He indicated a messy heap of CD cases stuffed into the door pocket. Vee rummaged through them and pulled one out. ‘This is going to make me emotional,’ she said. ‘But maybe it’s better to get it over with now rather than drip tears all over Finn as soon as he gets here. I can’t believe how much I’ve cried since I came to Willowbrook. Nothing for years and then a tidal wave.’
‘You’ve been bottling it all up. What’s the song?’
Vee pushed the CD into the slot and clicked through the tracks. ‘This was a hit the year Finn was born. I played it over and over again. The words summed up everything I was feeling after he’d gone with Cassie and Marissa. I tried to make out that it was easy to give him up but it was hell on earth.’
The Backstreet Boys and ‘Incomplete’ now rang out, overwhelming Vee with the emotive lyrics that perfectly captured the love and longing she’d felt for the tiny, beautiful scrap of humanity that was her newborn son. Tears flowed down her cheeks and through them, she saw Rick rubbing his eyes with one hand as he negotiated a complicated roundabout.
‘That’s enough of being maudlin,’ Vee said, clicking the CD out as the song ended. ‘You need to give your attention to the motorway, or this journey will be over before it’s properly begun. Here, let’s have something upbeat. This one’s from our school disco days.’
It was a compilation this time, a collection of cheesy songs that took Vee right back to those heady, unpredictable days of flirting, trying to be popular and wanting so much to fit in that it hurt. She led the singing as the CD began with ‘Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go’, and Rick was soon outdoing her in volume. As they pulled off the motorway after countless hold-ups and headed towards the airport junction, Vee began to feel as if this thing was possible. She was going to meet her son as his birth mother for the first time, and she was going to give it her very best shot.
Rick parked as close to the terminal as he could and got out to open the door for Vee. He pulled her into a hug and for a moment she let herself be overwhelmed by the now-familiar scent of his shower gel and warm Rick-ness. He let her go and stepped back.
‘Good luck,’ he said, smiling down at her. ‘You’ve got this.’
‘Aren’t you… I mean, I thought you’d come in with me?’ Vee said, glancing at her watch. ‘He should be coming out very soon, I’ll need to run.’
‘This one’s for you to do on your own. Off you go. I’ll be here waiting.’
Vee turned to walk away and just as she was almost out of earshot, thought she heard him say, as if to himself, ‘I’ve always been waiting for you.’
Startled, Vee made herself keep going. There was no time to check if she’d heard right. She began to jog towards the arrivals entrance, dodging families with small children coping with tantrums and tiredness and arriving just as the passengers from Boston began to trickle out into the open area. Vee tidied her hair and tried to slow her breathing, but her heart was pounding so hard that she couldn’t stand still. She moved from foot to foot as she watched the stream of bleary people wandering out. Some spotted their lifts or welcoming parties immediately, others looked around as if stunned that they’d finally made it. One or two marched off smartly in search of taxis and buses. None of them were Finn.
Just as Vee was about to give up hope and go to find a help desk to send out a message, a tall young man with tousled hair strolled out, as if he had all the time in the world. He looked around and saw Vee standing alone in the middle of the arrivals area. His expression was unreadable as he came towards her, dumping his huge backpack on the floor.
‘Hi, Aunty Vee,’ he said. ‘I mean… I guess I mean… Mom?’
38
Driving home, Vee found herself sandwiched between a person with very little to say and an older one who looked very uncomfortable. She’d tried to make general conversation to get the ball rolling without success. Both seemed determined to be strong, silent types.
Vee reflected on the emails that had passed between herself and Finn over the last week. They had mainly been a list of arrangements to do with flights, transfers and the time Finn was allowed to have away from work. They hadn’t really touched on the reason for his visit, apart from a brief comment from Finn that the two of them had a lot to talk about and her own final sign-off last night when she’d said how she couldn’t wait to see him. Too much? But she’d so wanted Finn to know how welcome he was, even if this meeting was probably happening at a time in his life when he’d thought his world was stable.
They reached the outskirts of Willowbrook and Finn perked up, listening attentively as Vee pointed out places that were significant in her and Cassie’s past.
‘There’s our old school,’ she said. ‘And that’s the park where we used to play.’
‘Cool church,’ Finn said, peering up at the steeple. ‘And look at all those graves. Creepy. Are any of our family buried there?’
‘Oh, yes, both your great-grandparents on my side and… and friends.’ Vee thought about Patrick, in a grave on the far side of the churchyard, ironically not far from the site of the doomed shed. She shivered.
‘Are you cold?’ Finn asked. ‘It’s freezing here. My moms told me to bring layers. It’s warmer this week in Boston.’
This was the longest sentence he’d spoken so far, and Vee smiled at him in relief. ‘You’ll get used to it,’ she said. ‘I’ve put the heating on at home so the house will be snug.’
Rick pulled up outside Dragonfly Cottage and switched off the engine. He turned to Vee and Finn. ‘I’ll leave you here,’ he said. ‘I’m off to do a job in Meadowthorpe. Good to meet you, Finn.’
They reached over Vee and shook hands before Finn opened the door and jumped down, reaching out to help Vee from the cab. Her legs were stiff from being in the van for a while and she swayed as she stepped out. Finn put a steadying arm around her, but it was only a brief connection, and he was soon swinging his rucksack onto his shoulder and following Vee inside.
As she’d anticipated, the warmth from the radiators had turned the living room from the chilly place of that morning into a much cosier one. Vee’s charity shop sofa was now covered in a colourful patchwork throw and although she’d argued with Rick about the wisdom of covering up the floorboards with carpet, she had to admit that the room would be chilly without it. He’d said that the old boards were too uneven and damaged to sand and stain successfully, and he’d been right.
‘This is neat,’ said Finn. ‘A real country cottage, like on the shows the moms sometimes watch. Hercules somebody.’
‘Hercule Poirot?’
‘Yeah, that’s the dude. I like it. Great pictures.’
They both looked round the walls, and Vee saw with fresh eyes the eclectic selection of paintings and old mirrors she’d gleaned from the local charity shops. Also, she’d relied on Maryam and Rashid’s Treasure Trove table for additional bits and bobs to add colour and style. It was the place where villagers left their unwanted possessions and were free to take whatever they liked from the table in return. The previous guardian of the shop, Ingrid, had started the trend when she was divesting herself of a lifetime of unwanted belongings left to her by her husband and Maryam had loved the idea so much that she’d kept it going. Vee had collected a huge bottle-green plant pot only yesterday and it graced the coffee table that Rick had knocked up using old pallets found at the tip. The pot held a chrysanthemum plant, the glorious yellow one that had travelled all the way through France and back home with them. The others had donated it to Vee as a housewarming gift, saying that there would be no connotations of honouring the dead when it reached England. ‘It’ll remind you of the fun we had instead,’ Sid said as he presented it to her.
