‘Your parents wanted another child,’ my aunt says and I watch my uncle reach over and place his hand on top of hers. I’d never asked why they hadn’t had any children of their own – it wasn’t my business – but I’m suddenly aware that this is a painful subject for Miranda, just as it clearly was for my parents.
‘I always wanted a brother or sister,’ I say quietly and I watch Miranda blink back tears.
‘They tried for years but it never happened,’ James takes up the story. ‘And your mum became more and more desperate, more and more upset that she couldn’t get pregnant.’
‘Laurel became very depressed,’ my aunt says. I can’t remember the last time I heard somebody call my mother by her first name – Dad barely speaks of her and, up until now, James and Miranda only ever refer to her as “your mum”. ‘Do you remember the Christmas that we came to stay?’
‘Yes, it was the only time you came to Paris. The only time I’d met you before you picked me up two years later.’
‘Your father had asked us to come. He’d told us that Laurel wasn’t coping well, that she was very unhappy and would we be able to come over to help make Christmas a happy time for you.’
‘Papa asked you?’
James nods. ‘Yes, he even paid for our flights.’
This is so unlike the father I know, I’m surprised.
‘I do remember it being a very happy Christmas,’ I say. ‘Even if there was never any hot water.’
Miranda smiles. ‘Yes, it was a very small apartment for all of us to squeeze into but you and your mum had a good time and that was all that mattered to us.’
‘But it didn’t help long term did it?’ I ask. ‘I’m guessing Mum was still depressed.’
‘She tried everything,’ my aunt says. ‘Not just to get pregnant but to try to feel better in general – medication, therapy, meditation; she even started praying again but nothing was working. And then just before you went to boarding school she found out she was pregnant.’
My breath catches in my throat because if my mother had found out she was pregnant when I was thirteen and I’d never had a brother or sister there was only one other answer to what had happened and suddenly everything falls into place.
‘She lost the baby,’ I say quietly and Miranda nods, tears in her eyes.
‘It happened in the November,’ James says. ‘Manda went to Paris to be with her. By then your parents’ marriage was beginning to show the strain of what they had both been going through. I think you were probably at least a little aware of that, of how hard things were for them.’
‘I don’t think I realised at the time but as I’ve gotten older I’ve always thought that there was something I was missing,’ I say. ‘I never wanted to ask because I was scared.’
‘Scared of what?’
‘Scared that they might tell me the truth,’ I admit. Because that had always been the reason. Even that last time in Marseilles airport when I accused my mother of not loving me, even then I knew I could just ask what was happening, push her to tell me the truth. But I didn’t want to hear it. I didn’t want to know about their problems. They were my parents and I wanted them to be there for me, not the other way around. ‘I was so selfish,’ I say.
‘No, love,’ Miranda says. ‘We were the selfish ones keeping this from you for all this time. James is right, we should have told you years ago.’
‘But none of this explains why she didn’t want to see me,’ I say. ‘Was it too upsetting for her?’
‘The first Christmas she was still healing from the miscarriage,’ Miranda says. ‘When I went to Paris to see her Laurel asked if we could look after you at Christmas, just while she recovered. She didn’t want you to know; she begged me not to tell you.’
‘I can understand that. I was only thirteen.’
‘We thought it would just be the one Christmas and then things would get back to normal,’ my aunt continues. ‘But unfortunately her depression got worse. Much worse.’ She pauses, takes a breath and James squeezes her shoulder again. ‘In the spring, a little while after she came to see you, she tried to take her own life.’
I gasp audibly. I hadn’t expected this to be where the story led. ‘My God,’ I whisper. ‘I had no idea, I…’ I trail off. What can you say to that? How can you react? I felt as though everything I had taken for granted was being ripped out from underneath me.
‘She took an overdose,’ my aunt goes on. ‘Mercifully your father found her in time, but it was the first of several attempts.’ She stops and makes a little choking sound as though she can’t go on.
‘The doctors said that they were cries for help,’ my uncle says. ‘She never quite took enough to kill herself but she couldn’t cope with her life as it was anymore and she was desperate I think. She had no idea what to do. Luckily, which I know is a strange word to use in this case, after one of her suicide attempts she found herself in a hospital that really seemed to help her.’
‘When was this?’ I ask.
‘About a year before she died,’ Miranda replies. ‘That’s the saddest part. She was really starting to make progress, really starting to seem like her old self.’
We are all quiet for a moment as I take in what I’ve heard. My mother was no dry, dusty academic. That was why her books were always so popular – she found a glamour in the feminist writers that she researched, a glamour that previous biographers had never found, and none of this makes sense to me. The story of depression and of suicide attempts doesn’t fit with my flighty, intelligent, popular mother who always loved to laugh and drink a martini or four.
Or perhaps it does make sense if you think about it.
‘I’m so sorry,’ Miranda says. ‘I know James is right, I know I should have told you this years ago. I…’ She stops as the phone starts ringing. ‘I’ll get it,’ she says hurriedly as though she wants to get away from this conversation, a conversation she’s been putting off for so long, I suspect, because it is hurting her even more than it is hurting me. I can see the lines of pain in her face as she pushes herself up to standing and I wonder if it is her arthritis or the memories making her feel like that.
‘Manda hates talking about this,’ James says as my aunt leaves the room. ‘It’s one of the reasons I could never convince her to tell you. Because I know we should have told you a long time ago.’
‘I’m not sure if you should though,’ I say. ‘I’m not sure if I could have handled this back when Maman died. It’s only very recently I’ve even thought about making my peace with her memory. Ben helped me with that and I think it was Ben lying to me that made me think about how she abandoned me again.’
‘She never abandoned you, Ellie,’ James says to me. ‘She loved you so much; she just wasn’t able to look after you properly.’
‘But she could in the summers?’ I ask. ‘When we went down to Provence?’
‘If you remember there were a lot of families there in the summers.’
I nod. That was what had been so fun about it, the other families and the other children to hang out with.