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Troubled Blood
Part One - 6
“I gave them hell, to tell you the truth,” said Anna shamefacedly. “But all credit to Cyn, she stuck by me. She never gave up. She and Dad had had kids together by then—I’ve got a younger brother and sister—and there was family therapy and holidays with bonding activities, all led by Cyn, because my father certainly didn’t want to do it. The subject of my mother just makes him angry and aggrieved. I remember him yelling at me, didn’t I realize how terrible it was for him to have it all dragged up again, how did I think he felt…
“When I was fifteen I tried to find my mother’s friend, Oonagh, the one she was supposed to be meeting the night she disappeared. They were Bunny Girls together,” said Anna, with a little smile, “but I didn’t know that at the time. I tracked Oonagh down in Wolverhampton, and she was quite emotional to hear from me. We had a couple of lovely phone calls. She told me things I really wanted to know, about my mother’s sense of humor, the perfume she wore—Rive Gauche, I went out and blew my birthday money on a bottle next day—how she was addicted to chocolate and was an obsessive Joni Mitchell fan. My mother came more alive to me when I was talking to Oonagh than through the photographs, or anything Dad or Cyn had told me.
“But my father found out I’d spoken to Oonagh and he was furious. He made me give him Oonagh’s number and called her and accused her of encouraging me to defy him, told her I was troubled, in therapy and what I didn’t need was people ‘stirring.’ He told me not to wear the Rive Gauche, either. He said he couldn’t stand the smell of it.