Family Secrets
By Susan Skene April 2020
I ran into the bedroom, throwing myself onto the bed sobbing hysterically, unable to process the enormity of it all. I couldn’t put into words the all enveloping sense of fear, horror, rejection, aloneness I felt in that moment. It was too much, too overwhelming, suffocating and confusing to grasp. This wasn’t the future I had imagined for myself. This wasn’t any part of the plan.
I remember Mum, Dad and Jenny in the hallway waiting for me, but I I’d brushed straight past them crying uncontrollably. Unsure of what was happening or what they should do, they sat bewildered, waiting nervously in the lounge as Jenny ran into the bedroom after me. We were always the closest of sisters and she saved me. Between us, we devised the plan. It was her idea, the perfect solution. Only the three of us were to know and Bill, Jenny’s husband, of course. Eighteen years ago.
Life blossomed. It was the 70’s. I dreamt of new beginnings. I went on a cruise to Europe, fell in love with Mark the handsome pianist in the resident band and hooked up with my English relations before returning to Australia. Mark and I got married and between us we have two teenage children and live happily in the Sydney suburbs. Mark knew my backstory. It lurked like a danger in the shadows, biding it’s time, ready to ambush at any moment.
Visits to see mum and dad in Melbourne were difficult at times, but family gatherings lightened by eldest sister Alison’s frivolities and her brood of six children and husband number three!
We were busy getting on with our lives. It was easier that way. Jenny had two children and a husband to look after until one day she decided to divorce, leaving behind both children, Andrew and Susan. Bill was always a brilliant father.
Jenny was unpredictable then. Perhaps it was the chemotherapy for the cancer which had returned after twenty years, but that climatic moment I had been so afraid of was out in the open, blown sky high. In the middle of a blazing row, Andrew discovered his true identity. He wasn’t adopted after all, but was in his ‘real’ family, except his mother was living 500 miles away in Sydney. We were supposed to share that revelation together, the three of us.
The phone rang. Andrew wanted to visit. I was furious at Jenny’s betrayal, but grateful she had brought up Andrew as her own, a brother for Susan, at a time when she knew she couldn’t have further children after the cancer treatment. Andrew stayed four months in the caravan we bought and parked in the garden, in which those long and emotional conversations continued into the early hours between a mother and son who’d never shared motherhood or a childhood together. It is hard to describe the happiness I feel today. Love, understanding and ultimately forgiveness have reunited us. We are really family now the secret is out.
from Simon: I don’t know whether it is or not, but this reads like a real life story. It’s made more believable by the way the ups and downs of family life over a period of time are described. And the precise nature of the secret the narrator is suppressing is well hidden until we get the revelation at the end. And I liked the feeling of threat within the marriage, the backstory that ‘lurked like a danger in the shadows, biding its time, ready to ambush at any moment.’ It’s also good to read something which has a positive – even happy – outcome. Kept to the brief, too.