Page 29 of Statistically Speaking
“Like I say, I was only two when I was taken into care. I don’t remember my birth parents, and I choose not to see that as a loss—I choose to celebrate all that I am now. All that my mum and dad made me. Thank you.”
It is a powerful and emotional statement, a wonderful close to an enlightening presentation. The room erupts into applause, and I am aware of Erin standing up, cheering the loudest of all. I am aware of someone switching the lights back on. I am aware of a ringing sensation in my ears, and a flash of white zigzags clouding out my vision, and a sudden weakness in my knees.
I hit the floor, and am aware of nothing more.
Chapter 12
Brandy Number Four, Chairs for Two, and One World-Class Kiss
“God, that was embarrassing,” I say, holding my face in my hands.
“Could’ve been worse,” says Karim, shrugging. “At least you did it at the end when everyone was due to go home anyway.”
I nod in agreement. He’s right there. At least I didn’t ruin the whole night for everyone. I still feel trembly and weak, the physical remnants of an emotional wound. It was, of course, more than embarrassing—it was like a blow to the stomach. One minute I was watching Katie, feeling that now-familiar sense of connection to her, and the next, everything changed.
Every silly dream, every ridiculous hope, every stupid thought I’d ever entertained about her was shredded by that one sentence:“I was only two when I was taken into care.”
She was two when she was adopted. She was two when she left her old life and joined her new one. She was two—not a newborn baby.
Katie is not, never has been, never will be, my daughter.
I feel woozy, shaken, like I have just had my carpet of could-it-be pulled from beneath my feet.
I don’t think I’d realized how much it had become part of me—how quickly it had crept into my being, become almost fact, how well I had shaped it into what I wanted it to be. How many tiny ways I had allowed myself to start thinking of her as mine.
I have missed my baby girl every single day since she was taken from my arms in hospital. I have thought about her, and wondered about her, and grieved for the loss of her. I understand now that I am more injured by it than I ever let myself believe—why else would I have so readily embraced the idea that Katie was her?
I am a woman of facts, of dates and numbers and data, but on this one issue I hid away from them. I avoided finding out, I swerved around logic, I deliberately turned a blind eye to reality. I did all of that because I wanted so very much to be in her life again.
I’d been worrying about how to tell them that I was Katie’s biological mother. Planning scenarios, rehearsing speeches, even considering drafting letters. That’s how solid my conviction was, even if I never truly admitted it to myself.
I don’t just feel embarrassed—I feel devastated. Like part of me has been chopped off, and now all I have left is the phantom pain where my fantasy once lived.
Karim, of course, does not know this. He, like everyone else there tonight, simply believed me when I said I was fine. That I’d just been diagnosed as anemic, and that I was on iron supplements that obviously hadn’t kicked in yet. The lies just flowed out of me, easily, perfect little lies that left everyone reassured.
There had been some fuss about calling a first aider, some talk of getting me to a hospital, but I insisted that everything was okay. Another lie.
Karim had helped clear the room, students and families full of concern but also chattering in that hushed and excited way people do when they’ve been on the periphery of a drama. He’d loaded everything into his car and driven back around to the side of the dock to collect me, finding me huddled in my coat in the rain.
Erin had wanted to stay with me, to make sure I was all right, but I convinced her and Katie to leave. It wasn’t their fault, of course, but I couldn’t bear to be around them, not just then, when I was feeling so raw. So injured.
Katie had whipped the Wonky Cushion out from under her shirt and handed it to me to hold. I’d hugged it tightly, told them it was working its magic, persuaded them to head home. I needed to be alone, if only for a few minutes.
I’d sat on a low wall in the drizzle, watching them walk away, Katie so tall, her hair glinting under the streetlamps, Erin by her side. They walked closely, arms linked together, their bond so strong you could almost see it.
I watched them walk away, and I held back tears and told myself it was for the best. That it had all worked out the way it should. I wasn’t mother material, after all. I didn’t have the right skill set.
By the time Karim pulled up in his Nissan, I was able to fake it. Able to put on a brave face, to talk, to mock myself for being a delicate damsel in distress, to make jokes about needing to eat more steak dinners.
He was going to take me home, but I’d asked if we could stop off somewhere on the way. I just couldn’t face it, goingback to my flat. To its emptiness, its tidy rooms, its bare walls. For years I’ve taken comfort in solitude, in living my life with minimal clutter, in keeping my various homes so uncomplicated that I could move out within a day without any bother like a character in a spy film who keeps a go bag under the floorboards.
Now I see that for what it is—fear.
I have a lot of thinking to do, about my life and the way I live it, about choices I have made and about how to move forward. I promise myself I will do that hard thinking—but I know I am not capable of it tonight.
Now I find myself at a small corner table in a quiet pub in the city’s Georgian Quarter. As we drove through the damp streets, along glistening cobbles and past graceful gardens, the hulk of the cathedral and the elegant townhouses that surround it, I mentally recited the facts: planned by John Foster Senior in 1800; Gambier Terrace, former home of John Lennon; Canning, named after former Prime Minister George; St. Bride’s Church, neoclassical. It is beautiful, and it is timeless, and it is the home of many very fine pubs.
Karim is sipping a Coke and has placed a brandy in front of me. Several packets of crisps and nuts are on the table, bags torn open so we can help ourselves—“Scouse tapas,” he calls it.
