A Family Affair

by Janet Tanner

  ‘It’s the doctor!’ Carrie said as Helen got out. ‘Whatever does she want?’

  ‘I expect she’s got the wrong house,’ Heather said. She could see a young man in the front passenger seat. ‘There’s somebody with her.’

  Carrie pressed her nose against the glass, peering out, then exclaiming in disbelief.

  ‘No! I don’t believe it …’

  The doorbell rang.

  ‘Do you want me to go?’ Heather asked.

  ‘No.’ Carrie was breathing hard now, chest puffed out like a turkeycock. ‘I’ll go. She’s got that boy with her! Keep the dog in, will you?’

  Heather grabbed Sally’s collar. ‘What boy?’

  ‘The one that got our Jenny into trouble! I’ve sent him packing once today, and I’ll do it again!’ She flounced down the stairs and threw open the door.

  Heather followed.

  ‘Yes, Doctor.’ Carrie’s greeting was short, snappy.

  ‘Mrs Simmons. Can I come in?’

  ‘Not if you’ve come to talk to me about him, no!’ Carrie nodded her head abruptly in the direction of the car.

  ‘It’s not … well, only indirectly. Look – I really think it would be better …’

  ‘He’s got no rights. None at all!’

  ‘Just a minute,’ Heather interrupted. ‘Did you say that’s Jenny’s boyfriend out there?’

  ‘He’s already been here bothering once today,’ Carrie said. ‘I sent him off with a flea in his ear.’

  ‘Well, I’d like to talk to him,’ Heather said.

  ‘Over my dead body!’

  ‘Mum – if he’s come here looking for Jenny, we have to talk to him.’

  ‘I don’t want her unsettled.’

  ‘Can I get a word in, please?’ Helen said. They both looked at her. ‘The fact that Bryn is in my car is incidental. I’m here because I’ve just learned some very disturbing news I didn’t want to tell you on the doorstep but you leave me no choice. Jenny is missing.’

  ‘Missing? What do you mean – missing?’ Carrie demanded.

  ‘She’s disappeared from the mother and baby home. And her things have gone too. From what I can make out, pressure was being put on her with regard to the adoption …’

  ‘It’s only what we agreed was for the best!’

  ‘And it’s upset Jenny enough to make her decide to run away.’

  ‘Oh my Lord!’ Carrie said. ‘Perhaps you’d better come in after all, Doctor.’ She saw Helen glance towards the car and the young man and her mouth hardened. ‘Not him!’

  ‘Mum!’ Heather said. She was upset, yet more in command than Carrie had ever seen her. ‘Isn’t it time to put a stop to this?’ She turned to Helen. ‘He came to you looking for her, did he?’

  Helen let that go. She didn’t want to waste time explaining about the accident.

  ‘He’s very anxious to get in touch with Jenny. And he’s very upset about her disappearance.’

  ‘He knows? Before we did?’ Carrie was outraged.

  ‘He was with me when I found out, yes.’

  ‘He’s no right to know before us.’

  ‘For heaven’s sake, Mum!’ Heather yelled, turning on her mother. ‘If he’s the father of Jenny’s baby, he has every right!’

  ‘Hasn’t he done enough?’

  ‘Jenny thinks the world of him, Mum, you know that as well as I do. And now she’s missing and all you can think about is who knew first! I can’t believe you! I’m going out to speak to him!’

  She pushed past Carrie, who could only stare, open-mouthed. It was the first time Heather had openly defied her over any of her decisions regarding Jenny. With a resigned shake of the head she gestured to Helen to follow her into the house.

  ‘So what’s this all about?’

  Helen told her all she knew.

  ‘Oh, the stupid girl! Everything planned and she has to go and upset it all!’ Carrie said. ‘Whatever is she thinking of …’ She broke off as Heather came in, accompanied by Bryn. ‘Now see what you’ve gone and done!’ she shot at him. ‘All the trouble you’ve caused!’

  ‘Stop it, Mum!’ Heather said. ‘You’re not helping anyone. Bryn is as worried about Jenny as we are.’

  Carrie responded with an angry snort.

  ‘He wants to go up to Gloucester and try to find her,’ Heather said.

