“Read it, baby, find out what’s going on here,” I murmured, sliding the sealed envelope across to her. Sherry tore her rapt gaze away from the photograph and reluctantly tore open the sealed envelope. Two pages of handwritten paper in a firm, masculine hand, were inside. Sherry picked up the letter and began to read.
“Cherie,
My name is James Blake Morrison, and first of all, let me apologise for contacting you this way; until we saw you on television we, your family, had no notion of where you were, or even what your name was now, nor did we even know how to begin tracking you down.
“Your mother, Rosalie, was my baby sister, our Rosa-girl. I was still a student when she married your father, Sidney Young. She was only 17 when she married Sidney, and not even 18 when you were born. After he absconded, you and your mother went to stay with your newlywed half-sister: Sidney’s daughter from his first marriage; I was still just a student when Rosa-girl passed away. My other younger sister was in no position to be able to look after you, neither were my parents, your grandparents, so my mother and your sister agreed that, because you were so young, only four months or thereabouts, the best and safest place for you was with her, as part of her family, and so that was what happened.
“I should tell you that it was your sister who first suggested this solution; she was in no doubt that she wanted you from the outset, my mother often commented on how much she loved you, like you were her own daughter from the very beginning, and looking after you, bringing you up as her own daughter was all she wanted.
“My mother kept in close contact with your sister, since she and my father didn’t want to lose track of their only granddaughter, but my mother passed away unexpectedly just a short while later, as did my father, and with their loss also came the loss of our only link and connection with you; I lost three of the closest, most important people in my life one after the other, and with their loss I lost my only link with you. I never knew your step-sister’s name, my mother never really had time to settle that part of our family before she passed away, and with Dad following her so soon after, just a matter of weeks, we lost all trace of you, and I didn’t know where to start looking for you.
“My father never got over the loss of your mother; Rosa was the apple of his eye, his baby girl and my perfect little sister, a fun, smart, mischievous, happy girl, and when we lost her, a bright light went out of our lives. I believed then, and I believe now that his loss of Rosa, followed so closely by the death of my mother, is what hastened my father’s own passing. I tried to find you, I searched, if I had found you, I would have tried to be the family you needed; you were my own family, my baby sister’s baby. But you were a minor child, and I was a single man, still only a student. The authorities never allowed me access to any information as to where you were or how you were. I didn’t even know if you were going by your sister’s name, nor did I know what her name was; Mum never shared it with me, she never had time to, and Social Services would never divulge that to me.
“The enclosed photographs are of Barbara, Rosa-Girl, and me with our parents, and your grandparents in our home in South London. Barbara was training to be a kindergarten teacher when she married and moved away, you would have been perhaps two at the time, and we’ve heard nothing of her since; as far as I know, apart from my children and now my grandchildren, you are the only family I have left, and all I have left of my dear, sweet, funny, cheeky baby sister.
“I have to say, when I saw you on the BBC News I was astonished at your resemblance to your mother, to how I remember your mother, how Rosa held her head, her voice, her smile; in a thousand ways you are your mother’s daughter, and I’m so glad there’s so much of her still here in you.
“My home telephone number is appended below. It would please my family and me greatly to at least speak with you and reassure myself that indeed my little sister’s daughter is well and happy, so, if or when you are ready, I would deeply appreciate you making that call and giving me a lasting reminder that something of my Rosa-girl is still here. I would treasure that moment, no matter how brief or fleeting, believe me.
With all my heartfelt best wishes,
James Morrison”
Sherry looked at me, her sooty lashes framing her big, beautiful eyes; normally they were so big and bright, now they were wells of sorrow, tears spilling unheeded down her cheeks as her lip trembled and a soft sob escaped her as she looked at the handful of photographs: three children posing together, a sandy-haired, blue-eyed little boy, a little blonde girl, and in the arms of her mother, a toddler with jet-black hair and a strong resemblance to her mother. There were more photos: the children growing older, the two girls now preteens, but still gazing adoringly at their older brother, and finally, the brother, now a handsome young man with arresting blue eyes, the blonde, grey-eyed girl with more than a hint of the teenage beauty she was going to be, and again the pretty black-haired girl with her devil-may-care dimpled grin just like how I remember Sherry, and her bright blue eyes, just like her brother.
