Twenty-seven years after she adopted her daughter - now an up-and-coming opera singer - Lena Molloy receives a call from the nun who set up the adoption in Ireland. Sister Monica claims that she wants merely to tie up loose ends in her old age, but Lena thinks something more mysterious lies behind the call, and she sets off on a journey to Ireland, with her best friend, to find her daughter’s birth parents – little knowing the extraordinary truths which she will uncover.
Mary, Eddy and Hugo tumbled through the door in a commotion of chat and suitcases. They were almost identically dressed in blue jeans, T-shirts and black leather jackets. Mary had bundled her blonde hair into a knot on top of her head. Her dark eyes took in the rolled up rugs, the paintings stacked against the wall, the bare windows.
‘I’m glad I’m here to say goodbye to the house,’ she said.
‘I love my little flat in Stuttgart. But I still think of this as home.’
‘Our new house will be home to you as well,’ I said.
‘I know, Mum. Home is where the heart is.’ She gave me a great big hug.
Jack emerged from the kitchen, filaments of creamy flowers trailing from his hands. The scent of honeysuckle tickled my nose, and filled my throat with sweetness. He tucked a curling tendril of green spears and yellow-tipped blossoms into Mary’s hair.
‘Flower power,’ he said. ‘For my golden girl.’
Mary laughed. Eddy and Hugo clapped. Jack pulled first Mary, then me, into his embrace before breaking free to shake hands with Eddy and Hugo.
Hugo was from San Sebastian. He had a big-boned face and crow-black hair that swept his collar. Over dinner, he regaled us with stories about temperamental conductors and drunken oboists. Eddy was his usual quiet self. He listened, occasionally brushing a brown wing of hair from his forehead, while Hugo flirted and flattered with compliments.
‘Maria, I move in with you if you cook like your mama.’ Mary gave Hugo a dimpled smile. That’s one question answered, I thought.
‘Mary has beauty from her father and brains from her mother,’ said Hugo. ‘Or maybe the other way. Yes. The other way. Beauty from her mother.’
I glanced at Mary. She hadn’t told him she was adopted.
‘Everybody says how alike we all are,’ she said.
After dinner we took our drinks into the drawing room. Eddy said, ‘Will you sing before I go, Mary? The Habanera from Carmen? Will you accompany her, Hugo?’
I retrieved candles from a box in the kitchen and put them in the candelabra on the mantelpiece. I dimmed the lights and lit the candles. Jack, Eddy and I took our places on the sofa, smiling in anticipation. Hugo sat down at the piano. Mary pulled the ribbon from her hair and shook it free. Honeysuckle flowers fluttered to the floor. She stood beside the piano and sang,
‘Love at best is a bird in flight
That cares not what you do or say.
Call it back, and it’s out of sight;
You point, it flies the other way.’
She was all fire and sparkle. She swayed to the tango rhythm of the Habanera as her voice rose with ease, and descended thrillingly to the dark, lower notes.
‘When it’s ready to leave the nest
Nor you nor I can make it stay.
That’s love! That’s love!’
Mary finished with a triumphant toss of her head. She looked magnificent. Jack and I applauded. Eddy jumped up and hugged her. ‘Knock ’em dead in San Francisco, Mary.’
As I saw him out, his broad face flushed and eager, he said, ‘I wanted you to hear how her voice is developing. I’m sorry I have to go. I could listen to Mary singing all night.’
‘Me too,’ I said.
Eddy’s departure broke up our little party.
‘Do you mind I go to bed now?’ Hugo said. ‘I like to phone my partner. He is singing at the Met. He will be on stage in thirty minutes.’
I hope I concealed my surprise and disappointment.
‘I told you he was just a friend,’ Mary said, when Hugo left the room. ‘Didn’t you guess, Mum?’
‘I had no idea,’ I said. ‘I thought maybe you and he . . . I couldn’t tell.’
Jack said, ‘Don’t look at me, Lena. I can’t tell, either.’ He sat down at the piano. ‘Will we have a swansong for the old house?’ He began to play and sing,
‘Bless this House O Lord we pray,
Make it safe by night and day.
Bless these walls so firm and stout,
Keeping want and trouble out.’
Mary and I joined in. I saw all three of us reflected in the wide bow window. The perfect picture of domestic harmony.
Roisin McAuley