  ‘You’ve told him where she is!’

  ‘We don’t know where she is!’ Heather snapped back. ‘She’s wandering around somewhere all on her own in heaven only knows what state. You should be glad he cares! I’d go myself if it wasn’t for Vanessa.’

  ‘I’m not sure there’d be any point in going up there,’ Helen said, trying to calm the situation. ‘The sister in charge was going to call the police and report her missing and I’m sure she’ll soon be found.’

  ‘I’m going anyway,’ Bryn said.

  ‘I thought you were due back at camp tonight,’ Helen said.

  ‘I’ll ring them – put in for compassionate leave.’ He turned to Carrie. ‘I’m sorry if you think I’m to blame for all this, Mrs Simmons, but I do love Jenny. I still can’t understand why she stopped answering my letters and I can’t understand why she didn’t write and tell me about the baby.’

  Heather frowned. ‘But she did! I know she wrote! She told me!’

  ‘It must have gone astray,’ Carrie said quickly – too quickly.

  Heather looked at her incredulously. ‘Mum … ?’

  A dark flush rose in Carrie’s cheeks. ‘If he’s been abroad anything could have happened to it.’

  ‘Look, I really have to be going,’ Helen said. ‘I’ll give you a lift back to where you left your motorbike, Bryn. And what about you, Heather? Do you want to go home and make some telephone calls?’

  ‘I think so – yes.’

  ‘I’ll come too,’ Carrie said.

  ‘No, Mum,’ Heather said. ‘I think you should stay here. This is Jenny’s home address, remember. If the Hillsbridge police get a message they’ll come here. I’ll find out what I can and then come back.’

  Carrie had no choice but to agree.

  ‘I’m so sorry about all this,’ Heather said to Bryn as they rode down the hill in Helen’s car. ‘I just hope and pray Jenny hasn’t done anything silly.’ She was silent for a moment, then she added: ‘If you find her, you will let me know?’

  ‘I’ll let you know.’ His tone left her in no doubt how he felt about Carrie. ‘She thinks a lot of you.’

  Heather swallowed hard, tears knotting suddenly in her throat. ‘Find her, Bryn. Make her come home.’

  ‘Oh, I’ll find her,’ he said.

  When she had made the necessary phone calls, Steve ran Heather back up to Alder Road. She was none the wiser, no-one had seen Jenny since before lunch. But the police had been notified and were searching for her. For the moment there was no more they could do. Heather opened the door and went in without knocking.

  ‘Mum, I want to talk to you …’ She stopped in the doorway of the living room, hardly able to believe her eyes. Carrie was at the table, leafing through a stack of letters. She looked flustered – and very, very guilty.

  ‘Mum?’

  Heather crossed to the table, unable to believe her eyes. Envelopes addressed to Bryn in Jenny’s handwriting, sheets of paper, some unfolded to reveal closely written lines in an unfamiliar hand – and at the top, preceding the sender’s address, a service number. When Carrie had been so quick to claim Jenny’s letter about her pregnancy had gone astray the thought had flashed through Heather’s mind that she might have known more about it than she was prepared to admit. But this!

  ‘Don’t look at me like that!’ Carrie snapped.

  ‘What have you done, Mum?’ Heather sounded more incredulous than accusing.

  ‘It was for the best.’ Carrie was trying to bundle the letters together. ‘He wasn’t right for her. I wanted to put a stop to it.’

  ‘But you had no right. Mum, how could you?’

  ‘I wa
s only trying to protect her. She was far too young to be getting serious with a boy she hardly knew. I thought it would all die a natural death. I never knew she was …’ She baulked at the word pregnant. ‘I wasn’t to know how it was going to turn out!’

  ‘It’s a terrible thing to do!’

  ‘I did what I thought was right. That’s all I’ve ever done. The best thing now is to get rid of them. I should never have kept them in the first place.’

  ‘You can’t get rid of them!’ Heather said, shocked. ‘They belong to Jenny.’

  Carrie grew even more flustered. ‘She mustn’t see them! She’ll…’

  ‘Never forgive you? No, I don’t expect she will. To be honest, I shall find it very hard to forgive you myself.’

