Chapter 1
‘Jess, I’m so sorry about your sister.’
I nodded at the woman who had spoken. Caroline, a neighbour and so-called friend of my mother’s from when we lived in London. A memory of her in our kitchen after Mum died jumped into my head, her lips clamped to Dad’s.
‘Thanks,’ I murmured.
Voices ebbed and flowed in the pub around me. Dad was at the bar looking like a wreck, talking quietly to Uncle Denny. Not a real uncle – Dad didn’t have siblings – but a childhood friend, and frequent visitor to our home over the years.
I should go to Dad but felt incapable of leaving the leather chair where Adam had settled me, handing me a measure of ‘medicinal’ brandy before taking Noah into the garden.
‘He doesn’t like everyone being sad.’ Adam’s dark eyes had searched mine from behind his black-framed glasses. ‘Will you be all right?’
I’d nodded, feeling oddly detached.
Now, I craned my head and looked through the window to where Adam had created goalposts using his jacket and Noah’s red jumper. He’d adopted a goalkeeper’s crouch, arms spread as he waited for Noah to kick a scruffy football.
Noah would be 6 in a couple of months – a November baby. Watching my robust boy, his brown curly hair a little too long, I felt tears burning my eyes. He was too young for this. She was too young. I flashed back to my sister’s email two weeks before she died.
Can I come and see you? We need to talk. Rachel.
No context, but that was typical. My heart had leapt, questions flooding my mind. Filled with an unnamed dread, I replied, Yes. When? She hadn’t responded.
It was the last time I heard from her.
Dragging my gaze back, I scanned the bar of the bland London pub where we’d gathered for refreshments, chosen for its proximity to the crematorium.
‘She must have been what … 27?’ Caroline had settled in the chair opposite, knees jutting from the hem of her black skirt. She knew all about my sister’s lifestyle; probably thought she’d got what she deserved. ‘Far too young,’ she went on when I didn’t answer. Her heavy blonde fringe moved as she shook her head. ‘I know she put your parents through a lot, but even so—’
‘Why are you here?’ My voice was even. ‘You didn’t like Rachel.’
Caroline’s head jerked back. ‘I’m here for you and your dad.’ She flicked a look at him at the bar. ‘We’ve known each other a long time.’ Her gaze softened. ‘Maybe it’s as well your mother’s not here.’
I placed the tumbler of brandy on the table in front of us. My hand trembled and I bit back the words I wanted to say. Don’t you remember that day? The day you tried it on with my dad. Some friend you were. ‘It’s been a difficult time,’ I said instead.
Caroline rested a hand on my trouser-clad thigh. ‘I know you all did everything you could for your sister.’ I studied the web of veins beneath her skin. ‘An accident, the coroner said?’
‘I’m sure Dad’s told you that was their verdict.’
Caroline’s hand pulled away. ‘Alcohol does terrible things to a person.’
In that moment, I hated Caroline. She didn’t remember the little girl I’d read stories to when she was ill, who would allow only me to wash her hair at bath time – the girl who had so much potential. ‘We thought she’d given up drinking.’
Caroline absorbed this for a moment. ‘Was it seven, or eight years between you?’
Was it. Past tense. ‘Eight.’ Mum had thought she couldn’t have any more children after me, so Rachel had been a surprise. A nice surprise, she stressed, with no idea of the heartache that lay ahead.
I’d assumed that when we were older, my sister and I would establish a relationship that worked, just as my parents had prayed they would reconcile with their youngest child, but Mum’s illness had taken hold, and after the final seizure she’d died without seeing Rachel again.
‘Your dad did well at the service.’ Caroline seemed determined to prolong our exchange.
I nodded, though in truth, I’d barely heard his well-scripted tribute to Rachel that glossed over all the ways she’d let our parents down. Not that there had been many people to listen apart from Caroline and her husband, and someone from the art gallery where Rachel had been working. Rachel had never been good at making friends. In a fog of disbelief I had kept looking at the shiny wooden coffin thinking, How can she be in there? while keeping half an eye on Noah, restlessly kicking his heels.
