Coincidences (28 page)

Stephanie's eyes widened as she
turned to face Alice. ‘No, of course she doesn’t. Why do you ask?’

‘No reason.’ Alice could not
meet her eyes.

‘No one knows. Well, except for
Rita. At the time, I told all my friends that you were adopted, but I haven’t
kept in touch with any of those people. I met Rosie when you were about six
years old. I told her you were my child, because, well... I didn’t want you to
know anything at that time. Since then, I’ve always told people you are my real
daughter.’

Alice nodded. She could breathe
again. At least now she could rest in the knowledge that people she had known
for years were not whispering behind her back and pitying her.

‘I mean, if I’d told people that
you were adopted, I thought you’d find out somehow. It was to protect you.’
Stephanie had her back towards Alice as she spoke. ‘So, darling, how was work?’
Stephanie changed the subject, turning back towards her.

‘I didn’t go to work,’ explained
Alice. ‘I went to see my dad and Miranda.’ Alice could not bring herself to
refer to Miranda as “Mum”.

‘Oh!’ Stephanie dropped the
wooden spoon onto the floor. ‘Oh, no. Now look what I’ve done!’

‘I’ll clear it up,’ said Alice,
realising that Stephanie had not taken the news well.

‘I didn’t think you would be
going to see them so soon,’ said Stephanie, watching Alice clean the pasta
sauce from the floor where she had dropped the spoon.

‘Neither did I,’ said Alice. ‘I
just decided this morning that I had to go and see them.’

‘How did it go?’ Stephanie was
looking at Alice now, but her face was pale and her eyes distant.

‘I don't really want to talk
about it.’ Alice washed her hands, and sat at the table.

Stephanie served the pasta and
sauce into two large plates on the table. ‘You know you can talk to me about
anything that's bothering you, don't you?’ she said as she sat opposite Alice
at the table, a concerned frown on her face.

‘This tastes nice,’ said Alice,
avoiding the question.

‘Did your dad upset you? If he
did, please don't take it to heart—he's always been selfish. I warned you,
didn't I?’

‘I said I don't want to talk
about it.’

‘I just want to know that you're
not upset about anything,’ said Stephanie, taking a bite of her food.

‘I'm really okay,’ said Alice.
‘One good thing came out of the meeting, if you must know. Jane was there and
she’s really nice. She asked for my telephone number, and we’re going to meet
up again.’

‘Oh, that’s nice,’ said
Stephanie, smiling at her. 'Would you like some parmesan?’ She waved the carton
of grated cheese in front of Alice. ‘It’s recommended in the recipe.’

‘Yes, okay,’ said Alice, taking
the cheese carton from her, and daring to believe that she would not ask any
further questions about the meeting with her parents. She started to sprinkle
the cheese onto the dish.

‘Stop me if I'm being too nosy,
but I'm curious as to what your father had to say for himself after all these
years.’

Alice wanted to disappear. She
had preferred it when Stephanie had been totally against her having anything to
do with her real parents. Now, she seemed to have accepted that Alice wanted to
get to know them. What she really wanted at this moment was for Stephanie to
start saying that she should forget about them, then she could agree with her
and say that she didn’t want to see them again. She carried on eating, hoping
that Stephanie would forget she had asked her anything.

‘What does your dad think about
you seeing Jane again? I would have thought he'd be against it. He's always
been a miserable so and so.’ Stephanie rolled her eyes. ‘What excuse did he
have for not contacting you for all these years?’

Tears began to well in Alice's
eyes and her cheeks turned red.

Stephanie appeared to notice and
lowered her eyes. ‘Sorry, I'm asking too many questions. Please just let me
know when you're ready to talk about it.’ She sipped her glass of wine, keeping
her eyes averted from Alice.

Eventually, Alice spoke: ‘He
said that the reason they never contacted me... Well, he said, they thought it
was better if I didn’t visit them. He said...
they
said... they don’t
want me to...’ she started to explain but her words did not make sense. As she
tried to explain she could not continue. She could not stop herself from crying
openly. All the frustration of looking for her father, and finally finding him,
and the final rejection, had been building up slowly within her, and she could
no longer hold it all inside. She tried her best to stop crying, not wanting to
upset Stephanie—but the tears continued to fall.

