Page 51 of The Pieces of Us

‘This was a ridiculous idea,’ I tell Asim, back in our room at Myrna’s. ‘What the hell was I thinking? That I’d turn up at an address written on a postcard sent more than thirty-five years ago and my biological mother would just be sitting there waiting for me?’

‘Well, you have to try,’ he says.

‘Do I, though? Why do I have to try? Shouldn’t I be at home with the people who need me?’

‘Cat, you’ve come all this way. You can’t change that –’

‘I know,’ I snap.

‘You’ll be back with your family soon,’ he says.

‘I know .’

For once his calming voice doesn’t help. In fact, it makes me feel worse. He’s kind and warm and reassuring – and I’m a nightmare.

‘I wish you hadn’t come here,’ I tell him, grabbing my phone and starting another fruitless online search for Beth Muir, as if she would have miraculously appeared on Facebook since I last looked for her.

Asim laughs. ‘You don’t mean that, Cat.’

I look up at him. ‘Yes, I do. There’s no need for you to be here.’

He looks away first. ‘I’ll give you some space then. If that’s what you want.’ His voice is muted.

Don’t leave me , the voice in my head screams. My body overrules it. I nod my head, fold my arms and clamp my mouth shut. I wait for him to leave. But he turns back before he reaches the door.

‘Cat, I care about you. I know this is really, really hard for you. Being here, trying to find out about your birth mum. And I know this – ’ he gestures to himself, then to me – ‘is hard for you too. But do you know something? It’s not easy for me either.’

I tighten my arms across my chest. My shield. ‘You can’t say I didn’t warn you.’

‘Ha. You certainly did. All your complications. But that’s not what I’m talking about.’ He leans against the wall, looking defeated.

I wait behind my shield. I hear Minnie’s voice in my head: You’re as stubborn as a mule, Cat McAllister .

‘Cat, I think you’re worth all the bumps in the road. All those complications you constantly remind me of. I don’t see them that way. They’re just all part of you … of your life, your story. I can deal with any of that stuff. Alzheimer’s … pregnant daughters … But don’t push me away. Not now.’

He pauses, giving me the chance to make things right. His dark eyes are begging me to take it.

‘I don’t know what you want me to say,’ I mutter, and I can see the disappointment take over his face. He’s been my cheerleader all day, but all I want is to be left alone to wallow in my own disappointment.

Finally I relax my arms. But it’s only to lift my jacket from the bed. ‘I’m going out for some fresh air,’ I tell him.

‘Do you want me to –’

‘ No ,’ I say, and I know it’s too forceful, but I can’t take it back because I’m already on my way out of the room.

I don’t go further than Myrna’s garden, nor do I want to.

It has a magical quality in the dusk, with delicate fairy lights around the weeping willow tree branches and stone water features.

I sit on the wrought-iron bench and admire the blue borage, which is also known as starflower and smells like cucumber.

I focus on a single flower, trying to make it bigger than everything going on in my mind.

‘Cat?’ A soft voice behind me.

I turn and recognize her straight away. The woman from number 44.

‘Sandra … hi. Do you … do you have news about Beth?’

She sits down beside me, and in a second, on this still summer’s night in Myrna’s fragrant garden, something changes.

‘I owe you an apology,’ she says, and her voice is gentler than it was at the cottage. ‘You caught me off guard, and I needed a bit of time to get my thoughts in order. I wasn’t honest with you. I’m not your mother, Cat. But I am your aunt. I’m Beth’s sister.’

I stare at her.

‘I can’t believe it’s you,’ Sandra says. She has an unmistakable Irish accent but I can pick up a layer of something else too. Something more familiar to my ear. A Scottish tone.

I gulp. Beth. The baby bangle. The postcard. The note inside the nesting doll. Her presence in Minnie’s confused mind, always part of her tangled memories. It’s all real.

‘I can’t believe it’s you ,’ I tell her. ‘I mean … I hoped I’d find Beth here, or someone connected to her. But I don’t think I really believed it would happen. Wow. Where is Beth? Can you take me to her?’

Sandra’s face falls. ‘I’m so sorry, Cat, but I can’t do that.’

I can’t take my eyes off Sandra’s face, silently willing her not to say the words.

‘Beth died, Cat. Three years ago, of cancer. It happened quickly at the end. Our sisters and I were there, with her. And her partner Emily. We listened to ABBA.’ She smiles but the tears are falling.

Immediate and fierce, the grief twists in the pit of my belly.

Quite different from the grief I’ve been experiencing over the last few months with increasing intensity – the disconcerting type that strikes when you’re losing a loved one who is still very much alive.

Beth is dead . My body buckles, my chest collapsing against my knees.

