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That Deborah kept your letters from us is profoundly shocking. As someone whose entire professional life has involved the care and guidance of young people, her argument about ‘protecting’ us seems entirely misguided, not to say self-serving. In actuality, it is a kind of theft she has committed, and not just of the material objects i.e. your letters. Deborah robbed us all of the connection we might have had with you. The enormity of this is almost beyond measure.

As a result, I found myself in rather turbulent waters, emotionally speaking. The psychologist I’ve been seeing pointed out that I may have transferred some of the feelings of abandonment and anger I had held towards you over many years, onto Deborah. But if she had not kept your letters from us, my feelings of anger and abandonment would not have been nearly so great. All in all, it is very difficult at this point to see Deborah’s actions as in any way forgiveable. I believe Meredith feels much the same.

Nevertheless, both this therapist and my beloved wife Vesna say it is tremendously important to face things as they are, work through them and move on. Right now I can honestly say that in recent months I have faced a great deal about my past. I will do my best to do that with this situation too.

Vesna asks me to say, Mother, that she is looking forward very much to meeting you and introducing you to your two beautiful granddaughters. I heartily concur!

With warmest regards,

your son, Robert

From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]

Dear Robert, dear Meredith, dear James:

Let me begin by thanking you for all your contact with me: by letter, phone and email. And now, with the email from Deborah, I am in touch with ALL of my children again. Although it has occurred under such difficult circumstances, I want you to know what a joy this is for me. It’s been an extraordinary journey, and although the landing is proving, shall we say, a little bumpy, nevertheless it brings a truly great sense of fulfilment to my life. One I had long given up hope of experiencing.

I understand your anger towards Deborah for keeping my letters from you. It would be strange if you were NOT angry! And yet, nervous though it makes me to say this, I feel I must put my hand up and remind you that it is actually ME who deserves your anger. It was me, after all, who left you in the first place. And then out of guilt and fear, I made assumptions that were incorrect, and in doing so I let all of you down for a second time by not taking steps to find out if my letters were getting through, or to be in contact with you in other ways.

Even before I left, I made a lot of assumptions about Deborah: your father and I both did. She was always such a capable, responsible girl, and when I left I knew that Alex would rely on her for a lot of things, as indeed he did. I look back now at what I did, leaving a twelve-year-old with such enormous emotional and practical responsibilities, and I know that only someone as immature and selfish as I was then could possibly have thought that was in any way a good thing. It appals me. I can’t pass the responsibility for this off onto your father; it’s my shoulders this must fall on.

I want to say so many things. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for being willing to meet me, and my husband Roland and his daughter – and for talking to me. Don’t be afraid to be angry with me: it is right that you should be. I can take it – I hope I can! Try, please try, for everyone’s sake, to be kind to Deborah. It would be a very sad thing if by coming back into your lives, I tore a hole in the fabric of your relationships with each other. By the way, I am writing to Deborah too, along these lines.

Thank you all, and I am looking forward so much to meeting you and your families in person, on your home ground, after all this long, long time!

with all my love,

Rose

From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]

I shouldn’t be writing this, I have drunk a whole bottle of wine by msyelf and opened another one so this is stupid but i have to do it. Your letter just gutted me and I didn’t expect that to happen, i thought I would be tougher than that but noone has ever admitted what a lot of shit I had to deal with as a kid. Being the eldest and having to look after the younger ones and never being able to just bloody well be myself, just be a kid myself for christs sake. And Dad is such a nice bloke, such a fucking NICE BLokE, god, how can you ever complain about Dad? It was just a water off a duck’;s back anyway, if I ever got upset about everything I had to do after you left he’d say Fair enough darling. You just leave that for Mrs Whoever was housekeeping or babysittting or whatever at the time. He never got that I couldn’t just laeve it, I just worried and worried and did things and did thing all the bloody time. And now he has dementia and he must be looked after and I don’t know how to dael with it but at least I DO know now that I CAN’T FIX IT. I can’t fix things and i shouldn’t even bloody try. And he will NEVER understand now, he will never understand how he helped make me like this.

