A Proper Family Christmas (27 page)

‘Good news! You’re a great match for Isabella,’ said the consultant.

‘What does that mean?’ Ronnie asked.

‘It means that if you decided to go ahead and become a donor, there is a good chance that Izzy would thrive with your kidney. Isn’t it fantastic?’

Ronnie could only gasp in disbelief.

When she heard the news from Dr Devon (Ronnie had asked the consultant to make the call), Annabel danced around the kitchen, forgetting in an instant that she was dog-tired and aching on a daily basis as she entered her third trimester. Suddenly it was all worth it. Suddenly the agony of facing up to her past had come good in the most miraculous way. Ronnie was a match. Ronnie! Of all people. The Benson family member with whom Annabel felt she had the least in common turned out to be the one who could make Izzy well again. Annabel was ecstatic. With her mobile phone still in her hand, she whooped and punched the air.

But Richard was less excited.

‘Hold on,’ he said.

‘What do you mean, “hold on”? Ronnie is a match. Izzy is going to get a new kidney. Thank God.’

‘
If
Ronnie agrees to a transplant.’

‘Of course she will. This is fantastic. It could happen within a couple of months. Dr Devon foresees no compatibility issues. There’s no need for plasmapheresis. Assuming that everything goes well when Ronnie sees the psychologist, Izzy could be on the road to recovery by the New Year.’

‘Annabel, we’ve got to give Ronnie time to think about it. I think it’s quite possible that this news has come as a shock to her and to Mark.’

‘How can they be shocked? They agreed to be tested. They knew this was the possible outcome. The best one. The one everybody wanted.’

‘I don’t know. There’s a huge way to go from a blood test to letting someone have one of your organs. They said “yes” to being tested so quickly. They can’t have really thought about it that hard. And perhaps they were assuming it would be Jacqui or Dave who came up trumps.’

‘But it isn’t.’ Jacqui and Dave had both been ruled out for their high blood pressure. Just like Richard. Mark wasn’t a close enough match. ‘It’s Ronnie. We have to see them all again as soon as possible. We need to do everything we can to make this happen and soon.’

‘Perhaps we should give them a little while to digest the news first?’ Richard suggested.

‘Richard, we’re talking about our daughter’s health! When can we see them?’

Izzy’s birthday was coming up. It was the perfect opportunity to bring the two families together again without it seeming forced. Except that of course the whole thing would be planned with great precision. It wasn’t Izzy’s eighteenth – that was still a year away – but it could still be very special. Impressive.

The Twilight, one of Izzy’s favourite bands, were going to be playing at the O
₂
. Ordinarily, Izzy would have been glued to her laptop the moment the tickets went on sale, desperate for a chance to breathe the same air as her heroes. This time she hadn’t bothered. It hadn’t seemed worth it. Not when she was so ill. But the news that Ronnie was a match had given everyone a new burst of energy and now Izzy
did
want to see her heroes. Alas, the tickets were all sold out.

‘Leave it with me,’ said Richard.

There was nothing that couldn’t be solved with cold hard cash. Two days later, Richard announced that he had secured the use of a corporate box at the stadium, which meant that Izzy could take as many friends as she wanted. So long as Sophie Benson-Edwards was top of the list.

Jacqui was as delighted as Annabel to discover that Ronnie was a match. When Ronnie told her, over coffee in Jacqui’s kitchen, Jacqui hugged her middle daughter so hard, she almost squeezed the life out of her.

‘You’ll make us all so proud,’ said Jacqui. ‘You are going to do it, aren’t you?’

Ronnie nodded. Jacqui didn’t notice if it lacked enthusiasm and as soon as Ronnie left to go home and make tea for the children, Jacqui called Annabel and told her that Ronnie was ‘raring to go’.

Perhaps Annabel had only reconnected with her birth family because she was looking for a donor for Izzy, but Jacqui was sure that the dynamics were shifting. Annabel seemed to want to be a proper part of the family at last. Jacqui was starting to feel as though they really knew each other now. She was no longer hesitant about calling up to see how Izzy was getting on. Annabel always seemed pleased to speak to her on the phone. And she always asked how
everybody
was getting on. Annabel even asked after Granddad Bill. Not that there was ever very much to report where he was concerned. He lived in his chair with the TV tuned permanently to Sky Sports, occasionally taking a trip as far as the corner shop in his wheelchair if Jack was visiting and wanted to go along for the ride.

