The Astonishing Return of Norah Wells (25 page)

She pulls her suitcase out of the wardrobe.

How stupid, she thinks, to have allowed herself to believe that everything was going to be okay: that Norah would go home with her new family and leave them all to pick up their old lives.

That's what she'd thought when she saw the man and the boy in Norah's hospital room in Berlin: that if Norah had someone to love her, if she'd moved on, found a better life, then maybe she and Adam could be together.

Fay hardens her jaw.
Stop living in a bloody fairytale
, she tells herself. Norah's got cancer. That changes everything. It's why she came home and it's why she's going to stay. And it's why Fay needs to go home.

She looks at her stomach.
It looks like it might just be the two of us,
she whispers. And as she says the words, she feels a cold gust sweep through the window open. Goosebumps rise on her forearms.

She stares at Adam's side of the bed, the sheets tossed to one side. And then she remembers his shocked face as he sat at the kitchen table, looking at the son he didn't know he had. The child that Norah decided to keep. More than anything, she wants to go downstairs and hold Adam and tell him that she loves him and that they'll work it out, like they have ever since Norah left. They were a team – the best team in the world.

But Adam was no longer hers to look after, was he?

She smells Norah's perfume in the room. Nothing in the house, not the walls she painted or the furniture she bought, feel like hers any more.

How had she left herself believe that this was her home? Her family? The place where she belonged?

Fight for it, like Ella said? But what was the good in that? Downstairs was a little boy who deserved to have a real family, a real dad, real sisters. Especially now that Norah was ill; they should spend every second together. And maybe it would make Norah better, them all being together. Maybe it would all work out for her.

Do you love her?
she'd asked Adam. And his silence had said it all.

Outside, another tile crashes onto the path in front of the house. Six years to fix a roof, the only thing she'd ever asked Adam to contribute to the renovation of the house.

Fay stuffs clothes into her suitcase. Her old life is still out there: she just has to wipe away the cobwebs, pull off the dustsheets and make it her own again.

‘Mummy!' Willa bursts through the door, crying.

She throws her arms around Fay's waist.

For a moment, as Fay holds on to Willa and lowers her head into her little girl's thick, tangled hair, time stops and she forgets that she's just lost everything.

‘It's okay, my darling,' she whispers. ‘Everything's going to be okay.'

Willa thrashes her head from side to side. ‘Ella said you're not my mummy.'

So, the last piece of the puzzle has fallen into place.

Willa stands back and stares at Fay's suitcase. Her eyes are bloodshot and she's rubbed the scar on her cheek to a fiery red.

‘Why are you packing?' Willa asks.

Fay kneels down and takes Willa's hand. ‘You need to spend some time getting to know your real mummy, the mummy who gave birth to you.' The words stick in Fay's throat but there's nothing else she can say. Not if she wants to protect Willa.

Footsteps on the landing. And then a voice at the door:

‘You have two mummies, Willa.'

Willa and Fay turn round. Norah stands in the doorway.

‘You have two mummies,' Norah says again as she walks in. She kneels next to Fay and takes Willa's other hand.

What is Norah playing at? Two mummies? Willa needs clarity. She needs to understand that there's only one real mother: Norah.

Willa shakes her head. ‘No one has two mummies.'

‘Actually, lots of people do,' says Norah. ‘Do you know what it means to be adopted, Willa?'

Willa looked up at Norah: ‘Adopted?' Then she looks at Fay.

‘Yes,' Norah says.

‘Like the girl in Year Five who was adopted from Vietnam and doesn't look anything like her parents?'

‘Yes, like that,' says Norah. ‘When I was a baby I was adopted, like that girl.'

Fay couldn't get her head around it. Adopted? Since when? And what about Walter? Was he her real brother, then? And did all this mean that Norah had some grand excuse for doing what she did? An abandoned child goes on to desert her own children? It was all too easy.

‘My mother couldn't look after me,' Norah continues.

So walking out on your children runs in the family, thinks Fay.

‘And so she left me to be cared for by another mummy. That mummy was the mummy I grew up with, the one who picked me up from school and helped me with my homework, who put plasters on my knee – and made me birthday cakes, though none of them were as amazing as the one you had today.'

