A Proper Family Christmas (13 page)

It hadn’t worked. Not so far.

Jacqui didn’t stay in touch with the other girls from the mother and baby home. It wasn’t like boarding school. It wasn’t even like borstal. It had been an experience utterly without levity and joy. None of the girls wanted to remember their time there. Even Jacqui tried to narrow down her memories of those six weeks to the sight of her baby’s face. But Jacqui had seen, years later, a woman she thought she remembered, talking about her successful reunion in a newsletter from NORCAP, the society that helped bring families affected by adoption together. That gave her hope again. But then she read about reunions that didn’t work. And even NORCAP didn’t last, folding in 2013.

From hope to despair, from despair to hope. Jacqui was somewhere in the middle when she got home from celebrating her sixtieth in Lanzarote.

While Dave unloaded their luggage from the back of the car, Jacqui opened the front door. It didn’t open smoothly. A small landslide of post had built up behind the door. Ordinarily, Ronnie would have been looking after the house, making sure no one knew they were away. Jacqui scooped up the post. Bills, bills. The bills kept coming, even on your sixtieth birthday. Fortunately, there were some cards too. Jacqui opened those as she pottered about the kitchen, waiting for the kettle to boil. She laughed at a rude card from one of her cousins. Way too rude to be put on display now that Jack seemed able to read just about everything.

Then she came to an envelope addressed in handwriting she didn’t recognise. She tucked her thumb under the edge of the flap and eased it open. Inside was a single sheet of A4. She pulled it out. At the sight of the address at the top, Jacqui’s heart almost stopped. It was from one of the adoption reunion registers they’d signed up to so long ago. Jacqui held the letter to her chest.

‘Dave,’ she called him into the kitchen. ‘Dave, quick. I think it’s happened.’

They sat opposite each other at the kitchen table, the letter between them in a circle of light. Jacqui couldn’t look at it. Dave did the honours, though his hands were shaking as he picked it up and started to read.

‘It’s about Daisy,’ he confirmed. He reached across the table to take his wife’s hand. ‘Our baby girl has decided she’d like to meet us.’

Jacqui almost didn’t want to believe it. She had been disappointed so many times before.

‘Read it out, Dave. I can’t stand it!’

‘Dear Jacqui Benson,’ Dave began, ‘I am writing to you on behalf of my client, Annabel B, who has reason to believe that she may be your daughter. She was born and named Daisy on the eleventh of September nineteen seventy-one—’

Jacqui snatched back the letter and waved it above her head.

‘Our baby’s coming back!’

Ronnie and her family had only just got into the house when Jacqui called. Her parents were on the same flight but Ronnie’s family had had a slightly longer drive home, made longer still by a detour via McDonald’s because Jack and Sophie were threatening meltdown if they didn’t get fed soon and there would be nothing in the fridge back at the house. Seeing the name on her mobile screen, Ronnie almost let her mother go through to voicemail – she was knackered and all she wanted was to put the kettle on – but since they had just returned from a holiday at her mother’s expense, Ronnie thought the least she could do was talk to her.

‘Missing us already, Mum?’ she asked.

‘Oh Ronnie!’

Jacqui had been crying. Ronnie could tell at once.

‘Can you come over, love? Something’s happened.’

‘What? What is it? Have you been burgled?’

‘No. Not that sort of something.’

‘Then what?’

‘I want to tell you face to face, love.’

‘I’ll be right there,’ said Ronnie.

Ronnie was true to her word. She was at her parents’ house within half an hour, having left Mark, Sophie and Jack to do the holiday unpacking and put the first of many washes on.

When Ronnie arrived, her parents were both in the kitchen. They’d settled Granddad Bill into his favourite chair but everything else remained undone. Their suitcases were still by the front door. Jacqui was still wearing the mac she’d put on as they left the airport. It was almost ten degrees cooler in the Midlands than it had been when they left Lanzarote that morning.

Ronnie was relieved to see that neither of her parents was obviously ill and though she was red-eyed through crying, Jacqui was also slightly manic in a happy way. Suspiciously happy. She gave Ronnie an effusive hug.

‘Come in, come in,’ she said. ‘Sit down.’

