Chapter 14
>Yvonne<
I didn't know about Terry, but I was feeling pretty nervous! I've waited... well, over ten years I guess, for this day. We were on our way to St Mary's church in Andover. The vicar there had spoken with Daisy... no, I need to call her Elaine, don't I? And Elaine had agreed to meet with us, to explain our past, and answer our questions. So, we would be using the vicar's office, so that we were alone and undisturbed, although the vicar would be nearby, in case any of us needed her.
Terry parked the car in the church car park, and we went into the church, and to the back, where the office was.
"Good afternoon, err.. Jan. Nice to see you again. This is my sister, Yvonne"
"Terry, nice to see you again, and Yvonne, nice to meet you, I'm Jan." We shook hands. "Elaine is already here, she's waiting in my office, but let's get you both a coffee first, it might help relax you a bit...". Yes, that sounded like a good idea.
"How you feeling, Terry?" I asked him.
"Nervous. A little scared..."
"Me too!" I replied
"Don't be... Elaine is feeling very positive about meeting you: we had a lovely chat last week, and she told me the whole story. So don't worry..." said Jan. She put our two coffees onto a tray, and added a small plate with a few biscuits. "I'll bring this, let got through to my office..."
I opened the door to the office, and Jan went in first, putting the tray onto the desk. "Elaine, this is Terry and Yvonne. Yvonne, Terry, this is Elaine, who I understand is your birth-mother!
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>Terry<
Jan, the vicar, led is both into her office, put the tray with our coffees on, onto the table, then introduced us. "I'll leave you all alone to talk, but if you need me, I won't be far away. Take as much time as you need, there's no rush!"
I looked at the lady in front of us: like Yvonne and myself, she had lovely red hair! Yes, in her late 30s, not that bad looking, but I got a feeling that, probably earlier in her life, life had not been so good for her... something I would soon discover to be very true. We politely hugged her.
"It is SO nice to see you both again after all this time... and I can see from the smiles on your faces that life has been good to you!". Elaine stood there, with a huge smile on her face... and yes, I'm sure you'll be amazingly happy to hear that she had braces on her teeth! I quickly guessed that she must be near the end of her treatment, because her teeth were amazingly straight, with ceramic brackets on her top 6 teeth, amd metal ones elsewhere.
"Hello... mum..." I said, hugging her: I had tears streaming down my face. The person that I was hugging was my birth-mother. The woman who had created me. The woman I had only ever dreamed about actually meeting, but here I was, hugging her. I broke off the hug, to let Yvonne also meet her birth-mum: she was crying too.... and so was Elaine. Jan had thoughtfully left a box of tissues on the desk.
Hugging over, we stood back from each other a little, looking at each other.
"My goodness, what amazing adults you have both become! I'm now very happy that my decision just over 17 years ago was absolutely the right one!" She stopped a moment, wiping her tears away with a tissue, and took a big breath. "Come on, sit down, and I'll try and explain everything, that's the least that you guys deserve.... Then you can tell me about yourselves....".
We sat down, and sipped our coffee as Elaine explained her history:
"I never knew either of my parents, apparently I was abandoned as a new-born baby: I don't even know the actual date I was born, but it was in the middle of October. Sadly, I was never adopted. I was fostered as a young child by several families, but by the time I was 12, I lived in a children's home with loads of other kids. I guess back then I had a lot of anger in me, because I was always in trouble, both at the home and at school... stealing, smoking, drinking and yeah, I did drugs too: I've done it all, and I'm not proud of it. I lost my virginity when I was only 14, and got myself pregnant when I was 17: I was having twins... you two. At least, when I was pregnant, and immediately after, I wasn't doing any drugs, although there was a bit of booze, and I kept smoking." Elaine was clearly feeling very emotional telling her story, so paused for a moment, and took a sip of her tea. Yvonne and I were listening silently to Elaine's terrible story.
"I gave birth to you in hospital, and returned back to the children's home, where luckily a couple of the other girls helped me look after you both. Oh, and if you're wondering why you don't have a father listed on your birth certificate, that's because it could have been any one of three boys... yeah, that's how bad I was back then!" She paused again.
"I wasn't able to stay in the home for long: when you're 18 you have to leave. At least, being a single mum with two new born kids put me top of the housing list, and I was given a place to live: it was a pretty disgusting small bed-sit. A tiny and disgusting kitchen, an equally tiny and disgusting bathroom, and a small room which I had to live and sleep in. I was all alone, with no one to help me, and bugger all money, and I really struggled to look after you. Yeah, I was visited by the social services, not that they were able to give me any real practical help. Look, Yvonne, Terry, don't get me wrong, I loved you both dearly, you were the centre of my life..." She took another pause: I could tell it was hard for her to tell this story.
"And that's when I started doing drugs again, to try and dull the pain of living in such a horrible place, all alone with you two. And that meant I wasn't really looking after you two properly... and that of course led to my care worker taking more of an interest. Maybe if there had only been one of you, I might have coped..." Another pause. "There were a lot of discussions, some of which I was 'sober' for, and I came to the same conclusion that they had already reached: this was not the place for two babies to be brought up. The decision I had to take was NOT easy, but looking at you both now, I now know it was absolutely the right one. I was absolutely distraught the day they took you both away. After that, I was kicked out of where I lived, and lived on the streets for a while, and yeah, the drugs helped to dull the pain...."
All three of us where in tears by this point: Elaine's life had not been a good one.
"Finally, I ended up at one of those half-way houses... I guess I would have been 20 by then.. then moved into a small, and quite nice, shared house: having people around me helped a lot. One of the other girls was a Christian, and she talked to me, and brought me along to church. My life was finally looking up. I even got a job. Then... it must have been 14 years ago, so I would have been 22 or 23 I met a guy at church, who I married a year later."
"Do you have any children?" asked Yvonne.
"Yes, a pair of twins, a boy and a girl, 12 years old... Seems that my body has a thing for producing non-identical twins!". As she mentioned her children, her face brightened up, and she smiled. "Now you understand why you were both adopted..." she continued. "So, tell me a bit about YOUR lives...."
The End
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