Because I haven’t heard from my parents in nearly fourteen years. I haven’t seen them for even longer. And now I never will. Perhaps their deaths shouldn’t shake me this much given we’ve been apart for so many years, by my own choice. What right do I really have to feel upset when Ichoseto cut contact with them? But I still can’t believe my parents are really gone. And that it was my daughter who told me.
She’d found out through her cousin Molly; it turns out they’d been in contact for nearly a year and I’d had no idea. Ella admitted everything in a frenzy last week, the secret conversations and then the news that my parents had both been sick and had passed away within two days of one another. Ella said she was sorry she’d kept it all from me but that she wanted to go to the island. She wants to attend the funeral for the grandparents she’s never met.
I remember when I first told Ella about Molly. Ella was at primary school and they were doing a project about family trees. The project sparked questions about my family that I’d tried my best to divert over the years, answering with only the briefest of information. This time though, she was insistent.
‘I can’t do the project if I don’t have a family,’ she near-sobbed to me one day after school. ‘Everyone else has nearly finished theirs and I haven’t even started!’
She was close to tears and I felt that old guilt and sadness rip through me – that I haven’t been able to give my daughter more. So many times, I’ve pictured a different kind of life for her. A life full of people: grandparents, cousins, siblings maybe, a father. Instead she’s only ever had me. I can’t give her everything but I wanted to give her something that day, so I told her.
‘I have a brother called Jack, but I haven’t seen him in a very long time. And he has a little girl called Molly. She’s a bit older than you and she’s your cousin. But I’ve never met her. They live really far away.’
She asked me more questions after that, what Molly was like, what her favourite subject was at school, whether she liked broccoli, what colour her hair was. But I brushed these questions off, partly because I wanted to change the subject and partly because I felt so ashamed at not knowing the answers.
What kind of a person does it make me that I didn’t know my parents were so ill? That the last time I saw them I was eighteen years old? When I left it may have felt like the only option for me, but even after all this time the guilt is still there, so easily brought to the surface. Were they alone when they died? Were they in pain? Jack must have been there with them. I’m not sure if that makes me feel better, or worse; worse that when I left the island all those years ago, I left all of that to him and him alone.
‘What made you change your mind?’ Sarah asks me.
I think about it for a moment.
‘My daughter mostly. She’s always wanted to know more about her family. I guess I finally realised she had a right to that.’
I think back to when Ella told me everything, last weekend. We were sitting in our favourite café in Greenwich. She’d been quiet all day, so unlike herself. And then she told me. I was so shocked that I had no idea what to say. If I’m honest, I know I didn’t react well. I was surprised, and hurt that she’d kept her relationship with her cousin a secret from me. And then there was the grief, catching me off guard. Why grieve for people you chose to cut from your life? I still can’t explain it, apart from the simple fact that all the time and distance in the world can’t erase. They were my mum and dad.
When Ella first asked if we could go to the island I said no. She grew angry then too, angrier than I’ve ever seen her.
‘They’re my family too, Mum, even if I’ve never met them!’ she shouted, turning all the heads in the café in our direction. Eventually, when I’d calmed down, I realised she was right. I’ve tried all my life to protect her. Everything I’ve done is because I love her. But that doesn’t necessarily mean I’ve always made the right choices.
‘I guess it makes sense that she’d be curious,’ says Sarah, drawing me for a moment back to the present. I look at her again, this friend I haven’t seen in so long, and seeing her makes me think of my friend back in London.
‘It was something my friend Cheryl said too,’ I tell Sarah.
Cheryl and I were sitting in the school staff room after the weekend, the other teachers outside enjoying the sunshine. I told her everything that had happened and how desperate Ella was to go to the island.
‘Ella has never known her family,’ I said. ‘All she has is me. So maybe sheshouldget a chance to get to know her cousin, to meet her in real life. She deserves that.’
‘So why don’t you go?’ Cheryl suggested, simply but with a gentleness too.
‘Honestly? I’m terrified.’
Cheryl nodded then.
‘That makes sense. All those memories …’
‘It’s not just the memories, though. What if my brother doesn’t want to see me? What if I’m not welcome? I wouldn’t blame him after all these years we’ve been out of touch.’
‘Do you want to see him?’
The truthful answer was too complicated to fit into words. So instead I said the only thing I know for certain.
‘I’ve missed him so much. It’s been such a long time.’
‘It has been a long time,’ Cheryl said softly. ‘But maybe it’s been long enough? Things are different now. You have Ella, you have your life here – a life you’ve made for yourself, by yourself. You’re not a child anymore. You’re so much stronger than you think you are, Lorna.’
I didn’t feel strong. I still don’t. But my friend’s belief in me made me want to try to be.
‘She helped me see that it might be good for me to come back too,’ I tell Sarah now. ‘You know, face up to everything I left behind.’
My eyes meet hers and I feel so embarrassed that I look away. Laughter spills from a table on the other side of the carriage where a group of friends share a bottle of prosecco.