‘Like Mummy —?' Willa looks at Fay.

‘Yes, like Mummy.'

Fay's breath catches in her throat.

Willa goes silent and looks down at her feet. When she looks up she asks Norah, ‘Why couldn't you look after me? Me and Ella and Daddy?'

Norah blinks.

Fay squeezes Willa's hand.

This was why they'd lied to Willa. Because they couldn't find a way to explain why Norah had left.

‘I wasn't well.'

‘You were sick?'

‘Yes, I was sick.'

‘And did you ever get to meet the mummy who carried you in her tummy?'

Norah shakes her head. ‘But it doesn't matter. I still know that I've always had two mummies. And now you have two mummies too: you have Mummy Fay, and you have me, Mummy Norah.'

Fay can't bear to hear any more of this.

Willa shakes her head and points at Fay's suitcase. ‘But Mummy's packing – she's going away.'

‘I think that maybe, if we tell her that we'd like her to stay, she might change her mind.'

Willa straightens her spine, clears her throat and looks straight at Fay. ‘Will you stay and be my mummy?'

Fay doesn't know whether to be furious at Norah for having put her in this position or grateful that she isn't cutting her out of Willa's life. But how can she stay here, pretending that she doesn't love Adam, standing on the sidelines of this family, eating her supper propped up against a kitchen counter like an au pair?

‘I don't know, Willa,' Fay says.

‘But I want you to stay,' says Willa.

‘Willa's right.'

Fay looks up. It's Adam.

‘We want you to stay,' Adam says, looking right at Fay. The vein on his forehead pushes through his skin. It takes all the willpower she has not to go over and hold him.

Fay realises they're all waiting for her to answer. She suddenly feels achingly tired.

‘I'll stay for tonight.'

Willa throws her arms around both Fay and Norah and pulls them into her. Fay feels Norah's breath on her face, smells her scent. She pulls away, leaving Willa with one arm slung around Norah's neck.

Fay hears footsteps on the landing. She looks out through the bedroom door and sees Ella, watching them.

Ella shakes her head and runs up to the attic.

‘Ella?' Fay calls out.

She smells smoke curling out through Ella's open bedroom window.

‘Ella?'

No answer.

Fay climbs out of the window, onto the scaffolding.

She looks up and sees Ella's skinny legs dangling off the side of the roof. Fay climbs up to join her.

‘Hi,' Fay says.

Ella puts her cigarette behind her back.

‘It's okay.'

‘Really?' Ella's eyes shine in the dark.

Fay nods. ‘Really.'

Ella stares at her. ‘What are you doing up here?'

‘Can I sit down?'

Ella shifts over.

‘I know it's hard – that this weekend has been —'

‘Hell?' Ella says.

‘Yes, that would be an accurate description,' Fay says. ‘But we'll work it out. We have to help Willa get her head around all this, that's all that matters now.'

‘She won't. And she shouldn't have to. You're her mum, that's all there is to it.'

Fay puts her hand on Ella's arm. ‘She'll listen to you – if you explain it to her, she'll find it easier.'

‘Explain what? That I thought I knew who my mum was – that I thought I loved her, that I thought she was the best mum in the world – and then I woke up to the fact that I've been chasing a lie this whole time?' Ella shakes her head. ‘And anyway, a kid doesn't get used to having two mums. It's not natural. In fact, it's downright mean. She thinks
you're
her mum. You shouldn't mess with that.'

‘It's not my choice.'

‘That's lame.'

‘Maybe, but it's true.'

‘You should fight for her – for all of us.'

Fay hears the wobble in Ella's voice. She wants to hold her but she's afraid she'll push her away.

They sit in silence, and eventually Fay says:

‘You haven't come out here in a while.'

Ella looks up. ‘You knew I came out here? And you didn't tell Dad?'

‘You like being on the roof – and I like being in the garden. I see you, sometimes. And no, I didn't tell Dad.'

‘He said it was dangerous. He tried to lock the window and to hide the key. I thought you agreed.
Family rules
and all that.'

‘We all need our secrets, Ella?'

