by Lynda Page
Cait found her voice then. ‘That woman you have just described is definitely not my mother. She is a very good-looking woman, true, but definitely hasn’t got the personality you have just described. You’re mixing her up with someone else.’
He told her gently, ‘I’m not, Cait. Your mother and the woman I married are definitely one and the same. I couldn’t fault Nerys for the way she cared for me and my daughter, looked after the house, always made herself look nice for me, was the perfect hostess to our guests. I had loved my first wife, too. Julia was a wonderful woman, soft and gentle, and made me feel safe when I was with her. But Nerys made me feel . . . alive. I was constantly pinching myself, to check that I wasn’t in a dream. I was to find out, though, that she wasn’t really interested in me at all. It was an act she put on to fool me. What she was interested in was getting her hands on all I owned. My business, house, and what money I then had in the bank.
‘Just over three months after we married, I found myself in prison serving a fifteen-year sentence for a crime I hadn’t committed, but with no evidence to prove otherwise. Nerys had become the legal owner of all my worldly goods before I realised she was the only one who could have plotted and carried out the plan to frame me. By then there was nothing I could do about it. I’d signed everything over to her. The only thing that kept me going was the fact that she had promised to raise my daughter by my first wife as her own, and as she had always seemed to dote on her, treating Lucy just like she was her baby, despite the lies she’d told me, I believed she was sincere about that. But I now know she was lying and have no idea where my daughter is or where to start looking for her. The only person who could give me this information is Nerys herself, but for a long time I had no idea where she lived or even what she was calling herself now.
‘It was Jan’s . . .’ he paused and smiled warmly at her before continuing ‘. . . idea for me to get a job at Rose’s. I have such a lot to thank this kind lady for. When I met her, I was in a sorry state. I’d been living rough for years because I couldn’t get a decent job with my criminal record. Jan took pity on me and gave me the opportunity to get myself cleaned up, put a roof over my head . . . everything I needed, in fact, to start building a better life for myself than the hard one I’d been living. Her idea seemed the best way for me to find out where Nerys lived, so that I could go there and be reunited with my daughter again.
‘As Nerys was the owner of the business, there had to be times she would visit it, to check that all was well and deal with important issues. My intention was to keep my ears open, find out when she was on the premises then go and confront her, demand that she let me see my daughter again. Jan took a job with Rose’s too as we thought two people working together, trying to get the information I needed, had more chance of succeeding than just one.
‘Then, of course, the first day we started working at Rose’s we discovered Mr Swinton had died, and rumour had it that Mrs Thomas was abroad and her daughter was going to be deputising for her until she came back. I was sorry about Reg Swinton’s death, but I cannot tell you what hearing the other news meant to me. My daughter was going to be in the same building as I was, and all I could think of was trying to find an excuse to be up on the second floor, waiting to catch a glimpse of her face. Jan and I thought it best to plan carefully how I was going to approach her with the news that I was her father. At that time I did not have any idea whether Nerys had married again or was just calling herself Mrs Thomas. But the opportunity for me to visit the second floor never came until I saw my chance during the union meeting, while the vote on taking industrial action was being counted.’
Cait spoke up then, her voice thick with emotion. ‘I can’t imagine how disappointed you must have been to find it wasn’t your daughter after all, only me. Or before that, believing I was her and seeing the way I was behaving.’
Neither Glen nor Jan responded.
Cait got up and walked silently across to the window to tweak the shabby curtain aside and stare out into the grim, gas-lit street. She was lost in her thoughts. After a moment, she let the curtain fall back into place, turned around and asked, ‘This isn’t just a story you’re telling to fob me off, is it? You’ve not made it up to put me off the scent when really you are planning . . .’
Glen interjected, ‘Oh, Cait, I’d have to be a very cruel man indeed to tell you such elaborate lies just to provide myself with a cover story. No, every word I have told you is the truth.’
