I set my cup down. My hands were now shaking uncontrollably.
“So you lied to your husband?”
“I prefer to call it strategic framing, Helen,” she said, pouting. “You know me – I always think outside the box.”
“And now you want to uproot two teenagers, lie to your husband and wipe out the only family they’ve ever known?” I asked, almost speechless.
“You lied to your husband?”
“Yes. That’s exactly what I want, Helen,” she said, without batting an eyelid.
“And you think they’ll just come off with you like that?”
“Of course! They’ll live with us. They’ll go to a private school and have access to the world. We’ll travel every summer. The twins will have unlimited resources.”
For a moment, I didn’t say a word. I could hardly breathe. I couldn’t believe that Maribelle had thought all this through, that she had a plan. A plan that involved taking my babies away from me.
“The twins will have unlimited resources.”
“They’re 16,” added Maribelle, casually flicking invisible lint from her sleeve. “They’ll want more than this shack, Helen. Believe me. They’ll be thrilled. And after all… I’m their mother.”
“And what about me?” I asked, without taking my eyes off her.
She waved a hand as if brushing away dust.
“Oh, you won’t have anything to do with it. My husband mustn’t know there’s a grandmother, let alone one with your… limitations.”
“After all… I am her mother.”
She looked me up and down slowly and deliberately.
“And let’s be honest,” she said, barely concealing the malice behind her smile. “How much longer do you actually plan to stay here?”
I didn’t get a chance to reply before she stood up abruptly and raised her voice towards the hallway.
“Jacob! Lily! Come here, please!”
… the malice behind her smile was barely concealed.
I froze. My chest tightened. For a moment, I’d forgotten that they were at home, in their bedrooms, lost in their own thoughts.
Footsteps creaked on the stairs and within moments Lily appeared first, closely followed by Jacob. Both paused in the doorway when they saw her.
“My darlings!” Maribelle opened her arms as if she were expecting a dramatic reunion. “My goodness, look at you.”
Neither of them moved. Lily’s expression stiffened and Jacob frowned.
My chest tightened.
“You do remember me, don’t you?” she asked, beaming. “I’m your mother.”
“What are you doing here?” His eyes looked at me and then back at her. “Why do you think we’d remember you? You left us when we were still babies.”
“I’ve come to take you home,” she said, ignoring Jacob’s questions. “My husband and I have decided to adopt. Naturally, I’ve chosen you both. You’ll live with us, my darlings. It’s a much better life, I promise you – private schools, new clothes and real opportunities in life.”
“You abandoned us when we were still babies.”
“Adopt?” Lily’s voice was sharp.
“Yes,” Maribelle nodded. “I allowed your grandmother to adopt you as your legal guardian back then. But my husband doesn’t know you’re my children. I told him you were orphans.”
“You lied to him?”
At that moment, I couldn’t have been prouder of the twins. They were standing up for themselves.
“I told him you were orphans.”
“Let’s not get bogged down in formalities,” she said. “The only thing that matters is that you’ll have something better than this. You can’t possibly want to stay here.”
“You mean with the woman who raised us?” asked Lily, stepping closer to me. “Our grandmother.”
Maribelle’s smile faded and, for the first time, her confidence wavered.
“You left,” said Lily. “You disappeared. But she stayed. And she loved us.”
“You mean the woman who raised us?”
“You don’t understand…”
“Oh, we understand perfectly well,” said Jacob. “You can’t just walk in here as if you hadn’t missed 15 years of our lives.”
“You’ll regret that when she’s gone and you’re stuck in this run-down hovel,” spat her mother.
“You can’t take us with you!” cried Jacob.
“You never could,” added Lily, clinging to my arm.
Maribelle grimaced, then turned and stormed out without another word.
“You can’t take us with you!”
A week later, it all caught up with her.
I went to my phone whilst stirring a green curry on the hob. The voice on the other end belonged to a man I’d never met.
“Helen,” he said quietly. “My name is Thomas and I’m Mr Dean’s legal representative. I think you’ll be interested in what I’ve found out.”
My heart stopped as I listened.
A week later, she caught up with everything.
Thomas told me that his team hadn’t found any adoption papers. There was no orphan register that matched Lily and Jacob. Instead, they discovered two birth certificates bearing Maribelle’s own name, which had been filed at the district court 15 years earlier.
I stopped stirring the curry.
“Mr Dean was shocked,” he continued. “He didn’t know that these children were his wife’s biological children. That she had… just abandoned them like that.”