My Mother's Children: An Irish family secret and the scars it left behind. Annette Sills (free e books to read online txt) 📖

wanted fame and a glamorous life more than he ever wanted a family.” He turned to me. “I never once resented your brother. I loved the bones of him. As far as I was concerned, we were father and son.”

“And Tess?” I tugged at my jacket collar, my face and neck hot. “In all that time, you never thought of looking for her?”

“I did everything in the boy’s best interest, Carmel. I really did. First he’d lost Dorothy, then James. I was all he had left. He was in his teenage years which were proving difficult for him. He needed stability and Tess wasn’t the most stable of characters. The last thing he needed was his mother to turn up out of the blue.” He lowered his voice. “And if I’m honest I couldn’t bear the thought of losing him.”

“So what did you tell him? About Tess?”

Dempsey sighed. “That she died having him.”

I got up and paced across the room.

“His name was on the list of children who died in the Tuam home,” I said.

Dempsey lifted his head, startled.

“What?”

“When the scandal broke, a list of all the children who died in the home was published. Donal Dempsey was one of the names on it. Age of death two months. Cause of death heart failure.”

Dempsey went pale. “The nuns.” he said.

I nodded and rubbed at my neck. “Yes. The nuns. They created a fake death certificate to cover the fact they’d sold him on.” I sat back down. “Tess knew all of it. Not long before she died she read about the mass grave then she got hold of the list of the children who’d died. I don’t suppose for one minute she was expecting her baby to be on that list.” I glared at him. “I mean, why would she? Her brother and her family and the local priest had all assured her he would be adopted into a good family, hadn’t they?”

Dempsey flinched then frowned. “But surely to procure a death certificate, they’d need a body?”

I nodded. “That’s something I can’t bring myself to think about. Anyway, the cause of Donal Dempsey’s death on the list was heart failure. It was something the nuns just made up. Like I told you earlier my younger brother Mikey actually did die of heart failure. After his death we discovered he had a hereditary heart condition. Familial Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy.”

Dempsey nodded.

“You’ve heard of it?” I asked.

“Unfortunately I have.”

“Tess was a carrier. She blamed herself for passing the gene on to Mikey and she never got over his death. Imagine how she felt when she found her baby’s name on that list and learning he too had died of heart failure. She put two and two together as I did when I read it.”

He sat forward with his hands over his face.

“She thought she’d killed both her sons,” I said.

He stood up, tears running down his cheeks.

“Sorry, you’ll have to excuse me for a moment.”

“I don’t have time. I have to get to Euston to get my train. Please. Just tell me where he is.”

Walking over to a drawer by the Aga, he took out a large white envelope.

“Ellie, my daughter-in-law, always sends me photos,” he said, sitting back down “She knows I prefer prints to digital. This is the most recent.” He pulled a large photo out of the envelope, placed it in front of me then wiped his eyes with the back of his hand.

“This is Daniel with his son Tim and the latest addition to the family. They don’t have a name for her yet.”

I picked the photo up, my hand shaking. I blinked. My brother was smiling back at me. His long sandy-coloured hair fell loosely onto his shoulders and he was cradling a new-born in his arms. I looked closer and did a double take, every muscle in my body slackening. It was him without a shadow of a doubt. It was Dan, the bloke from the fundraiser in the Irish Club. Sitting next to him was the same tousled-haired boy I’d seen him with that day in Achill.

“Daniel?” I said, still staring down at the photo. “You said his name was Daniel not Donal?”

“Yes. When we got here I changed both our names to the English versions. It made life easier. Tadhg was always impossible to say or spell so I became Timothy. Donal became Daniel. He has his father’s surname, Sheridan. Most people call him –”

“Dan,” I said as the photo slipped from my hands.

Chapter 38

The café in the Whitworth Art Gallery was an elegant oblong of glass and steel overlooking Whitworth Park in town. It had recently been added to the old red-brick gallery and sitting in it gave the sensation of being suspended, a bit like being in a tree house. I’d been there many times and was delighted when Dan asked to meet there. I chose a table with a view of the giant metallic tree sculpture in the grounds. The artwork had been created on the spot of an old tree that had died. It was meant to represent loss and renewal and the ghost of what had gone before.

Plates clattered, a coffee machine whirred and Richard Hawley sang “Open Up Your Door” in the background. I concentrated on the words to stop my rising panic. I’d stopped taking the antidepressants but I’d popped a couple of beta-blockers earlier to calm my nerves. Outside the grass shimmered with a late January frost. It had been two torturous months since I made my discovery in Timothy’s kitchen in Battersea but now the waiting was over. I was finally going to meet my brother.

When I saw Dan Sheridan staring back at me from the photo, I was left speechless and in a state of shock. Almost a year had passed since the fundraiser and my memory of that night was hazy because I was drunk. I remembered not being able to pin down his accent, him saying he had Mayo