Waiting for sunshine, p.1
Waiting for Sunshine, page 1
Jane Sanderson
* * *
WAITING FOR SUNSHINE
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Acknowledgements
About the Author
JANE SANDERSON is a writer and journalist. She worked as a producer for BBC Radio 4 on The World at One and Woman’s Hour before becoming a novelist. She lives with her husband in Herefordshire, and they also have a houseboat in London. They have three grown children.
Also by Jane Sanderson
Mix Tape
This Much Is True
HISTORICAL FICTION
Netherwood
Ravenscliffe
Eden Falls
Praise for Waiting for Sunshine
‘Superbly written, emotionally satisfying and compellingly original’ Wendy Holden, Daily Mail
‘The story, and especially Sunshine herself, crept into my mind and heart and took up residence there. A lovely novel, deftly plotted and emotionally involving’ Laura Barnett, author of The Versions of Us
‘An unputdownable novel’ My Weekly
‘A profoundly moving, brave and beautifully written story … Sunshine completely stole my heart’ Hazel Prior, author of Away with the Penguins
‘Secrets simmer beneath the surface of this beautifully crafted novel about love, identity and the meaning of family … An absorbing and captivating read, and without doubt a book you’ll want to talk about to all your friends’ Holly Miller, author of The Sight of You
‘A lovely and very moving book indeed’ Quick Book Reviews
www.penguin.co.uk
For Pip Rau
1
March 1997
When the call came, they were at the cinema, watching a Weekend Classics screening of Rear Window, which they’d both seen before, but so had everyone else, that was the whole point. Not that Chrissie and Stuart were Hitchcock scholars; they were only there because it was something to do while they waited for the call, but everyone else in the audience looked studiously reverential, as if there’d be a test afterwards, or a Q&A with Hitch himself. Then Stuart’s phone began to buzz and bounce in his jacket pocket, and the silent, unanimous censure spread like a cloud of dry ice through the auditorium, especially when not only did he fail to switch it off, but also took it from his pocket and lifted it higher so that Chrissie could see too. Angela Holt. They looked at each other across the phantom glow, and the name on the screen seemed to pulse like an artery. Their immediate neighbours tutted now, and darted pointed looks, but Stuart answered the call, right there in the middle of row G; he answered the call, stood up, and started making a path none too gently down through the legs to the central aisle, saying, ‘Angela, hi, hang on, I’m just … sorry? No, it’s fine, one moment, just bear with me …’ while Chrissie followed, apologising in frantic whispers to their fellow cinemagoers, who stared at her, and refused to forgive. It was, after all, unforgivable.
Out in the foyer, Chrissie hung back while Stuart did that thing he always did on the phone, stalking about like a caged tiger, the handset pressed hard to his right ear. He always looked cross when he took a call; he always looked as though he was locked in verbal combat. She leaned against a wall and stared at the film posters without seeing them, hugging herself, wondering what news Angela had, bracing herself against over-optimism, and then he was in front of her, his face bright and alive with news.
‘A girl,’ he said. ‘She’s three. A very good match, Angela says.’
‘A girl,’ Chrissie said, on an outward breath. A girl, aged three. Older than they’d originally wanted, but they’d let go of all their own criteria months ago. So, a girl of three. A very good match. Such a strange term. Like an arranged marriage. She felt light-headed and let herself slide down the wall and sit cross-legged on the floor.
‘She’s in foster care, been there best part of a year,’ Stuart said.
‘A year? Wow.’
‘Yeah.’ He paused, considered the twelve months they hadn’t known about her, then carried on. He was aware of an usher and a girl at the pick ’n’ mix staring at them, doubtful looks on their faces.
‘Angela says she could be ideal, although it’ll have to go to panel obviously, but she says we could meet her soon, just a brief visit. She’s in Whitstable of all places.’
‘Nancy hasn’t mentioned her. Does she know her?’
‘I expect so. We didn’t talk about that.’