And then along comes your email and you do understand. I can’t believe it. I can’t believe how it makes me fall apart either. Why dos it make me fall apart inside to know thast you understand? And I have to tell you, I reliase at I have to tell you about the letters, not your letters to us but all the letter I wrote to you over the years. I have to tell you how much I wanted you there and how much I hated you for not being there. So I wrote to you, aall these sad little girl letters and I poured my heart outto you whn I was a teenager, god all these tragic poems! They really are a laugh in a way but it’s a pretty sad laugh. I wrote them for yours, then I stopped for a long time and I started again when my marriage started falling apart. Except my marriage was already falling apart exept I didn’t kno wit, by the time I knew it was all too late because I wasn’t looking, I just wasn’t looking, I took him for granted and look what I got. I got what I deserved., God it hurts to say that.

I just have to get this off my chhest and tell you that I never stopped missing you, ven despite the bloody awful thing I did with your letters. but it was bullshit what i said last time about protetcing the younger ones, really I never gave them your letters becusae I hated you so much, you didn’t deserve to have the kids love you and write to you. You know that doan’t youy. Now I am going to press send because I will never send this if I leave till tomorroiw and i have to.

A couple of nights before she left for Australia, Rose had a dream. It was one of those dreams that is not actually frightening in itself, yet is experienced with such arduous intensity that the dreamer wakes almost trembling with uncertainty and exhaustion.

She dreamed that she had to meet someone urgently, but first she had to find that person’s car. She went searching for it through unfamiliar streets and into a crowded shopping centre. Now she was searching not for the car itself but for the keys to it. The man she was to meet suddenly appeared amid the crowd and came rushing up to her, saying, ‘Oh, thank heavens you have my keys!’ and looking down
she saw that her hands were full of bunches of keys. Then people, strangers, were coming up to her, thanking her and taking their sets of keys and rushing off, until she was left standing there with empty hands and no idea of what to do next.

She described this to Roland as they lay together, the pearly light of an English winter morning just beginning to filter into their bedroom. He listened, sleepy but attentive, stroking her hair, and when she’d finished he said, ‘I wonder what dreams they having now?’

‘Over there?’ she asked, tilting her head in a direction they both understood to indicate Australia.

‘Yeah. Don’t you reckon they dreaming about you coming too?’

‘Yes, my love,’ said Rose softly, after a thoughtful pause. ‘Yes. I wonder what their dreams are.’

CHAPTER 32

James was there to meet them at the airport in Melbourne, just as they had met him at Heathrow before, and since all airports are alike there was something familiar about it. Still, it took Rose by surprise, the little leap her heart made when she spotted him in the crowd, waving.
My son!
The connection was so quick, quicker than a heartbeat. Tears pricked her eyes.
Oh, heavens, why do airports make people so sentimental!
she thought, embarrassed, and then,
Oh, why not?
, and embraced him without wiping those tears away.

James drove Rose, Roland and Jacinta to his home, the big handsome place overlooking the bay they’d seen in photos. It was late morning; the sun shone into the deepest corners of the garden and sparkled on the surface of the lap pool.

‘Very nice,’ complimented Roland, accepting the coffee James handed him with a waiterly flourish. ‘Is our Silver about?’

‘Ah. She’ll be back
any
moment, I hope. She’s gone to fetch our niece and nephew. Thought it might be nice for Jacinta to meet some family her own age.’

‘Are they my cousins, then?’ asked Jacinta.

‘Um… I’m not sure what relation they’d be…’

‘Stepmother’s grandchildren… ’ Rose mused. ‘Doesn’t bear thinking about.’

‘Okay, let’s call them cousins, anyway,’ said James. ‘They’re cousins, too, of each other I mean. You’re in between them, age-wise: Laurence is seventeen, I think, he’s just finished school, and Olivia is thirteen going on thirty-three. Unusual girl. I think you’ll like her, Jacinta, she’s really into animals, like you. In fact, I’ll bet she brings her dogs with her.’

