Then, as the crowds dwindled towards the last hour of the final day of the Robin Hood festival, and we sent Honour off to fetch us all ice creams, a man approached the food truck.
‘What can I get you?’ I asked.
‘Um.’ The man was about my age, maybe a couple of years older. He looked out of place for the forest in a smart shirt, bow tie, and royal-blue corduroy trousers. He removed a blue bucket hat to scratch a head covered in very short hair, shifting from side to side. ‘I’m not sure.’
‘We’ve not got much left, if that helps. No pasties, but there’s some no-cheese nachos and a venison taco. Oh, and the caramel blondie is fabulous, if you’d rather something sweet.’
‘Actually.’ He put the hat back on, bobbed his head up and down a couple of times and glanced around the clearing, looking painfully uncomfortable. ‘I’ll be back in a minute. I just need to…’
Then he hurried jerkily across the grass, around the side of a stall selling herbal soaps and candles, and disappeared.
‘Was it something you said?’ Blessing, who’d been cleaning up behind me, now squinted after him.
‘Perhaps he had his heart set on a pasty.’ I shrugged it off, turning my attention to packing up.
‘Um, hello again.’
I straightened up from where I’d been stashing away paper napkins, wooden forks and other bits and pieces. The man was back.
Only, with him was…
Oh, my goodness.
For the first, bone-jarring second, I thought it was my mother.
Then I noticed the woman’s petite frame, and for the next, adrenaline-pumping few moments, the incoherent thought spinning around inside my skull was that it was me.
A future me. This person was well into middle age, although there were distinct streaks of reddish blonde amongst the grey of her shoulder-length layers.
She appeared equally shocked, green eyes round, mouth hanging slightly open.
‘I told you, Mum. It’s her.’
‘And who would that be?’ Blessing asked, not unkindly, as she took hold of my clammy hand.
‘Is it you?’ the woman asked, voice quavering. ‘I saw the interview, on the news, and it was like seeing a ghost. I couldn’t stop thinking about it. Then Owen here – he’s my son – showed me your website, where it says about your story, and the pasty place. I thought, well, there might be more than one Emmaline Brown in the world, but there can’t be that many of them with a mother called Nell, who happen to be the spit of my sister.’
She trailed off, blinking rapidly as she shook her head in disbelief.
‘This is my mother, Dawn Swan. Her sister was Kennedy Swan,’ Owen added, enunciating carefully.
It felt as though the food truck had flipped upside down, and I were hanging there, suspended in time and space and unable to do anything but scrabble to right myself again.
‘We knew Nellie had taken on Kennedy’s daughter,’ Dawn went on, talking quickly now. ‘But then they decided we weren’t allowed to keep in contact, and, to be honest, they were right. I was that sorry to hear Nellie had died, but, given that we weren’t allowed to know anything more about you, we wondered if you’d never known about us. I thought it best to see you in person, so I could be sure before overturning the pasty cart, as it were. I didn’t want to be putting two and two together and making an imaginary long-lost niece. Sorry, I mean second cousin. But I just knew it was you.’
‘First cousin once removed,’ Owen corrected her.
‘Either way, we’re family. That’s clear in every inch of her face.’
I clutched onto Blessing’s hand for dear life. ‘I am me. I mean, I am her. I… I don’t think I mind if you call me your niece.’
‘Oh, Emmie.’ Dawn stretched up to try and reach me through the hatch, but all she could do was pat the counter. She dropped back, face contorted with emotion until Blessing hastily opened the side door to the truck and bundled me out.
‘Oh, my precious girl.’ Dawn pulled me against her, and, perhaps resorting back to nature over nurture, my arms flung themselves around her in a way that they’d never embraced Nell. Our heads rested together at the exact same height.
‘I can’t believe we found you,’ Dawn cried.
‘I can’t believe you came searching for me,’ I sobbed at the same time.
