Going to see Mother – A Short Story

Paris. The fashion capital of the world. The city of romance. A city so steeped in these two ideals that they become
twisted, joined together. Fashion becomes romantic, romance becomes fashionable. Artists go there for the architecture and the culture. Celebrities flock there like seagulls for the elitist shopping experience, the haute-couture, the feeling that they are something special, a cut above the rest. Common people honeymoon and propose there, atop the Eiffel Tower, kneeling on one knee, a cinematic moment in their short histories.

I went there to see my mother.

She disappeared when I was ten, just walked out of my life and never came back, leaving my distraught father to raise me as best he could. Three years later, I was effectively left an orphan when he went out to fetch some milk for breakfast one morning and was found two days later, face down in the bottom of a canal.

The police said he’d committed suicide, there was no doubt about it. I went to live with my grandmother, a formidable looking woman who always wore her steel-grey hair in a tight and severe looking bun. Despite initial appearances, my grandmother was wonderful. She swept me up into her lavender scented world and enveloped me in love.

I was fed to ‘fatten me up’, had new clothes and possessions on asking and, with my grandmother’s help with homework, I was ensured a spot at the best sixth form college in the area. I had everything I wanted – except my parents.

By the time I was twenty four, I’d done everything I wanted to do by that age. I’d received three A grade A-levels and gone on to university, graduating with a first class honours degree in Modern History. I’d had a long-term boyfriend and when he dumped me after two years, I had my fair share of one night stands as well. I had friends, I’d lived with
people other than my family. I’d owned a pet, admittedly only a goldfish I’d won at the fair, but it was something. I knew I could care for someone other than myself. I could drive, I drank and smoked and wore as fashionable clothing
as my salary allowed.

It was Alice, my closest friend and ally who brought about the trip to see my mother. I had told her about my earlier years soon after we’d met, and thus we had forged a deep bond. Now, we both worked at the same insurance company and we lived together in a tiny, two-bed flat in North London. Both of us were single and both of us hated our jobs. We were two people against a cruel world, partners in crime.

“It couldn’t possibly be that difficult to track her down,” Alice said, abruptly, one morning, while we sat eating breakfast.

The conversation started out of the blue. I looked up, confused.

“Your mother. You obviously want to see her.”

Alice’s bluntness was sometimes too brutal.

“Why are you even thinking about my mother?” I asked, stung.

“Let’s face it,” she said, sounding weary, “We’re both stuck in a rut. We’re both doing a job that we hate. We didn’t
qualify with a degree in Modern History for this. I thought that if you found your mother and laid your ghosts to rest, you could start your life properly. Do something you’ve always wanted to do.”

“What would you gain from me finding my mother?” I said curiously, “Finding my mother won’t help you get out of your so-called rut. And I don’t want to leave you behind.”

“You wouldn’t be leaving me behind. I have a confession to make.”

I was paying close attention to her now. Alice had never been that great at keeping secrets or at lying. She had a
very open face and an open personality. It was one of the reasons I was drawn to her in the first place. She was so honest she could be cruel, but it was always meant with the best intentions.

“Oh?”

“I applied for a new job.”

The bombshell made me gasp, but before I could speak she continued in a rush.

“It’s silly really, but a while ago I saw that MI6 were looking for new recruits. So I applied. It was a bit of a joke,
but then I got an interview and it inspired me to do a bit of sleuthing of my own…”

She got up from the table and brushed crumbs off her sweatshirt. It was a Saturday, no need for the polyester suit today. I waited patiently while she went into her bedroom. I heard her rummaging on her desk and then she reappeared, carrying a thin pink folder. She set it in front of me and sat down again.

“Open it,” she said.

“What is this?”

I took the folder and lifted the flap. It seemed empty at first, but when I tipped it upside down, three pieces of paper
slipped out onto the table. I recognised the first, biggest piece of paper. It was my birth certificate, on yellowing paper, with black typed lettering and two signatures at the bottom. I picked it up and unfolded it, taking in my parent’s signatures. Dad’s, curling and swooping, Mum’s, spiky and impatient.

“Look,” Alice said, pushing the other piece of paper towards me. The third I could now see was a photograph, face down.

“It’s an address. In Paris. I don’t know anyone in Paris,” I said, blankly, reading the words without any sense of
recognition.

“And now look at the photograph,” Alice urged.

I picked it up, knowing before I looked whose face would stare back at mine, a second in her life caught by the camera and locked down forever. I hesitated.

“Go on,” Alice encouraged gently.

Slowly, almost reluctantly, I turned the photograph over. The first surprise was that it seemed like a fairly recent
photograph, definitely taken by a digital camera with the date at the bottom of the photograph – 26/04/2006. The
second surprise was that she still looked exactly as I remembered her, although her face was slightly more lined and her hair had greyed a little.

