Dina glances at her watch. “Come on. I’ll drive you there and then bring you back here if that works for you.”
“Okay,” I say.
And with that, I make my way to meet my birth mother.
CHAPTER14
FAYE
We walk over to Dina’s Mazda parked a few spaces away from my car. “It’s only ten minutes from here.” She starts the engine, turning down the loud radio that blares out of the speakers.
“Thank you,” I say. “This is so kind, really.”
“Well,” she says. “It’s not every day that you meet your long-lost sister.” And then she laughs.
“Can you tell me a little about Rachel on the way?” I ask.
She lifts her eyebrows. “I’ll do my best, but Mum was always a closed book. I guess now I’m starting to understand why.” She exhales slowly as though thinking about the past. “She never really talked about her childhood. I know she grew up in the area but as a child I never met my grandparents.”
“Never?”
She shakes her head. “Not once. I didn’t have any extended family. No aunts, uncles or cousins. No one. It was Mum, Dad and me.”
“And your dad?”
“He passed away last year. He was a teacher. A bit older than Mum. She didn’t work. I think she had a job at a butcher’s before I was born and then became a housewife and mother. I had a good childhood. We weren’t well off but there were Christmas presents and home-cooked meals.”
It sounds nice, her simple childhood. As a young woman, I might have felt resentful that my birth mother was able to take care of her second child but not me. As a fifty-year-old woman, I’m glad my birth mother found happiness with another daughter.
Dina pulls into a carpark, reverses into a bay and refuses my offer to pay for the parking.
The nursing home reminds me of a Victorian school. Perhaps it was at some point. I wrap my arms around my body, taking a few steps closer.
“Are you okay?” Dina asks as we make our way inside.
“Not really,” I admit. “I feel very strange.”
The nerves have taken over and there’s a sense of disconnection flooding my body, as though I’m hovering above myself, staring down at the top of my head.
“I keep wondering if I’m doing the right thing,” Dina says. “Whether this is all too soon. After all, I only just met you. But to be honest, I don’t know how long she has left. And you seem nice.” She shrugs. “Besides, if you are some sort of grifter, you’ll be disappointed. There aren’t a lot of riches for you to pilfer.”
I laugh. “I promise you I’m not a grifter.”
We walk along a corridor before a nurse allows us through locked doors. I follow Dina, watching her move. While the physical resemblance between us is strong, our mannerisms are different. She walks with her shoulders forward whereas I lean back.
Before I know it, we’re outside a door. Dina knocks three times.
“Come in,” answers a weak voice.
I hold my breath.
As Dina opens the door, I think time may have slowed down. I’m not ready. But how can that be possible after all these years? A few seconds later, I step into the room and see my birth mother for the first time.
This is it.
The window behind Rachel’s slumped shape illuminates her form. Sunlight peeks through the wisps of her grey hair. If she is sixteen years older than me, that makes her sixty-six, but she looks more like eighty.
“Ah,” she says. “You girls should be out in the fields, playing. Why are you inside?” She shoos us away with her hand, as if to dismiss us.