Deep down Cait had known it, but it was all too shocking for her to take in immediately. She silently resumed her seat and stared sorrowfully at him. ‘I can’t believe that my own mother could be so selfish and cruel as to live happily on what she stole from you, knowing you were rotting away in prison for something you hadn’t done. Or that she was in fact responsible for a poor man being half killed when he tried to stop his van being hijacked.
‘I asked my mother when I was younger how we lived as neither she nor my father worked, and she told me . . . she actually told me that it was none of my business, but that the money came from a sizeable inheritance she’d had left her.
‘I feel so guilty now I know the truth about where that money really came from! I’ve been living on your money too, Glen. It paid for the house I lived in, the food I ate, the clothes I wore . . . everything, in fact, until I started to contribute just a little towards my keep once I was working. She’s my mother and I feel in some way responsible for what she did to you. I feel I should try and make it up to you somehow, but I don’t even know how to start.’
Jan reassured her, ‘Whatever your mother did, there’s no need for you to feel either responsible or guilty.’
‘Jan’s right,’ Glen confirmed.
‘But it’s not fair that you’ve been forced to live so harshly while my mother and father want for nothing. There must be a way you can get her to restore what’s rightly yours?’
‘It isn’t rightly mine any more, Cait. I signed it all over to your mother, without being compelled to. I’ve already come to terms with that. I’m just grateful that I finally have a roof over my head, Jan’s good food in my stomach, and a job so I can pay my way. All I want back from Nerys is my daughter.’
Jan was looking at Cait closely. By now she would have expected the girl to be sobbing her heart out on finding out that her beloved mother wasn’t at all the woman she had believed her to be. Instead, any emotions she was feeling were being kept to herself. That didn’t seem right to Jan.
Cait was silent for a moment, deep in thought, before she fixed grief-stricken eyes on Glen and Jan. The emotional pain she was feeling was etched on her face as she told them, ‘The woman you described . . . the warm, caring, vivacious, funny woman . . . I’ve never seen her at all. Well, yes, I have – but only when she’s with my father. She dotes on him, fusses over him like he’s a little boy she has to protect, will drop anything she is doing if he needs her for the slightest thing. She’s never been like that with me. She won’t allow me to get close to her . . . never allows anyone else but him to get close to her. Should anyone even try to be friendly with her, she puts them firmly in their place and lets them know they are wasting their time. I know she doesn’t love me. My father doesn’t either. I’ve tried to rack my brains and understand why, but all I can come up with is the belief that they love only each other and don’t have any left over for me. Like you have, Glen, I’ve come to terms with the fact that she doesn’t have any feelings for me.’
Now Jan understood. Cait had never been shown any love by her parents, wasn’t used to receiving it so didn’t expect it automatically to be given her by others. It was Jan’s guess that if she’d ever had a boyfriend and he’d shown her affection, then she would have wanted it to be shown constantly in an attempt to make up for what she didn’t receive elsewhere. There were not many men who could stand to be with an emotionally needy woman for very long. This was why her fiancé had called off their wedding. She now understood why Cait had behaved the way she had,
until Glen had put the fear of God in her and she had changed her habits. She had seen the way her mother treated others and consequently believed that was how she should behave too. Jan could never understand why some women couldn’t love their children, but she had seen examples of it before. She’d had a neighbour once who’d had five children she openly adored, except for her middle child. When she had been born, she’d been such an attractive baby, very content, never causing her mother a sleepless night, but for no particular reason her neighbour’s motherly feelings had never materialised. She supposed this state of affairs was what had happened with Nerys and Cait.
The girl had lapsed into silence again and Jan thought she’d go and make them all a cup of tea, something she could do now as she had bought another two cups and saucers on receiving her first full pay packet on Christmas Eve. She could most certainly do with a cup herself after all this, but before she could get up Cait was saying, ‘There is something I can do to try and make up for what my mother did to you. I can’t get your business back for you, or the house she took, or any money . . . but I could try and help you find your daughter. Lucy, that’s her name, isn’t it? I realise now why you called me that in my office when you found me there. It’s a lovely name, pretty. But I’ve been thinking that if my mother had her adopted or put in an orphanage, she would have had to sign a legal document or something, wouldn’t she?’
