‘Us too, we tried to find you,’ I said, ‘but you’d gone from London, and no one at The Seventh Star knew where you were. I did go in to try and find you.’
Mitch studied me closely. ‘The Seventh Star? Oh my god, that’s a long time ago – in the hippie days.’ She looked at all of us. ‘Are you guys married? Have children? Where do you live?’
‘I’m in Wiltshire, widowed,’ said Jo. ‘Two children, four grandchildren.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry you lost your husband, Jo, and … I’m so sorry I never made it to your wedding.’
Jo shrugged. ‘No need, he turned out to be an arse, though you might have spotted that if you’d come. You might have saved me.’
Mitch laughed out loud.
‘I’m in Devon, also widowed recently, husband not an arse,’ said Ally, ‘two children, one grandchild.’
‘Oh Ally, I’m so sorry,’ said Mitch, ‘about the widowed part. How are you doing?’
Ally grimaced. ‘Adjusting.’
‘Then you must come and stay out here, definitely, it’s a very restful place. Seriously. You’d be so welcome. What about you, Sara?’
‘Divorced. I married a man who ran off with my best friend—’
‘Wasn’t your best friend then,’ said Mitch. ‘What an idiot.’
I shrug. ‘History. I’m over it.’ I felt Mitch staring at me again and I glanced away. I’d forgotten how she could zone in on a person as if looking right into them and seeing all their secrets.
‘And you?’ asked Jo.
‘Very happy. I love it out here. I found my place. Married with two lovely boys, though hardly boys now as they’re both grown-up with their own kids.’
‘Mitch, before we go any further, we … er … we have something to tell you,’ I said.
‘OK. Oh. Looks serious. What is it?’
‘I … well, while we were looking for you, we met someone else who has been trying to find you—’
‘Not the tax man, I hope …’
‘No, not the tax man – your daughter. Lisa.’
Mitch appeared to freeze on the screen. ‘Daughter?’ she whispered.
I nodded. ‘Lisa. She’s in her forties and wants to meet you.’
Mitch’s eyes filled with tears. ‘Oh my god, how did you …? How did she …? Lisa? So that’s what they called her. You know about her.’ She was quiet for a few minutes, clearly trying to digest what I’d just told her, and I felt so glad I’d insisted to Gary that this was all to be off camera. ‘How did she – Lisa – find you? Or me? Where is she? I tried to find her. I hoped that when she was old enough to look for me that she would, but nothing ever came of it so I told myself I had to let go. Some adopted children don’t want to ever find their birth parents. I guessed she didn’t want to know me. The adoption agencies said that can happen sometimes but … I always hoped …’
‘It’s true. She didn’t want to look for you in the beginning,’ I said. ‘She said she had the best parents and after she’d found out she was adopted, she didn’t want to upset them …’
‘When did they tell her? What age?’
‘Fourteen, I think,’ said Jo.
Mitch nodded, taking it in.
‘She said that at first she was angry,’ I said, ‘upset that she had been discarded, abandoned—’
‘Oh no, it wasn’t like that.’ Mitch’s eyes welled up with tears and she was clearly finding the conversation difficult.
‘I am sorry to spring this on you, Mitch, but …’
Mitch took a deep breath as if struggling with an avalanche of emotions. ‘No, no. I want to know, tell me everything. So she didn’t want to find me then?’
‘Not at first. She said that everything changed when she had children of her own, then it became a compulsion. She had to know why you had given her up.’
Mitch nodded again. ‘Makes sense. I thought she might not want to know me when she heard that she was adopted but people change don’t they? I should have updated the agencies as to where I was, never given up looking for her. I guess I got good at shutting some things away and once I was settled here with Rob, my previous life felt further and further away and I told myself I had to let it go.’ She looked overwhelmed and sad. ‘How is she? Where is she?’
‘She’s here in London. She’s great, vibrant, she has two children …’
‘One of them is the spit of you, Scarlet, she’s sixteen,’ said Ally. ‘Lisa had a career as a dancer before becoming a mother, but now she teaches dance. Remember how you wanted to go to dance college back in the day?’
Mitch took a few more deep breaths. ‘I do remember wanting to dance. I’d love to meet Lisa. I must tell her how it was when she was born. Does she want to meet me or just call and ask her questions?’
‘She wants to meet you, very much,’ said Jo.
‘But how would you like to do it? I asked. ‘On FaceTime, Skype or in person?’
‘Oh. Phew. Let me think about that. Maybe both? I’ll talk to Rob. He knows all about her.’ Suddenly she smiled. ‘I named her Sara Rose, you know. Remember, Sara? We promised each other that if we ever had girls, you’d name yours Michelle, I’d name mine Sara. And Rose was—’
‘After Black Rose, Jack’s band,’ I said. ‘I know. Lisa told me. Mitch, I was so touched by—’
Mitch looked shocked. ‘You know about Jack too?’
‘We do, or at least we know a bit now, that he died … but what happened?
‘He died on his way to see me. Does Lisa know that?’
‘She’d worked it out,’ said Ally, ‘though not the details.’
‘We’d planned to get married and were about to tell my parents. I’d cooked, it was to be a great celebration, but Jack never made it.’
‘You must have been devastated,’ said Jo.
‘I was, but more angry and confused at first.
