When We Were Friends by Tina Seskis

Author:Tina Seskis
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781405917964
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2015-03-04T05:00:00+00:00

45

Berkshire

Juliette’s mother looked across the table at her husband, or at his hands more precisely, which peered elegantly around the edges of The Times. She had debated whether to tell him, in fact had put it off for over a week, but she knew she couldn’t risk him finding out through anyone else. She coughed delicately, but Giles didn’t appear to hear her, just carried on reading the paper, occasionally tutting, the newsprint rustling quietly. She normally liked to leave him alone at this time, just after breakfast, in that brief moment of peace before he had to leave for work, but for some reason she found she couldn’t put it off any longer.

‘Giles,’ she said. ‘Giles, darling … Giles!’

‘Oh, sorry, dear,’ he said finally, angling the paper downwards, so he could look over the top of both it and his reading glasses, at his wife.

‘I need to talk to you,’ she said.

‘Yes, dear,’ he replied, and waited, and when she didn’t say anything, he hoisted the paper up a little, perhaps about to start reading again.

‘Juliette wants to trace her birth mother,’ Cynthia said, as if it were one word, one fast uninterrupted stream of letters, and this time Giles sighed and laid the newspaper flat on the table, its edge soaking up the remains of the milk from his cornflakes in the shallow beige bowl.

‘Oh,’ he said. ‘Oh.’

‘Exactly,’ replied Cynthia, staring at him. ‘What on earth are we going to do?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Giles. ‘What can we do? We knew this would probably happen one day.’

‘Yes, but not now,’ said Cynthia. ‘She’s not long been at university, she’s not ready for it.’ She stood up and paced back and forth, as though the room was too small for her. Then she stopped and leaned against the Aga.

‘Well, what’s happened?’ asked Giles. He shifted uneasily in his seat, and resignedly closed his newspaper and folded it in half. ‘How do you know she wants to? Did she actually tell you? Maybe you’ve got it wrong.’

‘She rang me last week and I knew there was something up, she sounded funny, and it wasn’t even the right day to ring. But she kept chatting on and I was even quite pleased that she sounded interested in my boring old WI stuff, and I assumed she was just a bit homesick – and then she came out with this story about needing to research her origins for an assignment, but it was obviously rubbish …’ Cynthia’s voice started to break a little. She sat down again, looking desolate.

Giles took his wife’s hand across the table, and the sleeve of his crisp striped shirt got a smudge of newsprint on it, just above the cufflink.

‘It’s all right, dear,’ said Giles. ‘What did you tell her?’

‘The truth. I told her where she was born. I didn’t know what else to say … What can she do now?’

‘I’m not sure, dear. But she can certainly go to Somerset House and look up all the births on the day she was born, until she finds her own certificate.

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