Why Don’t You Come for Me (36 page)

‘Of course. You’ll need something warm before you go out. What would you like? A bacon sandwich, maybe? I’ll make some porridge, if you like.’

‘A bacon sandwich, please.’ He regarded her suspiciously, noticing the way her eyes looked glittery and overexcited – although he supposed that might be because she had just been out in the cold.

Jo often took herself off somewhere else while he ate whatever food she had prepared, but today she hovered around in the kitchen, humming snatches of a tune, opening and shutting cupboard doors in a vain search for nothing in particular. Sean regarded her warily, wolfing down his sandwich as quickly as he could. He would have taken it upstairs, but she had very pointedly put out a knife and table mat, along with the ketchup which was de rigueur for the consumption of bacon butties.

‘You won’t forget to call for Becky – is that what you call her, Becky?’

‘I won’t forget.’

‘You don’t happen to know what her other name is?’

‘Becky Iceton, I suppose.’

‘No, it isn’t Iceton; it’s something else.’

‘Oh.’ Sean sounded disinterested.

She sat down at the table in the chair opposite him. Sean still had at least two or three mouthfuls of sandwich to deal with. He began to fiddle uneasily with the ketchup bottle.

‘Sean, will you do something for me?’

He didn’t make eye contact. ‘What?’

‘Will you find out what Becky’s other name is? Just ask her – casually – don’t make a big thing of it, and don’t tell her that it’s me who wants to know.’

Sean hesitated, uncomfortable beneath the weight of her full attention. ‘OK. But what’s the big deal?’

‘It’s not a big deal. It’s just something I want to know. OK?’

‘OK.’ He stuffed the remaining lump of bread and bacon into his mouth and stood up to make his escape.

‘You won’t forget?’

His mouth was too full to attempt an answer. A trickle of ketchup was escaping from the corner of his mouth, like a cheap effect in a vampire movie. He flapped his hand up and down a couple of times in a gesture she was intended to read as, ‘All right, calm down.’

Jo watched Sean cross the lane, dragging a sledge from each hand. The snow had eased now, as if in blocking the lane and turning the garden into a Fred Swan painting its work was done. As he was on the point of leaving she had called out casually, as if by way of an afterthought, ‘Bring Lauren back when you’re finished. I’ll do some hot chocolate and mince pies.’

‘Becky,’ he said impatiently. ‘Her name is Becky.’

‘Yes, of course. I meant Becky.’

He didn’t bring her back with him, of course. He had probably forgotten, or else she had declined. Jo did not bother to ask which. They had played out in the snow for more than two hours, and Sean needed to change out of his wet clothes before he was ready for the promised hot chocolate. When he reappeared, she only managed to contain herself for as long as it took to place his mug on the breakfast bar and put a couple of mince pies into the microwave. ‘Did you find out what Becky’s last name is?’

‘Yeah. It’s Ford.’

‘She didn’t ask why you wanted to know?’

‘No.’ Sean’s voice was contemptuous. ‘I said, like it was just conversation, that I was glad I wasn’t at the very beginning or the very end of the alphabet, because that way you’re never first or last when you get called out to do stuff at school, and she said she wasn’t at the very beginning either. Then I said, I’m H for Handley, and she said she’s F for Ford.’

‘That was clever.’ He had just gone up several notches in her estimation.

‘I’m not a complete amateur. So why do you want to know?’

Jo was ready for the question and embarked on a convoluted, but entirely untrue story about Gilda’s having been married to someone who might have been an old school friend of someone else, but not wanting to ask a direct question in case she put her foot in it. She could see that this was working just as she had intended, with Sean obviously wishing he had never asked, and breaking in at the first possible opportunity to say, ‘Yeah – whatever.’

She left him in the kitchen finishing his hot chocolate. She had not been idle during his absence. If Shelley’s father had begun his family researches via the computer, that must mean there was a way of accessing people’s birth certificates. She had found a site where, by registering herself and paying a fee by credit card, she could search the official indices of births, deaths and marriages online. You could not see an actual birth certificate without applying by post, but by looking up Lauren’s entry, she had established that the basic information shown in the index included mothers’ maiden names. Now all she had to do was check the birth of Rebecca Ford.