‘What’s her name?’
Stuart halted. ‘Ah, I didn’t ask.’
Chrissie laughed. ‘Stu! Here, let me call her back,’ she said, and reached up for his phone. ‘Remember what Nancy said?’
‘I know!’
‘If you can’t live with the name …’
‘You can’t live with the kid, I know.’
She looked up at him while the phone rang out, said, ‘God, what if she’s called Angela?’ then swiftly adjusted her tone when the other woman picked up.
‘Oh, hi – hi, Angela! Hi, hello, yeah, it’s Chrissie …’ she said, and then tailed off when Angela immediately interrupted and began to speak. Stu couldn’t tell what she was saying, but he heard the familiar cadence of her voice and pattern of her speech, her pedantic, circuitous way of communicating the simplest of messages. Of the two adoption officers currently invested in their future, this one – Angela – was senior to the other one – Nancy – yet her relationship skills were, by comparison, completely unevolved. Arm’s-length and no closer, was Angela’s philosophy, so that, eighteen months after they first met, they still felt they barely knew her. And yet they did know this: she always had something to say, and she liked to take her time saying it. Now Chrissie, who hadn’t even managed to ask her question yet, suddenly saw and seized an opportunity.
‘No, yes, I see, no, it wasn’t that, it’s just, we wondered what her name is?’
Pause. Stuart heard Angela’s pedantic drone, circumnavigating the answer. What the fuck? he thought. Just say the name, lady. Then Chrissie’s face seemed to soften and her eyes met his, shining.
‘Oh, really?’ she said. ‘Ah, wow. No, no, sure. Thanks so much, yes, aha, yes, thanks again, bye.’
She hung up.
‘Well?’ Stuart asked.
‘Sunshine,’ Chrissie said. ‘She’s called Sunshine.’
Outside, they walked in the rain without noticing it, and told each other the things they knew they should remember; how far there was still to go, how they should pace themselves, hold this new breakthrough close, not tell a soul until there was something more certain to say. Then Chrissie caved in and rang Nina, and Stuart rang Carly in New Jersey. They stood facing each other in the street, a few feet apart so their conversations didn’t collide, but looking directly at each other as they talked, then, afterwards, he opened his arms wide, and she stepped into them.
‘Sunshine,’ Chrissie said, into the warmth of his neck. ‘Can you believe that? Wouldn’t we have chosen it, for a daughter? She’s Sunny for short.’
‘Beautiful,’ Stuart said, and pressed his lips on her hair. He held them there for a moment, then said, ‘What did Nina say? Bet she was happy?’
Chrissie nodded. ‘Cautiously happy. I ought to tell Mum, now Nina knows.’
‘She’s right to be cautious,’ Stuart said. ‘We mustn’t run away with this.’
‘How to help it, though? I have this strange feeling.’
‘What, that she’s ours?’
‘No, no, yeah, sort of, yeah – a feeling that she’s who we’ve been waiting for, which is crazy. I want her, I just really want her.’
‘Nancy’s Law,’ Stu said, smiling. ‘Maybe she makes a good point, after all.’
Nancy Maitland; loopy, lovely, with a kind of robust zest for the task of finding Chrissie and Stuart’s child. Early on she’d told them – confidingly, as if sharing a secret – that she believed adoption placements were driven by fate, and when Chrissie and Stu had swapped sceptical glances, Nancy had only nodded and said, ‘I know you think that’s claptrap, but there’s a child out there who already belongs to you. You just don’t know each other yet.’
Chrissie hadn’t bought the theory at the time, not at all; but now she wondered if she’d absorbed by osmosis some of Nancy’s blind faith, because suddenly the world contained a little girl called Sunshine, and Chrissie had a sensation quite new to her, and very powerful, that this child’s path and her own were about to converge. It wasn’t merely a tug on the heart. She knew what that felt like; she’d had that before: Billy, a four-month-old baby boy, offered as a possibility by Angela, then placed elsewhere by Nancy; Rosie, the two-year-old girl they’d never met in the end; Celeste, another name, another baby, who had drifted into the frame, then out again, and now Chrissie couldn’t even remember why. But Sunshine. Sunsh ine. Something did feel different. Something did feel right. Something connected to instinct; those feelings that reside in the gut and require neither thought nor learning, but that you somehow know should be trusted.