As the autumn marched on, Jacqui began to wonder whether it would be premature to invite the Buchanans to spend Christmas at her and Dave’s house. They could just about do it, if they moved Granddad Bill’s bed out of the dining room for the day and brought the table back downstairs. That could easily seat eight adults. The children could sit at the kitchen table. Jack would love that. But then Jacqui considered that Annabel had probably already made Christmas plans. With Sarah, her adoptive mum.

Most evenings, after putting Granddad Bill to bed, Jacqui went online. She’d always been a big fan of Facebook. It was a great way of keeping up with Ronnie’s children during the week. She loved to see pictures of Sophie and Jack. But now she had Annabel and Izzy to check in on as well. She had scrolled through Annabel’s photographs a hundred times, so that she almost felt as though she had been there when Izzy picked up the Latin prize at school or at Annabel’s fortieth birthday party, which had been themed around black and red. Annabel looked so beautiful in the dress she’d had made especially for the occasion. She had such elegance and style. Jacqui wasn’t sure where she’d got that from. Was it down to Sarah? Or, as Jacqui preferred to think, perhaps Dave’s insistence that his great-grandmother had fallen pregnant by a lord was the truth after all.

Now that she and Annabel had been reunited, Jacqui looked at two other sorts of sites too. She looked at a forum for people who were awaiting kidney transplants, searching for good news about live donations. She was heartened to see so many success stories. And then she looked at an adoption reunion forum.

Jacqui had lurked on the adoption forum for quite some time but it was only when Annabel came back into her life that she finally felt able to stop lurking and say something herself. She felt it was her duty to give hope to the other women – and some men – on the site, who had been waiting years for contact. There were so many sad stories. So much pain. They had to know their dreams might still come true.

Eventually Jacqui drifted into a couple of discussions about ongoing relationships between adult adoptees and their birth families. She read that the initial reunion was the easy part. Finding a way forward was harder. It was difficult to work out what the relationship should be. It couldn’t be the usual dynamic of parent and child when the ‘child’ had never been around that parent. In fact most reunions eventually broke down.

‘You have to remember,’ someone wrote, ‘that your child has had parents for the whole of the time you’ve been apart. Those people adopted your child for
life
. They’re not going to disappear and your child won’t want them to either. They are every bit as much your child’s real family as you think you are. You must respect that. You can’t try to force a closer relationship than your adult son or daughter wants.’

Patience was the key, according to those who had been through it and succeeded in forming a close bond. So Jacqui continued to sit on the urge to ask Annabel for Christmas. Though she did take a tape measure to the dining room and look online for a bigger table. Perhaps she could invite Sarah too.

With the concert tickets secured, the Buchanans set about organising Izzy’s birthday celebrations in earnest. Because the O
₂
was such a faff to get to and from, they decided in the end that they would stay overnight in the flat Richard used during the week for work. Sophie could join them there. A London sleepover.

Sophie was over the moon at Izzy’s invitation. At fifteen years old, she had never been to London before. The thought of going to the capital city, of spending the day seeing the sights (or, more accurately, hitting the shops) and an evening at the O
₂
watching her new favourite band, The Twilight, was more than she could possibly have hoped for. And Izzy’s parents were paying for everything.

‘We’re going to be in a box at the O
₂
,’ Izzy explained. ‘One of Dad’s clients got the tickets. We might even be able to go backstage. Dad’s working on it.’

It just got better and better.

Sophie shared her excitement with Izzy online.

‘I can’t believe you invited me.’

‘Why wouldn’t I?’ Izzy asked. ‘You’re my friend.’

With the knowledge that she was going to London to take part in such an exclusive event, Sophie walked a little taller at school. She no longer cared about Harrison and Skyler and their small-town ambitions. The gossip they indulged in seemed pathetic. Sophie was on a different trajectory now.

