Forgive Me

  There were no pictures of the baby – it was said the mother hadn’t got a camera – but the baby’s birth weight was 5lbs 6oz.

  ‘She was very small.’ Eva looked up at him anxiously. ‘A month on she would still have passed for a newborn baby. The mother told the police she was wearing a pink frilly dress, a pink hand-knitted lacy matinee jacket, with matching bonnet and bootees. That is exactly what I found in the box in the attic. I thought at the time they didn’t look like clothes Mum would dress a baby in.’

  Phil knew he was out of his depth. He didn’t know what to do or say.

  ‘I’m scared,’ she whispered. ‘I really don’t want that baby to be me.’

  ‘We’ll get the photocopies and then we’ll go somewhere away from here so we can talk about it,’ he said.

  It was a mistake going to see Hadrian’s Wall, as Eva was in a world of her own. Phil suggested they stay the night in Wetheral, the village near Carlisle where she had stayed on her way to Scotland, because she’d liked it there. After checking in, they walked down to the river and found a bench to sit on.

  ‘I thought when I stayed here before that it was the kind of place nothing bad ever happens,’ Eva said in a small voice. ‘What should I do, Phil?’

  ‘We both know the right thing to do is to go to the police,’ he said. ‘But I don’t think you’re ready for that yet. And considering this crime happened twenty-one years ago, it’s not going to make a scrap of difference if you wait a few more days before you do it.’

  ‘Look,’ she said, turning the photocopied pages till she came to the one with a picture of Sue Carling scowling and holding up a fist to the press photographer. ‘She looks like one of the Fat Slags in the Viz comic. It’s hardly surprising there was so little sympathy for her.’

  Phil winced, but admired Eva’s bluntness. It wasn’t just the woman’s aggressive stance, or even the very short skirt and tight sweater and hair like a bird’s nest, it was more that she looked like everyone’s idea of a stereotypical unfit mother. The headline was what she’d screamed at the journalist: ‘OK so I like a drink and a f—ing bet, but that don’t mean I’m a baby killer.’

  Flicking through the photocopied press cuttings, some of which were dated several weeks after the event, it was clear why Sue Carling hadn’t got much public sympathy. A spokesperson at the hospital where Melanie had been born said that Sue Carling had discharged herself against their advice, just a few hours before the baby was taken from outside the betting shop. A few days after the event, while scores of local people had joined in the police search for the baby, she’d been photographed buying whiskey at an off-licence. There were reports that she’d got into a fight with a neighbour, been too drunk to do a television appeal for witnesses, and she’d punched a policeman who called on her during the inquiry.

  ‘I don’t want a woman like that as my mother,’ Eva admitted. ‘And if I go to the police, I’ll be opening Pandora’s box, won’t I?’

  She was also thinking of how Ben and Sophie would react to having their mother pilloried in the press. She knew it would sever any bond that had ever existed between the three of them. Of course it was right for Sue Carling to be exonerated of any crime, if she should be proved to be her birth mother, and also to have the peace of mind of knowing her baby had been well cared for. But Eva didn’t think for one moment she’d want a relationship with this woman, who might latch on to her and become a living nightmare.

  ‘Only if you do turn out to be the missing baby,’ Phil reminded her. ‘I really can’t believe you are. For one thing, everything you know about the young Flora suggests she was quite self-centred. Apart from Dena telling you about her crying over losing her baby there is no other evidence of her dwelling on it. Besides, women who snatch babies because they want one to love are always caught. That kind of impulse surely doesn’t go with the cool-headedness needed to successfully pass the baby off as your own?’

  ‘So what should I do?’

  ‘Well, nothing in haste,’ he said. ‘Maybe we should find a doctor or lawyer for you to talk to first? And what about your stepfather? Wouldn’t it be a good idea to talk it over with him?’

  ‘He won’t want me stirring anything up that might affect his children,’ she said, remembering how snotty Andrew had been when he’d called her in Pitlochry.

