Secret Joy

Part 6

Luckily Mor dealt with the border police at the airport in Copenhagen. I'd spent the whole flight picturing what might happen if I tried to hand over both of my passports: my familiar British one and my foreign Danish one. Mor had given it to me on the way to the airport. She'd had it all this time. How had she dealt with it without me there? Had my parents sent her pictures of me to have it updated every few years?

There was still so much I didn't know. I found myself wondering what would have happened if Dad had never been in the accident. I would never have seen my Danish passport. I wouldn't even have known I had one. I'd still have believed a lie. When would I have discovered my true parentage?

Would I have discovered my true parentage?

My suitcase felt much too light to be carrying half my life. Mum had promised to send the rest of my belongings on later: all my books; all the little things I had lying around my room; the rest of my clothes.

Later on. Once everything in my Dad's will was in order. Once Mum had worked out what she was going to tell the neighbours. If Emily didn't tell them the truth first.

* * * *

On the way to my new home, I insisted Mor spoke Danish to me. Every time she tried to speak to me in English, I insisted, "I need to learn Dansk. I will need to go to school in Dansk, go out and about in Dansk. I have to learn. See how lidt I know?"

"You don't have to go to school immediately," Mor said softly, "You're to have a few weeks off, for... for bereavement. And then you'll have an interpreter, and you'll have Danish classes after school every evening."

Knowledge settled on my back like a stone, knowledge that someone would be speaking for me, putting what I needed to know through a filter, as if I hadn't had enough of that.

But there was no other option.

Without an interpreter I would drown in the flood of an unfamiliar language, and the waters of confusion would close over my head as I sank unseen and unheard into the darkest depths of loneliness and despair.