And then, suddenly, she stops. A story has caught her eye.
BABY SNATCHED FROM LOCAL HOSPITAL
Georgie shuts her eyes and grips the edge of the table to stop herself falling off her chair as the walls of the library seem to close in on her. She already knows what’s coming next, but she’s still not sure she can bear to read it. She forces her eyes open and carries on.
A newborn baby girl was snatched from Norwich maternity hospital last night.
The baby, who had only that morning been named Louisa by her distraught mother, Kimberley Foster, was taken from her crib at the end of her mother’s bed in the Norfolk and Norwich maternity hospital between the hours of 1630 and 1700 yesterday afternoon. Her other child, twin Samuel, was left alone in his cot.
Ms Foster, 17, of Colindale Avenue, Sprowston, was too distraught to tell us any more, and is being consoled at home by her mother, Margaret. But Pamela Newsome, another new mother on the same ward, said: ‘This is every mother’s worst nightmare. I can’t believe this has been allowed to happen, and I can’t believe that nobody saw anything. Kim has to get her baby back.’
Police are calling for any witnesses, or anyone who has any suspicions of who the perpetrator may be to call the number below or call into Norwich police station.
The date is 25 November 1979. Two days after her birthday. She stares at the picture accompanying the story. It’s dark and grainy but the eyes of the young woman staring at the camera are filled with so much pain Georgie can hardly bear to look at her.
Her hands resting on the table are shaking, her whole body is trembling as she tries to absorb the information, to pin down the facts of the story she’s just read and process what they could mean. What they could mean to her.
A sense of dread creeps up her spine and she scrolls quickly through to the newspaper for the following day. Her eyes scan wildly back and forth as her heart thump-thump-thumps against her ribcage and blood rushes to her head. She feels sick but she needs to find out what happened. She keeps scrolling but there’s nothing, nothing, nothing. Then, finally, there it is. Two days later, an update.
NO NEW LEADS ON MISSING LOUISA
A region-wide search for a baby girl snatched from Norfolk and Norwich maternity hospital three days ago has so far led nowhere.
Police have conducted a thorough search of the hospital grounds and the surrounding area for baby Louisa, who was taken from her hospital crib last Wednesday, 24 November, but have so far found no leads.
Baby Foster was taken from her hospital crib on Wednesday afternoon just hours after being born at the hospital. Her twin brother Samuel was still in his cot when their mother Kimberley returned to her room.
Although police are still conducting their investigation, it appears that nobody from the maternity ward noticed anything unusual, and there were no witnesses.
Chief Inspector Henderson from Norwich City Police said: ‘We are asking anyone with any information to come forward. We must find this little girl and return her to her family as soon as possible.’
There’s a roaring sound in her ears and Georgie glances round, wondering if it’s obvious to anyone else how sick she feels. Whether anyone else can tell that, at any minute, when she’s properly processed what she’s just read, her whole world will be tipped on its axis. That she won’t be the same person that walked in through those sliding doors when she walks out again.
She sends the cutting to the printer, then scrolls back and does the same with the first one. She’s going to need time to read these again, to absorb the details, to make sure she hasn’t made any mistakes. She stands and hurries to the printer and snatches them off the moment they come through before anyone else sees them, then walks back to the table and puts them next to her, face down. Her heart thumps wildly as she scrolls on and finds the next story, a week after the snatch.
POLICE HAVE NEW LEAD ON SNATCHED BABY
Police are following a new lead in their search for a baby snatched from her cot at Norfolk and Norwich maternity hospital last week.
The baby’s father has been questioned and cleared, but police say they are looking for another member of his family for questioning. No other evidence has come forward. If anyone has any further information please contact Norwich police station immediately.
And then this one, from the following January:
POLICE REFUSE TO GIVE UP HOPE IN SEARCH FOR BABY FOSTER
Baby Louisa Foster, who was snatched from hospital in Norwich in November last year just 24 hours after she was born, has still not been found, but police are refusing to give up hope in their search.
And later, this:
POLICE HAVE NO LEADS ON BABY FOSTER
Police have admitted they have no new leads on the baby Foster snatching.
Louisa Foster, who was taken from her hospital bed in Norwich and Norfolk maternity hospital in November last year, was believed to have been abducted by her aunt, Sheila Thomson, 22, the sister of Barry Thomson, the twins’ estranged father.
But following an investigation the police have admitted they have no evidence against Miss Thomson.
Baby Foster and her brother, Samuel, who is still with his mother Kimberley and her mother Margaret at their home in Colindale Avenue, Sprowston, were the result of a brief relationship between Ms Foster and Mr Thomson. Mr Thomson, 18, has had nothing to do with the family since the babies’ birth. However, he did cooperate with police during the investigation.
Mr Thomson said: ‘My sister has had some troubles recently including losing a baby of her own and police were worried she might have been involved. But I knew she would never have done anything like this and just wanted to help prove her innocence. I hope baby Louisa is found soon.’