Her hands shook as she brought up the site and keyed in her search. There were two pages of Rebecca Fords, but none of them had a mother whose maiden name had been Stafford. She kept staring at the screen, going back from one page to another to double-check. And all the time the blood pounded in her head, making her feel giddy, setting up a pain behind her eyes. A combination of shock and rage coursed through her. She had long suspected that Gilda’s so-called daughter was one and the same as her own, but it was a very different thing to have proof of it.

And now she had her proof, what next? Should she ring the police? It was a Sunday afternoon and they were cut off by the snow. What would happen if she told the police? She knew enough about red tape not to imagine that a friendly constable would simply take her word for it, tell Lauren to pack her bags and move across to The Hideaway. Any delay at all would afford Gilda the opportunity to make a run for it, taking Lauren with her. They could be out of the country within hours.

Alternatively, the authorities might arrange to take Lauren into care while they made up their minds about whose daughter she was. She thought of Ma and Pa Allisson, who were probably dead by now. Foster-parents, or a children’s home. She thought of Lauren, with her boarding-school accent and nice clothes, thrown into a lion’s den shared with the kids of criminals, drug addicts and various other inadequates. She remembered the smell of cabbage and wee in the hall, the scuffed furniture in common rooms decorated with posters of pop stars and cartoon characters, always torn at the edges and missing their Blu-tack from one corner. The bits of last year’s tinsel trapped under yellowing Sellotape in the corners near the ceiling, faded duvet covers on the beds with washed-out Barbie dolls or Ninja Turtles on them – things which people thought kids liked, but which you would never have chosen for yourself. None of this must be allowed to happen.

There must be some other way. She could not simply spirit Lauren away as Gilda had done, so many years ago. Apart from anything else, the girl would not come with her. The prospect of Lauren rejecting her was akin to having a bucket of icy water tipped over her head – but Lauren had grown up believing she was Gilda’s daughter and that her name was Rebecca. What would her reaction be when she found out the truth? Would she want to stay with Gilda? Well, that wasn’t an option, because Gilda would go to prison, of course … but how would Lauren take that? Would she blame Jo for Gilda’s incarceration? Children did not invariably react in the most logical of ways.

It probably wasn’t a bed of roses having Gilda for a mother. Jo knew what it was like, being trailed everywhere by someone wearing a mustard-coloured number from a jumble sale, with a purple chiffon scarf wrapped around their head. Having a mother who was persistently out of touch with the way the rest of the world worked, but bridled at any suggestion of falling in line. Then again, what sort of alternative to Gilda would Lauren see in her – someone she only knew as the weird woman who had jumped out at her one day in the lane?

And there was her schooling – she and Marcus could not afford school fees. Lauren would have to attend the local comp, like Sean. She might like having a stepbrother – they had not exactly been the best of friends so far, but at least they’d been out sledging together – that surely counted for something.

She remembered the various bargains she had tried to strike with God. She wanted what was best for Lauren. She wanted Lauren to be safe, well and happy: those things were more important than anything else. If she knew that Lauren was all those things, wasn’t that better than actively making her unhappy? It was not as if she knew whether Lauren was happy or not. But if she was happy, and being forced to return to her natural mother would make her less so …

No, no, no. That would mean Gilda had won. A person should not be allowed to profit from their crime – that could not possibly be right. From somewhere at the back of her mind a memory of a social worker emerged, a woman having a bad hair day, pontificating on television: ‘When making a custody decision, the interests of the child are paramount.’ Suppose they decided that Lauren should stay with Gilda, irrespective of her crime. Would Gilda even get a custodial sentence? Only the other day a man had been given a suspended sentence for poisoning his ex-wife – as if permanently disabling her in the process was a matter of small account. These days the courts seemed capable of anything. No doubt the usual psychiatrist would be wheeled in to explain that it wasn’t really Gilda’s fault – she’d had a tough time as a kid, which meant that she had been temporarily suffering from some kind of compulsive disorder and was now full of genuine remorse for what she had done. Rather than punishing her, a judge was just as likely to decide that since Gilda had taken good care of Lauren, it was a first offence and she posed no obvious threat to any other children, a bit of litter-picking on Saturday afternoons for the next six months by way of community service would put everything right.