She said, ‘So, what did Carly say?’
‘She knew I was about to call,’ Stu said. ‘She sensed I had news about a child.’
They both laughed. You could never really tell Stu’s mother anything she hadn’t already gleaned through her famous sixth sense, but she wore her white witchery well. It manifested in a kind of bottomless positivity.
‘Ah, but she was sweet,’ Stuart went on. ‘Six in the morning at Cape May, and I’d clearly woken her, but she was like, “Darling boy, a child named Sunshine has infinite potential for joy.”’
A child named Sunshine. Chrissie let the words drift in her mind for a few moments. There had been no one, and now there was Sunshine. A small girl, untethered in the world, whose destiny was now tilting towards Chrissie and Stuart. Extraordinary, she thought. Extraordinary.
Later, she did her duty and rang Diana, her mother, in Barnsley, and they talked about the weather and her dad’s new car – a Bentley, of all things – and the new colourist at her hair salon in Sheffield who’d trained in London with Trevor Sorbie, before Chrissie at last broached the subject of Sunshine and caused a heavy silence to descend, a hundred and eighty miles away in South Yorkshire.
‘I see,’ Diana said, at last. ‘Well, you’ve come this far before, Christine, and still been thwarted.’
‘I know, Mum, but the system owes us, and Stu and I both have a good feeling about this one.’
‘That’s all very well, but it’s not about a feeling, is it? It’s about whether it goes your way.’
Chrissie rested her forehead against the kitchen wall and listened to her mother warning against false hope. She spoke from experience, because they’d been extremely unlucky so far, they’d been disappointed and demoralised, and had discovered that, in the parallel world of adoption, a child could be offered with one hand, then taken away with the other; available, then unavailable, as if, like a covetable couture handbag, they came in and out of stock, and bad luck, you’d missed out again. So yes, her mother knew well enough how Chrissie had suffered, because so had they all; but Diana’s concern, as ever, came out as a kind of thistly impatience, as if all the brutal iniquities of the system they’d experienced were only to be expected, so why the fuss? Sadness was weakness, in Diana’s opinion; she could barely tolerate it, and she possessed only this brand of mothering; steely, unbending, a cold, fierce love.
They’d got off on the wrong foot from the start, of course, when the day before their first adoption workshop, Diana had phoned to say it was all a waste of time, since they weren’t husband and wife, and Chrissie had said, ‘Ah, well, about that …’ and then had had to confess the thing she’d been putting off, and putting off – that she and Stuart had got married three weeks ago, very quickly and quietly, at the Old Marylebone Town Hall; just Sol, Julia, Rocco and Kim in attendance, and coffee and cake afterwards at a cafe in York Street.
‘We’ll have a big wedding celebration when the time’s right,’ Chrissie had said, into the arctic silence. ‘And that day, the day of the party, will be our real wedding, because the other was just for the paperwork, right? A formality. We didn’t dress up, even.’
And this, finally, had forced Diana into a response. ‘Please tell me you didn’t wear jeans, Christine,’ she’d said.
That was a year and a half ago, and now here they were still, wearily engaged in the attack and parry of a telephone chat about whether or not they should allow themselves to hope.
‘Well, look,’ Chrissie said, doodling on a notepad by the telephone and listening with only half her mind on Diana’s doomy pragmatism, ‘we’ve been given every reason to feel encouraged this time.’ She’d written Sunshine Stevenson and Sunshine Woodall, and now she stared at the names, and adorned them with tiny flowers on snaking stems that twisted and curled through the letters.
