“Are you my mother?”
The question hit her like a sledgehammer. It was unexpected, painful, and rendered her speechless.
“My real mother, I mean?”
Helen took a breath.
“No, no, I’m not. But I knew her.”
He was looking at her intently.
“I’ve never met anyone who knew her before.”
Helen was glad she wasn’t looking at him. Tears had suddenly sprung to her eyes. How much of his life had he spent wondering about his birth mother?
“How did you know her? Were you a friend or...?”
Helen hesitated. Then:
“I’m her sister.”
Robert said nothing for a second, stunned by Helen’s confession.
“You’re... you’re my aunt?”
“Yes, I am.”
Another long silence as Robert took this in.
“Why didn’t you come and see me sooner?”
His question cut like a knife.
“I couldn’t. And I wouldn’t have been welcome. Your parents had carved out a good life for you—they wouldn’t have wanted me butting in, raking up old ground.”
“I don’t have anything of my mother. I know she died when I was just a baby, but...”
He shrugged. He knew virtually nothing of Marianne and what he did know was a lie. Maybe it was better to keep it that way.
“Well, maybe if we meet again, I can tell you more about her. I’d like to. Her life wasn’t always happy, but you were the best thing in it.”
Suddenly the boy was crying. Years of questions, years of feeling incomplete, catching up with him. Helen was fighting tears too, but fortunately Robert had dropped his head, so her distress went unnoticed.
“I’d like that,” he said through his tears.
“Good,” Helen replied, recovering her composure. “Let’s keep it between us for now. Until we know each other a little better, eh?”
Robert nodded, rubbing his eyes with his hands.
“This isn’t the end, Robert. It’s the beginning.”
•••
Thirty minutes later, Robert was in a cab heading home. Helen watched the cab go, then climbed on her bike. Despite the many problems that lay ahead, despite the many dark forces swirling around her, Helen felt exhilarated. Finally, she was beginning to atone.
In the aftermath of Marianne’s death, Helen had devoured every aspect of her sister’s life. Many would have buried the experience away, but Helen had wanted to climb inside Marianne’s mind, heart and soul. She wanted to fill in the gaps, find out exactly what had happened to her sister in prison and beyond. Find out if there was any truth in Marianne’s accusation thatshewas to blame for all those deaths.
So she had dredged up every document that had ever been written for or about her sister and on page three of Marianne’s custody file she stumbled upon the bombshell that had shaken her world—a sign that her sister still had the power to hurt her from beyond the grave. Helen was only thirteen at the time of Marianne’s arrest, and she had been spirited away to a care home straight after her parents’ murders. She hadn’t attended her sister’s trial in person—her testimony had been prerecorded—and she was told only the verdict, nothing more. She hadn’t seen her sister’s swollen belly and Hampshire Social Services had kept mum about it, so it was only when skimming the medical assessment on her arrest sheet, expecting nothing more than the familiar bruises and scars, that Helen had discovered her sister was pregnant when arrested. Five months pregnant. Later DNA tests would prove that Marianne’s dad—the man she had murdered in cold blood—was the child’s father.
