One Winter Morning Read online

  Isabelle Broom

  * * *

  ONE WINTER MORNING

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Isabelle Broom was born in Cambridge nine days before the 1980s began and studied Media Arts in London before joining the ranks at Heat magazine, where she later became the Book Reviews editor. Always happiest when she is off on an adventure, Isabelle now travels all over the world seeking out settings for her novels, as well as making the annual pilgrimage to her true home – the Greek island of Zakynthos. Currently based in Suffolk, where she shares a cottage with her two dogs and approximately 467 spiders, Isabelle fits her writing around a busy freelance career and tries her best not to be crushed to oblivion under her ever-growing pile of to-be-read books.

  By the same author

  My Map of You

  A Year and a Day

  The Place We Met

  Then. Now. Always

  One Thousand Stars and You

  For the brave, brilliant

  (and utterly bananas) Ian Lawton

  1

  The morning began as so many do in winter, with low-hanging fog and a smattering of frost. For weeks the sky has been the muted silver of a much-thumbed coin, but today the sun has broken through, laundering my little Cambridgeshire village with light.

  As I walk the ten or so minutes to the pub, I relish this new brightness which has brought with it so much colour – red berries in a thicket of holly, a battalion of purple pansies in a window box, and perched on the wall outside the church, a blue tit, its head cocked inquisitively to one side.

  I see David as soon as I cross the threshold of the White Swan. He is easy to spot, with his round bald head and those John Lennon-style glasses, which he wears balanced precariously on the end of his nose. In all the early family photos of him, Anna and myself, David has thick, black curls, much like my own, but his hair started to thin rapidly the year he turned forty, and now, at fifty-eight, there’s barely a strand remaining. Strangers used to comment on David’s hair when I was a child, telling me how fortunate I was to have inherited it. I always smiled away and allowed them their assumptions – in fact, I enjoyed hearing them. In the eyes of those people, I was a normal daughter, from a normal family, living a normal life.

  I once read that the average human life has seventeen possible starting points. Some believe it begins at conception, others the moment of birth, while for a few the transition into adulthood marks the real beginning. I suppose our life is a story, and we are its author – therefore it’s down to us to decide which chapter means the most to us.

  My own life began eight days after my fourth birthday – the day I found out I was adopted. I can’t remember how it felt before that, just being Evangeline Nash, a child who had no idea she had been given away by the one person who was supposed to cherish her the most, a mother whose name I don’t even know. In the quietest moments of the night, in that pause before the dawn arrives, I still search inside and try to find myself – the person I should have been.

  ‘There she is!’ David exclaims as I walk towards him. ‘You look lovely – what a nice dress.’

  ‘It’s a jumpsuit,’ I say, lifting one leg to the side like a tightrope-walker before accepting his enthusiastic hug of greeting. ‘They’re flattering, but an absolute nightmare when you need a pee.’

  Stripping off in the ladies’ loo aside, it made a nice change to wear something other than leggings and a sloppy jersey today, so I’m touched that he has noticed the effort. It has been a good long while now since I have ventured out for lunch, and I even went so far as to apply a smear or two of make-up.

  We spend the first few minutes discussing the mundanities of David’s life – his car MOT and the ongoing battle between the neighbour’s dog and his rose bushes. I remark on the ludicrous number of Christmas decorations that are up in the pub, and we deliberate over whether to order the Swan’s famous macaroni cheese or its triple-stacked BLT from the menu. I don’t argue when he offers upfront to pay, even though it stings to accept. I will get back to a place where I am earning again, but at the moment, it still feels a long way off.

  ‘So,’ he begins, when we both have a Diet Coke in front of us, ‘your big date is tonight, isn’t it?’

  ‘It is,’ I agree. Then, seeing him arch an inquisitive brow, ‘Why are you making that face?’

  ‘I’m just happy for you, poppet, that’s all. Billy is one of the good guys.’

  David often makes these proclamations, telling me his opinion rather than asking me for mine. Anna told me once that he can’t help it – before he became a full-time author, he spent so many years teaching that his mannerisms and speech patterns were altered.

  ‘Well, don’t get too carried away,’ I inform him, allowing myself the flicker of a smile as I picture Billy. The idea of being on a date with him later is sending my mind down a helter-skelter, but it’s too late to cancel on him now.

  ‘It’s just a drink,’ I remind David. ‘Not a Happily Ever After.’

  ‘Yes, of course, I know that. I don’t want you to feel that I … Well, that is to say … What I mean is …’

  David coughs to mask his discomfort, then reaches into the inside pocket of his blazer and extracts a small cloth. When he removes his glasses to polish them, however, he promptly drops them on to the floor, then bangs his head as he begins rooting around beneath the table.

