Page 74 of All Our Missing Pieces

Only then, perhaps, Beatrice and I will be able to heal, to have some sort of relationship.

I know I am not the mother she wanted to find. I am only her mother in the most basic, biological sense. But perhaps I can change that. Perhaps now that she has found me, I can find the part of myself that has been lost, but was always there. Perhaps I can learn, at last, how to be a mother.

FORTY-SIX

Beatrice might have burst out of the house on Damask Square, but she didn’t go far. Her keys were in her pocket but she didn’t have her phone, bag or a coat, so she let herself into the garden square, sat down on a bench and cried.

All this – all her work, her research, travelling halfway around the world – and it had come to this. Orla hated her. She didn’t blame Orla for hating her. She’d behaved terribly, alienating the one person in the world she most wanted to have close to her.

But she hated Orla, too. She hated her for reacting the way she had – for trying to explain and justify what she had done. She hated her for all the months she had spent preferring Livvie to Beatrice. Most of all, of course, she hated her for that first, irrevocable abandonment twenty-two years ago.

It was over. She would have to leave Damask Square and move into the spare room in Frances and Peter’s apartment, if they’d still have her there. She’d have to explain to her parents what had happened – or alternatively lie to them and say that she hadn’t been able to trace her birth mother and had decided to give up trying.

There was nothing here for her any more. Nothing left.

Half an hour later, she was still sitting there. She’d stopped crying and was beginning to shiver with the cold, but she barely noticed that, like she barely noticed the fox that drifted past, its rough coat amber in the light that fell from the windows of the flats opposite. She didn’t respond when a group of young men called out, ‘All right, darling?’ to her. A light came on in the upstairs room of one of the neighbouring houses but she didn’t look up to see who was there. The sky lanterns hovering in the darkness from a Diwali display somewhere might as well not have been there.

It was only when a man sat down next to her that she jerked back to consciousness, the awareness of potential danger tensing every muscle in her body.

‘Beatrice? I thought it was you. Are you okay?’

‘Neil.’ He was like an apparition from another world – a world before she had confronted Orla in the garden. A world where there had been hope instead of only despair. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘Been visiting Gramps. Mum made chicken soup and I took him a load for the freezer. I thought I’d come by and see if you were okay, because you didn’t answer my text.’

His text – the one with the kiss at the end.

‘My phone’s indoors,’ she said.

‘You must be freezing.’

Beatrice realised she was shivering. ‘I guess so.’

‘You look like you could do with some chicken soup yourself. Has something happened? Did you speak to Orla?’

Beatrice nodded.

‘Here. Take my gloves.’ Neil slipped them off and handed them to her. The warmth from his hands enveloped hers as she fumbled her stiff fingers into the rough wool. ‘Do you want to get a cup of tea somewhere? Or a drink?’

Beatrice shook her head. The thought of being somewhere with bright lights, other people, the world carrying on as if nothing had changed, was overwhelming.

‘I told her. Well – I asked her, first, whether she’d been married and whether she had a sister. She never had a sister, and she married some guy called Clifford years ago and kept his last name when they split up.’

‘And so is she…?’

‘She gave birth to me.’ Beatrice found she couldn’t use the word ‘mother’.

‘How does that make you feel?’ Neil asked gently.

Guess he’s had some therapy in his time, Beatrice thought.

‘Honestly? Messed up. Not anything like I thought I’d feel.’

‘Go on.’ His steady gaze remained on her face.

‘I thought… All my life, when I imagined I might meet her one day, I thought there’d be this instant connection. You know, you read stories and it’s all fairy tale and heartwarming. Like recognising yourself. But I’ve lived with her for months and there’s been nothing.’

‘You’ve lived a whole life apart from her,’ Neil said. ‘And fairy tales aren’t real. Relationships take time.’