Lifesaving for Beginners

up, the three envelopes, and walk into the dining room.
    ‘Mum?’ She looks up from her notebook. Sees me. Sees the envelopes in my hand.
    ‘Oh, yes, I’m sorry, Katherine. I meant to forward them to you.’
    ‘When did these arrive?’
    Ed says, ‘Who are they from, Kat?’
    Mum says, ‘Oh, I’m not sure. Recently, I think. The last few weeks, definitely. I’ve been so busy with the book, you see. It’s been . . .’
    ‘Difficult. Yes. We know. You said.’
    Dad steps in. ‘Well, you have them now, Kat. No harm done, eh?’ This is the role he has always played. The middle-man. The referee. The facilitator. The one who rings the bell. The one who says, ‘Enough’.
    I’m at my chair now. The envelopes are in my hand.
    Ed says, ‘Who are they from, Kat?’
    I sit down. Pick up my glass. Drain it. Pour more wine.
    Mum says, ‘Aren’t you driving?’
    Dad says, ‘I’ll take her home.’
    Ed says, ‘That’s an English stamp, isn’t it, Kat? Look, it’s got the Queen on it.’
    I look at the envelopes. A cream queen on a pink background. The postmark is London. I don’t know anyone in London. Except Brona, of course, and she posts everything to the PO Box number I gave her.
    I open the first envelope. Take out the letter. One page. I turn it over. One side of one page. It is written the way I like things to be written. No fancy language. Precise. To the point.
    Ed says, ‘Who’s it from, Kat?’
    Mum says, ‘Edward, don’t put your elbows on the table. And please don’t speak with your mouth full. How many times have I told you that?’
    ‘Stop it.’
    Mum looks at me and says, ‘I beg your pardon?’
    ‘Leave him alone.’
    She picks up her fork. Puts it onto her plate. ‘I’m merely trying to instil some manners in the boy.’
    Dad says, ‘Janet!’ Which is the closest he’ll come to telling her off. He puts his hand on Ed’s shoulder and wanders out of the room, into the kitchen.
    I say, ‘He’s thirty-four years old. He’s not a boy.’ Anger is not something I feel all that often. I’m more inclined towards peevishness. That’s what Thomas used to say anyway. Anger has its two hands round my throat now. It’s strangling me. ‘And he’s not speaking with his mouth full,’ I say. ‘He’s finished.’
    Dad comes back into the room and says, ‘Here’s the coffee.’ He looks at us as if we are an audience and he a reluctant after-dinner speaker. Everything about my father is small. His voice, his size, the portions he eats, his expectations of other people.
    I say, ‘The first letter is dated nearly a month ago.’
    There’s one morsel of cake left on Mum’s plate. She spears it with her fork, dips it in a puddle of melted ice cream, lifts the fork to her mouth, opens, closes, chews her ten chews, swallows, drinks water followed by the merest sip of wine. Then she looks at me and shakes her head. ‘I forgot about them.’ And if this were a normal Sunday, one of the hundreds of Sundays I have sat round this table and watched my mother chewing and swallowing and forgetting about things, that would be that. I would shrug and remind her, or not remind her, depending.
    I don’t do either. I look right at her. ‘The letter is from an adoption agency.’
    ‘An adoption agency?’ She sets her fork down. I nod. My breathing is funny. Jerky. Mum looks at me and it’s like she’s just arrived. She is present. I have her attention.
    I say, ‘Did you know it was a girl?’
    Ed says, ‘Who was a girl?’
    Mum says nothing. Her lips have retreated into a single, thin line.
    I say it again. Louder this time. ‘Did you? Did you know it was a girl?’
    Dad says, ‘Katherine?’
    Ed says, ‘Who was a girl?’
    Mum looks at her plate. She nods.
    ‘Why did you never tell me?’
    ‘I assumed you knew.’ Her voice is low, almost a whisper.
    Ed says, ‘Who was a girl?’
    I look at Ed and shake my head. There are things I need to tell him but I don’t know where to start.
    The thing is, we never discussed it. Afterwards. Maybe it was the shock of the thing. She thought I was in Minnie’s house, revising for a history test on the Normans. I was her only daughter. A fifteen-year-old girl. I remember her arriving at Minnie’s house. Out of breath, like she’d been running, her hair escaping from the bun that she wore, even then. I remember how I felt when I saw her. Relief. That she would sort it out. Make sense of it.
    And she did, I suppose.
    ‘It’s for the best,