‘I can fetch some milk—’
‘I take mine black.’ I lie. The wait has become unbearable. I need to know what happens within these four walls with the burgundy flocked wallpaper and too many secrets. Why Adam had either been here or was planning on coming here.
Nancy hands me my drink. I wrap my hands around the mug, trying to still the trembling in my fingers.
‘I lost my daughter,’ she says simply. Her words are steady, firm and instinctively I know she’s said them many times before. Her eyes are filled with pain. ‘That’s what led me here.’
I nod, but I don’t understand. I can’t. I’m shaking so hard I put down my mug.
‘Her father, he… he wasn’t around. I had no interest in another relationship. I had no interest in anything. It was three years after… after Lucy that my mum suggested I come here. It wasn’t that I wanted to replace her, but…’ Momentarily she closes her eyes while she inhales deeply through her nose before huffing out the air. ‘In the end I couldn’t do it, but I began to volunteer and… it was healing. Now I’m the manager but it’s more than a job, it’s a vocation and… it’s enough for me.’
She leans forward and takes my hands in hers. ‘Your husband… Adam. I don’t know why he wanted you to come here but the fact you’ve lost a child.’ She doesn’t finish her sentence. Again my eyes sweep the room for clues.
‘What is this place?’
‘It’s a children’s home.’
‘It can’t be.’ I draw my hands away from hers, looking around wildly for signs of children. Listening for sounds of children. There aren’t any.
‘They’re mostly all in school.’ Nancy senses my confusion. ‘We don’t put a sign outside because some of the children have come from difficult homes and we want to protect them. Give them some privacy. Some dignity back. You wouldn’t believe what some of these kids have been through. Wherever we can, we place them with new families, of course.’
‘I… I’m sorry.’ And I am. Sorry for her loss, sorry for the children who find themselves without stability, security, but most of all I’m sorry for myself. I had come here for answers but now all I have is more questions. Why did Adam lead me here? It makes no sense.
‘I…’ I trail off. I can’t speak. Can’t think. Can’t breathe. I stand up, my chair toppling back. I rush for the door. I have to get out of here. It was a mistake to come.
‘Anna!’ Nancy is seconds behind me but I don’t stop. My chest is in a vice. I don’t know what I expected to find but it wasn’t this.
My hand is on the front door handle when I hear it.
A cry.
A cry that tears at my heart.
A cry I recognize.
Choking back a sob, I spin around. Push past Nancy, heading for the stairs.
‘Anna! You can’t go…’
But I am halfway up the flight, my feet barely touching the ground.
The cries grow louder. Nancy’s footsteps thundering behind me.
‘Anna! Wait!’
But I don’t. I can’t. I run full pelt towards the door at the end of the landing and throw it wide open.
There are so many things I feel as I approach the cot. Fear. Excitement. Disbelief. Relief. Confusion. Pain. But everything I feel is overridden by a crushing anxiety that I might be wrong, but my heart tells me I am right.
It’s Harry.
His face flushed red. Curls damp against his scalp.
It’s Harry.
Small hands scrunched into fists.
It’s Harry.
On his arm, the birthmark shaped like a map that matches Adam’s.
‘You shouldn’t be in here,’ Nancy says, but her voice is soft.
‘It’s… it’s you. It really is you,’ I whisper.
At the sound of my voice the baby stops crying and studies me with deep blue eyes. Adam’s eyes. Gently, I scoop him up and hold him against my chest. The familiar weight of him. The smell of him.
‘Poor little mite has barely stopped crying since he was left on the steps outside ten days ago.’
But she doesn’t have to tell me he was left the day Adam died. She doesn’t have to tell me because I know.
However impossible, this is my child.
This is Harry.
Part Six
‘Love will find a way.’
EDITH CURTIS – ADAM’S NAN
Chapter Eighty-One
Anna
Twelve months later
It took almost nine months for me to adopt Harry. The wait was torturous. During that time, I lived in constant fear that someone else would swoop in and take my boy away. I hadn’t been on the waiting list to adopt, of course, but thankfully Nancy had recognized the bond between us and rather than placing Harry with foster carers, which would have broken my heart, she continued to care for him while she championed my application from beginning to end. It was her expertise, her patience, that allowed me to untangle the red tape and bring Harry back to where he belonged.
Home.
‘I don’t know what it is about you two,’ she had said, watching me during one of my frequent visits. ‘He cries almost constantly when you’re not here.’ On cue Harry released one of his infectious giggles while I blew raspberries on his tummy. ‘And yet with you he’s happy. Content. It’s like you were meant to be.’
Sometimes she would raise her eyebrows, an inviting of confidence, and I’d smile, and nod, and tell her yes. It did feel like Harry was mine. Once. Just once she asked me why I thought Adam had left me the address of her care home.
I had shrugged. ‘I can’t say for sure but I’m very grateful he did.’ Never sharing that I could say, but didn’t. There was no logical reason for Harry being left here while Adam lay dying across the other side of the world. How a baby, my baby, who scientifically speaking had never existed, now lays contentedly in my arms as though he belongs there.
And he does.
Over time, I have stopped trying to figure it all out.
‘There are more mysteries to the universe than we can ever unravel,’ Oliver had said. ‘Things that are beyond the realms of scene, of probabilities.’ Hearing this allowed me to stop endlessly googling neuroscience and consciousness and trying to find a rational explanation.
There isn’t one.
From time to time, I spring awake in the middle of the night. Sheets tangled and drenched with sweat, heart pounding as I wonder what would have happened to Harry if I hadn’t remembered the notebook. The address. But generally I don’t allow my mind to go there.
‘I’ll stick this one in my boot and drop it at the Parkinson’s charity shop in the morning.’ Josh hauls the box I’ve labelled ‘Donations’ into his arms. ‘I think that’s the last one.’ He pounds downstairs.
‘Thank God for that.’ Nell wipes her forehead with her sleeve. ‘I’m knackered. You ready, Anna? We’ll be late.’
I shake my head. I’m not ready and yet… ‘Can you give me a few minutes?’
‘Of course. Come with your Aunty Nell.’ Nell stretches out her arms and Harry crawls across to her. His dungarees are filthy at the knees. I was mortified at the amount of dust that had been uncovered when the furniture was carried out. Nell scoops him up and plants a kiss on his check. He giggles. He loves her so much. Again, I question whether I’m doing the right thing, tearing him away from his bedroom with the yellow ducks marching around the walls, his home.