She was still striking though. Long curling eyelashes lowered over indigo eyes, full lips with red lipstick painted on. Her cheeks were flushed slightly, as if she’d been running before the photograph was taken. Her hair was still long and slightly wavy, falling around one shoulder, brought there by an unseen hand. Her chin was tapered and she was
half-smiling, so that the dimple on her left cheek was faintly showing.

The smile mocked me, but I noticed it didn’t quite reach her eyes. I felt a coldness sweep over me.

“Where did you get this?” I asked.

My voice had changed and taken on an edge, the nervous energy inside me setting my entire body jangling.

“As I said, I did some detective work and now you have her address. Now you can go and see her. Get everything out into the open. Find out why she left.”

“Why do you have my birth certificate?”

“I had to get her maiden name from somewhere. Jaego… It’s an unusual name. It was quite easy to find her.”

“How did you guess she wouldn’t still be using my father’s name?”

“No offence, but why would you? Brown isn’t exactly an interesting surname. It only suits you because she gave you
such an atypical first name. It’s not every day you get a Sierra Brown, is it?”

I felt the chill seep to my bones as I gazed at the pictures, the ghosts swooping around me, old wounds reopening.
When Alice next spoke, her voice was soft.

“So, what do you think? Shall we go to Paris?”

“Why did you do this? Why do you want me to do this?”

“You need to do this,” Alice replied, “She’s holding you back, she always will unless you sort it out and clear
things up with her.”

Alice took my hands in hers and I nodded slowly.

“I suppose we’ll go,” I conceded, “I don’t seem to have much choice.”

“To be honest, I thought you’d be really mad at me,” Alice admitted, gathering up the photograph, birth
certificate and address and putting them back in the folder, “This is a relief.”

“I am mad at you,” I retorted.

“Good. Well, I’ll book tickets to Paris on the Eurostar. We can go tomorrow.”

“Have you gone completely crazy? What if I don’t want to go to see my mother tomorrow? And what about work?”

“I got us some annual leave. Got Gary to authorise it. Why not go tomorrow? There’s no point hanging around.”

I had to admit she was right. If we didn’t go tomorrow, I would find reasons to stall and we would never go. Alice knew me too well.

“Okay, let’s do it,” I agreed.

A thrill of fear and excitement coursed through me as Alice beamed triumphantly. We were going to Paris.

Paris was colder than London, with a leaden sky hanging low over the city and the threat of snow. On the Eurostar, Alice had read a book about the Louvre and I had gazed blankly out of the window, deep in thought. Now, I huddled deeply into my thick winter coat and pushed my face into my scarf, letting Alice locate our bags and bring them over. There were people everywhere.

“Here.”

She handed me my small overnight case and looked around.

I sagged under the unwelcome weight of my luggage. I felt tired and so nervous that my stomach was tied up in knots.

“We’ll get a taxi to the hotel,” Alice decided. She hailed one and conversed with the driver in broken French. During
the journey I rested my head against the cold window, feeling my brain rattle and jolt as the taxi moved slowly through the busy Parisian traffic. At the hotel, she paid the full fare.

We had booked a small, double room. We’d been friends long enough not to shrink away from the thought of sharing a bed, in fact, we welcomed the opportunity to curl up together and exchange gossip and secrets. Alice ordered French onion soup with warm crusty bread and molten cheese to be brought up to our room and we ate it by the window, looking out across the rooftops and barely talking.

“A real taste of France,” Alice sighed, finishing her bowl and pushing it away, “And tomorrow the Mona Lisa and the
Eiffel Tower. I know it’s cliché, but I can’t wait! Hey, are you going to eat that?”

As much as I was trying to enjoy my soup I couldn’t eat it. I toyed with my spoon and shook my head in answer to her question.

“Give it here,” she said, “You look all in. Why don’t you go to bed?”

“I think I will,” I agreed, gratefully, passing her the half-eaten bowl of soup.

“Try to sleep,” she said, looking anxiously at me, “Try not to think about tomorrow.”

“Easier said than done!”

“I know.”

She reached out and squeezed my hand briefly in an effort to reassure me.

After I had changed into my night clothes, I stood in front of the bathroom mirror and surveyed my features. I looked pale and drawn, nerves etched on my face. With a sigh, I went back into the bedroom. Despite myself, I slept quickly, tired from the journey.

Our breath billowed around our heads in clouds at the top of the Eiffel Tower, and our hands froze in seconds when we took off our gloves to take photographs. It was a bright, sunny day, and frighteningly cold. At the top of the most romantic landmark in Paris, I felt vulnerable. Defenceless against the icy air, the great height and against time,
which ticked ever closer to the afternoon, towards the moment when I would finally see my mother again, after all these years.

