of course, suddenly stops me dead in my tracks.
‘I’m sorry … What did you just say?’
‘Eloise, do you honestly think that I spent my whole childhood and adulthood not wondering about my own natural parents? Who they were and where they were from? And what were the reasons why they’d given me up for adoption? Do you really think that’s not something that obsessed me for just about as long as I can remember?’
‘But, you never mentioned anything before …’
My voice gets increasingly smaller and smaller then trails off into nothing. Because the thought is unspoken between us. Why would Helen tell me, of all people? Why would anyone bother to tell me anything about their private life? Even if she had phoned me to talk, chances are all she would have got would have been my voicemail, or else a promise from my assistant to get the message to me. Which, I shamefacedly have to admit, the chances of my returning would have been slim to none.
Have to say I’m feeling very, very small right now. Something that’s happening far too often lately.
Thankfully Helen is too humane to really hammer the point home though and I feel an even deeper surge of gratitude towards her for this small mercy.
‘You see,’ she goes on to explain, distractedly picking up one of Lily’s stuffed cats from the floor in front of her and thoughtfully playing with it, ‘because our parents were fantastic to me and I loved them both so much, it seemed almost like ingratitude to want to know who my real family were. But that didn’t stop me from always wondering, and in later life, becoming absolutely determined to find out the truth about my birth family. Who were they, why they gave me up, all of that.’
‘But Helen,’ I say, a bit softer now, ‘Mum and Dad adored you, idolised you.’ You were like their little treasure. I want to tack on, and we both know that I was the also-ran daughter, the difficult one, the one they always had to worry about, but somehow there’s no need to. It’s unspoken between us. She already knows.
‘I know all that and believe me, I couldn’t have been more grateful to either of them. Or, God knows, have had a happier childhood. But you’re missing the point. Because no matter how loving a family you grow up in, knowing you’re adopted still leaves a scar. You spend so much time wondering. Think about it. Your mother, the person who’s supposed to love you and protect you more than anyone else in the world, gives you away. The first thing that happens to you in the first few days of life is that you’re rejected. And I just had to find out why. And also to let her know that I was okay and thank God, that things had worked out well for me. So, it took me years to pluck up the courage, but eventually I decided to do a bit of detective work. I told our mum of course; I’d die if she thought I was doing anything behind her back. But she understood that this was something I absolutely needed to do and she was incredibly supportive. Came with me to the adoption agency and everything.’
‘And …?’ I manage to get out, overwhelmed by the tidal wave of guilt at not being there for her. At not even knowing about this before now.
‘I was too late. My birth mother had passed away about two years previously. She’d had breast cancer and apparently died very young, in her early fifties. She was only sixteen when she had me and it turned out my biological father, her boyfriend, had been killed by a drunk driver in a car crash shortly before I was born, which was why I was put up for adoption in the first place. She was grieving, I imagine, and felt she couldn’t cope with a new baby on top of everything else she was going through. I don’t even blame her either – chances are I’d have done exactly the same thing in her shoes. She was only sixteen for God’s sake, she was still a kid herself.
‘But please listen to me on this Eloise,’ Helen says gently, leaning forward and looking at me intently, ‘I now have to spend the rest of my life living with the fact that I was too late. That if I’d gone about tracking down my birth mother years ago, I may have been able to meet her, might even struck up some kind of a relationship with her. Maybe I could even have seen her before she passed away. But I kept putting it off and now I have to live with the what-ifs. All I’m saying is, don’t put Lily through what I’ve been through. She’s obsessed about finding her real dad just like I was and it’s not going to go away. So please, for her sake, deal with this now, while there’s still time. She has a right to know, just like I did. And our mum supported me when I went digging for the truth, so why not do the same for Lily?’
Oh God, I think, looking sympathetically across at her. I feel so awful for Helen, for what the poor girl had to go through. And could she have a point? Is this whole thing turning into an obsession for Lily that won’t go away until she finally finds out who her father is? Then one awful mental image after another starts to crowd in on me; of the child sitting on a bus today and asking the driver if he is her dad. Of her not even being able to enjoy a harmless TV movie without fantasising about who her real dad is … Drawing pictures of him …
Who knows what’s going through her little mind?
Helen knows me well and must sense that I’m wavering, because next thing she’s sitting cross-legged on the sofa in the Lotus position, looking serenely calm, fair hair neatly flicked over her shoulder.
‘Aren’t you in the least bit curious yourself,’ she puts it to me, ‘to know anything at all about him? I mean, he must come from good stock, he’s got to be intelligent, because Lily couldn’t just get it from you and you alone. Sure, just look at her. She’s so alert and advanced for her age, don’t you think so?’
I nod, tears of pride surprising me by stinging my eyes. Lily is incredibly bright; I’ve no doubt about that. She never even had baby-talk, she started speaking words clearly and distinctly at eighteen months and by aged two, she was talking in whole sentences, like a proper little lady. Already she’s learning to read and can assemble all her own toys and even more impressive, can amuse and entertain herself for hours without getting bored. She even surprised me by being musical at a very young age and when I bought her a piano, she took to it like a duck to water. She’s too young for proper lessons yet, but the second she is old enough, I’ve been intending to hire private tuition. To be perfectly honest, I’m only itching for her to turn three so I can get a proper IQ test done on her. Because I know she’ll score high, just know it.
‘I’ll bet her father turns out to be … A senior consultant cardiologist in the Blackrock Clinic,’ Helen chips in dreamily. ‘Or because she’s so musical, maybe a conductor. With the Philharmonic at the New York Met. Or maybe he’s a physicist well on his way to winning the Nobel Prize by now. One thing’s for certain though, he must be really good looking, because she’s such a gorgeous little fairy.’
‘Hmmm,’ is all I can say, getting intrigued now in spite of myself.
‘Either way,’ she goes on, still in her fantasy world and I think barely even registering me now, ‘if you were him, and if you had a little girl this special, wouldn’t you want to know about it?’
The funny thing is that when it boils down to it, I actually know so little about Lily’s father myself, it’s ridiculous. And I’m surprising myself by wondering about it now, as it’s something I rarely do. Once I had Lily, I banished all thoughts about whoever he might be completely out of my mind. She’s mine, I thought. Mine and no one else’s. One thing is for certain though, whoever he is and wherever he is, he’s got to be someone very special – because isn’t Lily the living walking proof of that?
Oh, sod this anyway. You know something? It’s curiosity that’ll be the death of mankind. Not all this crap about climate change.
No,
