‘Tigre is our cat, though he likes to spend more time on our neighbours’ doorsteps. I think other people feed him, although they say they do not. Please, come in. We will sit out on our balcony.’
Cate stepped into a narrow hallway, taking in its pale-pink walls, the samples of old, handmade lace framed and mounted on the wall.
‘I will make the coffee,’ Lina said, disappearing through a door at the end.
Cate waited in the hallway with Belinda. A folding umbrella and some unopened post lay on a half-moon table, watched over by several family photographs. An image of a girl in a bunny-eared hat feeding a baby lamb made her catch her breath.
‘This is me… when we went to Wales. I must have been three or four.’
‘Your papà sent Mamma a photograph every year. Most of them are in an album in our living room. I loved to look at them when I was a little girl, hoping you looked a bit like me. Come, let us go and sit outside.’
Cate followed her half-sister up the stairs and out onto the balcony, sinking into a green cushioned swing chair under a shady awning. She hardly dared to believe what she’d heard and seen. Her mum had kept and treasured Cate’s photos; she’d yearned to see her daughter again. And her half-sister had known about Cate all along and dreamt of meeting her. How could Dad have let her go on that school trip to Venice, not telling her that the mother who loved her was living here?
‘I still cannot believe you are really here!’ Lina put down a tray laden with a metal coffee pot, cups, tea plates and an oval tin of Amaretti biscuits decorated with a whirly pattern of gold and pink. She perched on the edge of her chair, struggling to open the lid with her beautifully manicured hands.
‘Let me. Your nails are too long.’ Belinda prised open the lid, releasing a sweet, sugary scent. ‘Please, take one.’
‘Thank you.’ Cate took one of the paper-wrapped biscuits. Lina poured out the coffee, holding the pot steady with both hands. Belinda threw back her drink in a couple of gulps and then stood up.
‘Mamma, I think I will leave you two alone. Cathy and I have so much to catch up on… but you have so much you must want to say to each other.’ Her sugar-almond-scented hair brushed against Cate’s cheek as she bent to kiss her.
‘Thank you, that’s kind of you,’ Cate said.
Lina stirred her coffee, even though she’d already added a sachet of sugar and stirred it just moments before. Cate undid the white wrapper on her biscuit even though she wasn’t sure she could eat a thing.
‘I saw the photograph in the hallway of me feeding the lambs.’
‘Every year, Terry – your dad – sent one to me. This is the only one I have on display. It would make me sad to have too many pictures of you around the house.’
‘Why did you leave?’ Cate blurted it out. ‘When I had my own children, I understood how strong a mother’s love was. I couldn’t imagine any circumstances where I would abandon my boys. It was Dad, wasn’t it? Was he mean to you? Is that why you had to go?’
Lina fiddled with a stray strand of hair, taking a moment to compose herself. She licked her lips, swallowed and continued.
‘No. I cannot blame Terry. He was always a good man, just a boy back then. I was so young when I fell pregnant: just a teenager. I was too scared to have a baby, too scared to have an abortion, too scared to go back home and disappoint my parents again. Terry surprised me; after the initial shock, he was thrilled to become a dad. I told myself everything would be all right. I even began to get excited and by the time I was five or six months gone, I knew I was willing to put my dreams of doing more travelling aside. I started to dream instead of a happy little family.
‘I should have felt elated when the nurse handed you to me in the hospital but I just felt numb. She told me it was the exhaustion of the birth and I shouldn’t worry. When I took you home, I struggled to breastfeed. I could not sleep. I would wake in the night to check on you, worrying about every little thing that could go wrong.’
Lina paused. She leant forward, resting her hands on the wrought-iron table, but that didn’t stop them from shaking.
‘I became convinced I was a bad mother, that one day, I would harm you. I began to imagine hurting you. I had visions of standing over your cot, holding a pillow and smothering you.’
Cate gasped, hardly able to take in what she was hearing.
‘One day, I imagined feeding you from a bottle, putting bleach or some other poison in the milk. I could not tell anyone the truth; I believed they would take you away from me. But I knew you could not have a mother like me; you were not safe when I was around. You do not know how close I came to harming you.
‘I could not tell Terry why I had to leave,’ Lina continued, her voice so soft, Cate had to lean forward to catch her words. ‘I did not want him to think I was a monster. It was easier for me to let him think I was selfish and uncaring, that I did not want to be tied down. Part of me hoped that once I’d left England, I could lose myself in travel, new places, new people, that somehow I could move on, but of course it does not work like that. It was many years later, when I was listening to a radio show, that I discovered I was not the only mother who had felt that way. I realised I must have been suffering from post-natal depression. I had not been mad or bad. I had been ill. It was such a relief to find a reason but so sad that I had not known to get help. When I was pregnant with Belinda, I spoke to the doctors so they could help me if it happened again.’
‘Oh, Lina… Mum. It’s terrible to think you suffered that way. I know how hard bringing up a baby can be. I was twenty-four when I had Oli and I still felt like a child parenting a child even then. And after him, we had Max and he didn’t sleep. I still remember the struggles of being up half the night. I can’t imagine dealing with that as a teenager and suffering from post-natal depression on top of it all.’
‘I thought of telling Terry the truth once I realised what had been wrong with me. But it was too late and I knew he would blame himself for not being aware of how badly I was coping. I could see from the photographs he sent every year that you were happy, settled and you could not have had a better dad.’
‘Dad kept me from you.’
Lina shook her head. ‘No, that is not true.’
‘I came to Venice, on a school trip, when I was fourteen. He never told me you were here. We could have met. You would have wanted to see me, wouldn’t you?’
Lina turned her face away. ‘Terry wanted to tell you, he wanted me to meet you, but I refused.’