  ‘Probably not, but he did bring you up. And I think you owe him the chance to either tell you something which proves Flora gave birth to you or, if he can’t, give him some warning of what might possibly lie ahead.’

  She heard the understanding in Phil’s voice, and when she looked into his eyes she saw the honesty she’d observed the first time she met him. He’d helped her then when she most needed it, and she felt certain he would see this through with her too.

  ‘Will you come with me to see him?’ she asked. ‘I’m a bit scared of him.’

  He took both her hands in his. ‘Of course I will. We can go to Cheltenham on the way back to London. You aren’t alone any more, Eva. You’ve got me now.’

  There were times during the next few days when Eva thought that the tarot cards must have been spot on when they represented Phil as the ox, in as much as he was patient, calm and reliable. He joked that he was also dim, thick-skinned and likely to charge into things too if the mood struck him. She liked his self-deprecating sense of humour, the fact that he was never boastful, and that he was interested in so many different things, from all kinds of sport to history, current affairs, music and nature. They had travelled on to the Lake District where he bought her a pair of proper walking boots and thick socks, so they could do some serious walking on the fells.

  The walks may have been seriously strenuous ones, but Phil made her laugh so much that she barely noticed her aching muscles and even managed to stop dwelling on Sue Carling and her baby.

  One afternoon, after lunch in a pub in Grasmere, they had climbed up a steep path to look down on the lake. It had been raining in the morning, but the sun had come out while they were in the pub and everything looked sparkling: white cottages with pretty well-kept gardens, the lush grass and the lake shining like blue glass.

  ‘I feel a Wordsworth moment coming on,’ Phil said and stopped to look at the view, shielding his eyes from the sun with his hand.

  ‘I wandered happily with my girl. When all at once my head began to whirl. Was it because my lady was so fair? Or just that I’d eaten a pudding big enough to share?’

  Eva giggled. ‘I think Wordsworth might turn in his grave at that,’ she said.

  They sat down on the grass beside the path.

  ‘It’s so beautiful here,’ Phil said. ‘I thought Scotland was fantastic, but this is even better. I think I might give up the idea of seeing the world, and just tour round England.’

  ‘Plastering as you go?’ She raised one eyebrow questioningly. ‘You could get a van and have a sign painted on it: “Stop me for a plastering job”.’

  ‘Not a van, a posh motor caravan,’ he said dreamily. ‘We’d park up in places like this, and I’d go and do a job while you made the dinner or washed our clothes.’

  ‘Nice daydream,’ she said, leaning against his shoulder. ‘I won’t bring you down to reality by saying how cold it would be in winter or how few people would actually want plastering done by some itinerant man who just knocked on their door.’

  ‘I never used to imagine impractical things until I met you,’ he said, putting his arm around her. ‘That’s what falling in love does to a bloke.’

  ‘You love me?’ she asked.

  ‘’Fraid so,’ he said, kissing her nose. ‘I had the idea of getting right to the top of this path, doing the whole romantic bit of taking you in my arms and telling you. But I guess I’ve blown it.’

  Eva felt as if she was melting inside. She’d almost said she loved him several times in the past few days – but she hadn’t, for fear of jinxing everything.

  ‘You haven’t blown it,’ she said, catching hold of his face with both her han
ds and kissing him. ‘I love you too, and nothing in my life has ever felt this good.’

  ‘We’ll sort all this stuff with your stepdad – and the police, if they’re needed. And even if Ben and Sophie don’t want to know you any more, I’ll always be there for you.’

  No words had ever sounded sweeter to Eva. She felt she had everything she’d ever wanted right here with Phil beside her, and all the beauty of Grasmere and the mountains surrounding it, spread before her. She just wished she had the right words to express what she felt.

  Chapter Seventeen

  ‘This is where you grew up?’ Phil exclaimed in astonishment as Eva directed him into the drive of The Beeches. Andrew’s red BMW was parked up by the front door.

  ‘Well, yes,’ she said. ‘What sort of house did you imagine then?’