  I would usually have been amused by such a display, but as it is, I find his obvious unease disconcerting. David was once the person I relied on to have the answers to all my questions, but nowadays, he falters whenever he speaks to me – even over a subject as benign as my date with an old friend. In his eyes, I have transformed from my robust self into something fragile, a delicate china ornament that must be handled with the utmost care at all times, just in case I crack.

  Since Anna died in a horse-riding accident last Christmas Eve, it has felt increasingly like David’s playing a part; he is A Father and Widow Who Is Coping, rather than his real, presumably wobbly self. Would it be different if he had fathered me in the traditional way? If we were related by blood, would we have a mutual understanding that allowed each of us to better support the other? I wish I could do more to help him, but then, I wish he could help me more, too.

  Once the glasses have been restored to David’s face, I do my best to steer the conversation away from the subject of my dating life, and the two of us end up sharing a
laugh as we recall a comical habit from my childhood. I was very fond of pulling my jumpers up over my face and pratting around the house unable to see, which led to many a collision with not only the furniture, but also two long-suffering cats and, while seated at the dining room table once, a plate of macaroni cheese hot from the oven. That one was messy.

  I have just put my knife and fork together across my empty plate when David drops his bombshell, beginning with the fairly innocuous comment that he’s worried about me.

  That makes two of us.

  ‘I’m fine,’ I say automatically, only to chastise myself for the lie. ‘What I mean is, I will be fine. I just need a bit more time, that’s all.’

  I twist a thick wedge of hair furiously around one finger, wincing when it starts to shred.

  ‘It’s been almost a year,’ David continues, and immediately I feel the all-too-familiar stinging sensation behind my nose.

  ‘Oh, Genie.’ David sighs and reaches across the table to pat my shoulder. ‘I’m sorry, sweetheart. I shouldn’t have brought it up.’

  I shake my head and look down at my knees rather than at him. I have already learned that seeing my own pain reflected back in his expression does nothing at all to lessen it.

  ‘It’s OK,’ I mutter. ‘I don’t want you to feel like you can’t talk about it.’

  David sits silently while I discreetly cry out this latest batch of tears, his fingers rubbing soothing circles on my hands. It’s only when I stop and bring my eyes up to meet his that I see the fear in them. He has something else that he needs to tell me, but suddenly, I don’t want to hear it.

  I move my hands out of his grasp and lean back, gripped by an urge to flounce away from him, just as I would have done as a teenager. I tormented David and Anna from the age of thirteen right through to eighteen, sneaking out after my bedtime, drinking, smoking, even dabbling once or twice in recreational drugs. And I delighted in inviting boys home and locking my bedroom door behind us – a practice that was strictly against David’s rules. How bold I felt, when really, I was lost. It’s obvious to me now that I was oh-so angry at my displacement within the world, when what I should have been was grateful – happy to be as cherished as I was by my adoptive parents.

  ‘I can’t just sit here and watch while you allow your life to fall completely apart,’ David says quietly, his tone sympathetic rather than severe. ‘This is the first time you’ve been out for a meal in months,’ he adds, gesturing around. ‘And what about your job – are you ever going to go back?’

  I shake my head once, the gesture unequivocal.

  ‘I can’t,’ I say. ‘I just can’t be there. I can’t be anywhere near there. I’m sorry that I’m not paying my way – I will get a job somewhere else.’

  ‘Genie,’ he begins, and I know what he’ll say next: money is not the problem, never has been since he wrote all those books about another girl called Evangeline; since he turned my forlorn start in life into the Evangeline And … series for other children to enjoy. It’s that Evangeline who has kept a roof over our heads, who settles the utility bills, puts food in the fridge and pays for the artwork on the walls of our home. She is the real star of our family.

  ‘It’s time we had a chat about your real mother,’ David blurts out.

  I feel the blood drain from my cheeks. Whatever I thought he was going to say, I never would have guessed it would be this. The official line regarding my birth parents has always been the same: that my mother was a friend of an acquaintance, a girl who got herself into trouble when she was too young to cope, while my father was simply some random that she hooked up with – perhaps even one of many – who was never in the picture and never wanted to be. David and Anna stepped in to help because they so longed for a baby. There has never been any suggestion she was a person they knew – or even met. I know her name must be on my original birth certificate, but I have never seen it, nor have I ever wanted to. The only one I care about is the reissued version, which has David and Anna down as my parents. For a moment, all I can do is mouth uselessly, my emotions veering violently from shock to anger to downright alarm.

  David has turned pale at the look on my face – an expression that warns him to stop talking. I cross my arms and jut out my chin, my posture radiating anger. Before I can muster an appropriate reply, however, he takes another deep breath and adds, ‘I know who she is and I know where she is, too. I have always known.’

  ‘You WHAT?’

  I can’t believe that I am hearing this.

  ‘You always said you had no idea where she went after I was born,’ I storm.