Sherry stared fixedly at the photos, obviously comparing the children, seeing their likenesses and differences, but when I went to take them from her she tightened her grip on them.
“My family, Danny… look, it’s my family, there’s my mother, look… I mean look, I look just like her, Danny, look at this,” she murmured distractedly, scanning the photographs with laser-beam intensity. When she looked at me, her eyes were lambent, a more intense blue than I’d ever seen; she finally had all the pieces of her jigsaw puzzle, the other side of her family, but the need to know, to put them all together was burning there too. She didn’t need to say anything to me. I already knew where this was going; this was what my Sherry-Baby wanted, what she needed, I’ll be damned if I wasn’t going to help her get it.
“Give them a call, baby; let’s go check this out. This is something you need to do. You know I’m right.” I said, and her eyes crinkled in gratitude. “You need to know, and so do they.”
Sherry kissed me once, gratefully, and I gathered up the scattered papers and photographs and put them back in the folder, then slipped it back into the envelope.
“Let’s finish our dinner, then we’ll go home and talk some more, eh?”
Sherry nodded gratefully and we resumed our meal, this time in silence; we both had too much to think about, although I had less than her. However this turned out, she was still going to be my girl, we were still going to be together, and nothing was going to change between us.
*****
Morning found us exhausted from lack of sleep, but finally decided on what we were going to do. Sherry was calm now, but she’d been an emotional mess most of the night. She’d known since we were teenagers that she wasn’t really Mum’s daughter, that her birth-mother had been killed in an accident, but emotionally, that was another story altogether; my Mother was her half-sister, but really she was her mum, too: the only mother she’d ever known. That was how she knew and loved her. Rosa was a dim figure from a past they’d never shared, and now these people were coming into her life and telling her she was part of them too, because Rosa was part of them, was raking all that up and turning her life on its head.
Sherry had cried for Mum a large part of the night, and I’d held her while she shook and cried, fearful that her mum, my mother, was somehow going to be taken away from her, that she’d never really been hers at all. Irrational, I know, but that was what her heart was feeling, and I got that. Now the morning had come, and we knew what we had to do.
I handed her the phone.
“Call him, baby, you need to know,” I said. She took the phone from me like it was red-hot, and dialled the number. Tried to, I should say, she was so nervous she fumbled it several times, until I took it from her and dialled. The number rang several times, and a girl answered.
“Hello, Morrison residence, may I help you?”
I flicked the phone to ‘speaker’ and nodded at Cherie.
“H… Hello, may I please speak with Mister James Morrison?” stammered Cherie.
“He’s not here at the moment,” said the girl.” Who shall I say called?”
“Mm… my name is Cherie Young, Mister Morrison wrote to me, he sent me some photographs… ” stammered Shery, obviously still spooked and skittish.
There was a pause, and then the girl fairly erupted.
“OH MY GOD! You’re the girl on TV. Sherry, my dad saw you and nearly had a heart attack. You’re his sister’s daughter, oh my God! Daddy’s not here, he had to go into work for something, but my mum’s here, I think she’d like to speak to you, if you don’t mind? Please? Oh my God, he’ll be so happy you called, he was so hoping for this!”
Sherry froze, suddenly tangled-up in this girl’s enthusiasm, her Uncle James’ daughter, so I guess that made her and Sherry first-cousins, the first family she’d ever encountered apart from me. The phone went silent, or the girl put it down, and the vague sound of voices told me she was telling her mother that Sherry was on the phone. A new voice came on the line, older, softer and more measured.
“Hello? This James Morrison wife. You just speak to my daughter, Nia. My husband not here right now, I speak to you if you not mind? My husband have to go to work this morning. He be back soon. Can he call you when he come back? He be so pleased that you have called here, he been waiting for you for so long, his sisters so dear to him, he lose his baby sisters and it like a piece of him been taken away as well! You talk to him, please? It make him so happy, I promise you!”
There was something lulling, relaxing, almost hypnotic in the way this obviously foreign lady spoke. I had heard her soft accent and almost musical speech patterns before, in my dojo, in London. My Sabun, my sensei was from Laos, and she’d sounded just like this lady.
Sherry looked helplessly at me, so I shrugged and gestured to her to keep talking.