by Stella Duffy
“I don’t think so.”
“Why not?”
Saz frowned, “It’s not that I don’t want to help, Patrick. I’m just not sure I’m the best person to get to do the job.”
“I’ve contacted Social Services. I’ve got an adoption counsellor, but the whole bloody thing takes forever.”
“There are loads of private agencies who do this sort of thing too. Who specialize in it.”
“Yeah, and they’re all full of strangers who have more to gain from knowing my secrets than from passing those secrets on to me.”
“You could say the same about me.”
“I could. But you’re doing this to help your friend. Who you’re having a baby with. Some poof and his boyfriend that you and your girlfriend are having a baby with. Now, correct me if I’m wrong, but there’s a good chance you know a little more about the necessity for discretion than most?”
“Yeah.”
“And I’ll pay well.”
“Yeah?”
“And believe me, babies are bloody expensive.”
“So I’ve heard. Look, can I just ask something?”
“What?”
“You said you were looking through things from your father’s solicitor, right?”
Patrick nodded confirmation.
“What was the solicitor’s name?”
“Richard Leyton.”
“Fantastic!”
“What?”
“Leyton was the Marquands’ solicitor. He’s in this photo.”
Patrick shook his head. “Damn sight younger there.”
“Well, anyway, maybe your parents weren’t great mates with them, but they shared a solicitor, who had something to do with Chris’s adoption. Perhaps Richard Leyton had something to do with yours too.”
“I know he did. That’s how I found out about the different birth dates. In with my father’s things, there was a letter from Leyton. I didn’t really understand what he was on about, but he gave a different birth date for me than the one I’d grown up believing. I’d been meaning to check it against my birth certificate, but I hadn’t got round to it yet. And now you’ve done it for me.”
“God, it must be weird to think you don’t know for definite when your birthday is.”
“It gets worse. The main part of the letter is actually an invoice to my father demanding payment.”
“For arranging the adoption?”
“No. That was a different fee, the one Leyton put through his company’s books. I’d already found that bit. This other letter was on Leyton’s private notepaper. This was about the actual fee for buying the baby.”
“I’m sorry Patrick, I don’t understand.”
“My parents paid for me. Gave Leyton money, not merely for arranging the adoption, but also to actually buy me.”
“Bloody hell.”
“Yeah. Really.”
TEN
Patrick left Saz’s flat only after she had agreed to travel down to his father’s house in Sussex with him the following day. She then called both Chris and Molly to give them an update of her news. Molly was delighted she’d met Patrick Sweeney, furious when she heard that he’d physically removed her from his restaurant, and intrigued when Saz told her about the solicitor connection. She was also more than a little miffed that not only had Saz had her lunch made for her today, but also that she would most likely be getting dinner tomorrow and breakfast the day after.
“Bring me back a doggy bag. Or better still, make best friends with him and get him to cook for us.”
Saz, knowing Molly wouldn’t have been quite so impressed by the celebrity had she been at home when he was beating down their back door, suggested they leave the best friend thing for a bit – “At least until I’ve spent a night with him, babe.”
Chris was equally excited about Saz’s day, though not at all concerned about the state of her bruised knees. He was rather more upset that Saz had almost blown her chances with her too blatant questioning.
“Yeah, I know, Chris, I took a chance. But it was all right in the end, I am going to get to take a look at his father’s things.”
“Right, and at least he trusts you now and there must be some connection, with the photo and now the same solicitor.”
Saz had decided not to tell Chris about Patrick’s revelation of baby-buying, at least not until she’d seen Leyton’s letters herself. While Chris had a very good relationship with his mother, she wasn’t sure it would withstand that sort of allegation.
“Yeah, maybe. Just don’t get too excited yet. We’ve still got a long way to go. I’ll call you as soon as I get back.”
“Or if you find anything juicy.”
“Of course.”
They hung up, Chris hopeful and Saz worried.
Saz left home the next afternoon both excited and nervous. While she was pleased to be getting on with the job – both jobs – she was also a little uncertain about spending the next twenty-four hours in the company of a man she barely knew, who only a day before had bodily removed her from his presence. This was a client she’d need to be especially careful with. Patrick filled in the first part of their journey with a detailed account of what was happening with the investigation through the traditional channels. What was happening was almost nothing.
“The thing is, they don’t really have anything to go on. Apparently it’s really unusual to get to my age and not know. Or rather to be my age and never to have been encouraged to find out by your parents. Keeping it all a big secret is what they did in the bad old days. Not in the enlightened ’60s.”
“Your parents were hardly children of the ’60s.”
“Clearly not.”
Patrick’s disapproval of his parents’ actions translated itself to a tighter grip on the steering wheel and his right foot pushed down ten miles an hour faster on the accelerator.
Saz tried another question to distract him. “So if you didn’t know there was a different date on your birth certificate, how have you managed without it so far?”