Georgie makes fists with her hands and presses them to her temples. She feels faint, her breath coming in such short bursts she’s almost panting as the words on the microfiche machine swim in front of her eyes.
The names she’s just read fill her mind until there’s no room for anything else. Kimberley Foster. Louisa Foster. Twin Samuel. Sprowston. Baby’s father, Thomson.
Baby snatched.
Snatched.
Snatched.
Snatched.
She shakes her head as though to dislodge the word, which is stuck on a loop like a needle stuck on a record, playing over and over and over.
A baby was snatched from the same hospital she was born in, at least the one she was born in according to her mother. But there was no record of anyone called Georgie Rae Wood being born there that day. Or anywhere else.
But there was a record of a baby called Louisa Foster.
And that baby was taken from the same hospital the very next day.
The facts swim round her mind, floating like torn pieces of paper, each one containing a different name, a different piece of information. All she needs to do is fit them together, like a jigsaw, and she’ll have the answer.
Except she already knows what she’s found. The trouble is, she just doesn’t want it to be true. She so doesn’t want it to be true.
Yet what other explanation could there be?
She is Louisa Foster. Kimberley Foster’s daughter. And her mother took her from the hospital, the day after she was born.
She knows it has to be true.
She just needs to know why.
Minutes have passed and Georgie is still sitting here, numb. The quiet of the library hums around her head like flies. How can silence be so distracting?
She knows she has to move, to do something. Mechanically, she winds the film back, replaces it in its case and walks stiffly to return it to its rightful place in the drawer. How long will it be until someone else takes that film out of the drawer and reads it again? Days, weeks, months? Maybe they never will, and the thought of it lying there, unread, gives her a pang. All those words, all those people’s lives, tucked away in this drawer for people to forget about all over again. It’s heartbreaking.
She walks slowly along the bank
of filing cabinets until she gets back to the births, deaths and marriages section. She doesn’t need births this time, and it doesn’t look as though she’s going to need marriages either, at least not as far as her real mother and father are concerned. But she can check whether her mother is still alive. At least then she’ll know what sort of search she’s dealing with.
Numbly, she pulls the deaths film out of the drawer and walks back to the microfiche machine and repeats the same process as before. This time a long list of names appears on the screen and she starts to scroll slowly through them, her eyes aching after just a few minutes. She carries on for a while longer but when she doesn’t find anything she has to give up. She decides to move on to marriages after all. It’s at least worth checking whether her mother and father ever got married. But it soon becomes clear it’s like searching for a needle in a haystack, and she gives up again.
Perhaps she’d have more luck if she looked online, so she vows to have a look tomorrow when she’s at home, but for today she feels drained, as though she’s done all she can, so she makes her way out of the library and back across the forum. It’s raining outside now and people hurry across the square in front of the church with umbrellas up, battling to hold them against the wind. Georgie wishes she’d brought a warmer coat. She pulls her hood up and walks blindly back to her car, not registering the journey at all. The newspaper cuttings she’s printed from the microfiche machine are burning a hole in her pocket, she’s so desperate to read them again, to pore over them, piece together the facts.
But all she can think about is Kimberley Foster’s face.
The face of a mother who has lost a baby.
And then she thinks of her own mother, of her childhood, of the way she was brought up, just herself, Kate and her mother. How her new-found knowledge helps to explain a lot of the things that went on, and the narrow, insular childhood they’d had.
And she questions the mind of someone who has taken a baby from another mother. What must have happened to them to make them do something like that, something so evil? And even then, whatever the reason, how could anyone live with the knowledge of what they’d done, with that guilt, that pain, and still get up every morning and keep on breathing? She pictures again Kimberley’s stricken face, the pain etched into the furrows of her forehead and the lines that ran prematurely down her youthful face, and she rubs her hand across her own face, roughly.
And then she thinks about herself and feels her shoulders tighten. The truth is, she no longer really knows who she is.
She’s Georgie, yes. But she’s also Louisa.
And does the fact that she can’t possibly be two people at the same time simply mean that she’s neither?
Her mind reeling, she reaches her car and climbs in. Pulling the cuttings from her pocket again, she unfolds them and stares at the picture of Kimberley, at the face in the blurry, thirty-seven-year-old photo. It’s hard to make out any features clearly, but Georgie is sure she can see a hint of herself in that picture, the way she was at that age: the dark hair that she’d always assumed had come from her father, so unlike her mother and Kate’s pale hair and complexion; the furrowed forehead, the arch of an eyebrow. She’s sure she’s not imagining it.
This is her mother.
Kimberley Foster.
Her mother.
The realization makes her head spin and she slumps back in her seat, crushing the cutting in her hand.
She doesn’t have the space in her head to think about what this might mean for the life she’s led so far. She can only get as far as processing the information she’s just discovered. She’s going to need time to work out what she’s going to do with it.
But first, she needs to speak to the woman who claims to be her mother.
