Quarter Past Two on a Wednesday Afternoon (16 page)

She wandered indoors. The house felt so different on a hot day, cooler than outside, the curtains moving gently to the air from open windows. A fly buzzed loudly on the kitchen windowsill. Anna rescued it, guiding it outside, then went upstairs. Instead of going to her own bedroom she stood in the doorway of her parents’.

It felt somehow grand and forbidding, this room; bigger and much tidier than hers or Rose’s, with the bed always made, covered by a cream bedspread you couldn’t bounce or sprawl on or you’d never get it as precisely draped again, its edges falling exactly to the floor. Her parents had a bedside table each, with an alarm clock and a weighty book on her father’s side, a small jar of pills and a more feminine kind of book on her mother’s. Anna didn’t go in there much, but wandered in now to sit at Mum’s dressing table, which always intrigued her. When Mum sat on the low padded stool, looking at herself in the mirror as she put on make-up, it seemed a glamorous thing to do, like an old-fashioned film star, except that a film star would have light bulbs all round her mirror.

‘Of course not, you’re much too young,’ was what Mum said when Anna asked if she could wear make-up. Rose did, but not much – mainly dark grey stuff round her eyes, and mascara, and concealer which she dabbed on any emerging spots, though it was rare for her to have them. These items she kept in a bead-spangled pouch that sat on top of her chest of drawers, next to a small mirror on a stand. Mum had a special make-up drawer, which was altogether more mysterious. Anna slid it open, sitting on the cushioned stool.

The drawer smelled of perfume and powder, heady and cloying. Inside was a zipped bag, containing lipsticks, eye-shadow pencils and round containers of blusher. There was a powder compact with a dusty mirror inside, and a pot of rouge or lip-gloss, its surface worn into a smooth, glistening dip. There were tubes of hand-cream, foundation and moisturizer and hair-removing cream, slim jars of nail varnish in boiled-sweet pink, all the paraphernalia of being grown up and female. So much of it, so much to learn and remember! You’d think Mum went out every day looking like a painted doll; in fact Anna had never seen her wear more than powder and lipstick.

Anna picked up a sachet of face-mask and read the instructions. There were several in the drawer, so Mum wouldn’t miss one. With nail scissors she snipped off the corner, and at once the contents began to ooze out – like thick cream, only tinged with green, and giving off a sort of clayey plastery smell, not unpleasant. You had to smooth it over your face and neck and leave it to dry, the instructions said. Anna fastened her hair back more securely into its scrunchie, and used one of Mum’s grips to keep her fringe out of her face. She put a dollop of creamy stuff on her chin, and began to spread it with her fingertips. It felt like covering her face with custard. Over her eyebrows she spread it, up to her hair-line, and all over her nose and cheeks and jaw, till all that was left was her mouth, which suddenly looked very pink and mobile, and two circles around her eyes. A clown face looked back at her from the mirror. She stared, almost frightened, and giggled at herself.

There was a blob on the blue carpet. She dabbed at it with one finger, making a pale smudge that worsened when she tried to scrub it away with a tissue. She used the tissue to wrap up the empty sachet, which she must remember to take downstairs and hide in the bin.

She felt the odd sensation of the mask hardening and tightening on her face, pulling her skin. She’d intended to put on make-up, the whole works – foundation and eyeshadow, blusher and mascara and lipstick – but now she couldn’t. What else did Mum keep in these drawers? Listening out for Rose’s tread downstairs – if she came indoors, there’d be time to bolt into the bathroom and wipe the stuff off her face – Anna closed the top drawer and pulled out the middle one. Mum’s scarves were in there, silk and chiffon and fine wool, bright plain colours and pale patterns. Nothing interesting.

The bottom drawer looked boring too, full of card folders. They held dull-looking papers, accounts and bills, apart from one near the bottom that had a label saying
Certificates
. To Anna, a certificate was something you got at school, for swimming or winning a race on sports day or for reading lots of books, but the ones inside were made of flimsy folded paper.

