My Secret Sister: Jenny Lucas and Helen Edwards' Family Story (34 page)

Sam came out to find me. ‘What is it?’ he asked, stating the obvious. ‘Are you upset?’

‘Yes, I am. I just can’t handle it. I think of Katie and Ben at home and everything they have, a comfortable home, the love of two parents, warmth and food, toys, everything.’

I walked around outside for a while to try and compose myself in the fresh air.

Finally, I went back to the hospital entrance. Sam wanted me to come and be with him because he’d been so upset himself the first time he came. I had to steel myself to go back inside. When I found him he was talking with a young doctor, who spoke good English.

‘Look, Sam,’ the doctor said. ‘You’ve got children of your own. Maybe you could help us. We have a baby here who has just been left with us, abandoned in the hospital. He’s a healthy baby, tiny but perfect.’ He studied Sam’s face, turned to look at me, then back at Sam. ‘If he stays here, you know how it will be for him. He needs a good home. Can you help?’

Shocked, we looked at each other. We had gone on this trip to bring them some of the things they needed, to plan the renovation of the building for them. Suddenly we were faced with the impossible challenge of rescuing a baby and taking him back to England. How difficult would that be, and were we up to it? What about our own children – how would they react? We weren’t sure it would even be legal. So many thoughts crowded into our minds at the same time. We should have told them we needed time to consider the situation, but before we knew it, a nurse brought this tiny baby into the doctor’s room, wrapped only in a bit of grey rag, with no nappy. She put him down on a table in front of us and opened out the rag so that we could see him in his nakedness. I was afraid for him, stunned, unsure how we were supposed to react. Then of course it struck me that they wanted us to see he was a perfect baby. Instinctively I nodded, at which point the nurse lifted up his bits, as if to say ‘he’s all there’. She looked from Sam to me and back to Sam with a questioning look, and I could almost hear her pleading prayer for us to rescue this innocent baby from his hopeless fate.

The baby was only a few days old, with dark blond hair and a thin, wrinkled body. Goodness knows what they were feeding him, but it didn’t seem to be doing him much good. As I looked down at his pinched little face, he lay quite still with a steadfast gaze, his eyes fixed on mine. At first I did not dare lose that precious eye contact with him, perhaps the first he’d had with anyone, but after several seconds I couldn’t hold it any longer as my eyes welled up. I turned to Sam and he put his arm round me, barely holding back the tears himself.

‘Well, do you want him?’ asked the doctor.

The tears were now running down my cheeks.

Sam looked at me. He paused for a minute or two, perhaps not even that long. Then I heard him speak. ‘Don’t worry. We’ll get him back to England somehow.’

Sam, always the optimist, could not refuse. I wasn’t sure whether he was speaking to the doctor or to me, but I nodded. I knew he was going to say yes. I wanted him to say yes. It was a joint decision. Sam’s positive attitude to getting things done in any situation was one of the things that had first attracted me to him He was right about one thing –we could give this baby a wonderful life. But even in that moment I knew it was going to be a desperately difficult task to get him out of the country, across Europe and back home with us. Was it even possible?

Later that day, Sam phoned a British immigration lawyer. She advised us to drug the newborn baby and bundle him into the boot of a car to smuggle him out of the country. We were horrified by that idea and immediately said no. There must be a better way.

That was the start of the process. We didn’t have any idea how complex it would be to foster and adopt a Romanian child in England.

The next day, the baby’s mother suddenly reappeared, together with her mother and uncle. We assumed the doctor had traced her to her poor, rural home many kilometres away. Perhaps he’d arranged transport for her to come back and sign the papers. We met her and the doctor translated for us as we heard some of her story. She was nineteen and had been sent away from home to have the baby. Her brother had been stoned in their village because of the disgrace she had brought on the family. Villagers told her parents that she would be killed if she returned with the baby.