The only problem was what to wear.

Sophie took as many hours at the bakery as she could outside school but she was on the minimum wage and unless she found a black market for damaged buns, she could think of no other way to increase her income in time to smarten up her look ready to meet Izzy’s other friends, the ones who had been at the festival where Izzy took the pills. That was something Sophie’s parents still didn’t know about – the real reason for Izzy’s kidney failure. The secret knowledge had brought Izzy and Sophie even closer. Sophie had promised never to tell.

When it came to impressing those private-school girls, however, it was Auntie Chelsea who came to the rescue. It was part of the plan that Chelsea would meet up with Sophie and the Buchanans while they were all in London. Chelsea promised Sophie that she could have her birthday present early if she liked. Maybe they should have a quick look in the gigantic Topshop at Oxford Circus for a start?

Sophie was delighted. London, a gig at the O
₂
and shopping. As far as she was concerned, Annabel’s reconnection with the Benson family was the best thing that had happened to them in a long time.

The Buchanans picked Sophie up in Coventry and drove down to London in the Porsche, leaving Leander back at Great House with Sarah. They dropped the car off outside Richard’s Fulham pied-à-terre and caught a taxi into town where they met Chelsea at Bond Street. They would go to a restaurant nearby before hitting the shops for a while. Sophie had been excited enough by the thought of Topshop. The thought of going to Selfridges was enough to blow her mind. It was a teenage girl’s equivalent of Disneyland.

Meanwhile, Chelsea welcomed the opportunity to spend time with Annabel without having Ronnie there as well. Chelsea had wondered what it would have been like had the three women grown up together. Ronnie and Chelsea had been close as children. Would she have been close to Annabel too? From what little she knew of her long-lost sister, Chelsea was beginning to think they had quite a bit in common. While Ronnie was hot-headed and quick to take offence, Chelsea was better able to sit on her feelings. She sensed that Annabel was the same. More measured. Perhaps more anxious too, though maybe that was just because of the current circumstances. Who wouldn’t be anxious when their child was so unwell?

As it turned out, Chelsea and Annabel did have plenty in common and without Ronnie and Jacqui to monopolise the conversation, they were soon chatting like old friends. Away from Ronnie in particular, Annabel seemed much more relaxed and open.

Chelsea thought that perhaps she had some understanding of how Annabel must feel when talking to their middle sister. Chelsea herself often toned down tales of her own life for fear of being called hoity-toity or a snob. Though Ronnie was kind at heart and would give you the shirt off her back if you needed it – as demonstrated in her decision to give Izzy a kidney – she could get quite nasty if she thought she was somehow being left behind by the conversation or patronised. But Chelsea and Annabel had none of those worries when they talked to each other. They could talk about London to their hearts’ content without fear of leaving anyone out or appearing to be too exclusive. They could talk about restaurants and shops they both liked visiting. Chelsea could talk about her work. Annabel even seemed slightly in awe of Chelsea’s job at the magazine.

‘It’s five per cent glamour and ninety-five per cent spellcheck,’ Chelsea assured her.

‘I wish I’d done something creative,’ Annabel admitted. ‘I worked in the City until we had Izzy. I didn’t really like my job but I do sometimes miss the buzz of an office. I was thinking about setting up my own business,’ she added. ‘Before Izzy and … this.’ She indicated her bump, which could no longer be mistaken for the results of a weekend of overindulgence.

‘What sort of business?’ Chelsea asked.

‘Events. We’ve got some outhouses at the Great House. I thought we might do weddings. Something like that.’

‘Perhaps you still will. The baby won’t always be a baby and Izzy will soon be leaving home.’

Annabel smiled. ‘She will, won’t she? Once she’s had the transplant and gone back to school. In two years she could be at university just as we always hoped.’ Annabel exhaled deeply. ‘Oh, Chelsea. I can’t tell you what your sister is going to do for us. What a difference it will make. I thank God a thousand times a day that we met you all.’ She reached over and squeezed Chelsea’s hand. ‘We were totally without hope. Everything was looking so desperate. Now we can start looking forward to the future again.
Our
sister is an amazing woman.’