4
25–27 October 2016
The printouts from the library cover the kitchen table, the dark eyes and prematurely deep lines of Kimberley’s face staring out balefully. Georgie’s studying the face she saw for the first time only a few short hours ago, fragments of her mind flying like moths around the room as she struggles to contain them, to keep them in place long enough to try and make some sense of it all.
The facts are this:
She’s called Louisa, not Georgie.
Her real mother had twins; she’s a twin.
She has a brother. Samuel.
Her real mother – Kimberley – fell pregnant by accident.
She, Georgie, was taken away from her real mother when she was less than a day old.
Her mother – Jan, she’s not even sure she can bear to call her her mother at the moment; Jan, then – took her, and she never gave her back. Instead, she spent her whole life lying about who Georgie really was.
Kate isn’t really her sister.
Jan isn’t really her mother.
Her whole life is a lie.
How could Jan have done it? If she had acted on a whim, then why did she never admit it and hand her back, even secretly, before too much damage had been done? How different would Georgie’s life have been then, if she had? And Kimberley’s? But instead, she’d kept her. She’d left this woman always wondering whether her daughter was out there in the world, or whether she was dead. She’d left her utterly heartbroken.
How could you? she mutters to herself, as she draws in gulps of air.
Her thoughts are interrupted by the sound of a key in the lock and she gathers the papers together hurriedly, glancing up at the clock as she does. It’s six o’clock already. She hadn’t noticed it growing darker outside, the evening light fading and filling the room with smudgy grey. She holds the papers down under her arm and looks up, expecting her daughter to walk through the door. But it’s Matt.
As he comes into the room he stops dead in the doorway.
‘What’s going on? Why are you sitting in the dark?’
He flicks the light on and Georgie squints against the sudden brightness. She stands and scurries over to the sink. She knows her face will give away everything she’s feeling and she hasn’t yet worked out how to articulate those feelings. Running a cloth under the tap, she squeezes it and turns to wipe down the worktop, rubbing furiously and pointlessly at non-existent stains.
‘Will you just stop that for a minute, please.’
Matt’s voice is loud, shriller than usual, and it makes her stop and look up. His face is chiselled with concern and she knows she has to tell him what she’s found. He’ll know what to do. Or at least he’ll listen to her, be someone to talk things through with.
She lets out a long breath of air, drops the cloth in the sink and stands staring out of the kitchen window into the almost-black of the garden. The trees are dark lumps against the sky, and the table and chairs huddle on the patio in the darkness. She feels Matt’s hand on her shoulder and she jumps, then turns to look at him. His face is close, and he puts his other hand on her other shoulder and looks at her intently.
‘Please, George. Tell me what’s wrong. And don’t say it’s nothing.’
She pauses, then before she can think about it any more, she starts to speak.
‘I found something. In Mum’s loft. Or rather, I didn’t find something.’
Matt doesn’t reply, doesn’t push, but waits for her to carry on.
‘There was – an envelope. It had a baby’s hospital wristband in it, with a name on. It was Kate’s. Her birth certificate was there too. At least, a copy was.’
She takes a deep, shaky breath. ‘But there was nothing of mine, Matt.’
Matt’s eyes look directly into her own and she wonders whether he can read what she’s thinking, whether he understands how scared she is.
‘And you’re worried about this, right?’
Georgie nods.
‘So what else has happened? Because this is obviously about more than just a missing birth certificate, George.’
She nods again and with a shaky hand points at the kitchen table. Matt walks across and leans over, spreading the cuttings out and study
ing them one by one. While he reads them she watches him, to see what he’s making of this bombshell.
He looks up, a deep frown on his handsome face, the face she’s loved from the moment he walked into the room, the new boy at school, when she was just thirteen years old. ‘But I don’t understand. You don’t think – do you? You think this is you? This snatched baby?’
‘Yes.’ The word comes out small.
‘But George. Your mum would never do something like that. There’s no way. She hasn’t got it in her. You must have got the wrong end of the stick, love. You must have done.’ It’s as though he’s trying to convince himself as well as her.
Georgie shakes her head and speaks more loudly this time.
‘Look at them, Matt.’ She picks one of the cuttings off the table. ‘Look at this face. Don’t you think she looks like me?’
Matt peers at the grainy photo and shakes his head. ‘I can’t really see what she looks like in this, love. She could be anyone.’
Georgie can feel her frustration start to build. She jabs the paper with her finger. ‘This is me, Matt. Louisa Foster. I’m Louisa Foster. I’m absolutely sure of it. Why else doesn’t Mum have any record of me being born?’
Matt shakes his head and sits down. Georgie stays on her feet, pacing up and down the kitchen floor.
‘But there’s more, Matt. I went to the library – that’s where I found these. I also found out something else. Nobody with my name was born on the day of my birthday, or any time near it. According to the records, I don’t exist. I was never born. And yet this baby was, on the same day, and she went missing, was never found. That’s a pretty damn big coincidence, don’t you think?’
The Mother's Secret Page 5