Alice realised that she had been
fooling herself that she had taken her parents' rejection well. Her true
feelings had been hiding under the surface. When Stephanie had asked her to
tell her about her visit, the trauma and pain had resurfaced and it was as if a
time bomb had been detonated. The floods of tears seemed never-ending. She was
inconsolable.

Stephanie tried her best to
cheer her up, telling her that it had probably been a shock to her parents
seeing her after all this time and they had probably reacted in the heat of the
moment.

  ‘Please stop crying, darling.
Look, finish your dinner. You’ll probably feel better after a meal. You’re
probably just hungry and tired after your journey.’

They ate their dinner in
complete silence. The only sound was of knives and forks clanging, and Alice’s
intermittent sobs.

After dinner, Alice told
Stephanie that she was tired and wanted to go home. ‘I’ll feel much better
tomorrow. It’s just hard facing up to the fact that they don't care about me.
But I should have known that already… I mean, if they cared they would have
tried to contact me before, wouldn't they?’ Her brown eyes looked mournful and
lost.

Bloody Roger
, thought
Stephanie,
I’ll kill him if I ever lay eyes on him
.

‘Why don’t you stay here
tonight?’ she offered, worried about Alice's state of mind.

‘No, I’ll be fine. Thanks for
everything.’ She smiled weakly and walked towards the front door.

‘Alice, forget about Roger and
Miranda. Let’s go back to how we were before. We were happy then.’

‘Yes, I know, Mum.’ Then Alice
realised that she had called Stephanie “Mum”, and for the first time since
finding out the truth it had felt like the right thing to do. She started to
believe that maybe it would be possible to go back to how things were before.
Hope was calling out to her where before there had been nothing but darkness.

***

Stephanie watched Alice walk away. The anger she felt
towards Roger and Miranda was threatening to give way to thoughts of revenge.
She took deep breaths and tried to calm her mind.
How could they have turned
her away like that?
She was trembling with rage as the adrenaline coursed
through her.
I have to do something. Alice needs my help. But what? What can
I do?
She decided to phone Rita. Maybe she could help her rationalise
everything.

‘Hello,’ said Rita.

‘Oh, Rita, sorry to keep
bothering you. You must be sick of me by now,’ said Stephanie.

‘Don't be silly,’ replied Rita,
with a giggle.

‘Something's happened and I'm at
my wits’ end. I feel like killing someone but I know that would be going too
far… Well, I usually know that would be going too far, but today? I think
anything is possible.’

‘Steph, wait, rewind. What has
happened? You sound upset.’

‘Alice went to visit Roger and
Miranda, and they told her they don’t want anything to do with her! They don’t
want to know her. She was so upset. She was crying for hours. I just don’t know
what to do.’ Her words were tumbling quickly from her mouth like dominoes
falling one after the other.

‘Why on earth would they do
that? When—I mean, well, I wouldn’t have been able to do that. If I was in that
position I would have been happy to see my son... I... I... I mean my
daughter
,
after all those years.’

‘Do you think I should visit
them?’ asked Stephanie, still caught up in her own thoughts and not having
really taken in what Rita was saying.

‘I can't figure out how their
minds work,’ said Rita. 'Why would they turn Alice away?’

‘Yes, but do you think I should
go and give them a piece of my mind?’

‘Steph, there's something I
haven't told you. I didn’t tell you, because of what you’re going through at
the moment. It would have sounded wrong if I was giving you advice about Alice,
if you knew the truth,’ said Rita, cryptically.

‘What is it?’ asked Stephanie,
impatiently, not happy about the detour in the conversation, wanting to get
back to the matter at hand.

‘I gave my son up for adoption
when he was born,’ said Rita suddenly. ‘The reason I left London was because I
became pregnant and Peter’s father didn’t want anything to do with me. My
parents disowned me as soon as they found out. I was an embarrassment to them
because I was unmarried. I went and stayed with my aunt in Birmingham, until
Peter was born. I had to give him up for adoption because I didn’t have anyone
to support me and I couldn’t afford to raise him on my own.’

‘Oh, Rita,’ said Stephanie,
‘that's so sad… but why didn’t you tell me any of this before?'

‘Because, I thought you would be
upset. I knew you had tried so hard to have a child of your own, and I gave my
child away.’