“My father sorted out my first passport when I was sixteen, that’s the only thing I would ever have needed it for. And however he did it, money and connections no doubt, it does give the date I’d always believed, the 30th of August. They opened my bank accounts for me when I was little, put various things in my name that I took over when I was sixteen, or eighteen, whatever – just like most kids, I guess.”
“Most rich kids.”
“That’s what I am,” Patrick retorted. “I’m not prepared to go into the story of being a self-made man again. I get enough of that sort of shit from the press.”
“I’m sorry. Taking the piss out of the rich is a reflex reaction.” It was only half an apology, but it was the best Saz could manage.
“Well, anyway, it meant that by the time I needed to do anything for myself, I already had a whole selection of other legal documents to prove the birth date I believed in. And there’s really not an awful lot you need your birth certificate for. Not having it to look at wasn’t something I questioned. It may be that rich kids get more things done for them, but I don’t imagine even you knew all the finer points of your legal details when you were sixteen.”
Saz shook her head. “I knew nothing when I was sixteen, except that I hated my parents, hated my sister, would die if I didn’t move to London within the next week. And that no one was ever going to understand me. Or love me.”
“What changed?”
“I moved to London. But no, you’re right, the legal stuff only begins to matter later. So what about your wedding?”
“Las Vegas. Passport.”
“No, I meant your first wedding.”
“Las Vegas. Passport.”
“Both weddings were in Las Vegas?”
“It’s quick and easy. And kind of romantic.”
“And you didn’t need your birth certificate.”
“As luck would have it.”
“Or fate.”
“Same thing, aren’t they?
”
“Only if you’re naturally lucky.”
Saz imagined that until just recently, naturally lucky was exactly how Patrick had seen himself.
“And you didn’t need your birth certificate when you changed your name?”
“It’s not a legal thing. I’m just known as Patrick Sweeney. Patrick Freeman trading as Patrick Sweeney. I didn’t change it by deed poll or anything. It’s just for business.” Patrick shook his head, “Shame really, if I’d have made it a legal change, I probably would have had to prove who I was, I would have needed to check the records ages ago, when my father was still alive. I could have asked him about it.”
“Yeah. It is a pity. Tell me again about the letters.”
“I’ll show you when we get to the house. The first one is just a legal letter from Leyton confirming the adoption had gone through, and asking for the arranging fee. It doesn’t say who I was adopted from or where or anything else. Adds that I would now be the son and heir to the Freeman family empire. Or I would once I was old enough. And that’s it. All I have to go on. Other than the second letter which tells me they paid the vast sum of five grand for me.”
“Not cheap then.”
“No. Not cheap.”
Patrick heaved a sigh of relief as the irritatingly slow oldman driver in front of him finally turned off and he was able to drive once again at his preferred speed of just under a hundred miles an hour. In a car that made the speed feel like gliding across just-cleaned ice, even on a winding country road. He continued with his story and Saz quietly checked that her seatbelt was securely fastened.
“Leyton dealt with all of my father’s matters – family, business, the lot – none of that modern delegating rubbish for him. His daughter Georgina was one of the partners and she sent everything on to my father when her father died. Which is why all those papers are in such a mess, he just never got round to sorting it himself.”
Saz wondered how well Patrick knew Georgina and decided that for the moment she would keep quiet about their unhelpful meeting.
“Why didn’t your father take her on as his solicitor?”
“He didn’t want to. My father was bloody old-fashioned too.”
“Didn’t want a girl?”
“Well, that is what I used to believe, but now I think that maybe it was actually more than that. Perhaps he didn’t want Georgina looking through this lot, finding out that her father was involved in selling a baby, and the only way he could make sure she wouldn’t be able to was to get the papers back himself. Very considerate of him.”
“How well do you know her?”
“Our fathers did business together, our families occasionally met, you know the sort of thing.”
Saz didn’t, but didn’t want to tempt Patrick’s temper with another explanation of their difference in upbringing. “So all the private papers were sent on to your father’s house?”
“I think so. But I honestly couldn’t say anything for definite. Once I’d found that letter about the money I was a bit gobsmacked really. Katy made me call Social Services, I got myself landed with an adoption counsellor – which was absolutely not what I wanted – and they started on what would appear to be their very slow and inept process of getting to the truth.”
“It’s only been a month, Patrick.”
“I know that, and well-meaning Lucy, the irritating social worker girlie who’s supposedly helping me through this awful trauma, was at great pains to tell me it may take years.”
“Have you told her about the baby buying?”
“Hell no. I’ve told her as little as possible.”
“You don’t like her?”
“I don’t like being patronised by a twenty-two-year-old just out of college, who’s done a couple of modules on dealing with something like this, and wouldn’t yet know a real emotion if it hit her over the head.”
“Just because she’s young?”
Patrick snarled, “No. Just because she’s stupid. I don’t need counselling, I need action. And I’m not prepared for it to take years. I want to know now. I kept quiet for thirty-nine years, to please my parents. Now I want to please me. I need to know who else I am as well as Patrick Freeman. Sweeney. Whatever. And I’m fucked if I’m going to wait another forty years to find out the rest of the story.”
