I creep forward in the undergrowth to get a better view.
She’s wiping her mouth on the back of her hand now, and she takes the sheet of paper in its refolded state and rips it in half, and half again, and again. She scrunches the pieces up and shoves them into the trash bin. Then she does the same with the envelope. She straightens and looks around, not directly toward me, and then she pats the pocket of her trousers and sets off toward the main path that bisects the park. I wait until she’s on the path, heading for the far end of the green, before I emerge from my hiding place and start to follow her.
There are family groups playing football and Frisbee, and others sitting around on the grass. I concentrate on keeping Laura in sight, getting steadily closer as she leaves through a gate on the far side. I follow her along residential streets, crossing over once, turning right at the next junction. These are narrow roads with cars parked all the way along each side, and I’m expecting her to notice me at any moment, but she tugs keys out of her pocket as she swings jerkily into the front garden of a narrow end-of-terrace house, ignoring the broad steps up to the front door and instead disappearing down the side alley toward the door of the basement flat.
“Excuse me!” I shout, and I dive through the gate and around the corner of the building. Laura is frozen in position, her hand on the key in the lock, her head turned toward me. I stop with a jolt, and we look at each other for a long moment. She’s breathing through her mouth, and there’s a sheen of sweat on her face.
“I’m Seraphine Mayes,” I say.
“I know who you are.” Her tone is flat, but her hand trembles as she turns the key and starts to push her front door open, keeping her eyes on me.
“I was hoping I could ask you some questions,” I say, stepping forward as she eases herself through the door, rotating her body so that she’s still facing me but is now inside her flat.
“I can’t help you, Seraphine. Please go away.”
She starts to close the door, to shut me out, but I put my hand against it, pushing lightly, and she hesitates.
“Please,” I say. “I just want to ask you about Summerbourne.”
She presses her lips together and shakes her head slightly. I search her face. It must have been traumatic for her, my mother dying the way she did. But still, twenty-five years on, shouldn’t she be happy to meet me—one of the babies she helped deliver?
“You were there when we were born?” I ask. “Danny and I?”
She turns her face further into the shadows of the dark hallway, and I have to increase my push against the door to counteract hers. If she puts her whole weight behind it, I won’t be able to stop her closing it against me, and I desperately try to find words to stall her.
“The photo,” I say. “Did you take it? On the patio. With only one of us in it?”
Her eyes widen, and I can see that they’re brown, like mine; not blue like my brothers’. She twitches the door away from me, and I lurch sideways, unbalanced, knowing any second now she’s going to slam it, and any chance I have of hearing the truth will be over. I blurt out the question before I can change my mind.
“Are you my mother?”
And suddenly, her face softens, and I read sympathy in her eyes as her grip on the door relaxes and she exhales heavily. I press my lips together, trying to calm my breathing so that I can concentrate on every detail of her reply.
“No, I’m not your mother, Seraphine. How funny you’d think that.” She pauses, and I watch the flicker of expressions on her face. “I was with your mother when you were born.” She still blocks the doorway, but she reaches out with her free hand and touches me gently on my forearm. I hold my breath. “Your mother said you were the most beautiful baby she had ever seen. Like an angel.”
I am aware of tears on my cheeks, but I focus harder than ever on her face, on her fleeting sad smile as she mentions my mother, on the steadiness of her gaze as she says these precious words. Words I’ve been waiting my whole life to hear. Words I should have been able to turn over and examine every day of my life until they were as smooth as glass pebbles from the sea.Instead, I am lacerated by the glittering surprise of them as I clutch them to me now.
She opens the door a tiny bit, and I remove my hand from it and take a small step back.
“I can’t talk to you anymore, Seraphine,” she says. “I’m sorry about your father. I only just heard. Please don’t come here again.” The door bangs shut in my face, and I hear the grate of locking mechanisms on the inside.
I wander back out to the pavement, dazed. At some point on her road, I stop to lean against somebody’s gatepost, taking deep breaths and trying to clear my head. Eventually, I have the presence of mind to go back and make a note of her house number, and then the street name. I feel empty as I retrace my steps to the park: I came for an explanation, a resolution, but I’m leaving with a sense that Laura was protecting secrets in that dark hall, pushing them into the shadows behind her to keep them from my view. Just inside the park gate, a child drops a Popsicle stick on the path in front of me, and suddenly, my swelling resentment is punctured by the thrill of an idea.
I jog over to the trash bin by the bandstand, keeping my feet clear of the mess on the ground as I reach my hand tentatively through the slot on one side, feeling for scrunched-up paper. I’m lucky. I pull out several wadded sections, slightly damp, keeping my face turned away from the smell. On my last attempt to feel for more, the drone of a wasp rises from the mass of rubbish, and I withdraw my arm sharply. I hold the pieces of paper away from my body, and a solitary child watches me with his mouth open as I hurry toward the gate.
Back in my car, I quickly abandon an attempt to piece together the shreds of the letter, and check my phone to find a reply from Edwin saying,Course you can. I’ll be home around 8.
Winterbourne is the opposite to Summerbourne in manyways. It’s formal on the outside, and sparsely furnished on the inside, with none of the clutter that our childhood country home has accumulated over generations. Nevertheless, it has a welcoming calmness that always soothes me as soon as I step inside. When Edwin moved in four years ago, he replaced the old gas burners in the kitchen with a sleek induction cooktop, but changed little else. Danny is staying here at the moment, but I’ve no idea where he goes during the day. His motorbike is parked under cover to the side of the house, but when I call his name from the entrance hall, there’s no reply.
I place my handbag on the polished wood of the dining table and begin to peel the layers of damp paper apart and lay them out; the words are machine printed, and form a narrow band across the middle of the page. There’s a section missing, but it belongs to the upper right corner of the paper, and I imagine it would have been just blank space anyway.
I hold my breath as I look at the two sentences I have re-created, and then a surge of nausea makes me dash to the cloakroom. The stench from the park trash bin still clings to my hands, and I scrub repeatedly with antibacterial hand wash. I need a hot shower and clean clothes.
I creep back into the dining room and read the note again.
Dominic Mayes is dead. If you discuss Summerbourne with anyone, your daughter will be next.
I leave the room and close the door softly behind me. My mother said I looked like an angel when I was born, I remind myself. The most beautiful baby she had ever seen. I won’t think about the letter until Edwin gets home.
