Read Online Are You My Mother? by Louise Voss - Free Book Online Page A

trails criss-crossed the wide pale sky like scars, and I wished that I could fly away somewhere too. I turned back into my bedroom and gazed miserably at myself in the full length mirror. Even without my glasses on, the blurry reflection showed me what a state I looked. Stella was right – I did currently resemble Neil from The Young Ones ; lank, Nana Mouskouri hair, droopy lips and shoulders, pasty complexion.
    It was funny to think that Stella was a baby when The Young Ones was first shown on TV. She seemed to like it even then, undulating gently in her bouncy chair as she stared with startled blue eyes at the television screen. Years later, she and her friends almost wore out the video of it, laughing hysterically, but with a certain cultivated post-modern irony to their amusement.
    The hardest thing about searching for my birthmother would be telling Stella. I had never even admitted to her that I knew my birthmother’s name; had found it in a letter, shortly after Mum and Dad were killed.
     
    I was nineteen - Stella’s current age, although she was nine at the time – when they died. With a single knock on the bathroom door, everything changed.
    I was in the bath, getting ready for a night out, and it was Annette, a friend of my mother’s, who had knocked tremulously on the door. She’d been babysitting Stella that night, because Mum and Dad had gone to a wedding in Wiltshire. I was surprised and a little irritated to see her face wavering psychotically at me through the swirly frosted glass – babysitter turf was strictly downstairs on the sofa, in front of the television. She sounded odd, too, almost as if she was crying, but since I’d just lathered my hair into a wig of suds and couldn’t hear her all that clearly, I decided that she probably just had a bad cold.
    ‘ Emma, there’s – someone here to see you.’
    ‘ I’m in the bath. Tell him I’m not ready yet.’ I’d told Simon, my newish boyfriend, to come round for me at eight, and it was only twenty-five to.
    There was a pause. ‘It’s not your boyfriend. You’d better get out. Please.’
    Irritated, I dunked my head under the water, rubbed off the shampoo, then sat up, causing a small soapy tidal wave to whoosh up to the end of the bath.
    I was running late, but I’d wanted to wash my hair anyway. Simon was taking me to a disco, his best friend’s eighteenth birthday party, at the function room of an Ealing hotel. We’d only been going out for a month, but I’d already brought him home to meet Mum and Dad, so I knew I was keen. I had endured that ordeal the previous week, and Dad had been his usual embarrassing self; the conversation going something along the following lines:
    Dad (in mock-pompous voice): ‘Now tell me, young man, are your intentions towards my daughter entirely honourable?’
    Simon (blushing to the roots of his hair and studying his Doc Martens with great interest): ‘Um….’
    Mum (slapping Dad on the arm): Oh, for heaven’s sake, Ted, leave the poor man alone. Take no notice of him, Simon, he’s pulling your leg.’
    Simon had been mortified, but touchingly awestruck that Mum had called him a man. He went on and on about what a cool mother I had, until I wanted to suggest he took her out for a date instead.
    Grinning at the memory of Simon’s discomfort, I’d wrapped a towel around my slick wet body, and opened the bathroom door. Annette stood there, with an expression on her face unlike anything I’d ever seen before, and the smirk dropped away from my lips. She appeared waxy, greenish, terrified. I thought for a fleeting second that she’d looked more normal when viewed through the frosted glass.
    ‘ Are you all right?’
    ‘ Oh Emma. I just got here and then…please come downstairs, straight away.’ She grasped my bath-warm arm with her fingers, cold and red from the walk from her house to ours. She was still wearing her overcoat. It was March, but cold, cold weather.
    Alarmed gooseflesh broke out all