The word
Deaths
caught her eye first. Who had died? But it was her father’s name written there, in old-fashioned loopy writing: Donald Leonard Taverner, and the words at the top were
Certified Copy of an Entry of Birth
, she read.
Pursuant to the Births and Deaths Registration Acts, 1836 to 1947
. It was her father’s birth certificate. How stark and impersonal,
Birth
and
Death
in the same phrase, as if nothing in between counted for much. The date on it was 1948, ages ago. Underneath was an identical certificate for Cassandra Mary Skipton, dated 1950. It was weird to imagine her parents as tiny babies, new-born, with no idea of growing up and coming together to be Mum and Dad. Next came a marriage certificate, with both their names and the date 1969, and another birth one. Anna’s eyes registered the details in shocked delight:
Anna Rose Taverner, 1977
. She knew it was hers, but it made her think of someone else: a helpless baby, red-faced and repellent in the way new babies were when she saw them squalling in the supermarket, refusing to be shushed.

Wasn’t there one for Rose too? She couldn’t see it here. Anna flattened the papers and put them back in the wallet-folder, then lifted out the one underneath, which had a white label but no title. Inside were more papers, official-looking like the others, but A4 sized and on thicker paper.

The top one must be Rose’s birth certificate, but it looked different from Anna’s. It had her name, Rose Patricia Taverner, and the first date was her birthday, 10 March. The widest column said
Name and surname, address and occupation of adopter or adopters
, and underneath that was Dad’s name and then Mum’s.

Anna’s heart gave a dizzying thump. Her mind blurred. There was something here she was failing to grasp.

Adopter. Adopters.

Dad’s name and Mum’s.

It meant Rose wasn’t really her sister. Was that what it meant?

Adopters
.

They weren’t Rose’s parents. She hadn’t been their baby. She was someone else’s.

Her eyes had gone funny, not focusing properly; she had to hold the certificate close to her nose to read it again, and again, to be sure.

Yes. At the bottom it said
CERTIFIED to be a true copy of an entry in the Adopted Child Register maintained at the General Registry Office
, and the date – November 1972 – had been written in by hand.

Adopted Child. Rose Patricia Taverner.

Rose wasn’t her sister. Rose, with her different skin, her differently shaped body, was no relation at all. Anna felt that somewhere inside herself she had always known that.

But – she looked around dizzily at the room, which seemed to have changed since she sat down – it couldn’t be true, or it would mean they’d lied. Mum and Dad were liars, and so was Rose.

Looking up at the mirror, Anna was startled by the clown face staring back, the mask cracking into lines and flakes. Her hands trembling, she took out her own birth certificate again, doubtful now about what she’d seen. It frightened her, that there were official papers about all of them, about Mum and Dad and herself, papers with stamps and signatures without which you might not properly exist, papers saying that one day you would die. Papers that made someone not who you thought they were. Her own certificate – with the full names of Mum and Dad written in, Donald Leonard Taverner and Cassandra Mary Taverner, formerly Skipton – looked like a confirmation that she
was
who she thought, but could she trust it? It was only a piece of paper. She held it in one hand, Rose’s in the other, comparing them. She had been born, it said here, on her own birthday, to her own parents. Rose, though, had come from somewhere else.

Anna was shivering. It didn’t make sense. It couldn’t! Rose would have said. She had always been there, ahead of Anna, bigger, doing things first, knowing everything. Rose wouldn’t lie. If she did, she wouldn’t be the same Rose. But then: who
was
she?

Hearing Rose’s voice, she came back to herself with a jolt; how long had she been sitting there, gazing at words that jumbled themselves into nonsense, words that danced and teased in front of her eyes? She’d been listening out for Rose, but she must have forgotten; now Rose was calling out from the top of the stairs, soundless on bare feet, and the bedroom door was open and Anna sitting there in full view.

‘Anna? What’re you— Oh—’

Rose had stopped, leaning against the door-frame, a hand to her throat. Then she started laughing. ‘Where did you get that?’

Anna fumbled the papers – too late to push them out of sight – before realizing that Rose meant the face-mask.

‘You made me jump! Your face, it’s like a Halloween ghost!’

‘I was just …’ Anna faltered.

‘Did Mum say you could? She didn’t, did she? You’re bad, Annie, using Mum’s stuff, when you know I’m in charge of you! Are you trying to get me into trouble?’

‘No, I …’ Anna looked down at the certificate in her left hand, then held it out. ‘Look. Look, I found this. What does it mean?’

‘What?’