  ‘Something a lot humbler.’ He grinned. ‘You’ve never so much as hinted that you lived in a palace.’

  Looking at the Georgian house through Phil’s eyes she supposed it did look very grand, but she was shocked at how neglected the garden was. The grass had been cut, but the flower beds and the drive were overgrown with weeds.

  She was very nervous at seeing Andrew. She’d phoned him two days earlier while still in the Lake District and he had been very chilly. She said she had a dilemma that she needed to discuss with him, and he began to say her dilemmas were of no interest to him. It was only when she said it was to do with her mother in Carlisle that he agreed to see her today at five thirty. Just the fact that Carlisle triggered a response suggested he knew something.

  Eva went to the front door and rang the bell; somehow, she knew Andrew would be affronted if she went to the kitchen door. She would have felt easier if Ben and Sophie were there. But Ben was in Leeds, and no doubt Andrew had sent Sophie out.

  Andrew looked flushed when he opened the front door. She wondered if he’d been drinking.

  ‘Hello,’ she said, and introduced Phil to him.

  Andrew looked very hostile. ‘Do you think it’s appropriate to bring someone else along when we need to talk about family business?’ he said in icy tones.

  ‘Yes, I do,’ Eva said more firmly than she felt. ‘We are an item, and he was with me in Carlisle, so I want him here.’

  She shot Phil an ‘I told you so’ look. He gave a little shrug.

  Andrew extended one hand to indicate that they were to go into the sitting room.

  As they walked into the hall Eva noticed that Rose must still be coming in to clean, as everything looked much the same as it always had. But when they entered the sitting room she saw straight away that Flora’s painting of the Cornish beach had been removed and replaced with a print of a Venetian canal.

  Phil sat next to Eva on one sofa, while Andrew took an armchair opposite. ‘What is this?’ he said without any preamble or the offer of a drink.

  Eva had rehearsed what she was going to say over and over in her head, but the stony expression on Andrew’s face made it hard to get the words out.

  ‘As you so kindly informed me you weren’t my father, I wanted to find out who was,’ she began. ‘You already know about Flora’s diaries, and while I was in Pitlochry – where she lived for a year until a short time before my birth – I found out that no one there knew she was pregnant.’

  Andrew didn’t react to that, so she cut to the chase. ‘Flora left both a photograph and a painting of a row of shops in Carlisle. It transpires that on the 1st of April, 1970, a three-day-old baby girl was taken from outside one of the shops in that picture, and has never been found. I think there is a possibility that baby was me.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Andrew exclaimed.

  ‘I really do hope my fears are ridiculous,’ Eva retorted.

  ‘And I’m looking to you for some facts to prove it isn’t true. For a start, which hospital was I born in?’

  ‘How do you expect me to know? I hadn’t met your mother then,’ he said.

  ‘She must have told you, women talk about that kind of thing. Was it in London or somewhere else?’

  ‘I seem to remember her saying it was a home birth.’

  ‘A first baby born at home? I don’t think that’s even allowed,’ Eva said. ‘Where? At the studio?’

  ‘Yes, I think so.’

  She knew with utter certainty that he was lying. He was sitting on the edge of the sofa, his back hunched, looking down at his knees; even his voice didn’t have the conviction he normally spoke with.

  ‘How old was I when you met?’ she asked. ‘And how did you meet?’

  ‘What’s that got to do with anything?’

  ‘I want to understand Mum’s frame of mind,’ she said wearily. ‘Look, I came here because I’m hoping you can reassure me that she was my birth mother. Unless you can tell me something that will convince me, I’ll have to go to the police. They’ll soon find out the truth – and once that cat is out of the bag, there’s no putting it back.’

  He glanced up at her and then looked at Phil, as if weighing them up.

  ‘You were two months old or thereabouts when I met her. I was staying with a friend in a flat just around the corner from the studio. It was a Saturday, and I was having a lunchtime drink sitting outside The Prince of Wales because it was warm and sunny. She was there too, rocking the pram backwards and forwards to get you to sleep. We got talking, she said she was waiting for a friend. I don’t think she was – a friend would have called at the house. My guess was that she was lonely. It can’t be much fun being on your own with a young baby.’