Glen’s mind was racing. ‘Yes, she would have.’
Jan excitedly piped up, ‘And hopefully Nerys would have kept a copy. If we can find that it might give us a lead to follow.’
‘That’s what I was thinking,’ said Cait. Then she mused, ‘But I never found anything like that, any personal papers at all, when I had a rummage around in her bedroom . . . not even in the safe. I would have thought that’s where she would keep such private things.’
She then felt a need to explain why she had been searching through her parents’ personal belongings. ‘You see, they never talk about their past at all . . . only told me they were both orphaned. I was intrigued to find out where I came from and thought that maybe there would be some old photographs of my grandparents, so I could at least see what they looked like. That’s why I was having a good look around but, as I said, I found nothing. Well, except for my own birth certificate on a shelf in the safe and a small box with some mementoes that my mother had kept from when I was a tiny baby. Or perhaps they’d belonged to her, considering how she felt about me.’ She decided not to mention the money she had helped herself to. She had just accused innocent people of being thieves and now she was realising that she herself was. ‘So where the likes of my parents’ marriage certificate and other personal documents are kept, I have no idea. Have you?’ she asked them both.
‘Most women I know, including myself, keep all our personal stuff in a box or handbag in the wardrobe. Your mother obviously isn’t like the rest of us as you never found anything like that when you had a search around,’ Jan mused.
When Cait had talked about the safe she had discovered, locked in a cupboard in her mother’s bedroom, Glen had immediately known that this had to be the one he had inherited from his father in which he had kept his personal papers. Glen had followed suit. He said to Cait, ‘And there was definitely nothing else in the safe besides what you found on the shelf? There was nothing in the drawer, for instance?’
She looked at him, frowning. ‘What drawer?’
‘The one in the safe.’
‘I never saw a drawer in the safe. In the bottom half it was just a block of metal. My birth certificate and the box of baby things were on top of that.’
Glen’s eyes lit up. ‘So you didn’t check the drawer then?’
‘I told you, there isn’t a drawer in that safe.’
‘Yes, there is, Cait. That solid block of metal you described, well, that’s the drawer. You push the front and it springs out.’
She exclaimed, ‘Oh! In that case, I could still find some photographs or information about my ancestors. And, more importantly, information that could lead you to your daughter. Hopefully my mother did keep the adoption paperwork!’ She jumped up from her chair. ‘Come on,’ she urged them both. ‘Let’s go and find out. There’s a taxi office on the main road. Hopefully they’ll have a car available and we can be looking in that safe in half an hour. Then tomorrow, all being well, you’ll be on the way to being reunited with your daughter.’
CHAPTER THIRTY
Glen and Jan were anxiously waiting while Cait searched the safe drawer.
She had gone through the procedures of getting both the key to the cupboard and the safe key itself from where her mother had hidden them, and then opened them both. From where she was kneeling on the floor she took a moment to flash a look over at Glen and Jan as if to say, well, here goes, then pushed her hand against the front of what she had thought to be a solid metal base. A metal drawer shot out to reveal its contents.
Glen and Jan meanwhile had been holding their breath, praying that the drawer contained what they had come for. From their position neither of them could see anything. Unable to contain herself, Jan blurted out, ‘Does it hold anything, Cait, or is it empty after all?’ Her mind was screaming, Please, please, say there is something. No more than Glen’s was, though.
Cait put them out of their agony by nodding and telling them, ‘Yes, there is a pile of papers here. Let’s just hope that amongst them is something to do with Lucy.’ She put her hand into the drawer and lifted out a sheaf of papers and began to search through them. On top of the pile was a thick document, the official lettering on the front page informing Cait it was the one Glen had signed, mistakenly believing it to be a power of attorney. Cait replaced that in the safe drawer. She then found the deeds to the house in the names of Samuel and Nerys Thomas, and put them back in the drawer too. The document below that concerned the car. Now there were only three pieces of paper left. She scanned the top one and her face screwed up in utter bewilderment.