Ella taps the end of her cigarette on a roof tile. ‘You haven't said that in ages.' Fay watches the ash fall between them. ‘I mean,' Ella goes on, ‘you used to say it all the time, when I was little… before…'

‘Yes, I used to say it all the time.' Fay looks down through the scaffolding at the bags of rubbish standing on the doorstep, at her hanging baskets, at the cherry tree. The roofers have stamped thick rubber-soled prints through her flowerbeds. She thinks of the sign hammered into the ground:
Holdingwell in Bloom
. Willoughby Street won the competition last year. Fay's garden was the centrepiece. She'd been so proud.

‘But you always did the right thing, didn't you? You didn't pretend to be my friend, like Mum.' Ella stares ahead. ‘I'm such an idiot. I actually fell for it: ice-cream in the middle of winter, bunking off school, chocolate whenever I felt like it, never forcing me to do anything that I didn't want to do… She did it because being your daughter's friend is easier than being her mum, didn't she?'

‘There are different ways of being a mum, Ella.'

‘Remember when you took me to have my feet measured for my first pair of school shoes?'

‘I've still got the photo and the certificate.'

‘You do?'

Fay nods. Even when Norah was here, looked after the practical things. It made her feel like she had a role to play in the family, like she mattered.

Ella kicks at a bit of scaffolding. ‘What other stuff did you keep?'

‘Your first letter to Father Christmas.'

‘You kept that?'

‘Of course.'

It was early December and Ella was four, when Fay had collected her from nursery and they'd gone to the Holdingwell Café for cake and hot chocolate, and they'd written a letter together, Fay holding Ella's small hand, helping her form the letters. And then they'd walked hand in hand to the post office.

‘Do you remember Sai from that time?' Fay asks.

Fay remembers him, a little boy with a centre parting who followed his dad around the shop, franking letters, stacking shelves, holding the door open for customers.

‘I don't know. I guess I must have, because it feels like I've always known him. But I don't have an actual memory.' Ella shakes her head. ‘He says he remembers me, though.'

‘That's nice.'

‘Maybe he
thinks
he remembers, but really he's kidding himself – his brain's just made it up because it's what he wants to believe… like I did with Mum. Or maybe he just says it to make me happy.'

‘Wanting to make someone happy is not so bad. But I think he remembers.' Fay thinks back to the little boy whose dark eyes followed them around the shop. ‘He was cute.'

Ella raises her eyebrows: ‘Cute?'

‘Baby cute. A cute little boy – just like you were a cute little girl.'

‘I was?'

Fay nods. ‘The cutest.'

Even though it's dark, Fay can see the flush in Ella's cheeks.

‘Like Willa?' Ella asks.

‘Cuter,' Fay whispers.

‘
Cuter?
'

‘Classically cute —'

‘Rather than bonkers cute?'

Fay smiles. ‘Exactly.'

‘It was fun, wasn't it? Before Mum left, I mean. The stuff we did. Proper fun, the kind of fun a kid should have.'

Fay puts her arm around Ella. ‘It was the best.'

Ella leans her head on Fay's shoulder and looks up at the sky as though the stars remind her of that time.

‘Remember,' she says, ‘remember the day I put Mum's trumpet in the bath and you took it to hospital to put it in a special drier thing?' Ella catches her breath. Fay watches her stare into the distance. ‘I wanted to clean it for Mum as a surprise and I nearly ruined it – and you didn't say anything. You helped me fix it…' Ella brings the cigarette up to her mouth; her fingers are shaking. ‘We always wanted to please her, didn't we?'

‘Yes.'

They stare out at the rooftops of Holdingwell.

Fay nods at the cigarette. ‘Can I have one?'

‘Seriously?'

‘Seriously.'

Ella pulls a packet out of her jacket pocket. They're Marlboros, Adam's.

‘I just borrowed them,' Ella says. ‘For an emergency.'

Fay laughs. ‘I guess this counts as an emergency.' She pulls a cigarette out of the packet, waits for Ella to flick the lighter, puts the cigarette between her lips and leans forward. They look at each other through the flame.

For a moment, Fay feels the closeness they used to have when Ella was little. Perhaps, after all these years, after everything they've shared, and despite all the rows – even closer.

And then Fay breathes in.

