Rachel wasn’t sure she could be any happier as Clara walked upstairs and into the living room.
Clara didn’t even say hello. She threw her bag down onto the sofa and sat down.
‘I saw your mother today. My God, she’s an absolute bitch. I don’t think I have met a nastier female, and I went to a private girls’ school for two years – trust me, there were some horrible girls there.’
Rachel gasped. ‘You saw her? In hospital?’
Clara raised an eyebrow. ‘I took her grapes but I took them back because that woman doesn’t deserve grapes or anything from me or the rest of the world. I am surprised you didn’t push her down the stairs. I would have.’
Rachel didn’t know if she should cry or laugh but Clara was the bravest person she ever met for confronting her mother and for taking the grapes back.
‘What did she say?’ Rachel asked, grasping her hands together, twisting them and sticking her nails into the cushiony bit of her hand near her thumb.
Clara looked Rachel in the eye. ‘Why do you call her Mother when she doesn’t act like one? And besides, she’s your stepmother.’
‘What?’ Rachel didn’t understand. ‘She’s my mother. And she does act like one.’
‘No. Mothers care for their children – they love them, they don’t punish them for existing. They support them, and they do the hard work while you learn how to become a grown-up. Their love is a feeling of peace.’
Rachel sat back into the sofa. ‘Not my mother? What do you mean?’
‘She told me,’ said Clara. ‘But I need to confirm that it’s true or if she’s just saying it to stir up drama. Where does she keep all her papers?’
‘What papers?’
‘You know, birth certificates and things like that?’ Clara said.
Rachel tried to think. ‘There’s a locked box in the cupboard in her wardrobe.’
‘Grab it for me and let’s have a look.’
Rachel left the room and came back and put the box on the table in front of Clara, who looked at the lock.
‘Got a screwdriver?’ she asked.
Rachel went downstairs and came back with a set of screwdrivers. Clara chose the largest one and started to jimmy the lock.
‘What are you doing?’ Rachel couldn’t believe Clara’s lack of care of what her mother – or stepmother – would think.
Clara ignored her and used the screwdriver to push in the lock and then Rachel heard a snap. Clara lifted the lid and looked at Rachel.
‘This could be tough, Rachel. Do you want me to look first?’
Rachel nodded and Clara pulled out an official envelope and opened it and read aloud.
‘Rachel Louise Brown. Born to Peter Brown and Sarah Brown.’
She handed it to Rachel then opened another envelope.
Rachel ran her finger over her mother’s signature on the birth certificate extract. Sarah Brown? Why didn’t they tell her?
Clara handed her another certificate.
This one was the death certificate for her mother. She was only nine months old when her mother died of an embolism. No wonder there were no photos of her as a baby before nine months. Moira had probably thrown them all away.
Her mother was twenty-six when she died. Only a year older than she was now. She felt tears forming and she started to cry.
Clara was next to her now, hugging her. ‘All this time, I wondered how my own mother could do this to me, but now I know she wasn’t my mother, and it makes it better somehow but also worse. I thought I couldn’t be loved if my own mother didn’t love me.’
Clara held Rachel closer. ‘You are loved, you are wonderful, you are special and you never deserved what she did to you, Rachel, never – you understand?’
Clara pulled away and held Rachel’s face in her hands.
‘This was never about you, it was done to you, but it’s about her. She’s a truly awful person.’
‘Who will come back and make my life worse,’ cried Rachel.
But Clara was smiling and shaking her head. ‘No, I don’t think she will. Let me go through these papers but if she is as evil as I think she is, she will have done something that might just undo her.’
Clara went back to the box and picked up the rest of the papers and envelopes.
‘Can I take these?’
Rachel nodded her consent, still in shock.
Clara leaned down and hugged her again. ‘It will be okay, Rachel, I promise you that. I know exactly what I am going to do, but I just have to get the evidence to prove it.’
She left in a whirlwind. Rachel went to the box, and found an envelope from a pharmacy and opened it. Inside were old photos, and with her heart in her mouth she pulled them out.
There was Sarah Brown. Almost exactly like Rachel to look at, with the same short haircut she had now and with a broad smile, sitting in a park, Rachel on her lap. A photo of the three of them, her dad looking happier than he had ever looked with Mother. She mentally corrected herself. Moira.
More photos of them at a party, maybe her mother’s birthday. Yes, there she was being held by Sarah as a cake with candles was burning in front of her.
She checked the birth date and the day of her death on the death certificate and touched the photo. Months later she would be dead and Rachel would never know that love again. She lay on the sofa and cried for everything she had never known and most of all for her mother who had never known her daughter.
What Moira did was unforgiveable. She had taken everything from Rachel, including her confidence and her sense of worth, Clara said, but Rachel had one thing Moira didn’t have. She had talent and she was determined now, more than ever, to make the Merryknowe Bakery and Tearooms a soaring success.
30
Henry tucked Pansy under the covers and kissed her on