Dave put a mug of tea made exactly how Ronnie liked it on the table in front of her.

‘What’s going on?’ Ronnie asked.

‘You’ll never guess!’

‘I’m not even going to try,’ Ronnie said.

Jacqui looked at Dave. He nodded to signal that she should carry on.

‘Your big sister has written to me!’

‘What?’

‘Her name’s not Daisy any more.’

Jacqui put the letter on the table.

‘It’s Annabel. Can you believe it? Very posh, eh? Look! Look at this.’

Now it was Ronnie’s turn to cry. She wasn’t sure why. The letter that her parents showed her wasn’t exactly emotive. And it wasn’t actually from this ‘Annabel B’ herself anyway but from an agency, which acted on behalf of adopted people seeking their birth families. It was very formal. A standard letter, Ronnie guessed. Someone had just filled in the personal details. The names, dates and addresses.

‘So, are you going to say “yes”? Are you going to see her?’ Ronnie asked.

‘Of course we are!’ Jacqui and Dave chimed.

‘Are you excited, love?’ Jacqui asked. ‘You’re going to get to meet your big sister at last.’

Ronnie nodded, though truth be told she wasn’t yet sure what she felt.

‘Well, this is a turn-up for the books,’ she said.

The youngest of the Benson sisters, Chelsea, had to hear everything over the phone the following day as she was returning from the Canaries a day later than the rest of her family. Jacqui tried calling her while she was still on the island, but Chelsea didn’t pick up, figuring that it would be cheaper to call when she got to Gatwick. Her mother or sister would text if there was a real emergency going on.

So Gatwick was where Chelsea heard the news. She was standing by the luggage carousel, waiting (and praying) for her bag to appear. She decided it would be a good time to call her parents. She soon wished she’d waited until she was safely at home.

It was impossible to give Jacqui’s news the attention it deserved while simultaneously trying to pull luggage off the conveyor belt. In the end, Chelsea had to let her bag go round eight times while her mother talked and talked and talked. The letter from the intermediary was read out several times. It wasn’t a long letter, thank goodness, or terribly personal, but still, Jacqui wanted Chelsea to give her view on it in as great a detail as Chelsea had once critiqued passages of Thomas Hardy for her English A level. There wasn’t much to say but Chelsea agreed that it was ‘strange’ that the baby called Daisy she had never known was now a woman called Annabel that she didn’t know either.

But Chelsea knew as well as Ronnie did that this was an important moment for the whole Benson family.

As soon as she got off the phone to her mother, Chelsea noticed she had missed three calls from her sister. She duly called Ronnie back. Ronnie, like their mother,
really
wanted to talk.

Chelsea stuck in her earpiece so that she could walk to the Gatwick Express platform and talk at the same time. It was awkward, trying to concentrate while negotiating her way out of the airport, but she couldn’t just tell Ronnie she’d call her back later. Not when such a big thing was going on. Especially not when the sisters had so recently patched up their friendship after two years when they didn’t speak to one another at all.

‘Are you OK?’ asked Chelsea. ‘You don’t seem very happy.’

‘I’m not sure that I am.’

‘But Mum’s happy about it. And Dad.’

‘They just can’t believe she’s got in touch. Mum’s completely blind to the possibility that it could all go wrong when they actually meet her. What if she’s not a nice person?’

‘She’s our flesh and blood. How could she not be nice?’

Ronnie snorted.

‘You’re just upset you’re going to be moving down the pecking order. You won’t be the eldest sister any more,’ Chelsea teased. ‘At least I’ll always be the youngest.’

‘Chelsea, I know you’re trying to make light of it but it really isn’t funny. You’ve got to come up here as soon as you can. This weekend. I want to tell Mum to take things slowly and I want you to be here to back me up.’

‘Do you think she should take things slowly?’

‘Yes, I do.’

‘It’s already been forty-odd years, Ron.’

‘Then a couple more months won’t matter. You’ve got to help me persuade her to give the consequences some more thought.’

‘I’m sure it’s going to be OK,’ said Chelsea as she scanned the departures board for the next train to Victoria.

‘I wish I could be so optimistic. I’ve got a really bad feeling about it. I want them to take their time.’

