She pushed it aside. ‘It’s too hot. Can I please see now?’
So I opened the album. As I flicked through briefly, I wished I could show Rosie some of the reject photographs. The funny anecdotes that went with them would make her laugh. As it was, I only had the glossed-over version of our past together, which seemed suddenly woefully simplistic.
Nevertheless, I started from the beginning, which was what this was all about.
‘That’s you in there,’ I said, pointing to my stomach in a series of four cheesy soft-focus photographs. I wore a white cotton maternity dress and a floppy hat and I stood in front of a field of vibrant purple.
Rosie brought her face up really close to the page. ‘How do I know it’s me?’
‘What do you mean? Because I’m telling you it’s you, silly. See? June 2006.’ I pointed at the black italics underneath. ‘You were born a month later.’
I tried to turn the page, but Rosie stopped me. She seemed fascinated by the photographs.
‘Where’s Daddy?’
‘He was taking the photos.’
There was a long pause.
‘So who’s Katrina Doobik then?’
It was like a thump in my head. ‘What?’
‘You told Granny Helen that she was my real mummy.’
‘You misheard,’ I said, my stomach lurching, my head spinning off my shoulders.
‘No... I didn’t...’ she stuttered, her lips beginning to quiver.
‘Yes, you did.’
‘But...’
My mother’s words rang in my ears. If she found out now, three weeks before the hearing, it would be catastrophic. Our family would meltdown. It was essential to maintain the equilibrium. The tightly run unit would only survive if I stuck to the script. Rosie had to fall into line.
‘That’s final. You misheard, and that’s that. Okay? Look I’m showing you evidence and you still don’t believe me.’
‘YOU’RE A LIAR!’ she screamed and she tore out the page of the album. ‘That’s probably a fake or something. Look it’s all blurry and weird like you you’ve smudged paint on it or something.’ And she screwed it into a ball and chucked it at my head.
I stood up, incensed by what she had done.
‘YOU’RE the little liar, young lady. Who the hell do you think you are?’
‘Who cares?’
‘Don’t speak to me like that!’
‘Shut up!’
‘How dare you? It is unacceptable to—’
‘Shut UP!’
‘If you carry on like this I’ll—’
‘SHUT UP!’
‘What are you trying to do to me?’ I howled, rising from the table.
Rosie repeated ‘shut up’, ‘shut up’, ‘shut up’, again and again and again like a mantra that had the power to eat into my sanity.
‘STOP IT!’
‘Shut up, shut up, shut up, shut up, shut up, shut up, shut up,’ she screeched. I needed to leave the room but she pulled at me and yanked at my jumper until it cracked at the seams.
‘I said STOP THAT!’
And then my mother appeared at the door. Her small face was stern, her milky blue eyes fearful.
‘What’s going on in here?’
‘Mummy’s a LIAR!’ Rosie screeched and wailed, and clasped my arm, yanking it with all her might, her head pressing into my ribs.
‘DON’T TOUCH ME!’ I was trying to pull my arm away from her, but she was gripping on too tightly, an alien creature suckered to me, sapping my life force. Violence swarmed my brain. I imagined my hand rise above her head and coming down on her, anything to make her stop.
To Mum I begged, ‘I can’t cope, Mum, I can’t cope. Get her away from me.’
‘Rosie, come here darling.’ She moved towards her, as though moving towards a wild animal whom she wanted to befriend and tame. Prizing her off me, she held her hand and drew her back, protecting me from her, protecting her from me.
‘Look what she’s done!’ I brandished the destroyed photographs at my mother. My hands were quivering, more terrified of what I could have done than what Rosie had actually done.
‘Okay, calm down, Gemma.’
‘Me, calm down? Are you fucking kidding me? She’s the one who needs to calm down!’
I bent down low and pointed right into Rosie’s face. ‘D’you realise that Mummy could go to prison because of your lies to DC Miles? And do you know what’ll happen? You won’t be able to live with me ever again. Is that what you want? Really? Really?’
‘That’s ENOUGH, Gemma,’ my mother hollered.
Rosie cowered behind my mother. ‘My head hurts,’ she sobbed, holding the back of her head.
And more quietly, my mother added, ‘You’re frightening her.’
I was dumbstruck, tranquilized. My skin turned to gooseflesh. Taking a step back, I thought of what might have happened if my mother hadn’t walked in.
I straightened up. ‘I have to get ready for work,’ I said mechanically, walking away, leaving behind the totemic union of my mother and Rosie.
As I went upstairs, I caught a snippet of their conversation. ‘But Granny Helen, I thought I was one of those adopted children.’
My mother laughed. ‘Goodness gracious, you’ve got an active imagination, my darling. Come on, let’s...’
But I switched off from them, closed my ears, took myself upstairs where I dressed and made my face up and left the house without saying goodbye.
* * *
I asked Peter to meet me in London after work, as we used to do often before the children.
The restaurant had been a nostalgic choice of mine. Peter and I had shared many candlelit dinners there in the past. For this reason, it might have been a bad choice. Possibly too romantic for the purpose. Then again, maybe that’s exactly why I chose it. If Peter didn’t like what I was going to say, he would be too self-conscious to cause a fuss, and he was too much of a gentleman to walk out and leave me there.
To be honest, I wasn’t even sure how he would greet me.
I was already seated at the table when he arrived, and as soon as I saw him I had a pang of regret about what I had planned.
Sixteen years ago, when he had walked into the cinema foyer to meet me on a blind date, his elegant features had rendered me weak at the knees. Before we had met that first time, Jacs had told me two facts about him: he grew up in the countryside and he had been in the year below Richard at their primary school. Knowing these two facts, I made two snap judgements: he wore green wax jackets like Richard and he was emotionally stunted – like Richard. A photograph of him in a fashionable black pea coat standing next to a very beautiful brunette in shiny red heels, who I had been told was his ex-girlfriend, smashed at least one of those assumptions to pieces, which I replaced with another: I wasn’t pretty enough for him. But the doubts had melted away from the moment he shook my hand and said, ‘Gosh, you’re much lovelier in the flesh,’ with a familiarity – but not a hint of suaveness – that suggested he had known me all my life. He later admitted that it had simply tumbled out of his mouth when he saw me, but that it had ruined the whole movie for him, throughout which he had worried he had come on too strong and put me off before we’d even started.
Sixteen years on, I loved him even more than I had at first sight. I knew him better now, but my instincts about him had been right. He had turned out to be just as kind and trustworthy as I had suspected he was, if not more. When he kissed me under the streetlight, when our souls met, he became mine, as much as I became his, and I dreamed that it would always be that way.
Until this morning – when he’d barely been able to look me in the eye – I had been confident our feelings were as unshakeable as they had been back then.
I wanted one last shot to prove to him that anyone would buckle under the pressure Rosie put me under. He was the only one who had seen her in action, at her worst. Even a living saint would struggle to stay composed. However ashamed I was of what had happened, I needed him to stick by me, to believe in me, to know in his heart of hearts that I would never willingly hurt her. If he believed in me, then I could believe in myself.