Page 36 of Little Wing
Her aunt nodded. ‘You look like Florence. You always have.’
There was only one word. ‘Why?’
Marjorie’s gaze tried to slice straight through Nell as a warning but Nell barricaded herself with all the imaginary Teflon she could envisage.
‘Florence – was your mother.’
Nell sat down heavily as if weighed down by all this nonsense.
‘Why? Why has no one – ever – told me this?’
Marjorie hugged her lecture notes against her. The question had finally come and it sounded undeniably reasonable. She knew that any answer she gave would sound flimsy. ‘We thought it was best,’ she said. ‘That was what was decided. That’s what we all agreed. We thought it best – for everyone.’
She watched Marjorie walk away, bone-brittle and stooped. Nell couldn’t move and, for another hour, she sat where she was. She sat through an hour of chemical engineering and was asked by the neighbouring students if she was going to the departmental social later.
And Nell thought to herself, I’m not who they think I am.
Somehow, she managed to find her way back to the park-and-ride and drive herself home from Cambridge. She kept the windows rolled right down, needing cold air to prevent her brain overheating, needing it to signal the here and now, needing the buffeting to help her concentrate on the road. She said names out loud. Florence. Wendy. Marjorie. Her mum was ten when her mother was born. What kind of a fucked-up sentence was that? Calculated her mother must have been sixteen or seventeen when she gave birth to her. Wendy would have been twenty-six. And Marjorie thirty-one. But who had called her Nell? Was that Florence or Wendy? And why had Florence given her up? And where was she now? Why – and when – had Wendy become her mother?
Her dad.
Jimmy.
Thoughts of her dad were rarely accompanied by emotion of any magnitude but, just then, Nell felt waves of confusion and dread. Did this mean that Jimmy had been Florence’s—? Florence’s what? Did Florence have an affair with her mum’s husband?
Why hadn’t she asked Marjorie about Jimmy?
Why hadn’t she asked where Florence was?
But most of all why – please – please – why had no one told her anything about any of this?
In the care home car park, Nell took her mobile phone and very nearly called Debbie and very nearly dialled America and was about to phone Marjorie at home. She flipped the phone’s lid back and forth, snapping it shut, pinging it open and then, crying out in despair, she threw it into the footwell and stamped on it.
Sylvie on the desk.
‘Oh, hello, Nell love!’
But Nell could offer only a fake smile as she climbed to the first floor, the threat of vomit in her throat.
‘Knock knock who’s there it’s Nell, Mum,’ she called out as she entered the room.
There she was, watching the telly gormlessly, trying to inhabit the world inside that bloody box.
Nell went to the cupboard and took out the Coronation crockery.
‘Hello, Wendy!’ she said, all light and jolly. ‘Tell me – whose is this, Wendy? Is it yours – or does this one belong to Florence?’
Her mother inspected it, glanced at Nell and rolled her eyes. ‘It’s yours, silly – I broke my plate the day we got them.’
‘Wendy!’ Nell said. ‘Wendy!’ She shouted. ‘Wendy! ’
Her mother frowned, stared hard at her, as if willing Nell to come more clearly into focus. She looked confused, perhaps frightened, and her vulnerability confronted Nell on a cellular level. She went and stood behind her mother’s chair, zapped the remote control to turn off the television. ‘Wendy,’ she said over her head, giving the chair a forceful nudge. She fought to control her voice, crushing the scream she wanted to emit, for a lightweight and conversational tone instead. ‘Wendy – what happened to Florence?’
The stillness, the weight of hidden words.
‘What happened? To Florence?’ Nell stayed where she was.
‘Well—’ And her mother sounded so fragile, so fearful. ‘Well—’