I was shocked and devastated hearing all this. It seemed such a primitive reaction from her neighbours – a terrible situation for her and her family. She had no option but to give her baby away and signed to say she wanted us to adopt him. The doctor had told her the baby would have a good life with us, but she seemed devoid of emotion as she signed the papers. I was stunned that she was signing away the life of her child yet showing no sadness or regret, though of course I could not imagine what she was really feeling. It was only when she left that she turned to give us a slight smile.

I thought then of my own adoption and how my mother must have felt. Was it a similar situation, being forced to give me away, and had Mercia hidden her feelings too? Would I ever know?

When we got home, Sam and I agreed that I should call Kent Social Services to start the process of getting our baby over to England legally.

They said very clearly that they could not help us because we did not meet their requirements as adoptive parents.

‘We have three initial requirements, Mrs Lucas, and I’m afraid you fail to meet any of them. You have not been married long enough, you are too old and you already have two children of your own.’

Well, that was that. I told Sam what she had said.

‘Right.’ He refused to be put off. ‘Then we’ll have to do this another way.’

Sam rang up a friend in Bucharest who worked for a charity out there and had some experience of this sort of situation. She said the only way would be if the baby’s mother brought him into the country herself and handed him over to us personally.

‘Could you go ahead and organize that?’ asked Sam.

‘Yes, I think so,’ she said. ‘And I’ll bring them over myself, so that I can explain things to the mother and do any necessary translating.’

So she got visas, booked flight tickets and made all the arrangements for the trip.

In July, ten weeks later, we went to Stansted airport, hoping to collect our Romanian baby. We’d kept it quiet and not told anyone, even the family, in case there was a hitch, which seemed quite likely.

We had arranged to meet in the airport car park, so we arrived early and waited anxiously as the minutes crept by. Just as we began to think they wouldn’t be allowed through immigration, or there would be some other problem, our faces lit up as we saw them appear – our baby’s birth mother, Gabriela, holding him in her arms and walking towards us, accompanied by the charity worker. To our great relief, it had all gone as planned. They had come through immigration with no questions asked.

As they walked towards us, I looked at Gabriela and was disturbed to see the complete lack of expression in her face, her eyes blank and her mouth set straight. Perhaps this journey, with the child she was giving up, had left her numb with pain. As I looked into her glazed eyes my thoughts once again leapt back to the day that Mercia handed me over for adoption. Did she have the same empty gaze, the same disinterested demeanour? Did she care as little as this woman seemed to do? How could anyone manage not to show emotion on what must be the most heart-rending day of their life?

As they were turning to go, I stopped them.

‘Would you like us to send photos of him on birthdays and Christmases?’

The charity worked smiled and translated.

‘No,’ said Gabriela in English. But she did not thank me for thinking of it, and there were still no tears, no smile, no anything. She just turned her back and walked away. I felt dreadful for her. Surely she must be hurting so much inside.

Once we had recovered from the anxiety of waiting and not knowing whether he would be there, which was quickly followed by the euphoria of having our baby in our arms at last, our overwhelming concern was that the flight hadn’t upset him and he would be able to adjust to his new surroundings. I couldn’t wait to get him home, to be the best mother I could be to this little waif and surround him with all the love he needed.

That day, when Josh joined our family, we were all elated. When we got him back home that evening, the thing he needed most was a nappy-change. It was late at night, ten-thirty, when I unwrapped the little bundle and took off that first, awful nappy that he’d worn all day on the journey. As I ran water into the baby bath, I heard footsteps along the landing. Katie, now three and a half, had woken up and heard the sounds, so came to investigate. We had told her about Josh coming to join us one day soon and she had been thrilled, but she had no idea it was going to be that night. She came into the bathroom and her bleary face immediately lit up when she saw him.

‘My
own
baby!’ she exclaimed. ‘Mummy. He can be my own baby. I can look after him myself.’

‘Not quite yourself,’ I smiled. ‘He will be our baby, your baby brother, and you can help me look after him.’

Katie doted on Josh from that first night on. We bathed him together, washing him all over at least three times to rid him of the smells and grime from that place. Then we laid him on the floor, covered him with sweet-smelling talc and wrapped him in our fluffiest towel for hugs. Now Josh was ours. A member of the Lucas family. We bonded immediately. For some reason I had a ready affinity with him, perhaps because I’d been adopted as a baby, just like him. I was determined to make sure he would always know his background and what happened.

