slow, hope-curdling months that followed. They had, of course, been told that it could take time, they would have to be patient, but the absence of any news was hard to accept, as was the sudden lack of activity. It was as if they’d become addicted to the process of applying to adopt – had, in truth, relied on it to lessen the grief of being childless. Now there was nothing they could do but wait for fate to decide. They had time and space, and deep, swirling reserves of pent-up love, but absolutely no idea what to do with themselves, because the bedroom at the back of the house, which caught the sun in the morning and was quiet in the evenings, was still empty.