Chapter 10: Two Sisters
She answered on the third ring.
"Patricia Dowell?"
"Yes?" Cautious.
A teacher's voice — measured, accustomed to waiting for the full picture.
"My name is Emma Whitfield.
Dorothy Whitfield was my mother." I paused.
"I think she was your mother too."
A long silence.
"He told me you'd try to contact me," Patricia said.
"He said you'd try to turn me against the claim."
"Richard Calloway told you that."
"Yes."
"Patricia, I'm not calling about the claim.
I'm calling because you spent twenty-five years trying to find your mother, and you deserved to find her, and I'm sorry you didn't get to." I stopped.
Breathed.
"She didn't know you were looking.
I have to believe that.
Because she was a woman who would have gone to you.
She would have wanted to know you."
Silence.
"She kept a tin of biscuits," I said.
"Same brand, same shelf, for thirty years.
She painted her kitchen yellow because she said it made winter mornings bearable.
She grew roses along the south wall of her garden.
She called me every Sunday at half past ten, and she always asked about my daughter first, before she asked about anything else."
Patricia said nothing.
But she hadn't hung up.
"I only found out about you four days ago," I said.
"Richard told me during a phone call — as a threat.
He thought it would destabilize me.
Instead I had a researcher find you, because I thought you deserved to know that she was real and she was good and she wasn't the woman he's been describing to you."
"He said—" Patricia stopped.
Started again.
"He said she left a letter for me.
That it was being held with the property.
That if you got the house, I'd never see it."
Something cold moved through me.
"There's no letter," I said.
"I've been through everything.
There's no letter for you among her things.
I would have found it." A pause.
"But Patricia — if there had been one, I would have given it to you.
Without question.
Whatever she wanted to say to you was yours."
Another long silence.
"He came to my house," Patricia said slowly.
"Eighteen months ago.
He was very kind.
Very sympathetic.
He said my mother had always regretted giving me up, that she'd thought about me every year on my birthday, that she'd wanted to leave me something but your brother had talked her out of it." Her voice had changed.
Something in it was loosening.
"He said you were the one fighting against it."
"I didn't know you existed until four days ago," I said.
Quiet.
"He brought photographs," Patricia said.
"Of the house.
He said it was where she'd always imagined bringing me home to."
"It was her home," I said.
"She lived there for thirty-five years.
He wants to demolish it and build four flats."
The silence that followed was different from the ones before.
"He wants to—" Patricia stopped.
"There's a planning application.
Filed eight months ago.
Demolition of existing structure." I kept my voice steady.
"That's what this is about.
Not you.
Not me.
Not our mother.
The land is worth four times the house."
I heard Patricia exhale.
A long, slow sound.
"I'd like to see her house," she said.
"Before anything happens to it."
"Then come," I said.
"Come and see it.
Whatever the court decides — come and see where she lived.
See the roses.
See the kitchen." My voice was quieter now.
"She should have been the one to show you.
I'm sorry she can't.
But I can."
Patricia was quiet for a moment.
"I'll call Richard's solicitor," she said.
"And tell them I'm withdrawing my statement."
I closed my eyes.
"Thank you," I said.
"Don't thank me." Her voice was dry, and under the dryness there was something that might, in time, become warmth.
"She was my mother too.
I'm not going to let someone use that."
After I hung up, I sat in my car in the car park outside Margaret's office for a long time.
I had gone into this alone.
May you like
A deed, a solicitor, a Christmas dinner in ruins.
Now there were two of us.