‘This child is going to grow up knowing he’s adopted, and where he came from,’ I said to Sam.

From that moment onwards, I started to compile a book for Josh. The story of his life. It would be his book, starting with a photo of his mother we’d taken when we met her at Brasov, then pictures of him at various stages throughout his childhood, right up to now. He looks at the book from time to time and shows it to his friends. I’m so glad we did it.

Sam continued to make regular trips to renovate the hospital in Romania, one week every month for the next year or so. It was hard on me with three children under five to look after, but it was much more difficult for Sam. He worked hard and provided so much for that hospital. It was depressing for him to find each time he returned that the low-paid staff had spirited away most of the toys for their own children and sold the drugs and electronic equipment to fill their food cupboards. We couldn’t blame them. They had to live with poverty every day of their lives, struggling to feed their children and survive somehow.

About six months after Josh joined us, there was thick snow on the ground. Sam’s children from his previous marriage were with us and were having a great time in the garden helping Katie and Ben to build a giant snowman. I put Josh in his bouncer in the kitchen doorway. Sam watched him as I went upstairs to get something and I heard the doorbell. Moments later Sam shouted up to me.

‘Come on down, Jenny. There are some people in the kitchen I want you to meet.’

I went down to find two strangers in our kitchen with Sam. There was an air of menace about their visit.

‘This gentleman is a senior Kent police officer, and this lady here is from Social Services.’

‘Hello,’ I said, shaking their hands in great trepidation. ‘Can we help you?’

‘Oh yes,’ nodded the Social Services lady. ‘We believe that you have an illegal immigrant living in this house.’

‘Really?’ I said, trying to keep my voice light, but I was quaking inside, petrified. It was all such a complicated process, and it still wasn’t complete – I knew we had to register Josh with the courts and we hadn’t done that yet. What if they had come to take him away from us? I looked at Sam, who must have been thinking the same as me, but he hid it well.

‘Yes.’ Sam smiled. I knew it was a nervous smile, but they couldn’t have realized. ‘That’s him over there!’ He pointed at ten-month-old Josh, bouncing with glee in the doorway.

I watched, anxious to see their response, but I began to relax as I saw their expressions change from officious to confused to embarrassed. It had been a tense few minutes, but by this time Sam didn’t look worried at all. He was trying to keep his face straight. We explained Josh’s circumstances. Our visitors made their hurried excuses and apologies, then left. What a relief! We laughed for a good ten minutes after they’d gone.

‘How did they know?’ I wondered aloud. ‘Somebody must have told them about Josh, but who?’

‘I think I know,’ said Sam. ‘I had to sack one of the men last week for stealing. He might have phoned up the council to get his own back on me.

‘Well, thankfully it misfired.’

We told Josh, years later, that when he was a baby he had nearly been arrested as an ‘illegal immigrant’.

At this stage, we still had little idea of the mass of work we would have to do with Social Services, the Health Service and immigration, not to mention the various legal stages, culminating in the High Court. But finally, after three years, everything had been done and the High Court Judge agreed the adoption, so he became legally ours at last, though from day one he had been at the heart of our family and brought joy to us all.

In these glorious years with the children, my days were full and I had little time to think of anything else. But that visit to Mercia’s sister, and the phone call, sat heavily at the back of my mind and in my heart. Now that I had adopted an abandoned child myself, I had experience from both sides.

Distressing as it had been to be rejected a second time by my birth mother, I was desperate to know more. And what about my half-siblings? Could I try and trace them? I went over and over it, but my mother Connie was still alive and I didn’t want to hurt her. She had been over the moon when we’d told her about the new addition to the family and when Josh was about three-and-a-half she came to live with us in Kent so she could be with the family. She had her own little annexe, but always ate her meals with us. She and Sam got on like old friends, continually bantering about the merits of their favourite football clubs or the escapades of their players. Connie loved him like her own son.