‘Oh!’ she exclaimed.
Both Glen and Jan urgently asked, ‘What have you found, Cait?’
She shook her head. ‘But it doesn’t make sense . . . It’s a death certificate.’
Jan clasped her hand to her mouth in shock.
Glen froze as a vice-like pain squeezed his heart. He uttered, ‘My daughter is dead? Oh, no, please don’t let that be . . .’
Cait shook her head. ‘No, Glen, she isn’t.’
They both gasped in relief to hear this. ‘So who is the death certificate for then, Cait?’
She looked across at them both in utter confusion. ‘Me,’ she told them.
They looked back at her in surprise. It wasn’t possible for her to be holding a death certificate in her own name when she was still very much alive!
Before any of them could fathom how this state of affairs had come about there was the sound of the bedroom door opening and, to their horror, they saw Nerys walk in.
At the shock of seeing her, Cait let out a gasp of fright.
In the process of taking off her stylish coat to hang it in the wardrobe, Nerys swung round to see Cait down on her haunches by the open cupboard, the door of the safe wide open too.
Throwing her coat on to the bed, Nerys furiously exclaimed, ‘What are you doing in here? You’re not even supposed to be living here any more and you know this room is forbidden to you without my permission.’ She then noticed the sheets of paper Cait was holding and her look of anger turned to one of panic. She demanded, ‘Give me those. Now! NOW!’ she screamed frenziedly as she started to head towards the cowering girl. Then she froze in her tracks when a male voice told her in commanding tones, ‘Leave her be, Nerys. She’s helping me.’
She swung round in surprise to see two strangers standing across the other side of the room. ‘And just who the hell are you?’ she demanded. ‘And what is Caitlyn helping you with?’
Glen took several steps forward so she could see him better and said, ‘You don’t recognise the man you married and
then framed for a crime he didn’t commit?’
Nerys frowned, studying his face, before mouthing, ‘Glen!’
He said sardonically, ‘At least you remember my name.’
‘Why are you here? What is it you want?’ Then she thought she knew, and smirked. ‘Oh, if you think . . .’
Glen finished for her. ‘That you’ll hand me back what you took from me?’ He gave a sardonic laugh. ‘You went to a lot of trouble to take if off me and make sure there was nothing I could do about it, so I’m not stupid enough to believe you’ll surrender a penny. I have to take my hat off to you. It was a clever plan you came up with, to give yourself a comfortable life without having to work for it . . . with no thought whatsoever for the others you destroyed in the process.’
‘So why are you here?’ she snapped nastily.
‘To find out what you have done with my daughter. Show me you have at least a shred of decency, Nerys, and tell me where I can find her, so I can get her back with me, where she belongs.’
She vehemently insisted, ‘If she gives me those papers back, right now, then I will tell you.’ She looked over at Cait, eyes fixed on the pieces of paper she had not as yet inspected.
A puzzled Cait couldn’t understand why her mother was so desperate to get her hands on them. Her brain whirled into action. They had to hold information that Nerys was terrified of anyone finding out.
She made to look at them but was stopped by a frenzied cry from her mother. ‘Don’t you dare read those! They are my private papers. Give them to me NOW.’
Just then a voice was heard calling weakly from downstairs, ‘Nerys . . . Nerys, I need you, darling.’
At her husband’s summons she pushed Glen out of the way so she could call back down the stairs. The voice that only moments ago had been harsh and nasty had become tender and caring. ‘I won’t be long, darling. I’m just . . . seeing to something. Make yourself comfortable by the fire and I’ll be down in a minute.’ Then she spun back again and told her audience, ‘My husband needs me. Now get out, all of you, before I have the police called. And you,’ she wagged a warning finger at Cait, ‘give me those papers back before you leave.’ She marched across, hand outstretched to snatch them from the girl.