‘Don’t worry about it,’ said Chelsea. ‘There’s a long way to go between getting the first letter and actually getting to meet her, I’m sure. Put it to the back of your mind. You’ve got a wedding to think about.’

‘I have, haven’t I,’ said Ronnie. After sixteen years, Mark had proposed to Ronnie on the last day of their family holiday. Chelsea could tell that the change in subject pleased her sister. ‘Are you going to be my bridesmaid?’

‘I thought you’d never ask,’ said Chelsea. ‘But the answer’s “no”.’

‘You cow. I’d let you choose your own dress. We can have a look online when you’re up this weekend.’

‘Who says I’m coming up this weekend? I didn’t agree to that.’

‘Chelsea, you’ve got to. I can’t cope with Mum and Dad and all this Daisy stuff on my own. This is going to affect you as much as it affects me. You’ve got to get involved. Saturday. You can stay at my house.’

‘Well …’

‘Don’t tell me you’ve got something more important on?’

As a matter of fact, there was something rather important to Chelsea on the horizon. The real reason she wasn’t terribly excited about having to spend the following weekend in Coventry was because she already had tentative plans for the Saturday night. Adam, the widowed father who had been something of a holiday fling for Chelsea, had asked if he could see her when they were back in London. Chelsea was very keen to see if the connection they’d made in Lanzarote would have survived the flight home.

But how could she tell that to Ronnie? How could she admit that she had any higher priority than finding out all about her new big sister?

There were other things that Chelsea had hoped to spend some time on too. She was keen to make an appointment to see her GP to talk about the possibility of getting some counselling. For years, Chelsea had been in denial about a serious problem. She was bulimic. She had long been too afraid to admit it, telling herself that because she didn’t throw up
every
day and sometimes went months without making herself sick, the situation was under her control. But recently she had been purging again and, because they’d shared a room in Lanzarote, her lovely six-year-old nephew Jack had noticed and expressed his concern.

Chelsea didn’t even try to explain but she promised Jack that she would see the doctor as soon as she got home. That was one promise she intended to keep. When she got back to her flat, she fired up her laptop before she unpacked, found the number for her local GP surgery and called.

As she finally set about unpacking her suitcase, Chelsea had the feeling that her life was about to change. She was ready to accept help with her eating disorder. She was soon to meet her oldest sister. And she had a date. That was most promising of all. Adam texted to say that he and his daughter were safely back at their house in south London.

With her unpacking finished, Chelsea made a cup of tea and sat down to call her mum again. She’d promised Ronnie some backup when it came to telling Jacqui to take her time. She could at least express her concerns over the phone.

‘I’ve been thinking we should have a family conference before you respond to that letter, Mum.’

‘Too late,’ said Jacqui, full of excitement. ‘We already have.’

In the kitchen of the Great House in Little Bissingden, Annabel Buchanan was sitting on a stool, looking out on to the rain-soaked lawn. In her hand she held the letter she had subconsciously been expecting her entire life. Now she had it, she didn’t know what on earth she should do.

She folded it back into the envelope. Not knowing that the Bensons were on holiday when the intermediary’s letter arrived, Annabel, Richard and Izzy had been on tenterhooks for a week. She would have to put her husband and daughter out of their misery and tell them the letter had come, but not yet. She needed to think about it alone for a moment. Because what was inside that envelope had already made just the tiniest tear in the fabric of who she was.

Dear Daisy
, the letter began. Daisy! Even though she had let them know her name was Annabel.
I suppose I should call you Annabel …
Too right, Annabel thought.

It was frustrating and strangely belittling. It almost stopped her from being able to read on.

I can’t tell you how pleased your dad and me were to get back from holiday and find your letter on the doormat. It was more than I ever could have wished for. It was the best birthday present ever. I just had my sixtieth birthday, you see. That was why we were in Lanzarote.

I have thought about you every single day since they took you from my arms. I have never stopped wondering what became of you. I know you must have been wondering what happened that I had to give you away – something for which I have never forgiven myself. It doesn’t seem like much of an excuse now, but your dad and me were just teenagers and we were broken up when I found out I was pregnant. My parents told me that the best thing to do was have you adopted and without their support, I couldn’t afford to give you a proper life on my own.