Page 107 of Lessons in Life

‘Steady on,’ I murmured, half laughing. ‘I’ve only just wrestled him out of the clutches of Alexandra Brookfield.’

‘Do you fancy Fabian, Jess?’ Sorrel asked, laughing herself.

‘Oh, don’t be so effing stupid, Sorrel,’ Jess snapped crossly but, catching her eye in the rear-view mirror, I realised she was suffused with embarrassment. Well, this was interesting!

‘Excuse me, can we have less of the bad language?’ Mum said irritably. ‘Anyway,’ she went on, ‘Jess wouldn’t get a look-in, even if shewasprepared to work for the Sattars in their restaurant.’

‘Oh?’ We all leaned forwards once more.

‘His nephew, Zain, presently working in Paris, is champing at the bit to come over and work at what would be the first Pan Asian fusion restaurant in Beddingfield.’

‘What’s that?’ Sorrel asked.

‘Fusion cuisine,’ Mum replied knowledgably, obviously quoting Kamran, ‘is producing inventive and flavourful new fusions of what we tend to eat in the West by using traditional Asian-style ingredients, dishes and cooking methods.’

‘Great stuff,’ Jess growled.

‘Well, maybe you and Fabian could still do what you wanted to do, then?’ I said, knowing how disappointed Fabian was going to be when I told him the news. Hell, I hoped this wasn’t going to mean him heading back to London, his dreams in tatters. ‘You know, the pair of you take on the white house in the garden and?—’

‘Don’t be so bloody ridiculous,’ Jess snapped again. ‘The white house is part of the Hudson House estate. And you can’t open two restaurants within a few hundred yards of each other. Oh, I’m so fed up now!’

‘You’re speeding, Jess,’ Mum censured her. ‘I knew I shouldn’t have said anything about Kamran’s plans. Can you slow down? I feel really, really sick. I’m frightened,’ Mum went on. ‘Terrified of seeing them again after all these years.’

‘Shall we turn round, Mum?’ I soothed. ‘Go home for a nice cup of tea and one of Jess’s scones? Forget all this wondering who you are? We know who you are! You’re our lovely mum. And that’s all that matters.’

She turned to me in the back seat, her face pale. ‘No, it’s not, Robyn, it’s not all that matters. I need to know.’

* * *

‘Goodness me!’ The woman on the doorstep peered round the front door but said nothing more.

‘Is that her?’ Sorrel whispered as the pair of us stood behind Mum and Jess.

‘No!’ I mouthed back.

‘What do you want, Lisa?’ the woman asked.

‘I want to know,’ Mum said, staring in obvious confusion at the woman. ‘I want to know who I am. Who my birth mother is… Is it Wendy? Aunty Wendy?’

‘Aunty Wendy…?’ I whispered, nudging Sorrel, whose eyes were saucers.

‘Yes, well, we’d all like to know that, wouldn’t we?’ The woman opened the door to let us in. ‘I don’t know what you’re going to find out fromher, Lisa. Goodness,’ she said again, ‘I’d have known you anywhere, you’ve not changed a bit. Still as beautiful as when you were a little girl. As beautiful as the day you left… the day you ran away.’ Aunty Wendy led the way back down the same hallway Jess and I had been in only days earlier.

‘You’ve visitors, Karen,’ Wendy said.

Karen Foley turned from where she was huddled in a chair, a blanket wrapped round her bony shoulders. ‘You again?’ she snapped as Jess walked in, followed by Sorrel and me. Then, her face white and unmoving, she simply stared as Mum came into the room last, ushered in by Aunty Wendy. I actually thought Mum was going to keel over and, always mindful of the seizures she’d suffered in the past, I held onto her arm.

‘You all right, Mum?’ I asked gently.

‘I’m fine,’ she whispered in a strangled voice before walking over to Karen and standing in front of her. ‘Hello, Mother. How are you?’

‘Well, well, well, look what the cat’s dragged in. What areyoudoing here?’

‘I thought it was about time we put our differences behind us.’ Mum smiled, only the slight tremor in her voice and her pale face belying her obvious anguish at being there. ‘Time we were friends, don’t you think? I know you met Jess and Robyn the other day, but I’d like you to meet Sorrel as well.’ Mum stepped backwards, taking Sorrel’s hand before bringing her towards Karen.

‘Hmm, another one, no doubt, who thinks a pretty face will take her places. Looks like you, Lisa.’

‘Mother – Mum – I’ve come here today to ask you –to beg of you– to tell me who I am. You must know more about who my birth parents are? Please? Let’s… you know… let’s put the bad times behind us and just tell me. I’ll go away then and not bother you again. Was my birth mother English? Or Indian? You never would tell me the truth, always changing your mind from one to the other, and I don’t understand why.’

---