Alice didn’t seem to notice my silence. She was enthusiastically getting as close to the edge as possible, taking countless photos and exclaiming over everything, from the fact you could see the smog over the city to the extreme chill.

On the way back down our lift got stuck and we hung, suspended by two or three steel cables, halfway down the tower.

I thought about the fragility of our position. With the impending meeting ever approaching, everything about my life
as it was now, before meeting my mother, seemed precious and in need of savouring. Just being alive, always unconsciously drawing breath into my body, my constantly pounding heart, it was all so delicate. If one of the cables snapped, we would all hurtle to our deaths in seconds. Life was as brittle as bones.

We reached the ground eventually, safe. Alice bounced off the lift in high spirits.

“Let’s have lunch,” she suggested, as we walked across the Pont au Double, Notre Dame looming over us in an intimidating manner.

“Can’t we walk, just for a while?”

Back on the good, solid earth, it was about half a degree warmer than it had been at the top of the Eiffel Tower.

“I’m freezing!” she moaned, “I want a chocolat chaud and something warm to eat.”

“Oh, all right!”

I didn’t mean to snap. Alice pretended she hadn’t noticed. My fear surged inside me.

We stopped at a small café that had tables and chairs set somewhat optimistically outside on the pavement. Alice ordered a chocolat chaud and a croissant. I wasn’t hungry and ordered a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice.

“You’ve got to eat something,” Alice said, looking concerned, “You didn’t eat breakfast either.”

“I had a slice of toast,” I retorted.

“You nibbled the corner and then left it!”Alice corrected, “I don’t call that eating a slice of toast. You’ll starve! Go
on, have something to eat.”

“I’m just not hungry Alice!” I snapped a second time.

“Fine. Have it your way.”

We sat in a stuffy silence until her croissant arrived, which she devoured. I watched her, nerves clawing my insides, as if there was a monster inside me. I willed her to take ages over her croissant, but it was gone in minutes and before I knew it, we were back out on the street.

“Right,” Alice said, her tone brisk, “I think it’s time I went to the Louvre.”

It was the moment I’d been dreading.

“Or you could come with me,” I suggested, quickly, desperately.

“Do you really want me to?”

“At least come with me to find the right street,” I begged.

“You could just get a taxi.”

“I want you to come!”

“I’ll come in the taxi,” she relented, “But you should go to the door yourself.”

“Fine. I will. Just come.”

The taxi journey was short. All too soon we were pulling up against the curb. Alice handed the taxi driver a few Euros and asked him in her broken French to wait. He nodded, apparently understanding.

“Go on then!” Alice urged, opening the door for me and giving me a push.

Directly opposite me was the house. It was only small, with nothing grand about it at all, except the rather ornate
knocker on the black front door. The house number, 446, was set out in brass letters next to the door. The street was a quiet one, with trees lining it, and a few parked cars. All very nice. My mother lived in a nice area.

I took a deep, calming breath. The butterflies in my stomach subsided slightly. I’d come so far now. I was so near
to her I could almost smell the Chanel No.5 she always used to wear. Even now, the scent reminded me of my mother. I glanced briefly back at Alice, who nodded at me encouragingly.

I approached the door, lifted the knocker and held it there, for the merest second, before dropping it heavily against
the wood. My mother had touched that knocker… Her hand had been there before mine. I waited, heart in mouth. I was aware of a strange ringing in my ears, of the blood pounding through my body. Adrenaline was kicking in.

There were footsteps beyond the door. I almost turned and ran back to the taxi, back to Alice, back to the safety of my old life… But then the door opened.

Short, curly grey hair. Clear, sky-blue eyes. Paper-thin, wrinkled skin.

“Can I help you?” the woman who wasn’t my mother enquired.

“I’m sorry to intrude,” I said, and my voice was broken, dry and husky like an old ear of corn left on the dirt floor of a
barn, “Does Zena Jaego live here?”

“I’m sorry dear,” the old lady smiled sympathetically, her skin gathering in soft crinkles around her eyes, her voice
apologetic, “Zena’s not here anymore. She moved about two months ago. I’m the new tenant.”

She hadn’t left a forwarding address. It turned out Alice had had the address, photograph and birth certificate in the
folder for about three months before plucking up the courage to show me.

We left Paris that afternoon, and did not return. Alice didn’t get the job with MI6. Six months later, she moved home to look after her sick grandmother. I got a smaller flat by myself. I stayed at my old job and returned to my old, safe life.

We never talked of my mother again.