‘So, what do you want to know?’ she asks, as she runs through the million and one questions of her own that are flying around her head.
‘Everything,’ says Jess, taking a seat.
Lauren feels winded as she sits there, opposite Jess, without any other distractions. The similarity between them is uncanny and the juxtaposition of how close they are, but yet so far apart, makes Lauren shudder involuntarily.
‘You didn’t seem that surprised to see me,’ says Jess. ‘At least, not as surprised as your sister or your mother.’
Lauren can’t pull her eyes away from Jess, transfixed by her every move and idiosyncrasy. ‘I don’t know what you want me to say,’ she says, when she eventually finds her voice.
‘I want to know where my father is,’ says Jess. ‘Because it felt like you were all hiding something.’
Lauren coughs, clearing her throat. ‘I . . . I’m afraid that my father . . .’
Jess looks at her expectantly, her blue eyes, so like Lauren’s, wide and hopeful.
‘My father . . .’ she starts, ‘. . . passed away.’
Jess’s mouth falls open. ‘But . . . but . . .’ she stutters as tears pool in her eyes. She bows her head as they fall silently onto her cheeks.
Lauren’s chest caves in as she fights the instinct to get up and go to her. ‘I’m so sorry.’
‘Wh-when?’ croaks Jess.
Lauren looks down at her hands, visibly shaking in her lap. ‘Ten months ago,’ she says quietly. ‘He had a heart attack. It was very sudden.’
‘Was he at home? Who was with him? Did he say anything? Anything at all to the people who were with him?’
Lauren looks at her, taken aback. ‘No . . . no . . . I don’t think so. He was at a client’s house when it happened.’
‘Who was it? Do you know who it was?’
‘It was a woman who he’d been helping with a divorce,’ says Lauren, confused by the line of questioning. ‘I don’t remember her name – she was just a client.’
‘I need to speak with her,’ says Jess abruptly. ‘I need to know who she is.’
‘What for?’ asks Lauren, suddenly going on the defensive.
‘Did he say anything to her?’ asks Jess frantically. ‘Anything at all?’
‘About what?’
‘Me!’ exclaims Jess. ‘Did he say anything about me?’
Lauren lets out a derisory laugh. ‘Do you honestly believe that your name would be the first to leave his lips when he was dying? Before his wife and the two daughters he brought up?’
Jess bites down on her lip and Lauren immediately feels remorseful. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—’
‘I know what you meant,’ says Jess tearfully. ‘I just thought it might have been the moment that he told the truth. That he might have redeemed himself and confessed the secret he’s been hiding for twenty-two years.’
‘I’m sorry,’ says Lauren. ‘It was very quick, and he never regained consciousness. If it’s any consolation, none of us got to say goodbye.’
Jess sniffs and puts her head in her hands.
‘You look like me,’ blurts out Lauren. She’d not meant to say it out loud.
‘I know,’ says Jess, looking up, with the tiniest hint of a smile.
‘Did you ever meet him? Do you remember anything about him?’ asks Lauren.
Jess stands up and walks to the front window. The light is fading and the street lamp outside the house is burning with a low orange light.
‘No.’
Selfish relief rushes out of Lauren’s body as her overactive imagination is silenced. She was worried that Jess would have memories that she didn’t want to hear. She couldn’t bear to think about her father bouncing her up and down on his knee, or taking her to the zoo with another woman.
‘I can’t believe he’s gone,’ says Jess, as another tear falls onto her cheek. ‘I had so many questions to ask him. So many things I wanted to say.’
Lauren forces herself to stay where she is, even though every natural fibre in her body makes her want to reach out to the broken young girl in front of her.
‘Could your mother not help you?’ asks Lauren. ‘Might she be able to fill in some of the gaps?’
Jess pulls herself up, taking a deep breath. ‘She might, if I knew who she was. I was given up for adoption when I was a baby.’
A heaviness weighs down on Lauren’s chest at the thought of what this young woman has been through. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she says.
‘Don’t be,’ says Jess, with a hollow laugh. ‘It was for the best. For whatever reason, my birth parents obviously didn’t feel they could care for me in the same way that someone else could. And I’m truly grateful to them for that. I’ve had a good life, probably better than they could ever possibly have given me. My adoptive parents were amazing. I couldn’t have asked for a better start in life. They’ve given me the best of everything.’
Lauren smiles, consoled by the image of a baby being rocked in the arms of parents who really loved and wanted her. A couple who had fought long and hard, with a courage and determination that most birth parents didn’t need to possess, because everything they’d wanted had come naturally to them. People like her father, who’d had a baby with reckless abandon, but who was too cowardly to take responsibility for it.
Shame threatens to overwhelm her as she contemplates how he could have let his own flesh and blood go through the trauma of an adoption, just because he wasn’t man enough to tell his wife what was going on. Who knows what might have happened if he had? Perhaps the three girls could have grown up as sisters, rather than endure the shock of finding each other twenty-two years later.
‘I’m so pleased to hear that,’ says Lauren eventually.
‘If only I’d found him earlier,’ says Jess, blowing her nose into a tissue. ‘I had so many things to ask him. Now I’ll never get the chance.’
‘You can ask me,’ says Lauren, softening to Jess’s plight. ‘I might not have all the answers, but I can certainly try and build you a better picture of who he was.’ Though even as she’s saying it, she wonders how well she really knew her father after all. Her childhood memories of him jar noisily against those from her adult years.
Lauren remembers the night a woman came to the door, crying hysterically and demanding to see him. Her mother had done all that she could to placate her, even offering to make her a cup of tea, but she wouldn’t believe that Harry wasn’t home. ‘I must speak to him,’ she’d shouted. ‘I keep calling, but he’s refusing to talk to me.’ In Rose’s infinite wisdom, or perhaps naivety, she’d tried to assure the woman that he was very busy at work and had hundreds of distressed spouses desperately in need of his time and expertise, but it seemed to fall on deaf ears.
‘She’s still there,’ Lauren had called out to her mum, whilst looking onto the street below from behind the net curtains in her bedroom.
‘Come away from the window,’ Rose had remonstrated. ‘Your dad will deal with it when he comes in.’
Had Harry told Rose about this neurotic client of his? Warned her even, that she might show up at their home, because that’s the kind of woman she was? Had they laughed about it together, as he’d regaled Rose with the juicy stories of his day? Or was his wife sitting downstairs, alone with her thoughts, and wondering if this was more than a manic plaintiff in a divorce case?