‘Is it? Is that what they called me? Or what you called me?’
‘That is your name.’
‘Answer me, Hope! Be honest with me for the first time. Try it. Go on. What’s my name?’
‘Steady, Curls …’ Lee tried to placate her, but she was having none of it and turned to confront Hope. She moved closer and leant down so her angry face was uncomfortably close to Hope’s, and she hissed:
‘What. Is. My. Name?
You owe me that, if you think I have any worth at all as a human being. I deserve to know my own name. My real name.’
Another grenade.
‘They … called you … Florence.’
‘FLORENCE? Oh my holy God. Florence. What, are they posh or something?’ She turned to Lee and put her hand out. ‘How d’you do, I’m Florence. Still want to have a baby with me? Even though I’m a total wanker?’
‘Umm, yes. Please. Florence. I sort of like it, I’ve always had a soft spot for a bit of classy skirt.’ He sniggered nervously.
‘It’s so not funny, Lee, you twat.’
‘I know, I know,’ he said. ‘But you made it funny, to be fair.’
‘This nightmare, it seems, is my actual life, what’s happening here. Goes to prove that it’s true, everything you do comes back to you in the end, doesn’t it?’ And with that, she flumped down on to the sofa with him. They sat in shocked silence together for a few moments, all three of them.
Hope had no idea what to say, and yet there was so much. She felt a warped kind of relief, but it was not anything she could appreciate. The weight of the actual untruth was lifted to a certain extent, but her horror was in the dawning realization that she’d dumped it all on Minnie at probably the worst possible time. So, where the agony of the kept secret had lived inside her, there was now a cold gaping hole, rapidly filling up with hot shame. Yes, everything comes back to you.
‘I want to, um, tell you …’ Hope was faltering. ‘… how sorry I am.’
‘Right,’ said Minnie curtly.
Hope pushed on: ‘But I can’t, Min, because I’m not, I’m just not. If this hadn’t happened, there wouldn’t be you. Us.’
‘OK,’ said Minnie, ‘does your heart not feel or something?’
‘Oh, it feels, all right. It’s broken right now.’
‘And what about the heart of my mother? Do you think that’s broken? How d’you think she has managed to live without her baby? After you tore her life apart? And now, you’ve done the same to me. Today, when I told you about MY baby? You certainly know how to brutally kill the joy. Gotta hand it to you. It’s savage. This should’ve been beautiful.’
‘I know,’ said Hope.
‘What the hell have you done?’
‘I’ve loved you. And whatever you think of me, I always will.’
‘Yeah, well …’ Minnie trailed off.
More silence. More shock. The tension in the room was sufficiently palpable to taste. Tin on the tongue.
Lee was the first to find it intolerable. ‘Tea?’ he offered, and escaped into the kitchen to complete what Minnie had started a few minutes ago, before her world collapsed.
Minnie was hurt. And furious. And insulted. Ordinarily, if she felt any of those awful feelings, she would rush to her mum to share it, but not this time. Realizing that fact only made her feel even more desolate. She was sitting in her home, where she was usually safe and cherished, with the two people she loved the most in the whole world, carrying another person who would mean everything, yet she’d never felt so lonely. She felt abandoned by everything she’d thought she understood. Her relationship with her own world was tipped up on its axis, and had, in a flash, become nothing she knew. ‘Who else knows about it? Does Nanna Doris know? Or Aunty Glory?’ demanded Minnie.
‘No one knows. I came home with you. They knew I was pregnant.’
‘So they think, to this day, I am – I was that baby?’
‘Yes. They’ve never questioned it.’
Minnie lashed out. ‘You’re such a liar. Like a queen liar, like the mother of all liars. Keeping it going this long, it’s unbelievable.’
Hope doubted whether she should say what she felt compelled to say next, but there was no returning from this moment of truth. There was an inevitable pull towards it.
She’d only been consumed by an irresistible impulse as potent as this once before in her life. And that had led to this.
Despite the potential can of worms she might be opening, and contrary to her big promise which she’d faithfully upheld until this moment, Hope knew that full disclosure was her only option now. She HAD to tell Minnie the whole truth.
‘Look, Min,’ she started gulping, ‘there is one other person who knows about what happened. Isaac. Your father.’
‘The absent African? Huh! He’s about as much my dad as you are my mum! He’s no bloody use to me.’
To Hope’s ears, these words were the cruellest. She had made the decision all those years ago; she was the one who had abducted the baby, not Isaac. His only crime had been to protect Hope and to love her enough to keep the secret. For the good of everyone, he’d had to leave. His honour had been his sacrifice and his sin. So, it was hard to hear Minnie, whom he had wanted so much and whom he loved so much, be so very dismissive about him. Hope could even feel violent about the depth of her love and therefore her defensiveness. Those words of Minnie’s stung, and Hope’s instinct was to slap her, to slap that rudeness out of her mouth, but of course she would never do that. Hope had never once been physical with Minnie. Hope wouldn’t hurt a fly, unless that fly was hurting her daughter. In this moment, while Minnie was indeed hurting, Hope knew what she had to do.
Hope stood up and went into her bedroom,
