“Joe’s probably going to bugger off soon if we don’t have a baby,” I said suddenly.
She looked taken aback. “Don’t be daft. Joe will never leave you.”
“He might.”
She shook her head dismissively. “Anyway, didn’t you say you had some news in your text?”
I sat up straight and fanned myself. “You won’t believe it.”
“Try me.”
I took Dad’s letter out of my bag, handed it to her, then everything gushed out of me like water from a cracked pipe. I told her how Tess had given her baby away, how it had affected her afterwards and how I was determined to find my sibling. She sat up straight and adopted her therapist’s pose, legs crossed and hands resting on her knees with her head slightly bowed. She listened carefully, shaking her head now and again, a pained expression flickering across her face. When I finally stopped for breath, I could see she was genuinely affected by what I’d told her and I loved her for it.
She sipped her coffee then her face suddenly screwed up like she was looking closely at something. “Remember the time you brought Tess to the hospital when Alexia was born?”
I nodded. “Vaguely.”
“You left the room at one point and Tess asked if she could hold her. When I put Alexia in her arms she started crying.”
“Really?”
“I asked her if she was OK but it was like she didn’t hear me. She kept stroking and kissing Alexia’s head then she started singing to her. It was like she was somewhere else. I probably forgot to tell you about it. Those first few days are such a whirlwind with a new-born.”
I closed my eyes. “I keep going over and over about how she scared she must have felt in that home. She was only sixteen when she gave birth. She must have been terrified. Even though I’ve never given birth myself I can imagine the horror.”
Karen shook her head slowly and sighed. “They’re so tiny and defenceless. All you want to do is hold them close and protect them forever. Her pain must have been unbearable.”
“Whatever anyone says, she and all those other women had no choice when they gave up their babies. They were forced adoptions. They were made to sign their babies away under duress because the sight of a single mother on the loose was too much for Catholic Ireland at that time to bear. Their families, the Church, the State, they all wanted them to disappear. They were seen as a stain on society and they were made invisible.”
Karen put her coffee on the table. “I had a client once who was forced to give her baby away in a Mother and Baby home. She was young and never told anyone. Afterwards she almost drank herself to death. She couldn’t cope with the barbaric treatment she received in the home at the time of the birth and the fact that her baby was gone. I just can’t imagine Tess’s pain. No wonder she was unwell.”
I fought back tears. “And all those years afterwards wondering where her baby ended up. Was it adopted? Did it end up happy in a good family? Or did it make it out of the home alive at all? The not knowing must have weighed on her.”
Karen leant forward and put a hand over mine. Then she sat back and frowned. “But why do you think Tess and your dad didn’t just run away when Tess got pregnant? Why give the baby up? They had two more kids together.”
I poured the rest of my Diet Coke into my glass and drank. “I know. I can’t get my head around that either. Maybe it was the shame they’d have brought on the families they left behind. It’s hard to grasp the hold the Church had in small towns and villages in Ireland then. Having a daughter up the duff out of wedlock was a catastrophe.”
“Not only in Ireland, Carmel. Mum’s parents in Glasgow refused to speak to her for two years when she told them she was keeping her black baby and not marrying my dad.”
I sat up. “God, yes. I forgot about Dee.”
An image of Karen’s mum came to me. She was in the front room of their council flat in Hillingdon Road curled up in a battered armchair. She was drunk. Her arms were swaying above her head and she was urging us to listen to the words of Dylan’s “Desolation Row” which was playing on the turntable. Dee wore multi-coloured maxi dresses and chokers years after they’d gone out of fashion, drank neat vodka and took shit from no one.
A shadow of sadness fell over Karen’s face and I leant over and squeezed her arm. “Dee had her demons but she also had guts,” I said.
She batted her hand in the air as if squatting a fly. “If you say so.” Her face brightened, a wide smile spread from ear to ear and she rubbed her hands together. “Bloody hell, Carmel. You could have another brother or sister out there in the world. How amazing is that?”
Her phone rang. Rolling her eyes and letting out a heavy sigh, she fished it out of her coat pocket. She looked down at the screen and blushed. “Sorry, hon. I’ve really got to get this. I’ll be back in a bit.”
I watched her head out
