‘Speaking of TV,’ Valentina said. ‘Are you watchingMy Ghost Kingdom, about adopted children and their birth families? The last one’s on tonight. I hadn’t even heard the term “ghost kingdom” referring to the adopted person’s imagined birth family, but I can relate. As a kid, I used to imagine that I shared blood with royalty or famous actors.’ She laughed. ‘Whereas I expect my parents were just ordinary people coping with an accidental, inconvenient pregnancy.’
Ezz began retracing her steps. ‘Compulsive viewing, when you’re adopted, isn’t it?’
Valentina agreed. ‘And heart-rending sometimes. Some birth mums were treated shamefully.’
Ezz skirted a particularly frosty patch of road that seemed to glitter a warning of its potential treachery. The village lanes didn’t have many pavements. ‘Although I take the reunions with a pinch of salt because they only seem to show the cheerful, successful ones, it’s fascinating watching people’s stories unfold. One minute I empathise with those who say their adoption affects their sense of identity but the next I side with those who say they’ve no need to know who created them. And that segment on the prevalence of teenage moodiness in adoptees made me think of Thea’s difficult patch at school. Is your birth family on your mind?’
‘Mostly I’m too busy to worry about it,’ Valentina confessed, ‘but it does float into my mind sometimes who my birth parents were. Why they didn’t keep me. Who my siblings and cousins might be – especially when Gary’s family has a giant get-together. He explains all these first and second cousins to me, and I don’t really get it. He and his parents can talk about family relationships for hours. It makes me aware that we don’t even have our adoptive parents anymore.’
‘I still miss Mum and Dad, even though they died when I was twenty.’ Ezzie crossed Harbour View and began up the dogleg slope of Creag an Lolaire, gasping when her feet almost shot from under her. Freezing sea mist could polish the ground to a glassy sheen. ‘Particularly lately, because I’m at a bit of a loose end,’ she confessed, turning right into Chapel Road and spotting the light that shone outside her cottage to welcome her home. ‘Well,’ she corrected hurriedly, not wanting to prompt a worried Valentina to call Thea to talk over Ezz’s isolation. ‘I might start dating again, but the last one put me off.’ She stopped to catch her breath. Above the mist, the moon rode in a star-bestrewn sky. Giggling, so Valentina wouldn’t get how much it had upset her, she admitted, ‘He had a bit of a quirk.’
Valentina’s tone sharpened. ‘Quirk? Or kink? He didn’t hurt you?’
‘No, no,’ Ezz soothed. ‘He was great at first and after a couple of dates I went home with him.’ She wasn’t coy with her sisters. ‘And then he announced he had special pleasures. Honestly, I just stared at him, because, you know … special pleasures? He said he liked to pretend he was an army officer, giving orders.’ She giggled, though it had been far from funny, being alone with Henry in his house as he tried to coax her upstairs. ‘When he said he called his man-part Major Magic, I left.’ She hoped she’d made it sound funny, because at the time it had made Ezz feel vulnerable and she’d driven home too fast in the dark, imagining him pursuing her. At least she’d never told Henry where she lived.
‘Ezz!’ Valentina sounded as if she didn’t know whether to be amused or appalled. ‘You will call the police if you feel threatened, won’t you?’
‘Yes, yes, lawyer sister,’ Ezz breezed. ‘Any minute now you’re going to ask why I can’t settle down with someone like that nice Ramsay I used to live with in Suffolk.’
‘I do feel slightly like that,’ Valentina acknowledged ruefully. ‘You’re forty-four and I want you to be happy.’
Ezz snuggled into her coat, cold yet unwilling to deprive herself of the enchantment of the dark, frozen evening. ‘Ramsay didn’t want to relocate when I wanted this job in Skye. You know that.’ And her doing something really hard, like giving up alcohol, had not received his support at all – a case of a hard drinker not appreciating a reformed drinker, she supposed. He’d felt criticised when she talked about not missing the hangovers or putting herself or others at risk during drunken escapades. For that and other good reasons, Valentina had never been told the full story of Ezz and Thea uprooting from the English countryside and replanting themselves on the beautiful Isle of Skye. They’d thought she’d be happier not knowing. ‘I don’t think Mum and Dad would have liked him much anyway.’
A fresh wave of nostalgia for their parents Maxie and Vince swept over her. Two musicians who’d adopted three girls and then had to leave them on the threshold of adulthood when something as mundane as a hotel’s faulty heating system had taken their lives. Her laughter deserted her. ‘We were so lucky. Mum and Dad put us at the centre of their busy lives. I suppose the advantage of being adopted is that the authorities check your potential parents are good people. With natural parents, you get what you get.’
‘Too right.’ Valentina sighed. ‘What if our birth parents are horrible? One of those stories onGhost Kingdomwas about a man who discovered his father had been a gangster.’
With a shiver, Ezzie took a step towards her cottage. ‘Nobody could live up to Maxie and Vince.’ The street lighting just here was sparse, letting her look up at a galaxy of stars, asteroids, comets, space dust and whatever else the Earth floated in, like a million diamonds flung on black satin.
Valentina was silent for several beats. ‘I get what you mean. Thea’s glad she’s found a birth parent now, but it wasn’t plain sailing, and it doesn’t mean our parents would be as OK as her mother Ynez. Even if we’re not the result of rape or incest, we were almost certainly dirty secrets. Our birth mums probably dealt with the emotional conflict decades ago and might not thank us for stirring it up again. Their current families might not know we exist, and by searching our birth mothers out we’ll expose their past disgrace.’
‘True,’ Ezz acknowledged.
Valentina went on. ‘I’m not sure I want to know that I was originally called Jessie or Mary-Anne or Nelly. I’mValentina.Mum and Dad were my mum and dad. You haven’t applied for your original birth certificate either, have you? It’s the first step on a road that might lead anywhere.’
Ezz tugged her hood over her hat. ‘Agreed. But if I ever started the process, I’d treat finding my birth family like dating via an app. I’d exchange messages. Then maybe I’d chat on the phone. Eventually, if we all wanted to meet up, I’d do it in a public place so I could leave whenever I wanted. If they bothered me, I’d block them – like I blocked Henry. Without my home address, they’d no longer have access to me.’
‘Wow,’ Valentina said slowly. ‘You’ve thought about this.’ She hesitated. ‘I’ve put a DNA testing kit on myChristmas wish list, but it’s mainly about health, because – as Gary’s mother Pearl pointed out – if there’s anything in my genes to be concerned about, it’ll affect Barnaby. And there’s also ancestry. Thea’s discovered she’s half-French, which is a nice thing to know. You’re so blonde, maybe you have Nordic forebears. I can be interested in where my ancestors lived without needing to meet any relatives the test might throw up.’ Then Valentina rounded off hastily. ‘Oops, Barnaby’s shouting for me. See you soon, I hope.’
‘OK, I’ll go home and get warmed up. Give Barnaby a hug from me.’ Ezz’s frozen toes were beginning to curl inside her boots, but before she finally turned towards her cottage, she lingered for one long last look at the night sky. She liked the stars and had downloaded an astronomy app in a fit of enthusiasm, where constellations like Cygnus were shown by dotted lines drawn between the stars.
She’d soon grown tired of the app but thought, fancifully, that she was like one of those twinkling stars within a constellation named Birth Family – part of something bigger, whether she acknowledged those lines or not. Other people shared her DNA. Out there. Somewhere. Valentina had Barnaby who looked like her and Thea had Ynez.I don’t have someone else with blonde hair, blue eyes and a pointy nose,she thought.
But then she shrugged. At various times of her life, she’d wondered about her birth family. She’d done nothing about finding them before and doubted she ever would.
