The Daily Dormouse. (aka Bike, est. 2007) Part 2223 by Angharad Copyright © 2013 Angharad All Rights Reserved.

I was sore again the next morning but Simon’s words with the troops the day before must have had some effect because none of them commented on my less than flowing movement.

Simon had gone to work early with Sammi, it was her last day as she was down to be admitted on the Friday for surgery the following day. Although we weren’t paying for the surgery, we did make a large donation to the local hospice at the agreement of the surgeon. So to anyone who suggested we could go privately for treatment, we pointed out we had made a payment to the hospice.

I showed the bracelet to the girls and they loved it–mind you, so did I. The blue of the sapphires matched those in my engagement ring and the necklace I had from my mother, originally from my grandmother. The link back to her was important to me. Sadly, it won’t go any further because my adopted children will link to their own grandparents genetically, if not emotionally. Emotionally, they’ll link to Tom, Henry and Monica. What effect that will have on them in the long term only time will tell.

Common sense seems to suggest that adopted children will have more problems than natural children which is probably borne out in some survey statistic somewhere. I suppose even obvious assumptions have to be tested before we can quote them ad nauseum. I’ve had the odd problem with the children from time to time but nothing compared to some adoptive parents. The fact that they wanted us to adopt them has to be a factor and while some have an anger or even disgust of their natural parents, I’m aware that could change later on.

I took the girls to school as per usual and when I got home found we’d had a mail delivery including some Christmas cards. I decided I’d have to try and write some that day and ended up spending most of the day doing it. With a second class stamp costing fifty pence, I was going to reduce the number to a bare necessity. I still did a hundred–cor, fifty pounds just to send the bloody cards.

I looked at those we’d had delivered and there was one for Mima with a foreign stamp on it. I wondered if it was from whom I thought it might be. I collected the girls from school and when we got home I managed to separate Mima off from the others and give her her card.

She spent ages looking at the stamp and the air mail sticker. The postmark was Jo’burg, which is South Africa. She stood there holding it and then looked at me.

“Don’t you want to open it?” I asked her gently.

She looked very sad and her eyes looked very moist. She said nothing but it wouldn’t take a genius to have a guess at what she was thinking.

“Would you like me to open it with you?”

She thought about it for a moment before nodding and handing the card to me. I slit it open with the paperknife. My hand growing sweaty with mild anxiety I extracted the card which had a picture of a Christmas tree with snow on it–about as likely in South Africa as Bradley Wiggins winning another TdF. I held it up for her to see. “Do you want to open it or would you like me to do it?”

She pointed at me so I flipped open the card and read her the verse. ‘Season’s Greetings from South Africa.’ Then I read her the inscription. ‘Dear Jemima, I hope you are happy with your new mummy and daddy. We miss you and think of you often. Love, your old Mummy.’ There was also a hundred dollar bill US variety.

I handed her the card. She carefully removed the money and handed it to me. Then she read the inscription herself, before she burst into tears and shouted in pain, “Bwoody wiar. I hate you,” after which she proceeded to rip the card up and fling the pieces up in the air.

“Excuse me, but it takes me a long time to keep this place clean.” She looked suitably chastened and began picking up the pieces which she handed to me. I was tempted to put them in the bin but I didn’t, I shoved them all back into the envelope and put them on my desk.

I gave her a cuddle and we chatted gently about her original mother and I suggested that she did love her.

“That’s why she abandoned me, is it?”

“I don’t know why she did it, she didn’t tell me, but I know she’s missed out on seeing you growing up and that’s quite important to all parents, but especially mums.”

“That’s ha own fawt. She wan off and weft me, I hate ha.”

“From what I could gather she ran off because she was being chased by all sorts of nasty people and she left you with me because she thought I could offer you a secure home. I hope I have, I’ve certainly tried.”

“I wuv you, Mummy, you my mummy now.”

“I love you too love you too, sweetheart.”

“Don’t wet ha take me away.”

“You have been adopted, Mima. That means she has no legal right to you at all. I’m your mummy now and I intend to keep it that way until or unless you tell me different.”

“I want you as my mummy fo-evva.”

“In which case, I shall be your Mummy as long as I live. Deal?”

“Deaw,” she said and we shook on it.

She went off to change and probably to wash her face with her red eyes from crying an obvious advert to the others to ask awkward questions. I left the card fragments and envelope on my desk and went off to ask David about the dinner. When I returned the envelope had gone and it wasn’t in my waste basket. I said nothing about it but the next day, while making her bed I found it under her mattress. She still had feelings for her birth mother, which I suppose I’d encouraged though I wasn’t sure how I felt about it.

I checked all the bits were still there and she’d stuck it all together with tape and not very neatly either. I suppose if she did it in secret it would be difficult. I thought back to when I first got her and how I somehow managed to achieve the same wavelength as she was on and somehow she trusted me enough to walk again. That was before the blue light became manifest, though perhaps it was in the background. I didn’t know.

We’d been through quite a bit since then, especially when the blue light did save her after she drowned and was practically dead. I’ll never forget that day as long as I live. Her friendship with Trish was what gave Sam Rose the idea to send Trish here and between us, Meems and I got her walking again too.

I went looking for her and found her sitting with Lizzie telling her she’d never abandon her and she’d see to it that her mummy wouldn’t abandon her either, like she had been until I saved her. “My new mummy, made me walk again and she saved me when I dwownded. She’w wook after you too, because she wuvs babies.”

I slipped away, eight years old and she has me analysed to a tee.