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

of my hand. “Sorry,” I said. “I’ve been searching for you for quite a while. It’s been quite a journey.”

He stared down at the table, uneasy at my show of emotion. Composing myself quickly, I asked him about his journey getting here.

“Tram from Altrincham into town then I walked.”

“Altrincham. I can’t believe we’ve been living six miles from each other all these years.”

He shook his head. “Me neither. Seems so cruel.”

He ordered an Americano from a passing waiter and I ordered another latte. We made strained small talk about the café and the gallery and the relative advantages of living in Chorlton and Altrincham.

When our coffees arrived, Dan leant forward and stirred his slowly. “I was devastated when Tim told me about Tess.” He stared down into his cup. “I’ve spent my whole life thinking about her.”

“Did Tim and your father ever mention her at all?”

“Not really. I started to ask about her when I was five or six when I saw all the other kids with their mothers at the school gates. Then one day when I was seven James sat me down and told me that he and my mother were in a relationship but they weren’t married. He said she’d died when I came out of her tummy. After that they never mentioned her again. I was very young and for a long time I thought it was my fault she’d died. To be honest, Carmel, finding out it was all a lie has floored me. I feel robbed, like someone stole my winning lottery ticket and claimed it as theirs.”

I cleared my throat. “How is Timothy now?”

Dan turned sideways in his chair to accommodate his long legs then he rested his hands in his lap. “Fine as far as I know. Ellie talks to him, but I haven’t spoken to him for a while.”

“That’s a shame. Despite everything I can’t help liking him.”

“It’s very complicated.”

His tone was sharp and it felt like a rebuke. I shrank back into my chair and in the brief silence that followed a plate smashed at the far end of the café. We both jumped.

Dan sighed. “Tim was a good father and a wonderful grandfather. But we’re not here to talk about him.” His face suddenly opened up like a flower. “Tell me about Tess. What was she like?”

“Beautiful. Funny. Child-like.”

“Favourite singer?”

“Big Tom. Jim Reeves.”

“Favourite Song?”

“‘I Love You Because’. Dad used to put it on the radiogram and they’d waltz around the living room after a few sherries.”

“Must have been hard for you all when your dad passed.”

“It was. He was from Mayo as well and he adored Tess. They were really happy together.”

“It makes me happy that she was loved. Did she go back to Mayo much?”

“Every year when Dad was alive.” I hesitated. I wasn’t sure I wanted to tell him about all the dark years when she rarely left the house. “She loved driving in Connemara and visiting Ashford Castle in Cong village.”

“Home of The Quiet Man.”

“Her favourite film.”

Dan shifted in his chair. “Tim mentioned she had some mental-health issues?”

I swallowed, choosing my words carefully, wanting to do her justice and not paint her in too many dark tones.

“She did but her problems didn’t define her. The times when she was well she sparkled.”

“Was it to do with what happened in the Mother and Baby Home? A PTSD type thing?”

“It’s hard to know. Timothy seems to think she had some issues when she was young. But then he did say he and Tess had quite a violent and uncaring childhood. Tess was never formally diagnosed but I think she was bipolar. She had highs and lows. Who knows if it was nature or nurture? It was probably a mixture. It so often is.”

He chewed on a thumbnail. “I went through a period of depression when I was a teenager. I took drugs to make it go away.”

I nodded slowly. “It’s a monster of a disease.”

He looked at me closely. “You too?”

“One episode. Very recently. I’ve never felt anything like it in my life. I’ve always been a bit anxious but I unravelled for a while. I had a lot going on. Tess and Mikey died, I was looking for you and then I discovered my husband had slept with my best friend.”

“Sorry to hear that.” He frowned. “Your friend. Was she …?”

“The woman with me at the fundraiser? Yes.”

He reddened and looked away.

I sipped my coffee. I’d hardly touched it. “Do you mind if I ask you something, Dan? Do you think what you went through as a teenager was anything to do with not having a mother? It can’t have been easy being brought up by same-sex parents back then. Did you ever feel different and singled out?”

He paused. “Of course. But I’d always known James and Tim were in a relationship and that Tim was my uncle. I’d grown up having two loving parents. I’d always felt loved and wanted and I was cool about it. I wasn’t depressed about not having a mother. The depression seemed to come out of nowhere. Maybe it was hormones. It’s never come back, touch wood. But what you’ve just told me about Tess and yourself makes sense. Maybe it’s genetic.”

He shook his hair back off his face and frowned. A thick silence settled over us like a fog and he stared out of the window. I knew that meeting him again was never going to be easy for either of us but I could see he was finding it much harder than me. Gone was the ease and banter of our first meeting. He was clenched shut like a clam, opening up only now and again. Or maybe he simply didn’t like me. I started to wonder if we were going to have any kind of relationship at all.

I tried to steer the conversation in a different direction.

“So have you done much research into the Mother and Baby homes?”

“Loads. I read everything about the mass grave I was supposed