Simon and Janet were in the doorway, watching, Janet wiping a little tear away.
‘You don’t have to look after me,’ said Diana. She suddenly felt ashamed of becoming old, being a burden to others.
‘I’m not looking after you – we’re looking after each other,’ Amanda stated. She paused briefly before adding: ‘That’s what families do.’
Diana looked at Amanda, blinking a few times as though trying to make out the words she had heard. ‘I might need to sit,’ she said.
‘A cup of tea is coming,’ said Janet. ‘And then Simon and I will leave you be.’
Amanda and Diana moved to the sitting area and Diana sat in her special and much loved armchair.
‘So you know,’ she said.
Amanda nodded.
‘I imagined you would work it out eventually.’ Diana sighed.
‘I don’t understand why you went to such lengths to keep it from me,’ Amanda said.
Diana leaned back in her chair and clasped her hands. ‘Let me tell you about when I met your mother.’
*
1990s
New York was too loud for Diana. She had arrived the night before and had arranged to meet the private detective in the lobby of the hotel she was staying in. It was small but comfortable place, not the Waldorf Astoria like her mother or father would have expected, but they were dead and Diana no longer had the money for extravagant hotels. She had just had the gutters done at Moongate and the gatehouse was about to be reroofed.
The private detective she had hired was not at all like the she had expected. His name was Joe but he was Hawaiian and an ex-policeman. When she had expressed that she thought he would be like the moustached men she saw on the American television shows, Joe had laughed and said he expected her to look like the Queen, so they were even. Diana liked him immediately.
They sat in the lobby of the hotel and Joe handed over the file.
‘Her name is Wendy Cox. She lives in Astoria and has a three-year-old called Amanda.’
‘No husband? Where is the father?’
‘He comes and goes but I don’t think he does much,’ Joe said.
‘Is she stable? Emotionally? Financially?’
Joe nodded. ‘Seems like a great mom. Amanda is in day care and Wendy has just finished doing a stenographer course. She went to an interview at the civil court last week, so she will probably work there. They are usually desperate for people.’
‘Is that the person who takes the notes on those funny machines in the court cases?’
‘Yup. It’s a good job, pays well.’
Diana smiled. ‘So you gave her my letter and she read it?’
Joe frowned. ‘I did, but she wasn’t happy about the contact.’
Diana pursed her lips. ‘And you asked her to meet me today like I requested? At the park? And bring Amanda?’
‘I did, and she said she’d think about it.’
Diana checked her watch. ‘It’s all I can do, I suppose,’ she said. She handed Joe an envelope with two thousand dollars in cash inside. ‘Thank you for your help, I wouldn’t have found her otherwise.’
Joe took the cash and pocketed it in his leather blazer.
‘You know, I do a lot of these cases, the reunification of adopted children and bio families.’