  Carrie’s jaw dropped. ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘I trusted you with her, Mum. I trusted you to give her a better life than I could …’

  ‘And she’s had it! Nothing but the best.’

  ‘You’ve kept her in a gilded cage! You were so worried she’d turn out like me you ruled her with a rod of iron. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to bite my tongue over the way you’ve been with her. But I told myself I’d forfeited my right to interfere. I suppose in a funny sort of way I still thought that you knew best. I took you at your own valuation – respected your judgement – because you are my mother. But this … you’ve gone way too far this time. And look what’s happened as a result!’

  Carrie’s face crumpled suddenly, the confidence rushing out of her like air from a punctured balloon. She knew she’d meant well, just like everything she’d ever done it had been for the best and for their own good. But how to make the others see that? She had never known Heather so angry, never experienced such scorn, directed at her by her own daughter.

  ‘Whatever is going on?’

  So engrossed had they been in their argument, neither of them heard Joe come in. He stood now, looking from one to the other, troubled and puzzled. Carrie’s lower lip sagged, trembled, fought a losing battle at holding back the tears.

  ‘Oh, Joe – it’s our Jenny! She’s run away, and we don’t know where she is.’

  ‘Wherever have you been, Helen? I was getting worried to death about you!’

  Charlotte was out by the door, leaning heavily on her stick, when Helen eventually pulled up outside Number 11, Greenslade Terrace.

  ‘Oh, Gran, don’t even ask!’ Helen couldn’t face going through it all again. She was too worried – though she was trying to console herself that thanks to her chance meeting with Bryn and her telephone call to the home, Jenny’s absence had been discovered hours before it might otherwise have been, and the search for her begun. ‘I’m really sorry, though, leaving you on your own all this time.’

  ‘Oh, I’m not on my own,’ Charlotte said. ‘I’ve got company.’

  ‘Company.’

  ‘Me.’ Paul appeared in the doorway. ‘We’ve been getting along just fine without her, haven’t we, Gran?’

  ‘Gran!’ Helen managed a smile. She thought she had never been more pleased to see anyone in her life.

  An hour and a half after Helen dropped him off, Bryn was knocking on the door of the home. His leg was paining him quite badly and hunching over the handlebars of his motorcycle he had discovered that he had strained a shoulder muscle too. But he gritted his teeth against the discomfort. Something so trivial wasn’t going to stop him finding Jenny.

  The door was opened by Sister Theresa. She stood barring his way, her face apprehensive beneath her veil. Men always made Sister Theresa nervous, their rough ways and loud voices set her nerves jangling and this young man, in his leather jacket and crash helmet, looked more threatening than most.

  ‘Can I help you?’ she asked timidly.

  ‘Has Jenny been found?’

  ‘Jenny?’

  ‘Jenny Simmons. Has she come back?’

  ‘No – we don’t know where she is.’

  ‘Have the police been told she’s missing?’

  ‘Yes, yes, of course. We’re very worried about her. She’s due to have her baby at any time.’

  ‘What is going on here?’ Sister Anne appeared in the doorway. Sister Theresa explained, still fluttering.

  ‘You’d better come in,’ Sister Anne said. ‘It’s all right, Sister, he’s not going to attack you.’

  ‘I take it you are the young man to blame for Jennifer’s condition,’ she said severely when she and Bryn were alone in her study.

  His eyes met hers square on. ‘I am. Yes.’

  ‘I can tell you very little, except that Jennifer walked out of our care soon after midday today. As I’m sure you must be aware, the girls are not prisoners here, and we cannot be responsible for their well-being if they choose to absent themselves in this way.’

  ‘Where could she have gone?’ Bryn asked. He had no intention wasting time with apportioning responsibility or blame.

  ‘I really have no idea. As I told the police …’

  ‘Where do you think she might have gone?’ Seeing Sister Anne about to deny all knowledge once again, he added: ‘I want to find her, and I should think you’d want that too.’

  ‘I should be pleased to know she is safe, of course,’ Sister Anne conceded. ‘Though whether we would be prepared to take her in again is another matter entirely. This kind of thing is very bad for our reputation and the sooner the police cease to be involved, the better.’

  ‘So where could she have gone?’ Bryn persisted.

