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All those times she’d been beside herself with worry that someone would find out when they’d needed to use her birth certificate to register her for nursery and school, and apply for a passport, when in fact the birth certificate hadn’t been falsified at all. There had been no wrongdoing – not officially, anyway. Simply, Freya’s father had decided to bring her up and it was an understanding between the two parents which wouldn’t have needed to go through the courts unless there was a dispute over this arrangement, which there was not.
But all these years, Alice had not been privy to this information. It was never about the fact that he had falsified his name on the birth certificate, it was the fact that he hadn’t! She glared at her husband. But there was still one thing she couldn’t understand. ‘But when … how?’ Alice realised she sounded just like her husband a short time earlier when he’d discovered she’d slept with Omar.
Jeffrey stole a glance at his daughter, before turning to face Alice. ‘Remember that time we came here, and we’d rowed over the fact that we couldn’t start a family, even though I swore to you that I was okay with that. You got in the car and left, returning home on your own.’
Alice hadn’t thought about that in a long time. Apart from their honeymoon, the other trip here that had always stuck in her mind was their wedding anniversary two years later when she’d met Omar at the guest house – and of course baby Freya. But now she recalled that short break in between,when Jeffrey had ended up staying a night at the guest house alone– or so she’d thought. He’d returned the next day by train to Cambridge.
They’d never talked about that episode. And now she knew why. The dates tallied. Nine months later, Freya had been born, and not long afterwards they’d returned to the guest house for that holiday on their wedding anniversary.
‘I got a bit drunk that night.’ Jeffrey lowered his gaze. ‘A young woman was staying in the guest house. I swear I didn’t know it was Wendy’s sister. We slept together. It was a stupid mistake – on the one hand.’
‘On the one hand?’
‘When we’d returned here months later for our wedding anniversary, I realised that morning at the guest house could either be the breaking of us – or the making of us. There was a baby. It was what you’d always wanted. It was your dream come true.’
‘But she wasn’t mine.’
‘I know, but she was mine. And I wanted to keep her, bring her up – with you. I just don’t think that would have happened if you’d known she was the result of my one-night stand with Wendy’s sister.’
‘So, did you know about the baby,yourbaby, when we booked to return and spend our anniversary here?’
She took Jeffrey’s silence as a yes.
Freya stood there with her mouth open. ‘Oh, my god, this all makes sense now. I’ve never seen my birth certificate. There’s been no need. You applied for my first adult passport nearly ten years ago. I always knew I was born in Suffolk – it’s written in black and white on my passport. But you two told me when I brought it up once that you were on holiday there, I mean here, when you were heavily pregnant and I came early. That’s why I was born in a Suffolk hospital instead of Cambridge. But that was a lie!’
The room was deathly silent. Alice stole a glance at her.
‘How long did you think you could keep this from me?’
Still silence.
'This is crazy! How could you all be so stupid. Didn’t either of you think that one day I might need my birth certificate?’
Jeffrey shook his head. ‘Once you’ve held a passport, you can simply renew it.’
Freya threw her arms in the air. ‘I’m not just talking about passport renewal! I might need it for a job or … or …’
‘Getting married,’ offered Tarek.
Freya turned to him. ‘Yes, I’d need a copy of my birth certificate.’
‘No, you wouldn’t,’ said Gerald, ‘you can just provide your passport.’
Wendy nudged him to shut his mouth.
Freya stared at them. ‘Didn’t it ever occur to you all that the truth would out, at some point, about my real mother?’
Alice swallowed. This was just what she had dreaded all these years. They should have told her. She shouldn’t have listened to Jeffrey. She knew what he’d been doing all these years – protecting her from the truth, that he’d had a one-night stand with Freya’s mother. But now all the lies and deceit on all their parts had finally come home to roost.
Freya wasn’t the only one who wanted to know everything.
Alice stared at her husband. ‘What about Freya’s mother?’ She turned to Wendy.
‘My little sister was in love with an American from a local air base.’
Freya interrupted. ‘What’s that got to do with anything?’
Jeffrey said, ‘Let her explain.’
