No Going Back (14 page)

S
ECRETS

A
bi still hadn't answered my text so I decided to go home. Not back to Derbyshire, which still didn't feel like home, but to my old house, my real home.

I stood on the opposite side of the road just staring at it for a couple of minutes. There were net curtains up at all of the windows and new blue pots crammed with African marigolds outside the front door. It didn't look at all like my house any more. Suddenly I wished that I really had arranged to see my old friends. Maybe they would stop me feeling so weird and displaced, as if I didn't really belong anywhere.

I couldn't stand on the pavement for ever so I began to walk towards the shops. I picked up some flowers from the florist two streets away and headed for the cemetery. Penny hadn't actually said whether she'd been to the grave so I thought I'd go and check.

Sure enough there was a little posy of roses and
white phlox but they'd obviously been there for some time and the petals were turning brown and falling off. I cleared them away, replaced them with my yellow daisies and sat on the bench for a while.

It was strange. There was no point in talking to Dad because I was pretty sure that he wasn't around. I'd half expected him to follow me when I left Penny's house but I had the feeling that he'd actually stayed put. I must have been really tired because my mind just went blank. That doesn't happen very often. I've usually got so many thoughts whizzing around inside my head that it can be exhausting. It was nice just to switch off. In fact I think that I almost dropped off to sleep. I jerked myself awake and blinked several times before checking my watch. It was almost five o'clock. Suddenly I didn't want to be here any more. I wanted to be back at the farm with Mum bustling around in the kitchen and the
clickety-clack
of Gran's knitting needles as she settled down to watch some quiz programme.

As I shrugged the rucksack onto my back a woman walked down the path towards
me. It was the woman who had walked straight past me that day several weeks ago and put her flowers on an untended grave. I have no idea why but, before she noticed me, I slid off the bench and melted back into the shadow of the tree. The branches swept low and were full of leaves so I was partly hidden. I watched as the woman stopped by Dad's grave and looked at my fresh flowers. Then she looked towards me, straight through the lattice of leaves. I stared back, unsure what to do. A girl stepped forwards. She was holding a small bunch of pink and white flowers and must have been walking directly behind the woman so I hadn't spotted her before. I couldn't believe what I was seeing. She was younger than me, maybe about ten, and she was slimmer than I was at that age and maybe a little bit taller. But apart from that it was like looking at a younger version of myself. She was also definitely the girl from the photograph in Penny's bedroom.

“What is it?” she asked, following the woman's gaze.

I stepped forwards into the sunlight.

The woman put a hand on the girl's arm. “We
ought to go,” she murmured.

“No!” the girl said, shaking her mother away and taking a tentative step towards me.

I had this enormous lump in my throat and I had no idea why. It felt like the size of an orange. Surely it must be grotesquely visible. The girl's face was serious but slightly inquisitive.

“Hello,” she said.

I licked my lips. She waited, hands clenching the posy a little bit tighter. A petal dropped from one of the roses and landed on the back of her hand like a velvety pink teardrop. She didn't seem to notice.

“Hello,” I replied.

The woman stood helplessly behind the girl. I could tell that she wanted them both to be spirited away, to be anywhere else except here.

“Are you Laura?” the girl asked.

Someone else who knew my name.

“Yes.”

She smiled then, a beautiful, radiant smile. “I'm Daisy.”

She said it as if I should know who she was. I must have shaken my head slightly, looked
confused, because she glanced briefly behind her, as if looking for permission of some kind. The woman's eyes narrowed,
her
head definitely shook. The girl turned back towards me and hesitated.

“Are you Penny's daughter?” I asked.

Daisy's smile vanished in an instant. She looked upset.

“No,” she said. “This is my mum.”

I stared at the woman. “I don't understand.”

She ignored me, took hold of her daughter's arm. The rose petal fluttered to the ground where it lay between us.

“Daisy, we really ought to be going.”

The girl stood her ground. “I haven't put my flowers on Daddy's grave yet,” she protested.