Sandra takes a tentative hold of my hand. ‘Cat, I’m so, so sorry.’

I grip her fingers, squeeze tight. When I look up at her, we’re both crying. ‘You’re my aunt,’ I sob, slowly straightening my back. ‘You’re sure about that?’

‘I’m absolutely sure.’

‘I can’t believe I found you.’ I wipe my eyes with the sleeve of my jacket.

‘Me neither,’ she says. ‘You threw me earlier … I just wasn’t prepared. I’ve thought about you so much over the years, Cat. But I knew I could never try to find you … I had no idea whether you even knew you were adopted, and if you did, what you would decide to do about it.’

‘Did you realize who I was, at the cottage?’

She nods. ‘When you asked if I was Beth. I saw it then. How … how familiar you are. You look like her. If I’d been at the cottage ten minutes later, you’d have missed me. I was only stopping to pick up the mail.’

‘Did you live there? Did Beth?’ I take another deep breath. ‘I have so many questions for you. I can’t think straight.’

‘Cat, I’ll tell you everything I know. Beth gave birth to you in a mother and baby home in Glasgow. She was sixteen.’

I picture Ruby’s face, her pregnant body, her scan photos on the front of our fridge, and feel a pang of anguish. ‘Is that why she gave me up?’

She nods. ‘That was a big part of it. None of us – her sisters and brothers – knew she was pregnant. Our parents did, but it was a closely guarded secret. For a long time, actually. It wasn’t until we were in our forties that Beth told me everything.’

I focus on Sandra’s face again. ‘I knew I was born in Glasgow. Did I spend any time with Beth, after I was born?’

‘None at all. You were taken away from her immediately.’

‘Oh my God.’ I cover my face with my hands.

‘Cat … if this is all too much for you …’

‘No.’ I shake my head. ‘I need to know the truth. My father … was he not around? His name isn’t on my birth certificate.’

Sandra shakes her head. ‘He was never part of the picture.’

My thoughts are racing, leaping from one question to another. ‘What happened after I was born?’

‘Beth came home, and we moved to Ireland the following year. Cat … can I ask you a question? How did you find out you were adopted? Did Mary tell you?’

‘Mary?’ I stare at her. Minnie’s real name, the one she never used.

I only discovered this by chance when I was a teenager, when she got her appendix taken out and the doctor handed me her medical notes.

‘It’s never been my name,’ she told me then.

Now I know that it had been at some point, and I wonder if switching to the nickname was something to do with my adoption. ‘Wait … you knew Min – Mary?’

Sandra reaches for my hand again. ‘She’s our cousin, Cat.’

It takes a moment for her words to sink in. ‘Cousins? You’re family?’ Minnie and I are related, just not in the way I’d believed all my life. ‘Minnie adopted her cousin’s baby,’ I murmur.

‘Yes.’

‘Why didn’t any of you know about it then?’

‘Well, we came here, and there was no contact. It wasn’t like today, with mobiles and emails.

My parents told us something about a fallout, and we just accepted it.

Beth knew the truth, of course. She told me later that she and Mary kept in touch for the first couple of years of your life, until it just became too hard for Beth. ’

The postcard . I tell Sandra about the biggest clue that brought me here.

She nods. ‘Beth would have sent that to Mary so that she had our address. My parents stayed there until they died, and we’ve – my brothers and sisters and I – kept it on as a holiday rental ever since.

But we’ve decided to sell it. Anyway, that’s another story.

’ Her eyes are concerned. ‘Are you OK, Cat?’

I nod.

‘I have to tell you … you’re so like Beth. You have her hair.’

‘I do?’

‘I was so envious of her hair. Mine’s always been as straight as a pin. I used to make her curl it for me. It drove her crazy.’

My hand automatically goes to my own unruly hair, a connection to my birth mother.

‘Cat, how did you find your way here?’

‘Minnie – Mary – has early-onset Alzheimer’s,’ I tell her. ‘She was diagnosed at fifty-four.’

‘Oh, Cat.’

‘She moved in with me and my daughter Ruby earlier this year. When I was going through her things, I found an adoption assessment from social services. That was the start of it all. Then I found a baby bangle, engraved with Beth’s initials.

I got my full birth certificate, which was really confusing because it had Minnie and Hugh’s names on it, but also a correction giving Beth’s name as my mother.

I found a note from Beth inside a nesting doll – Minnie has a set of them, Irish dolls.

And then finally the postcard from Donegal, with the address of your cottage on it.

’ I take a deep breath. ‘Minnie mentioned Beth too – only after I first started questioning her. But even the very little I got from her helped me to join some of the dots.’

‘And here you are now.’