The rush of smoke. The warmth in her throat, behind her eyes, in her head. The sharp pull at her lungs. The lightness. The feeling that if she breathed in enough smoke she might lift off the roof tiles and float away into the night sky.

She coughs. And then inhales again.

Ella laughs and shakes her head. ‘I never thought I'd see you —'

‘Letting my hair down?'

‘Doing something that wasn't completely good.'

Fay looks down at the Miss Peggs' bungalow. The television in their lounge flashes blue through the open curtains. The busker sits in front of his tent, strumming his guitar. Monica sits crossed legged on the pavement, smoking.

Sometimes, it's easier to be sad
–
wasn't that what she'd said to Willa?

Ella stubs out her cigarette. ‘Thank you, Fay. For all the things you've done for us. For looking after us and keeping us together.' She pauses. ‘For being our mum.'

There's a hollow feeling in Fay's chest. How had she let things get so bad between them?

‘So, as you've found out about me coming out here to smoke, tell me one of your secrets.' Ella looks up at Fay through her eyelashes, ghostly fair against her dark-dyed hair.

Fay sees the little girl she used to know, the Ella who loved her, the Ella who wanted to be a surgeon. Who'd asked her once whether she could live with her, and whether she could call her Mummy.

Fay takes a breath. ‘You know one of my secrets.'

‘I do?'

‘Friday night. Willa.'

‘Oh, Operation Kidnap?' Ella laughs.

‘You weren't laughing at the time.'

‘No.' Ella pokes Fay in the ribs. ‘But you have to admit, you were pretty rubbish.'

‘At kidnapping?'

‘Yeah. I mean, sitting on an empty bus with a bonkers-cute-gets-everyone's-attention kid like Willa, going round and round Holdingwell, where everyone knows everyone.'

‘Pretty lame.'

‘Pathetic.'

‘Hey!'

‘Well it was.'

Ella digs Fay in the ribs again and laughs. Then she turns to look at her; her eyes go dark and she says:

‘You should have run away with her. It would have been better for her.'

‘I would have come home anyway, even if you hadn't leapt onto the bus.'

Ella looks up. ‘Why?'

‘You know why.'

Ella blinks. ‘Really?'

‘You're my little girl too. My less bonkers but just as infuriating little girl.'

‘And Dad,' Ella whispers. ‘You came back for Dad too?'

‘Yes, and Dad. But it's complicated —'

‘You love him, right? I mean, not just
we're together and we've got used to it
love him. You're
in
love
with him?'

‘Yes, I'm in love with him.'

‘So it's not complicated.'

‘Your mum's come home. It's complicated.'

‘Have you ever told him?' Ella asks.

‘He knows.'

‘But have you ever
told
him? Not just a
love you
at the end of the phone conversation or when you leave the house for a shift at the hospital. A proper, sit down and look into each other's eyes
I love you
.'

‘I don't know. I can't remember.'

‘Well you should.'

‘Have you said it to Sai?'

Ella shrugs and looks down through the scaffolding.

Fay nudges Ella. ‘You asked me; don't I get to ask you?'

‘I'm waiting for him to say it first.'

Fay draws Ella in close again. ‘Good plan.'

Ella leans her head on Fay's shoulder. ‘I want to stay up here for ever,' she whispers.

‘Me too.'

‘Down there doesn't feel like home.'

‘It'll always be your home.'

Ella lifts her head. ‘And yours?'

‘We'll see.'

‘Don't do that.'

‘Do what?'

‘Go into sensible mode. Act like any of this is fair. Act like you don't hate every minute of it. That what she's done to all of us, that her fucking family turning up on the doorstep hasn't made you feel like smashing things and standing in the middle of Willoughby Street and yelling your lungs out.'

Fay looks at Ella and pauses. Then she puts her hands over hers.

‘She loves you.' Fay says. ‘And she needs you – now more than ever.'

Above them, the sky rumbles. The clouds pack together. Fay feels drops of rain on her face.

‘She wasn't there when I needed her. You were. You stayed. And you should stay now.' Ella's voice is strong and hard, the same tone Ella had used time and again to push Fay away. ‘If you love us, if we're yours, fight to stay.'