Jo thought about the cuddly dog waiting patiently on the spare-room bed. She pictured baby Lauren in her pyjamas, still pink from the bath, as she was carried upstairs and laid sleeping in her cot. Tears splashed on to the desk, narrowly missing the keyboard. She had never quite managed a happy ending for herself, but perhaps she could engineer one for Lauren. They would have to let Lauren decide. It must be done between themselves – no police, no social services, no tawdry children’s homes, or well-meaning foster-parents. Lauren should not suffer as she had done. Sometimes, if you really love someone, you have to let them go.

She went upstairs to change her clothes. She would have to put her big coat and wellingtons on top, but she wanted to look smart for the moment when Lauren understood that she was looking at her real mother. It took her some time to decide, practicalities weighing heavily in favour of most other considerations, so that she eventually ended up wearing her best jeans and a cheerful multicoloured sweater, bought on a visit to Bowness three years before and hardly worn since.

An early dusk was falling. When she opened the front door she was immediately aware of that heightened quiet brought by the snow. The temperature was already well below freezing, and the snow creaked in protest as it compressed beneath her boots. There was a light on above the front door of The Old Forge, just as if she was expected. And all the time that sense that this could not really be happening.

It was Gilda who answered the door on this occasion.

‘I need to talk to you. Can I come in?’

‘Of course,’ Gilda said, stepping back in a stance of invitation, although her expression was wary. Jo dragged off her boots and stood them upright on the front step before following Gilda along the hall, which was dimly lit with a single energy-saver and had a roll of carpet lying along one side of it, which had to be stepped over in order to access the sitting room at the back of the house. There was a fire blazing in the grate, but to Jo’s eyes this was about the only cheerful thing in the room, which suggested not so much someone’s living accommodation, as an abandoned stage set into which disparate props from half a dozen other plays had been randomly dumped for storage.

‘Sit down.’ Gilda indicated a chair from which she had removed a copy of a TV guide in passing. Jo sat. She was half disappointed and half relieved not to find Lauren in the room. Gilda tossed the TV guide on to a miscellanea of magazines and newspapers which stood several feet high on top of what might have been an old-fashioned needlework box, then lowered herself into the chair she had obviously been occupying before her visitor’s arrival, so that she faced Jo across the hearth rug.

Now that she was here, Jo found that it was not easy to know how to begin. She had effected no rehearsals, simply hoping that the right words would come when she needed them – which they did not. She cast about the room helplessly for a moment until her attention fell on a life-size stone cat which was sitting on the hearth.

Gilda saw what she was looking at. ‘We call him Timmy,’ she said. ‘Becky would like a real cat, but cat hair and I don’t get on.’

‘Lauren had a cat.’ Jo spoke so quietly that the last word was almost drowned by a crack from the fire. Gilda automatically extended her foot to rub out the spark which had leaped on to the rug. ‘She called him Puddy,’ Jo continued. ‘She had him with her on the day she was taken.’

Gilda frowned momentarily before saying, ‘Oh yes – Lauren was your daughter, wasn’t she?’

‘Is. She
is
my daughter. Does she still have Puddy?’

Gilda frowned again – harder this time, so that her eyes narrowed to shadows beneath a deeply puckered forehead. ‘I’m sorry, but I don’t understand. What cat are you talking about? Do you mean this cat – Timmy?’

‘No, I mean Puddy. Does Lauren still have Puddy?’

‘I’m sorry,’ Gilda repeated, ‘but I’m afraid you’ve lost me. What is it you’ve come to see me about, exactly?’

‘Where is Becky at the moment? Can she hear what we are saying?’

‘I doubt it. She’s up in her bedroom, listening to something on her iPod, I think.’

‘I know the truth, Gilda. I know that Becky is Lauren.’

‘Dear God – you’re mad! Absolutely mad!’

‘No, I’m not. Becky isn’t your daughter. I’ve checked up. Her name is Rebecca Heidi Ford, and her mother’s maiden name was Parsons, not Stafford.’