‘Your dad’ll be worried sick when I tell him.’
‘About what?’
‘About another one not working out, obviously.’
‘Well,’ Chrissie said in a measured tone, ‘I suppose that’s understandable.’
‘Anyway, who’ll look after the child when you’re playing concerts till all hours?’
‘Well, that’s a hypothetical problem if we don’t get her, right?’
‘I didn’t say you wouldn’t get her; I said it was a worry that you might not.’
‘Agreed, it’s a worry, but Stu and I are trying to stay positive.’
‘So, tell me again then, how you’ll manage this small child, with your lifestyle.’
‘Mum! My lifestyle? I’m home more than most working mothers! And we’ve both given up cocaine until the adoption papers are signed.’
‘Christine!’
‘Joke. Obviously. Come on, Mum, please, we’ve been through this so many times.’
‘Yes, we have, but I still don’t know how you’ll cope, or why you want to complicate an already very complicated life. It’s not unmarried girls giving away their perfect babies these days, it’s children from drug addicts, children who’ve been neglected.’
‘Mmm,’ Chrissie said, absently, ‘you’ve mentioned that before, once or twice.’ On the page of the notepad she’d written, A child named Sunshine has infinite potential for joy, and now she thought, thank you, Carly.
‘Now you’re being facetious.’
‘Mum, I know you’re anxious about this, but I’m sure you’ll feel better when there’s a living, breathing child instead of all this constant speculation.’
Diana snorted. ‘Don’t psychoanalyse me, Christine.’
Psychoanalyse Diana, thought Chrissie; where would she possibly begin? She sighed into the phone. Her mother was exhausting. How much of her adult life had she spent talking Diana down from the ledge of her furious indignation?
‘I just want you to be happy for me, Mum,’ she said.
‘If it all works out, I’ll be very happy for you, Christine,’ Diana said. She sounded hurt now, and Chrissie took her cue and softened her tone.
‘It’ll work out, Mum. We’ll make it work out.’
‘A little girl, you said?’
‘Sunshine, three and a bit.’
‘Sunshine? As in, sunshine?’
‘Yeah, Sunny for short.’
There was a protracted sigh. ‘Well,’ Diana said, ‘there’ll only be one of those on the school register,’ and this was her, giving a little ground, and on these terms they were both content to say goodbye. Chrissie put the phone down, and, with the notepad in hand, she went to find Stuart.
‘Sunny Stevenson,’ she said, showing him her artwork. ‘Or Sunny Woodall?’
‘Sunny Stevenson-Woodall?’
‘If it worked double-barrelled, we’d both be using it. I think it’s one or the other.’
‘Sunny Stevenson, then,’ Stuart said. ‘Alliterative and lyrical.’ It was Chrissie’s surname, and she smiled, and kissed him.
‘I knew I liked you, for some reason,’ she said.
‘We’re totally doing what we’re not supposed to do,’ Stuart said, suddenly serious.
‘Yeah. But this is happening,’ Chrissie said. ‘Your mother’s seen it in the tea leaves.’
There was going to be a child of their own; two of them, maybe three – vocals, drums, guitar – and everyone who knew them knew they’d make beautiful babies. They’d met in 1982 on a music course in Liverpool, first year, first week, first day. Chrissie had opened the door into her boxy room in the hall of residence and almost immediately tried to shoo away her parents, desperate that her glamorous mother didn’t speak to anyone in the embarrassing Queen’s English she tended to use on strangers, or that Doug didn’t start mending a dripping kitchen tap or bleeding the radiators. He was proud as punch of Christine, he kept saying, while Diana wondered things out loud; which shelf of this horrible fridge might be Christine’s? Who would put brown carpet and curtains in a girl’s room? She maintained her usual elegant hauteur until the time came to say goodbye, when she surprised herself and her daughter by finding it hard to let go. Her hug was too tight, too lengthy, as if she was trying to communicate something very important, for which she didn’t have the words.