‘But surely you didn’t have to
give him away. Why did you? You could have come to me at the time. We were
close. I would have helped you. Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘I couldn’t, Steph. When I found
out I was pregnant, I was so shocked I didn’t know what to do. Everything
happened so fast. It was around the time when you were having problems in your
marriage with Roger. You’d been telling me how Roger wasn’t coming home, and he
was working late all the time. You had enough problems. Anyway, at the
beginning I was seriously thinking of having an abortion, and I didn’t think
you’d agree with that, not after all you’d been through trying to have a child.
I didn’t want to get in your way; you were so upset about everything. If I’d
turned up on your doorstep, I thought I’d make everything worse between you and
Roger. I never really got on with Roger, anyway—you know that.’

‘But, Rita, if only I’d known.
So, do you know where your son is now?’

‘He still lives with his
adoptive family, but he visits me. He found me a few years ago and got in
touch. It was so hard living without him, knowing I had a son out there. I
always thought about him. I was so pleased to see him. I just don’t know how
Roger and Miranda could have turned Alice away. I was so shocked to hear that.’

Stephanie remained silent and
lost in thought. She hadn’t even known Rita was seeing anyone at that time, let
alone the fact that she had become pregnant.
How did that get past me?
she
wondered. It made her question herself for a moment. Rita had always been there
to listen to her problems, but it appeared she had never taken the time to find
out what was going on in Rita’s life.

‘Steph, are you still there?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, you see, I didn’t tell
you about this before, because I thought you would think I was being
hypocritical if I said anything against Roger and Miranda. I knew you needed my
support, though,’ Rita explained.

‘So, everything you said, you
were just being a shoulder to cry on? You didn’t really mean any of it, did
you?’ Stephanie’s mind was frantically running through all the conversations
they’d had recently. ‘I wish I’d never told you about any of this,’ she said,
speaking her thoughts.

‘Steph, you’re letting your
imagination run away with you. I meant everything I said. I only held back
telling you about Peter because I knew that it would change the way you felt
about talking to me. I wanted to help you, and I knew I could because I’m
someone who’s been through it.’

‘No,’ said Stephanie, ‘you’re
someone who’s been through what Roger and Miranda are going through... Wait a
minute, you were the one who told me that I should tell Alice about Miranda.
You were on their side all along, weren’t you?’

‘That’s silly. No, I wasn’t on
their side. I wasn’t on anyone’s side; I just thought that it was best for
Alice—’

‘What would you know about what’s
best for Alice? You abandoned your own child!’ snapped Stephanie.

‘My situation was different,’
said Rita in a small voice.

‘Hang on a minute... You knew
Roger married Miranda, didn’t you?’

‘No, of course I didn’t,’ said
Rita, incredulous. ‘I told you—’

‘It makes sense now. That’s why
you were not surprised when I told you they were living together,’ continued
Stephanie as if she had not heard her. ‘Your friend—the one who introduced you
to Miranda—she must have told you, and you’ve been keeping it from me.’

‘I haven’t seen her for years—’
Rita’s response was in vain, Stephanie appeared not to be listening to her
anymore. ‘Steph?’

‘Oh my God,’ Stephanie shook her
head, her eyes wide, ‘I’ve been such a fool. Is that why you were so keen for
us to rekindle our friendship, so you could persuade me to tell Alice about the
surrogacy agreement? Come to think of it, you were very insistent that you
thought Alice should know the truth. I thought you were being a bit pushy, but
I had no idea then that you had an ulterior motive. How could you? We used to
be friends.’

‘Stop it, Stephanie!’ Rita’s
voice boomed over the phone line and at last she caught Stephanie’s attention.

Something in the tone of her
voice and the way Rita had used her full name to address her, had brought her
mind back to reality.

‘Whatever you think of me I am
not in cahoots with Roger and Miranda. In fact, if you’d bothered to listen to
me a few minutes ago, you would know that I was shocked when I heard that
they’d turned Alice away. You cannot compare my situation to theirs. The
circumstances are completely different. They could have looked after Alice if
they wanted to, but they chose not to. I didn’t choose, I didn’t have a
choice.’ Rita was talking quickly and sounded upset. ‘And, I’ve already told
you why I thought you should tell Alice about Miranda. That was in case she
found out when she got in touch with Roger. I was looking at it from Alice’s
point of view. I was thinking about my Peter, and comparing Alice to him. I
knew it would be better for her to know her true identity. I saw how much of a
difference it made to Peter’s life when he met me. He felt more complete.’