‘I still can’t believe you upped sticks and moved so far away.’ Caroline gave a light laugh.
‘It was always on the cards once Dad retired.’ My smile felt thin. ‘You probably remember we used to holiday in the Lake District.’
Caroline nodded, eyes glossy with tears. ‘You scattered your mum’s ashes at Windermere,’ she said softly. ‘Will you do the same with your sister’s?’
I swallowed a hard lump of grief. ‘I don’t know.’
Caroline seemed to gather herself. ‘You didn’t mind giving up your job in the city?’
‘Not really.’ Finance was the career path I’d followed to live up to my role as ‘the good daughter’. When Noah arrived it was an easy decision to follow Dad to the Lakes and be closer to Adam’s mum. ‘I didn’t enjoy it.’
‘Your dad still teaching?’
He’d been a professor at the London College of Music until he retired.
‘He gives private piano lessons and goes fishing a lot.’ I sipped my drink and tried not to shudder as it burnt my throat.
‘He always was sociable.’
I glanced over and caught Uncle Denny’s eye. He gave a solemn nod and rested a hand on Dad’s shoulder as if to say, I’ve got this. Don’t worry. Denny had long since retired from the police force, but still had an air of quiet authority.
Caroline seemed about to say more, then rose and moved to the window. ‘He’s such a handsome boy.’ I looked out to see Noah doing a victory lap around the play area. ‘He looks so like you.’
It was a throwaway comment, but I felt a tremor of nerves. ‘Thanks.’ I removed myself from the sweaty clasp of the leather chair, willing Caroline to go back to her husband.
‘Well, I’ll leave you to it.’ As if reading my mind, Caroline summoned a smile. ‘Take care of yourself.’
‘Thank you for coming.’
As she hurried to the bar, a man materialized as though he’d been waiting for her to leave. I recognized him from the service as the owner of the gallery: Will something-or-other.
‘Jess?’ I had a vague impression of a teenager wearing his dad’s suit. ‘Sorry to bother you,’ he said, blocking my view of Noah. ‘It’s about your sister.’
I stiffened. ‘What about her?’
‘It’s just …’ He rubbed a hand round his jaw. ‘There’s something I think you should know.’
My heart missed a beat. ‘Go on.’
Behind him, Dad peeled away from the bar, eyes seeking mine. His movements were unsteady as he made his way over, closely followed by Denny.
‘I have to go,’ I said as I watched Dad stumble. ‘Tell me.’
Will turned, tracking my gaze. ‘It’s nothing.’ He held up his hands. ‘Forget it,’ he said quietly. ‘I’m sorry for your loss.’ He moved away quickly, nodding to Dad as he passed.
‘Who was that?’ Dad said, as the door swung closed. He was steadier now, Denny’s hand on his arm.
‘A friend of Rachel’s paying his respects.’ I pulled out a chair for Dad to sit down. ‘We should make a move.’
He nodded, eyes on the table.
‘I’ll fetch Adam,’ Denny said, a smile on his weathered face. I let him go, knowing he wanted an excuse to kick a ball with Noah as Caroline’s words came floating back. She was right: Noah did look like me, but it was Rachel I saw in his profile. He had the same long-lashed dark eyes as those in the photograph of her at the service, one of only a handful we could find, but the thing Caroline didn’t know – that virtually no one knew – was that Noah wasn’t biologically mine. He was Rachel’s child.
Chapter 2
‘How are you feeling?’
It was the third time Adam had asked. The first had been during the long drive from London back to the Lakes. I’d murmured fine, too drained to say more, keen for Noah to sleep during the journey. He was worn out after our ‘trip’, which had included a night in a Premier Inn he’d loved. Dad had slept at Denny’s and was staying another night. He’ll drive me home tomorrow.
I pretended to be dozing the second time Adam asked, and continued until we were back in Ulverston and he’d stopped the car outside our converted farmhouse.