  ‘So did she say where my father was? Why she was on her own?’

  ‘She said she’d made the mistake of having an affair with a married man up in Scotland. She’d left there because she didn’t want people knowing her business. And anyway, the tenant she’d had in her studio had finally left, so she could move back in.’

  ‘OK.’ Eva thought that sounded plausible. ‘So how long after that did you move into Pottery Lane with her?’

  ‘A couple of weeks or so later. I was paying rent at my friend’s place, but I was spending most of my time with Flora, and it made more sense to help her financially.’

  ‘What did she tell you about my father?’

  ‘Nothing much. It was a brief fling and afterwards she found out she was pregnant.’

  ‘A name?’

  ‘If she did tell me, I don’t recall. Surely even you remember how little your mother talked about her past?’

  Eva didn’t like his scathing tone, but she let that go. ‘But if she’d had me all alone, I can’t believe she didn’t ever talk about that time. Was she coping when you met her? Did she seem calm and serene? What?’

  ‘She was very untidy, stuff everywhere, and she said it had been hard at first. By the time I met her she’d got you in a routine and you were a placid baby. Not that I knew anything about babies back then. But I don’t remember you being any trouble. You were always out in the pram in the garden with her. Anyway, I was out at work during the day.’

  ‘If she had a home birth there would’ve been a midwife,’ Phil said. ‘And don’t health visitors come, and all that?’

  ‘That was all over by the time I came on the scene.’ Andrew shot Phil a look that implied he didn’t expect to be questioned by him.

  ‘But surely she spoke about the birth?’ Eva asked. ‘Women do – if not to you, then to her girlfriends.’

  ‘She made the odd reference to it being an ordeal, but nothing specific,’ he said. ‘As for girlfriends, there was only really that woman Lauren, who came to the funeral. And she didn’t turn up until you were four or five months old. Flora wasn’t one for girlfriends.’

  ‘So you haven’t got any proof that she actually gave birth to me?’ Eva said, trying to push him and get a reaction.

  ‘Have you got any proof that she didn’t?’ he retorted, and his eyes flashed with anger. ‘Why on earth would you want to think otherwise, Eva? Is this your Cinderella complex again? You always did like to make out you were the one
no one cared about. Are you so desperate for attention that you like to think you were snatched by a maniac?’

  That stung, but Andrew had always been one for cutting remarks.

  ‘Now you are being ridiculous,’ she retorted. ‘You started this, remember, by telling me you weren’t my father. All I wanted was to find out who my real dad was. But as it happened, Mum left diaries, baby clothes, my birth certificate and other things at Pottery Lane, and I believe she left them there for me to find.’

  ‘Flora was one of the most disorganized women I’ve ever met. If she left things there, it was just because she forgot them – not for anyone, and especially not you.’

  ‘OK then, so why did she take her life on the very day that baby in Carlisle would have been twenty-one?’

  ‘Pure coincidence,’ he snapped. ‘Really, Eva! Have you based this whole ridiculous idea on something as flimsy as that? You want your head examined.’

  ‘I hope it is pure coincidence,’ Eva retorted. ‘As I said, I was hoping you’d be able to tell me something which would convince me it was just that. I don’t need my head examined at all. I could easily get the proof I need by requesting a simple blood test. But it would be far better for all concerned if I didn’t have to go down that road, as it involves talking to the police.’

  Andrew’s body language changed immediately. He dropped his eyes from hers, rubbed his hands on his thighs and looked nervous.

  ‘I shouldn’t have told you I wasn’t your real father the way I did. I’m sorry for that,’ he said, and his voice was no longer strident. ‘But your mother hurt me badly and I was lashing out. You were old enough when Ben and Sophie were born to remember what a good mother she was. Can you possibly imagine her stealing another woman’s baby?’