Page 46 of Days You Were Mine

The word fits the picture, I can see that, but why does it giveme that familiar tug of unease, the way I once felt when my father’s mood threatened to turn?

Eddie says, ‘Album cover. And also album title.Apparition, by Disciples. It’s perfect.’

The working album title has beenCassiopeia, named for our night of star-gazing in Southwold, and Eddie, perhaps because he wasn’t there, perhaps because it was a little clichéd, didn’t like it.

Jake fetches a bottle of sparkling wine and we toast the second album.

‘ToApparition,’ we say, clinking glasses, inspired, proud and wholly unaware that this spectre would soon implode our lives.

Now

Luke

The power of the internet continues to astonish me. Less than six months ago, I typed my birth mother’s name into a search engine andping!a match came back with an artist named Alice Garland living in Chiswick. After several days and several drafts, I sent her a letter to introduce myself and tentatively enquire about the two of us meeting. And the rest is history. Except, of course, that it isn’t. For the dream I had when I wrote that letter is not reaching fruition in the way I expected. My real, natural mother might come to my house three days a week, but I know little more of her than I did when I first typed her name into Google.

Today in the office I find myself googling my birth mother again. Richard Fields and Alice Garland, I’ll try that. There’s a picture of the two of them – my real live parents, still hard to take in – at the opening of Rick’s retrospective at the National Portrait Gallery. I stare at them, Rick in a checked three-piece suit, Alice wearing a slim-fitting black dress, her hair up and exposing her neck, which is almost unfeasibly long and swanlike. She must have been so beautiful when she was young.

I find a small article about her that I haven’t seen before, in a local magazine calledChiswick Life. There’s a picture taken in her studio, Alice wearing a paint-spattered shirt and sitting infront of a comical portrait of a pug, exaggerated squinty eyes and rolls of fat on its tiny-toy body.

A quote from her makes me laugh: ‘This pug has a lion-sized character, the resilience and determination of a giant.’ Inside I know she’s amusing herself; outside she’s pitching for more business from her clientele of pooch-obsessed old ladies.

When I type inAlice Garland, the Slade 1973, nothing comes up. I realise there are no press articles from that time on Google; if I wanted to find out more I would have to go somewhere like the British Library and sift through reams of microfiche. Or I could ask Hannah to look up Alice and Richard in the cuttings library atTheTimes. But what would I say? Hannah, I’m beginning to think my birth mother is not exactly who we think she is; can’t put my finger on it, just a feeling I have.

Samuel is bathed and ready for bed by the time I get home, and dressed in something I don’t recognise. Instead of his usual white sleepsuit, a pair of pyjamas, navy with ladybirds on them, sweet though not exactly to mine and Hannah’s taste.

‘You bought him some pyjamas, Alice,’ I say, scooping him up from his sheepskin rug. He’s sitting up now, though Alice has him propped against a beanbag just in case. ‘How kind of you.’

‘Oh, I made them, actually. I thought I might have forgotten how, but it came back straight away.’

‘You made these? I’m so impressed.’

Alice laughs, pleased. ‘Well, I’m glad you like them. I could make him other things if you wanted. Dungarees? I used to make those for you …’ Her voice fades, but I press ahead, keen to glean something from the past we briefly shared.

‘You dressed me in dungarees? I’d love to see some photos. Do you have any?’

‘I don’t think so. I’ll have a look.’

‘Really? No photos from that time? How long was it we were together? A month? Six weeks?’

I hate myself for the way I press her, but she leaves me no alternative. Surely it can’t go on, this reluctance of hers to discuss our past?

‘That’s right,’ she says. ‘It felt like barely any time at all.’

She gives me a sad smile and then turns away to pick up her handbag, and I curse myself for reminding her.

‘The fish pie is ready to go into the oven. It will take around forty-five minutes. What time will Hannah be back?’

Hannah is working late again but she promised to be home in time for supper.

‘Around eight, I think,’ I say.

‘Well, have a good evening and I’ll see you tomorrow. Goodnight, little bird.’

She blows Samuel a kiss as she leaves the room, and I succumb to the now familiar dip of disillusionment.

The fish pie is perfectly brown by the time Hannah arrives, and I’ve laid the table with napkins, candles, a bottle of white wine.

‘Thought we ought to celebrate your success,’ I say, pouring her a glass.

---