  Sister Anne thought for a moment. ‘We’re very isolated here. She could have walked, I suppose, but in her condition it’s not likely she would get very far. I think the most likely thing is that she would have caught a bus in the village. They run into town every half an hour. Unless of course she hitched a lift in a car.’

  Bryn’s anxiety was a knot in his stomach. The thought of Jenny vulnerable and alone in a car with a stranger was not a pleasant one. As for the bus … if she had gone into the city she could be anywhere by now. But at least it was a starting point. The only one he had. And the voice of intuition, though he was almost afraid to listen to it, was telling him he might be on the right track. He tried one last question.

  ‘She hasn’t made any friends around here that you know of?’

  ‘None of the girls she has met live in the vicinity. And if they did, they would be in no position to help her.’

  Bryn moved towards the door. ‘I’ll just have to look and keep looking then,’ he said.

  For the first time, a small crack appeared in Sister Anne’s concrete-hard façade. ‘You will let us know if you find her?’

  Bryn didn’t reply. He was already on his way.

  ‘I’m afraid you’ve gone too far this time, m’dear,’ Joe said, shaking his head. His tone was worried and sad, but it also had that edge that Carrie dreaded.

  ‘I did it for the best.’

  ‘That’s your trouble. You always do. But to keep her letters like that – you shouldn’t have done that, you know. You’ve really upset the apple cart this time.’

  ‘Never mind the letters!’ Carrie snapped defensively. ‘Where’s our Jenny, that’s what I want to know. I’m worried to death about her, Joe.’

  ‘So are we all, m’dear. But she’ll turn up. She’s a good girl, our Jenny. The thing is, when she does, you’re going to have to own up about all this.’

  Carrie pressed a hand over her mouth. Beneath it, her chin wobbled dangerously.

  ‘Whatever is she going to think of me, Joe?’

  ‘Well, she’s not going to be best pleased with you, that goes without saying. But I reckon the best way to make it up to her is to give her the chance to make up her own mind what she wants to do about the boy – and the baby. We should never have sent her away at a time like this. She should be here at a time like this, in her own home.’

  ‘But everyone would have been pointing the finger …’

  ‘You shouldn’t worry your head so much about what people
think. If she’s run away from that place, she must be unhappy there. When she turns up, and she will, let her come home. And if she wants to keep the nipper, whether that boy’s on the scene or not, then we should let her. Only leave it to her, Carrie. Stop trying to make her mind up for her.’

  Carrie bit her trembling lip. What Joe was suggesting would blow all her carefully laid plans out of the water. But perhaps he was right. For all that he seldom expressed his opinions, he often was.

  ‘Let’s just find her first,’ Carrie said jerkily. ‘Let’s just find her and make sure she’s all right, and then we’ll worry about all the rest of it.’

  ‘It wouldn’t do any harm to be thinking about it while we’re waiting,’ Joe said firmly.

  Jenny was studying the timetables, covered with sheets of clear plastic, that punctuated the edge of the square outside the bus station. She was trying to work out the best way of getting home. She was hungry, her head ached and her back was niggling unbearably. Because her eyes were blurring it wasn’t easy to make out the small print on the timetables, much less decipher which buses ran, or didn’t run, on Saturday evenings. She was worried as to whether she had enough money for the fare, even more worried about the reception she would get when she arrived home. Should she telephone – ask if David or Steve could come and get her? But that would give them the chance to take her back to the home.

  A bus rolled up to one of the stops, disgorging a gang of girls, obviously Saturday night revellers. They were giggling and chatting and the reminder that such a short time ago she had been just like them deepened Jenny’s despair. She looked away quickly, out across the square, and suddenly her heart was pounding, racing.

  The young man walking down the opposite side of the square was exactly like Bryn! Fair hair, black leather jacket. She must be going mad, seeing things like a mirage in the desert. But she couldn’t tear her eyes away. It couldn’t be him. It wasn’t possible. But …

  It was! It was Bryn!

  Terrified of losing sight of him, Jenny plunged off the pavement. The bus that had just finished unloading the Saturday night revellers was backing up. Jenny was totally unaware of it and the driver never saw her step into his path.