Rose came in and reached for the paper. Anna saw her small frown as she read, her eyes scanning from side to side. She gave a small sharp intake of breath, but said nothing. The room was bedtime-quiet, the only sounds a dull ticking of the clock on Dad’s bedside table, and a car in the road outside.

‘Where did you find it?’ Rose said, and her voice came out croakily, as if squeezing past a blockage in her throat.

‘In there.’ Anna pointed to the drawer.

Rose stared; she knelt, and began rummaging through the drawer, pulling out the other folder, bending close over each certificate in turn. Her loose hair tumbled over her shoulders; impatiently she pushed it back. She seemed to have forgotten Anna. Resentful, Anna said, ‘You should have told me. Why didn’t you?’

Rose turned and stared, her gaze unsteady. Still in that strange harsh voice, she said, ‘Why do you think?’

Something was wrong here. Anna had started it and now there was no way of stopping.

‘I don’t know,’ she whimpered, and felt tears trickling over the caked mask.

‘Go and wash your face,’ Rose ordered.

Soon Mum and Dad would know, and be cross. Anna hoped Rose was putting everything back exactly as it was, so that they could pretend nothing had happened and go out for their walk and never refer to what those papers said. Obediently she went to the bathroom and ran cold water, dabbing at her face with the flannel. The mask softened as she wiped, but still clung to her skin; when she thought she’d got it all off and peered closely at herself in the mirror, she saw white bits in her eyebrows and in the corners of her nose. More and more chalky stuff flowed out as she rinsed the flannel, squeezing it under the tap.

When she left the bathroom, Rose’s bedroom door was closed. There was no answer when Anna called her name, then knocked, but Anna went in anyway. Rose was lying on the bed, staring up at the ceiling. The certificate was still in her hand.

‘You’ve got to put that back! Mum’ll be cross.’

‘Anna, you don’t understand. You just don’t understand. Go away and leave me alone.’

Anna went downstairs and out to the garden, and sat sideways on the recliner, staring at the lawn. The house’s long shadow was falling across the grass, and the heat had gone out of the day. She
did
understand. Rose wasn’t her sister. They weren’t related. They weren’t even slightly sisters.

She was an only child now. Rose had turned into a stranger, an unknown girl who for some reason lived here, like the poor sister in a fairy tale. Except that Rose would never be happy in that role. She’d taken first place for herself, leaving Anna to be the downtrodden one.

Rose didn’t emerge from her room until Mum and Dad came home, soon after seven; Anna found herself creeping around the house as if someone were seriously ill. As soon as their voices were heard in the hall, Rose came down. On the third stair from the bottom she stood very still in a way that made them and Anna turn to look at her. Slowly she unfolded the adoption certificate, holding it out to show them. In her new, grating voice she demanded, ‘Why haven’t you told me? Why haven’t you ever told me?’

Mum went pale. Never before had Anna seen that actually happening to someone: their face going so grey and rigid that you’d think all the blood had drained right down to their feet. She looked like a waxwork of herself. Dad said, ‘I think we’d better all sit down,’ and he put an arm round Rose’s shoulders and guided her into the sitting room. ‘Anna too. Come on, love.’

It was like they were having a meeting. At first Mum was silent; then, when she spoke, her voice was changed, and smaller, as if the air had been squeezed or jolted out of her. Tears trickled steadily from her eyes, and she snuffled into a handkerchief. Rose didn’t cry, but she kept saying, ‘Why didn’t you tell me? Aren’t I old enough to know?’

‘We were going to tell you when you were eighteen, love,’ Dad said. ‘We talked about it and decided that was best.’

‘But why? It wasn’t like you couldn’t have a baby of your own. Anna’s not adopted, is she? I saw her birth certificate. Why would you adopt me when you could have your own baby?’

‘Rose,’ Dad said, his arm round her, ‘we love you and Anna both the same. You’re both our daughters and we love you very much.’

‘But why would you …?’

Over and over it they went, round and round. Rose and Dad did most of the talking; Mum watched their faces. When she did speak, her voice was full of tears. ‘Rose, darling, we chose you because we wanted you more than anything. We wanted a little girl to love. And we do love you, we always have, from the first moment we saw you, and ever since.’

‘So who am I?’ Rose’s eyes couldn’t settle on anything. ‘Who am I?’