The Happy Family by Jackie Kabler (electric book reader txt) 📕

to come back as a homeless dropout, well, that made the shame even worse, because what was it all for? I thought about trying to track you down so many times, but I always talked myself out of it because I didn’t think you’d want to know me. I didn’t think you’d ever forgive me, and who would blame you?’

She’d found herself back in Bristol eventually, and that was when she’d bumped into Alan, an old friend of Dad’s – one of the few he’d had kept a little contact with over the years. Somehow he’d recognised my mother when he’d passed her on the street.

‘I don’t know how,’ she grimaced. ‘He used to fancy me, you know? And look at me now. But he did; he stopped and we talked, and I begged him, begged him, not to tell anyone he’d seen me. He obviously felt sorry for me because he agreed. And so I plucked up the courage to ask him if he knew where you were these days, and he told me your dad had told him you were working at a surgery in St James Road in Cheltenham and, well, the rest was easy.’

She looked so much older than her sixty years, so wrinkled and so haggard, sitting there in her shabby, musty, oversized clothes. And yet, that day, she looked like the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. My love for her was already brimming over.

‘The first time I saw you, coming out of the surgery, my heart almost stopped,’ she said. I thought about the day I’d first walked across the road to speak to her, and the way she’d stared at me.

‘I could still see the little girl I left behind, and for a while I was content just to see you, to talk to you, to see how happy you were. And then you told me your mother had turned up, and I was stunned. I couldn’t understand it. I knew someone was trying to con you – they had to be – but I just didn’t know who or why …’

I remembered then the day I’d told her about Alison and her bewildered expression.

If only she’d told me who she was then, I thought. All the trouble it would have saved …

I had, it seemed, inadvertently left an old envelope inside one of the books I lent her, an envelope I’d been using as bookmark, and on it was my home address.

‘Fate, maybe?’ she said, and I had to agree.

And so it had been her, that face appearing outside my living room window, peering in, trying to get a glimpse of my ‘mother’, wondering if she was somebody she knew and trying to see if I was OK. She’d grown increasingly worried about me, she said, and when she saw the newspaper article about me which mentioned my link to a school suicide, she began to wonder. But when she saw me crying that day outside the surgery, the day I was suspended from work, she said she finally knew she needed to confront Alison.

‘Ruth mentioned your party when she came over to see me the day before,’ she said. ‘She said your ‘mother’ was going to make some kind of announcement and I just got a bad feeling. I hid behind a bush across the road and when I saw you go off in your car I knocked on the door. She recognised me; she’d seen me by the surgery, of course. She was pretty surprised but she let me in, and then, well …’

Alison had been in a state of high excitement, apparently, and had suddenly started talking, telling my mother that her friend Beth was not what she seemed, that I was a nasty, evil person. She told her what I’d done as a child, and what she had come to Cheltenham to do to me.

‘I told her then that I was your mother,’ she said. ‘She was shocked, but only for a minute. She was sneering at me, laughing. She said it didn’t matter anymore. She told me it didn’t matter who knew she’d been faking it because it would all be over in a few hours, that she was planning to tell everyone the truth. And that was it, I’m afraid. I’m not a violent woman, Beth, but I saw red. I’m sorry. I’m not proud of attacking her like that.’

I was proud though, and I told her so. Proud too, and so, so grateful, that she confessed what she’d done to the police without telling them about my past, trying to ensure it wouldn’t get into the newspapers. Trying to protect me, again.

‘I just said I was angry at her for impersonating me,’ she said.

It means I haven’t had to tell Eloise and Finley about Lucy – not right now. I’ll tell them one day, when I’m ready. When I think they’ll understand. They’re happy now; we all are, weirdly. All of my little group, my family and friends. Our lives are back on track.

Ruth, Deborah, and I see more of each other than ever these days. Our Cleeve Hill walks are now a Saturday morning must and our cocktail evenings are a regular fixture – often with Brenda and Barbara too. Deborah’s stopped gambling, although she’s still going to her GA meetings, and she and Gavin are back together. Robin’s back in the fold too, of course, and we’re closer these days – more friends than employer-employee, although I still secretly think she’s a bit bonkers, with all her running. And as for Jacob and Crystal, we’re getting on so well we’ve even talked about taking a joint trip with the kids somewhere at Easter, which would be a first.

And – and this is one of the smallest things, really, but it’s given me such peace of mind – the porn website has taken down the footage of me. I’m still not quite sure whether it was my heartfelt email or Anna Reid’s gentle