Page 15 of Statistically Speaking
I hate being alone and sad while the sun is still shining outside. I think it’s a childhood thing. In my younger years, I was often indoors and isolated—either because I was worried about my mum, or because she had “friends” over and I was scared of them, or because in foster care I often wanted to hide myself away from any potential threats, even when they didn’t actually exist.
Long summer nights could be torture as I lay there fretting, listening to the sounds of the parallel universe going on around me: the yells of other kids playing, traffic, people having parties, footballs thudding against curbs. The soundof other people existing in a world that I couldn’t quite reach, the strange mix of wanting to join in and not feeling able to.
So I have learned to manage that sensation, to close the curtains against their world, to create my own. My bed is soft and comfortable, my duvet cover smells fresh and clean, the room is dark and the music cocoons me. I try to give myself the very best chance to be okay—but tonight it is going to be hard. Tonight, I am powerless to stop myself from thinking about what has happened, and about what it has triggered in my mind. The facts are simple. Katie Bell is a soon-to-be eighteen-year-old girl who is adopted. She has a birth date potentially near that of my own child; she is from Middlesex, which is not a million miles away from London; and she shares certain physical characteristics with me in terms of hair and build.
There are other facts, too, and I feel them crowding in, waving their hands in my face and looking for attention. Like the fact that I don’t know her exact birthday, even though I can find it out easily enough once I’m back at school on Monday.
But even if it is the same date, almost one thousand nine hundred babies were born in the UK on that day anyway. Another fact is that thousands of children are adopted every year. And the science tells me that all gingers are not actually genetically related.
The second set of facts should override the first set; I see that very plainly. I see that this would be a huge and insane coincidence, statistically improbable, that the numbers do not back up the likelihood of that kind of occurrence.
But for once in my life, the numbers aren’t helping. I am casting them aside, discarding them, throwing them to the wind. It feels terrifying, and even though I am lying flat on my bed, I have a sense of instability that is so strong it is almost physical.
I try yet another of my techniques and go through a list of Other Things That Happened on October 3. Iraq gains independence from Great Britain in 1932. The space shuttleAtlantisis launched in 1985. East and West Germany are reunified in 1990. Saint Francis of Assisi dies in 1226.
On and on I go, trying to put that one day into perspective—except I can’t. For me, the only thing that mattered on that day was the birth of my daughter. The soft nuzzle of her face nestled into my skin. The downy red hair beneath my fingertips. The way I felt when she left the room—like all the air, all the joy, left with her. Now I am gripped with this creeping certainty that I have found her again. No matter how much I try to talk myself out of it, how much I try to logic my way through the maze, I simply can’t—I feel like it could be true. That it might be true. That itistrue.
And if it is, it doesn’t just bring joy. It brings a whole world of other questions. If she is mine, do I even want her to know? Am I ready for that, and more importantly, is she? And how would it make Erin feel, after the tumultuous year of loss and upheaval she’s suffered? We have swapped phone numbers, made noises about meeting up again, could become friends. How would “Hey, just wondering, is your adopted daughter actually the biological fruit of my loins?” fold into that? Do I even deserve to be in my daughter’s lifeat all, as anything more than a teacher, a mentor, possibly a family friend?
These are big questions, and I know I am foolish to even be racing ahead and considering them when I don’t have the relevant facts in place. I like facts. I like numbers. There is safety in numbers, and I like to be safe. Now, for some reason, I seem to be deliberately unraveling myself.
Underlying this mishmash of conflicting emotions, there is one that is so much bigger than the others: relief.
Relief because, if Katie is mine, she has had an amazing life. Yes, there has been sadness recently, but she is clearly a loved and cherished young woman, the product of a caring and devoted family unit. She has wanted for nothing, and she is astonishing in every way. She is clever and confident and comfortable in her own skin.
There was always part of me that wondered, part of me that dreaded finding out that she hadn’t been happy. That being adopted had messed her up, left her with a feeling of rejection. That her new parents might not have been as wonderful as I’d been told. That she could have ended up, despite my best intentions, with a life of pain and struggle.
Maybe, I tell myself, that’s why my nonlogical side is so desperate for Katie to be the one—because if she is, I made the right decision. I never could have raised a girl as clued-up as Katie. I was only a child myself, and I just know I’d have messed it all up in a million different ways. If Katie is mine, then giving her up for adoption was the best thing I ever could have done for her.
Am I actually just looking for a way to let myself off a hook that I’ve been dangling from for so many years now?
I am exhausted from examining this thing from all angles. From going over and over it and still getting no further. From this frantic rollercoaster of thoughts. I wish I was the kind of person who had sleeping pills, so I could just knock myself out for a while. Or the kind of person who might drink herself into oblivion. I am not, sadly—because that always takes me too far into the territory that my mum lived in, and that is a far-off land I am happy never to visit.
I have shown no signs thus far of developing my mother’s condition, but I have my counting, and I have my strict protocols for maintaining order, and I am always a tiny bit scared of what might happen to me if those things stop working. If something big comes along and knocks me off course, like a rogue asteroid heading for earth. Something exactly like this. Could this be my extinction-level event?
I am soon wandering through the solar system, distracting myself with counting each planet’s moons, when my phone rings.
My hand slaps along the duvet until I find it, and I see Karim’s name bright on the screen. My first instinct is to ignore it; I am barely fit company for myself, let alone anyone else—but some lingering sense of politeness, or perhaps, more truthfully, a need to be taken out of my own mental whirlpool, leads me to answer.
“Gemma! Pub quiz, near yours—come, please, we need you!”
I can hear the noise of glasses clinking and background chatter as he speaks, and it is like a soundscape from a different reality.
“Sorry, I’m busy,” I lie.
“No you’re not. You’re always a month ahead of everything, and I came past earlier and saw your car in the drive.”
“That sounds a bit creepy, you know. Maybe not something you should admit to. Anyway, my car could be there because I got a taxi, or because I’m away for the weekend, or because I’m on a road trip with Hell’s Angels.”
“You’re in bed already, aren’t you? I can hear Florence and the Machine. That’s going-to-bed music. Come on—it’s Saturday night. Live a little.”
“You only want me for my superior knowledge base,” I reply, smiling against all odds. It is another huge relief—to be talking to someone other than myself. To be talking to someone who affects body parts other than my poor swollen brain.
“Well, that and your superior everything else—but please do come. One of my sisters is up for the weekend and I have to prove to her that I have a life.”
I glance at the screen and see that it is, in fact, only 8:22 p.m. I can still hear kids playing on the beach and the sound of dogs barking. It is still early, and I am still sad, and there is way too much evening left to fill. I might actually explode if I stay in all night, trying to figure this stuff out.
I ask Karim where he is and get off the phone. This isn’t a date, but it is Saturday night, and I can’t go out looking like a bag lady. I find some skinny jeans and a pair of heels, and a soft cashmere sweater in pale green. My hair is irredeemable, half wet and huge, so I just give it a quick pass with the dryer and pile it up into a messy bun. A dab of mascara, and I’m pretty much as good as I can get.