Now, I looked at him over the mug of hot chocolate he’d made while I settled Noah into bed, recalling the awful moment when I’d heard that Rachel had drowned in the canal in Camden, close to where she was living. She’d been drinking heavily when she slipped and fell in, according to the coroner’s report, though it didn’t explain why she’d been there after midnight. A row with her flatmate Hannah perhaps. She hadn’t been at the funeral, so I couldn’t ask.
‘I keep thinking about that email Rachel sent.’ I needed to get the words out. ‘Why did she want to visit after all this time? Nothing but the odd message for years, letting us know she was alive, and suddenly she wants to talk to me.’
‘It was strange,’ Adam conceded, as if we hadn’t gone over it many times since the police turned up at Dad’s with the bad news.
‘We didn’t even know she was living in London.’
‘Maybe she wanted to reconcile, but …’ Adam ran a hand through his crop of dark hair, which was starting to grey at the temples. For a moment, he didn’t look like himself, but I supposed I didn’t look like me either. Catching my reflection in the kitchen window, I appeared older than 35, my shoulders rounded, skin loosened, as if disbelief had burrowed beneath it. The fear I hadn’t voiced to Adam, or my dad, was that Rachel had wanted Noah back, despite her insistence that it would never happen. If only she’d said more in her email, or I’d been brave enough to ask the simple – most obvious – question. Is it about him? But I couldn’t bring myself to do it, scared of the answer, of what might lie ahead if she’d said yes. My and Adam’s names were on the birth certificate, but nothing was set in law, despite Rachel’s signature on the note she left with Noah, giving us custody of her baby. A DNA test would have confirmed she was his birth mother – that she had every right to be in his life.
‘You think she’d changed her mind about Noah, don’t you?’
Hearing Adam say it so baldly gave me a jolt. Putting my mug down, I glanced at the doorway to check Noah hadn’t appeared, but Adam had kept his voice low.
‘People change their minds.’
My mind flew back to that morning, nearly six years ago, to the email waiting in my inbox; an announcement from Rachel that she was nearly five months pregnant. She had only just found out and was panicking.
I’m not drinking. I’ve been working, saving to go back to Thailand. There’s no way I’m being saddled with a baby, I wouldn’t cope. Do you want it? If not, I’ll put it up for adoption. Due in November. Let me know ASAP. R.
Just like that, as though offering a piece of furniture she was considering getting rid of. No context, or update about her life in general. When I shakily replied with a request for her to call, to come home, followed by a barrage of questions, she only responded to one.
The father’s out of the picture. He doesn’t know and it’s best it stays that way. He’s no good. Yes or no? R.
I immediately called Adam, who’d left for work. He came straight home, his friendly face compressed into an expression I didn’t recognize when I told him Rachel’s bombshell.
‘Isn’t it typical that we’re struggling to have a baby, that we want a family more than anything, and your sister, she …’ Words appeared to fail him, but in spite of his initial shock, a glint of brightness had entered his eyes, a look that said, Here’s an opportunity; to have the baby we’d assumed would come easily, but still hadn’t, with doctors failing to find a reason why. I’d watched Adam grow more silent, less sure of himself, had mooted the idea of IVF, despite not wanting to fill my body with hormones. I’d even suggested we start the adoption process but this … this was the perfect solution. A baby that would have my family’s genes.
‘Don’t you care that it won’t biologically be yours?’ I’d barely believed we were even discussing it when an hour earlier Adam had been quietly showering, trying not to wake me before slipping out of the house, an argument about the hours he was working lingering from the night before.
‘A baby, Jess.’ He came over and pulled me against him. He’d trembled with excitement. ‘No gruelling hormone treatment, and newborn babies rarely come up for adoption.’
‘Rachel’s hormonal right now.’ I was trying to be realistic, but already my mind and my heart were adjusting, making room for this unwanted child – imagining the feel of him or her in my arms. ‘She might change her mind.’
Holding me tighter, his voice a rumble in his chest, Adam had said, ‘Have you honestly ever known your sister to change her mind about anything?’
I emailed, Yes. 1...
