My mother. My birth mother, anyway.
She walked over to the table, and the woman looked up. Cathy felt a smile break out on her face even as she felt like crying.
“Hello, uh, I’m Cathy. Wow. I can’t … I mean, it’s amazing to meet you.”
The woman didn’t look amazed. Mostly, she looked pained, and she met Cathy’s gaze only for a handful of seconds before gesturing to the chair across from her at the table. Cathy hesitated. Shouldn’t they hug? Wouldn’t there be a tearful embrace? She reminded herself of what her husband, David, had said; that this might be difficult in ways she couldn’t predict, and that went doubly for her birth mother. She sat down.
“Here.” There was an extra glass on the table. The woman picked up the bottle of white wine she’d been working her way through and poured a glass. “White okay? I suspect we could both do with a drink.”
“White’s fine, thanks.” Cathy took a moment to study Jane Bailey. She was a little older than she’d been expecting, maybe a few years older than her mum had been when she’d passed away. She was well dressed, with an expensive looking navy-blue turtleneck jumper and white jeans, and she had gold hoops in her ears. Her hair was an unlikely shade of purple-red—something out of a packet. “And thank you for meeting me. I understand that it can’t have been easy, but it means a lot to me.”
“I won’t lie to you, part of me didn’t want to come at all. I thought all that …” Jane paused, fiddled with a thick gold band on one slightly pudgy finger. “Well, I thought it was all behind me. That was sort of the point. How did you find me, anyway?”
“My mum passed away. Well. I mean …”
“I know what you mean. And I’m sorry for your loss.”
Cathy nodded briefly, trying to gather herself. The cold tone from the other woman was throwing her.
“Before she died, she told me I was adopted. It was a bit of a shock, to put it lightly. I never had the slightest inkling.” She paused and took a gulp of her wine. “She also told me it was a private adoption, no official records or anything, which was partly why they never told me. It all seemed mad to me. Still does.”
“It goes on more than you think.” Jane Bailey had crossed her legs, and was leaning forward over her knee, although she was looking at some point beyond Cathy. “Especially then.”
“She gave me the name of the woman who had arranged it, and … well, she took a lot of finding, is the short version of the story. When I found her, she did not want to talk to me at all. Like, at all. It was only when I threatened to get the police involved … and I’m not proud of that.”
Jane Bailey sat up, the color dropping from her face.
“You did what?”
“Nothing! Nothing came of that at all, I was just desperate. I wanted to know who you were. And she did tell me. So, I thought …”
“Look. Cathy. What do you want from me?” Her mother put her wine glass down on the table, and Cathy couldn’t help noticing her fingers were trembling.
“What do I want? What do you think I want?” Cathy gritted her teeth, forced herself to slow down. None of this was going how she’d expected. “I want some idea why. I wanted to know who you were, and why you didn’t want me. I guess that’s the heart of it.”
For a minute or so there was a silence between them. The television in the corner of the pub was playing a news report, black bars of subtitles flicking up and away before it was possible to make sense of them. The radio was playing some old ’80s song that Cathy couldn’t quite place.
“Cathy …” Her mother took a deep, slightly shaky breath. “I don’t have the answers for you, I’m afraid. When I had you, I was young. Too young. And I was … unwell. I barely knew what I was doing back then, and it’s not a time in my life I like to even think about, let alone talk about. And especially to a stranger. I’m sorry, sweetheart, but that’s who you are to me.”
“What about my real father? Are you still with him? Can you tell me who that is?”
Jane Bailey looked down at her hands, her sallow cheeks suddenly flushed with color.
“No, I can’t tell you that. I don’t know. Listen, this isn’t a good idea for either of us, all right? I think it’s best if —”
“You have grandchildren! Don’t you even want to know about them?” Cathy pulled her phone out and with a couple of presses summoned pictures of Harry and Rosie—she passed it across the table and then when Jane didn’t take it, flicked through the pictures herself. There were images of Harry’s third birthday, when he’d had a cake in the shape of a truck; photos of Rosie at the park, her wellies splattered with mud. She came to baby photos of the both of them, looking nearly identical with their tiny screwed up pink faces. At these Jane looked pained. She reached behind her and picked up her coat.
“What are you—?”
“I’m sorry. I can’t do this. Don’t contact me again.” She shrugged on her coat in a series of jerky movements, and picked up her handbag. “I mean it. Finish off the wine if you like, it’s paid for.”
With that she was gone.
Later, after a brief crying spell on a bus and a visit to the supermarket toilets to clean up her face, Cathy walked up her own road, feeling marginally better. So, that hadn’t gone how she had hoped it would. There had been no tearful reunion, no sense of two families coming together—just an older woman who felt like she was