  ‘I know,’ he agrees, looking sheepish. ‘Anna and I told you that we didn’t know any details, but we did. I’m so sorry, darling – but we thought we were doing the right thing, by her and you, by not revealing the extent of it all. But now that everything’s changed, I think it’s time you knew more. At least let me tell you her name?’

  ‘What if I don’t want to know?’ I retort. ‘What if I don’t want to know anything about that … that woman? It’s not as if she can replace Anna, is it? Nothing and nobody can do that, and you shouldn’t bloody well think they could!’

  David sighs. He is not a big man, but my reaction has made him seem even smaller somehow. Despite my indignation, I feel something inside me give as I glare across the table at him. He has been so hurt already by my actions, yet here I go again, piling on more pain.

  ‘Why?’ I ask, and I have to clench my jaw to mask the tremble in my voice. ‘Why now?’

  David looks at me for a moment. I can guess what he is about to say, and brace myself.

  ‘It’s because of Anna,’ he mutters, now close to tears himself. The waitress, who was approaching to clear away our plates, takes one look at him and veers off in the opposite direction.

  ‘Because she would hate seeing you like this – seeing both of us like this.’

  I close my eyes, and the image of my adoptive mother fills the dark space behind them. Her soft, lined face, her warm smile and those kind, fawn-coloured eyes. God, I miss her. I miss her so much that it makes my breath catch in my throat.

  ‘The thing is, Genie, this is killing me – seeing you in this state. I feel like I’ve lost you, as well as her, and it can’t go on. Things can’t keep on the way they are, with you so miserable and shut off from the world, and the two of us tiptoeing around each other all the time. Something has to change, don’t you see that?’

  ‘No,’ I reply sulkily, even though I know he’s right.

  ‘I know that meeting Bo—’

  A glare from me makes him falter.

  ‘Your birth mother,’ he corrects. ‘I know she won’t become a substitute for Anna, but meeting her might help you find your way back to yourself. Haven’t you ever wondered who she might be, or what she might look like?’

  ‘No, I haven’t,’ I snap, although David knows as well as I do that I’m lying.

  ‘And you do need to get out of the house,’ he says gently. ‘Get back into the world and remind yourself that there is still plenty to live for out there.’

  ‘Why do I need some random stranger to help me do that?’ I demand.

  ‘She’s hardly that,’ he counters quietly. ‘She’s your mother.’

  ‘I don’t want another mother,’ I tell him, my voice rising. ‘I want my mother.’

  The tears come back then, and I let them. I sit motionless as they trickle over my cheeks and down my neck. David’s eyes behind his glasses are watery, but his expression remains determined. He has his educator hat on again, but the lesson he is trying to teach me is one I already know.

  I can’t have what I want, because what I want is Anna. And Anna died because of me.

  2

  I am fairly certain that, given the day I have just had, most people would probably cancel their evening plans. Finding out your adoptive parents have kept a huge secret from you throughout your entire life is catastrophic enough, but when you toss in the name and location of the
woman who gave birth to you as well, it could surely be assumed that you would draw a line through any dates for the next month – let alone the following few hours.

  At the very least, what I should be doing tonight is an online search for the woman who gave me up. Any normal person would be desperate to put a face to the name – especially if it’s one they’ve waited almost their entire life to hear.

  I am not most people, though, and neither am I normal. So, instead, I have come back to the pub to meet Billy, and so far I have done a sterling job of convincing him – and myself – that there is absolutely nothing wrong with me.

  ‘Nice shot, Nash.’

  Billy grins at me from across the pool table, and raises his half-empty pint glass in a salute. I have just potted three yellow balls off the break, and now I am limbering up for a fourth.

  ‘She shoots, she scores,’ I throw back, slamming the cue so hard against the white that it ricochets forwards and sends two of Billy’s red balls hurtling across the floor of the pub.

  ‘Whoa there!’ Billy laughs as he tries and fails to catch them. ‘Any harder and you’ll take out the windows.’

  It is not the first time the two of us have played pool together in this setting – it could easily be the two-hundredth – but none of the previous occasions was an official date. This is the first of those, and it’s every bit as weird as I hoped it wouldn’t be.

  ‘Two shots,’ I say, taking the opportunity to get stuck into my glass of white wine. I have been avoiding alcohol at home, but this evening it feels necessary. Anything that can ease this awful feeling of having the rug yanked out from under me is worth a punt – or a pint. Now if only they sold wine in those …

  Billy always looks rather ridiculous when he is bent over the pool table. He has the body shape of one of those inflatable air dancers that you sometimes see outside car dealerships, all lanky limbed and square-headed. That is not to say that my old friend is not attractive, however, because he very much is. He has amiable pale-grey eyes, a liberal spray of Irish freckles and masses of conker-brown curls, not to mention the metabolism of an Olympic sprinter. Before we started this game, I watched him inhale a bacon double cheeseburger with all the sides, and now he’s tucking into a bag of salt-and-vinegar crisps.