‘Cool,’ said Jacinta.

Silver arrived with Laurence and Olivia soon after, and the three young people went out into the garden with Mintie and Fly-by. The adults could see them wafting to and fro, chatting and laughing together as things loosened up.

‘My god, they are
so
beautiful!’ said Silver, voicing the thought in all their minds. All three teenagers were tall, even Olivia, but she had the lanky build of a half-grown filly while Jacinta, at sixteen, stood poised in the doorway between girlhood and womanhood. She had skin the colour of milky coffee and extraordinary tawny eyes.

‘She takes my breath away, that girl of yours,’ Silver said to Roland.

‘She’s taken that young man’s breath away, for sure,’ said Roland, and indeed they could see Laurence’s attention was focused keenly on Jacinta. And he really
was
a young man, James suddenly realised, with newly broadened shoulders and a wide chest, moving with an easy grace that made his plain T-shirt and jeans look elegant, flicking his thick straight hair back from his eyes from time to time. James smiled. He recognised all of this; wasn’t there some element of himself there, after all?

‘Oh, dear,’ said Rose. ‘Suddenly I feel ancient. I think I’m going to have to sit down.’

‘Yeah, you the ancient queen,’ teased Roland, pulling out a chair for her. ‘The ancient queen who’s seen everything.’

‘Not quite everything, my darling, I hope,’ she said, taking his hand briefly and kissing it. ‘Not yet!’

‘Dad, Rose!’ said Jacinta, bursting in. ‘Can I go for a walk on the beach? Liv and Laurence are taking the dogs down there!’

Roland looked enquiringly at James and Silver.

‘Oh, it’s perfectly safe,’ James said. ‘Just at the end of the garden, practically.’

‘Hey, Jass!’ called Olivia from just outside the open door, ‘Can you grab a few apples or something? We’re starving!’

Silver gave Jacinta a big handful of apricots from the fruit bowl on the table and they were off, three yearlings sprinting across the grass with the dogs leaping and bounding beside them. Then the garden was empty, though the shimmer of their energy hung in the air awhile. Unexpectedly, Rose felt a sense of certainty welling up: the conviction, quick and sure, that she had done the right thing in coming here, that this visit would be a good one. Good for everyone.

Rose wanted to visit each of her other children by herself, one by one. No one disagreed. James and Silver lent her their spare car, a little Renault. Roland would go sight-seeing with Jacinta – although as it turned out, Jacinta spent a lot of her time with Laurence and Olivia. The further plan was for a gathering of the whole family at Alex’s place on Christmas Eve: casual, a barbecue with lots of salads. The big Christmas Day lunch would be at James and Silver’s house, and people could walk off their feasting on the beach afterward.

James was preoccupied with a new painting; he apologised for this on their first day, saying (of course) that it was nothing special, but he had just got started and couldn’t seem to leave it. When his mother asked if she could see it he actually hesitated for a moment, repeating that he had only just started work on it, and then said, ‘Yes, yes, of course’, and she followed him down the stairs to the studio.

Rose’s first glance confused her: the sketched outlines on the
canvas suggested something familiar –
Trees, aren’t they? Or….
but there was a dizzying tilt of planes that threw her eye all out of kilter. Coming closer, she saw that stuck on the wall beside the canvas were detailed drawings, torn from sketchbooks or just on scraps, and by examining these Rose understood where the large painting was going. Yes, trees: it was a forest scene, but from multiple perspectives: there was the root system below the soil, and there again at ground level; the trunks, seen from the eye of an insect or grub and also of the bird zooming in to pluck it up, and similarly with the branches, the twigs and leaves. It was the life of a forest and all the trees within it, from deepest root fibre to slenderest leaf tip, as experienced by the trees themselves and all the creatures who lived there. Simultaneously. No wonder it was dizzying!