The woman closed her eyes as Daisy walked purposefully forwards, retrieved the jam jar from behind the headstone and placed her posy in it.

Inside my head everything was swimming. I watched in disbelief as she settled the jar full of flowers next to my yellow daisies. I felt cold and clammy and my eyes couldn't focus properly. There was this rushing in my ears.

“Laura, Laura, are you all right?”

The woman's voice came from very far away, as if she were at the end of a long tunnel. I was aware of her grabbing my arm and leading me back to the bench, easing me down, gently pressing my head towards my knees.

“Better?” she asked, after a couple of minutes. “I'm sorry. You've had a bit of a shock.”

I nodded. That was the understatement of the year.

“There must be some mistake,” I whispered. “I don't understand.”

Daisy stood in front of me, her face full of concern. “It isn't a mistake, is it, Mummy?” she asked the woman. “Laura is my sister, isn't she?”

How do you describe a moment like that? It was like my world caving in and opening up all at the same time. It was disbelief and recognition, excitement and blame. It was a huge tangle of questions tying me up in knots. It was beyond belief, and yet as I looked at her standing in front of me, unsure whether I'd ever be able to remember how to activate the right facial muscles and smile
again, I knew that it was true.

“How?” I asked.

What a stupid question. There was obviously only one explanation but before the woman got the time to answer her mobile phone rang. She ignored it. It rang again.

“You'd better answer that,” I murmured. “It could be important.”

In truth I wanted some space, some time to think, or not think. I just wanted time. I sat, only half listening while she spoke. I remembered learning about the five stages of grief – denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. In the space of about thirty seconds my mind turbo-charged through the first four but when it got to acceptance it felt like running into a brick wall. NEVER. This could
not
be true and yet looking at Daisy I knew it was. Suddenly my whole body was so angry that I barely remember springing from the seat.

“No,” the woman was saying, “it's too late. She's here. I'm sorry. I didn't expect…”

I lunged for the phone, wrenched it from her grasp and pressed it against my ear.

“Who is this?” I bellowed.

There was a gaping silence. Sometime, someone was going to feel the need to fill it and it wasn't going to be me.

“It's me.”

The voice was soft and quiet, barely audible through the noise of a plane passing overhead. “It's me, Penny. I'm so sorry you had to find out like this.”

“Penny,” I shouted. “You knew? It's true?”

“I can't talk about this over the phone. Why don't you all come back here and have a cup of tea?”

“That photo by your bed. I saw it and thought it looked like me. I thought it was
your
daughter.”

“Daisy is my god-daughter.”

Daisy. Dad's other daughter. She was watching me, frightened now, since I grabbed the phone like a person possessed. She looked like a little cornered mouse watching a cat, waiting for it to make its next move. I thrust the phone back at the woman and bent forwards, put my head in my hands. I had a half-sister. For all of these years I had a
sister and no one had told me.

Half an hour later I was, once more, pushing open the gate to Penny's front garden. She'd obviously been looking out for us because the door opened before we'd even reached the porch.

We hadn't spoken on the way over. The woman, whose name was Amanda, had driven us in her car. I sat in the back and tried to ignore the way her eyes kept checking up on me in the rear-view mirror. Daisy was upset now too. She thought that she shouldn't have said anything, that everyone would be cross with her. I think she was crying a little but I was feeling too detached to care. That wasn't right, was it? If she was really my sister then I would feel something, wouldn't I? I'd want to comfort her. But I didn't. So perhaps it was all some terrible mistake after all. Except that of course I knew it wasn't.

“Laura.”

Penny reached out to touch my arm but I brushed her away. She had no right to touch me, to pretend to be all caring and concerned. I wanted to rush around to look for Dad but I didn't need to. He sloped into
the hall and from the look on his face he obviously wanted to be anywhere else than here, maybe even back with Gran and Reverend Tim. I couldn't even bear to look him in the eye.

