Shallow Breath

25

Kate




It is 1998. Eleven-year-old Kate is visiting her paternal grandparents in Half Moon Bay, a small town on the west coast of America. She has snuck into one of her favourite hiding spots, her grandmother’s large built-in wardrobe, with a Disney book and a plate of cookies, hoping she won’t be discovered for a while. She nestles down underneath the tea-rose-scented fabrics, between the bags, shoes and hats, then her back hits something hard. She turns around to see what it is, and pulls out a heavy, chintz-covered box. She struggles with the lid, but it is locked. Nonplussed, she returns to her stories.

The next time she sees the box, it is sitting on the kitchen table the day after her eighteenth birthday, and she has completely forgotten coming across it seven years earlier. She is more perplexed by the solemn countenances of her three surviving grandparents, as they sit stiffly on hard-backed chairs watching her. Her mother and father’s families have always been friends, but now sweet-faced Nana Jacobs is ill, and needs to see the oncologist once a week. As a result, the trip down from San Francisco has become a lot harder and she doesn’t make it very often. But this weekend, Nana Jacobs has made a special effort to travel to Half Moon Bay and celebrate Kate’s coming of age.

There is not a smile shared between the three of them as they regard her. In fact, her grandfather Pat is disturbingly watery-eyed. But it is Gwyneth, her father’s mother, who speaks first.

‘Kate, there are some things we haven’t told you about Connor and Elizabeth,’ she says. ‘We wanted to wait until you were of an age where you could understand everything properly. We didn’t want your childhood ruined further with anger or resentment. But now you’re an adult, it’s time you knew the truth.’ She pushes the box forward. ‘Take a moment to look through these, and then we’ll talk.’

Lifting the lid, Kate sees letters and photos, and immediately recognises her dad’s looping signature. She sifts through them, and finds a picture of a baby, the colours muted. The child sits on a wall, in front of a purple-tinted sea, only the hands of the person holding her visible. Curious, Kate begins to scan the contents more closely.

By the end of that day, Kate’s life has changed forever.