Her Father's Daughter Read Free Page B

dining-room table and wonders about it.
    She was lied to once. There was something she’d seen with her own eyes, and was told she hadn’t seen. Told she’d dreamed it. That’s what her grandmother and her mother said. They lied. But it mustn’t be mentioned again. It’s completely forbidden. How angry they were, even her mother. They shouted. Forbidden ever to raise the subject again. The only thing forbidden to this child, who usually does as she pleases.
    So she thinks about it, all alone, from time to time. Such a strange, muddled memory, but so clear too. You were dreaming, her mother and grandmother said. No, she wasn’t dreaming. She knows it did exist. But it now feels so long ago. It’s true, it is a bit like a dream.

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    The thing happened during that glorious, unusual trip to Normandy with her mother and grandmother, an almost make-believe trip – When? How long ago? The child doesn’t know, doesn’t yet have a sense of duration, dates, calendars – a trip filled with indistinct images, all the more exquisite for their volatility, a garden in the rain, the red splash of tear-shaped flowers, smells of woodsmoke.
    It was right in the middle of this wonderful trip that the peculiar scene appeared, incomprehensible and yet infinitely pleasurable, like every other part of it, this would even be its crowning moment, if they hadn’t told her it never happened and that they didn’t want to hear it mentioned.
    It’s like a dream, but it isn’t a dream .
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    She goes with her grandmother to visit the mother, who, rather surprisingly, is in hospital, in a white room, in a white bed, but she isn’t ill, she’s smiling. They sit the child down next to the bed, on a chair, beside hergrandmother, who’s also on a chair. All at once the door opens: in comes a nurse, carrying a snugly swaddled baby, which she hands to the mother; then, noticing the child, the nurse smiles at her, lifts her nimbly over the bed so she has a better view, and tells her to look how pretty her little sister is. They’re going to have a lot of fun together, aren’t they .
    Those words. And then the nurse leaves.
    Just for a moment the child saw, wrapped in a blanket, the crumpled red face of a sleeping baby.
    Astonishment. Momentary rapturous delight.
    But after that, nothing. Afterwards, there’s nothing. The child remembers nothing. How her mother behaved, or her grandmother, what they did and said.
    Her memories pick up with the journey back to the house in Normandy, the child accompanied only by her grandmother. Her mother stayed in hospital.
    â€˜And the baby?’ the child asks. ‘When’s she coming? When?’
    Silence. The child continues obstinately.
    â€˜When’s my little sister coming back with Mummy?’ she keeps saying.
    And from the grandmother: ‘What are you talking about? You’ve got things wrong. You don’t have a little sister. The nurse made a mistake. But your mummy’s coming back, she’s coming back. Soon. She’s been a bit ill, that’s all.’
    Fury from the child, who ploughs on, incredulous. Protests. Persists. In vain.
    When, some time later, the mother returns, alone, without a baby, the child bombards them with questions again, obstinate, sure the grandmother misunderstood, didn’t know, was lying. But now her mother too is telling her she’s wrong, she dreamed it. The child works herself into a state, stamping her feet with rage and hurt, crying. She knows what she saw, doesn’t she?
    Loathing her grandmother, who’s shaking her head inanely.
    Towards her mother, the child feels no anger. Just tremendous surprise. The sadness of not being believed. The disappointment of not understanding.
    And eventually the child would calm down. Would forget a bit. Would stop asking questions. Besides, she’ll be forbidden to mention the whole episode again.
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