Page 207 of The Missing Sister

‘About the fact she gave me up? I’m not sure yet, but to be honest, if that had happened to me at seventeen, just when I was on the verge of leaving home and going off to uni, I don’t think I would have been too chuffed to find myself pregnant either. I guess I understand why she did it. At least shehadme,’ Mary-Kate shrugged, ‘she could have got rid of me.’

‘Yes, she could have, sweetheart, and thank God she didn’t. Does she want to meet you?’

‘She hasn’t said. She just asked me if I’d like to email her back and tell her a little about myself. But she says there’s no pressure or anything. I mean, if I don’t want to.’

‘Do you think you will write back?’

‘Maybe, yeah. It might be interesting to meet up with her eventually, though I’m not, like, desperate or anything. But what that email also means is that I’m probably not the missing sister that CeCe and the other sisters were looking for. Michelle is definitely my biological mother and my biological father is local too. She says there are hospital records of my birth and everything. It makes me a bit sad, actually; I’d got into the idea of being part of that big family of adopted girls.’

‘So, you’re not blood-related to the sisters’ adoptive father, even if they thought you might be. Of course, as you said before, it’s possible this Pa Salt guy wanted to adopt you too, but Mum and Dad got there first,’ Jack shrugged.

‘You mean, perhaps Jock and I were approved by the agency and he wasn’t?’ I asked.

‘Something like that, yeah,’ said Jack, ‘but who knows? And I’m getting to the point where I want to say, who cares? It’s only relevant if this Pa Salt is a proper relative, isn’t it?’

‘True,’ said Mary-Kate, biting her lip. ‘And I suppose I do have new siblings now through Michelle... How weird.’

‘It’s okay to take all this slowly,’ I said to her, ‘and as a matter of fact,’ I added, making a decision, ‘I have something I need to tell you. About me, I mean. It’s nothing to worry about, but after what you’ve just said, it’s relevant. So why don’t we go and have some breakfast and I’ll tell you while we eat?’

‘Hold on a minute’ – Mary-Kate’s forkful of bacon and egg hung suspended between her plate and her mouth – ‘you’re telling me that you were dumped on a priest’s doorstep as a newborn? And then this priest and a man called Ambrose gave you to their cleaner, whose baby had just died, to save you from life in an orphanage?’

‘That’s about the size of it, yes. I was only called Mary because the poor baby I’d replaced was too.’

‘And they pretended that you were her,’ Jack added.

‘Which was a good thing actually, or Ambrose would have chosen some outrageous Greek name for me,’ I chuckled.

‘So, Mum, how are you coping with the fact that your family isn’t your family, after all these years of thinking they were?’ Mary-Kate asked.

I smiled inwardly, because it was the one area in which my daughter had far more experience than I did. And I’d taken a chance that sharing the fact I was also adopted might help her too.

‘It was a shock at first,’ I said. ‘But a bit like you, when I met my brother and sister again after all these years, the blood bit didn’t matter.’

‘See, Mum?’ said Mary-Kate. ‘It doesn’t, does it?’

‘No, and especially because I have no idea – and nor does Ambrose or anyone else – who my biological family are.’

Mary-Kate gave a small chuckle, then wiped her mouth with her napkin. ‘Sorry, Mum, I know it’s not funny but, like, how the tables have suddenly turned. I now know where I came from, but can we help you find out who you really are?’

‘At nearly fifty-nine, sweetheart, I think I know who I am. Genetics aren’t important to me. Although looking back now, I knew that I was different. When I went away to boarding school and then university, everyone back in West Cork used to tease me about being the missing sister, not because of the Greek myth like Bobby, but because I wasn’t at home anymore. And then I really was missing for thirty-seven years.’

‘It’s all a bit of a coincidence, isn’t it?’ countered Mary-Kate. ‘I mean, this whole family that thinks I’m related to them in some way, but it’s actually you who reallyhasbeen the missing sister.’

‘Yes,’ I sighed, ‘but for now, I suggest we forget all about them. Let’s try and actually enjoy the three of us being down here in this lovely part of the world and getting to know my family again.’

‘Will you tell your brothers and sisters, Mum?’ asked Jack. ‘About you being parachuted into their family?’

‘No,’ I said, with surprising certainty. ‘I don’t believe I will.’

The three of us spent the rest of the day driving along the coast, then enjoying a relaxed late lunch at Hayes Bar overlooking the almost Mediterranean-looking Glandore Bay. We returned through Castlefreke village, where the ruined castle stood in its dense forest, and I recounted the ghost stories my parents had told me about it. Taking the byroads along the coast, we found a tiny deserted cove near a village called Ardfield, and both my kids immediately put on their swimming gear and ran into the freezing cold sea.

‘Come in, Mum! The water’s fantastic!’

I shook my head lazily and lay on the pebbles looking up at the sun, which was so graciously making a rare appearance. I’d never told my kids I couldn’t swim and was hideously afraid of the ocean, like many Irish of my generation. But so much of what was then wasn’t now, and after hundreds of years of stagnation, it seemed that Ireland was reinventing itself in every way. The mass poverty and deprivation I’d known when I was younger seemed to have lessened considerably. The Catholic Church – such a huge part of my upbringing – had lost its claw-like grip, and the hard border between the North and South had come down after the Good Friday Agreement was signed in 1998. The Agreement had even been voted for in a referendum across Ireland. And – mostly – it had held for ten years.

I picked up a pebble from beside me and, sitting up, clenched it in both hands. Whoever I really was, there was little doubt I’d been born here on this land. For better or worse, there was a big part of me that would always belong right here, on this beautiful but troubled island.

‘I have to know what happened to him before I leave,’ I muttered. Then I saw my children running towards me, so I collected their towels and walked to meet them.