“I don’t imagine it’ll take that long,” Saz said with more certainty than she really felt. “We’ll see what we find when we look through everything else. There’s bound to be something.”
They sat in silence for the next ten minutes, Saz craning her neck over hedgerows to the fields beyond, until Patrick announced they had arrived. He slowed the car and turned on to the steep driveway leading up to his family home. Saz looked at the long, squat stone and glass building ahead, hoping for Patrick’s sake that the rest of the truth was something his father had not yet managed to tidy away. And that just maybe she’d find something for Chris – and therefore herself – at the same time.
ELEVEN
Saz was stunned when Patrick ushered her into his father’s office.
“Good God! What is this? You’ve been burgled recently?”
Patrick shook his head and had the decency to look slightly embarrassed, “No burglary. I got a bit annoyed when I found the letter about the money.”
“Yeah well, between this and the state of my knees, remind me never to get you a lot annoyed.”
Saz surveyed the damage before her. Piles of papers lay across the tops of the cabinets, their shades of clean white to brittle yellow indicating the timespan they covered. Some of the file drawers were fully open, musty papers spilling out of the old dark wood, other drawers were half closed, old files jammed haphazardly back in. The floor too was covered in a late autumn scattering of Sir Gerald Freeman’s life.
Saz grimaced and kicked over a few pages, “No stone unturned, then?”
“I found the letter and I kind of just …”
“Went off your face? Trashed the room?” Saz was clearly unimpressed.
Patrick offered an alternative to further explanation, “How about I go and make us some supper?”
Saz turned her frown from the papers on the floor to his would-be innocent face, “And leave me to sort this lot by myself?”
“Well, I left a few provisions down here on my last visit. And there’s a fresh salmon in the boot. So if you’d rather whip us up a quick salmon on puy lentils, fresh basil mayonnaise for the couscous and roast pepper starter … perhaps a dessert of early raspberries and a little salted butter shortcake …?”
“You’ve got all that in the car?”
“No. I’ve got the fish in the car. Most of that little lot grows quite happily in the garden and the rest lives in the pantry. It’s what we call ingredients in my trade.”
“It’s what we call showing off in mine.”
“Well, if you want to get on with supper and leave me to tackle this, I’m perfectly happy to swap jobs for a bit?”
Saz, whose idea of a gourmet meal was anything cooked by Molly and rarely enhanced by the touch of her own fairhands, shook her head, “No really, it’s fine. Puy lentils are hardly my forte. And anyway, I’d much rather stay here. Honest. Bastard.”
Patrick held back on his smug grin until he’d closed the door behind him.
Saz settled down to work, reminding herself that calling the client a bastard possibly wasn’t the best of business practice. Within ten minutes she decided she’d let him off lightly. Gerald Freeman may well have considered his self-designed home the cutting edge of British architecture in 1972, but it was sadly clear he hadn’t bothered to apply any modernist criteria to his office. Not only had Patrick’s father failed to use anything as prosaic as either a chronological or an alphabetical filing system for the huge wooden cabinets housing his records, what little order there was had been comprehensively destroyed on Patrick’s first foray into his dead father’s realm.
Two hours later dinner was nearly ready and Saz was feeling slightly happier
than when she’d first walked into the office. All of the files that had not been thrown to the floor in Patrick’s rage were now put away as tidily as possible in the cabinets, if not in alphabetical and chronological order, then at least facing front and right way up. With the drawers closed, Saz had eventually been able to start sifting through the papers on the floor without smashing her head on an elegant walnut corner every time she raised an eyebrow. The papers that had swamped the intricacies of the purple and red carpet were now laid out in four piles on Sir Gerald’s writing table. The first and by far the largest was the selection dating from as early as 1895 (the deeds to Sir Gerald’s grandfather’s home in Scotland), up to and including 1954. Saz figured she was fairly safe to assume there would be little reference to Patrick over five years before his birth. The next pile covered that four-year period until January 1959. The smallest of the four piles were the six pages from 1959, and then the second largest sheaf of papers dated from 1960 until Sir Gerald’s death.
She explained her method to Patrick. “Of course I haven’t started on the cabinets yet, so there’s probably loads more for the year or so we’re really interested in, but at least now we can walk to the files instead of skating over a sea of your family history.”
Patrick nodded absently, his attention taken by the papers from his birth year. “Yeah, good job, and this stuff? Anything here?”
“Sorry. But it is early days. There’s a whole Amazonian rainforest of drawers to go through yet. You are looking at a mere six sheets of paper.”
“What do they say?”
“Well, this one says that your father sold twenty-five acres of the Scottish property in late 1958. Or rather, he tried to get the deal done in ’58, it finally went through in February ’59.”
“That’ll be the golf course.”
“Good. We can put that in the sorted pile. Then in May 1959, your father tried to buy a property in France.”
“They didn’t get it?”
“Not from what I can see so far. Your father was supposed to visit the place in June, and then again in July. He never made it. Apparently your mother was ‘indisposed’ and he stayed in England all year.”