“Tea,” Penny said, leading us into the sitting room. “I've made tea. Do you drink tea, Laura?”

I nodded and she put a bone china cup and saucer in my hands. Why hadn't she used mugs? Was it so that I had to concentrate more in order not to spill the hot, sweet liquid onto her pale-blue silk cushions? I put the tea on the table in front of me.

“Laura, I can explain,” Dad whispered in my ear. I lifted my hand and brushed him away.

“How did you know my name?” I asked Daisy.

The woman, Amanda, spoke. She was sitting on the edge of the chair, her hand resting lightly on Daisy's shoulder.

“Daisy has always known about you,” she said. “I've told her ever since she was a baby that she had a sister and her name was Laura. I'd always hoped that one day you two would meet but not quite like this.”

“I don't understand what Penny's got to do with this,” I said.

“Amanda is a friend,” Penny explained. “She and your father met at a party of mine. Daisy was only two weeks old when he died. Your mother had her family to rally around. Amanda didn't have anyone. I didn't approve of what she and your father had done but I tried to be supportive.”

“Did my mum know about you?” I asked Amanda.

“Yes.”

Still I wouldn't, couldn't, look at Dad.

“Was he going to leave us, for you?”

Over by the window Dad shook his head furiously. I shifted on my seat so that he was out of my line of vision.

“Maybe,” Amanda replied. “I can't pretend that I didn't want him to.”

I was shaking now. I couldn't get my head around this. I wanted to get away, to be back in my room at the farm, somewhere quiet and peaceful where I could lie down and fall into a deep sleep. Then, maybe when I woke up, I would find out that it had all been a horrible dream. I stood up. My tea rippled as I placed
the cup and saucer on the uneven table top.

“I've got a train to catch.”

“Laura, you're upset,” Penny said. “You can't go yet.”

“You can't stop me.”

Daisy's face was so white. She looked as if she was about to burst into tears. I was an expert on when people were about to cry. I'd had enough experience myself.

“I'm sorry,” I said to her. “None of this is your fault.”

She blinked and sure enough a couple of tears lodged on her upper cheek. “I thought you'd be happy,” she sniffed.

It was one of those moments that can define your future, define someone else's too. I knew instinctively that the answer I gave would have an impact on both of our lives, for better or for worse. Be a grown-up, Laura, I said to myself. Show Daisy that you're the sort of person she'd be proud to call her sister. I didn't want to be sensible and mature and reasonable though. I wanted to rage and stamp about and shout. But I looked at Daisy
with her red-rimmed eyes and quivering bottom lip and somehow I got a grip on myself.

“I'm sorry,” I said again. For goodness' sake, why was
I
the one who kept apologising? “It's just been such a shock, that's all. I had no idea, none at all. No one warned me.”

I did look at Dad then, shot him a look as full of disappointment and venom as I could muster.

There was this uncomfortable silence in the room. No one knew what to say to me and my head was clogged with angry, resentful thoughts that were kicking my insides to pieces. I wanted to be better than those thoughts so I scrabbled in my rucksack and pulled out a piece of paper and a pencil.

“Here's my mobile number. You can text me if you like.”

I wasn't even sure whether I wanted her to but just saying the words helped. I did feel a tiny bit better about myself. I shoved the pad back in my rucksack and made for the door. Dad was right by my side.

“Can I come with you to the station?” Penny asked. “Make sure that you get on the train safely?”

“I'd rather you didn't.”

I didn't mean to sound so rude but the last thing I wanted was her fussing around me, trying to make polite conversation, trying to justify her actions.

“Will you send me a text when you get back then?” She pushed a business card into my hand. “Please?”

I nodded, partly because I'd have agreed to anything just to get out of there, just for them all to leave me alone and stop staring at me as if I were some newly discovered prize specimen. As I left Dad was standing on the doorstep, mouthing the word “Sorry,” so many times that I lost count. And that's where I thought he'd stayed but, as I turned the corner at the bottom of the street, he materialised beside me.