by Anita Waller
‘And you still have that folder?’
Alice nodded. ‘I do, along with his tiny silver cross and chain his birth mother gave him. He gave it to me when he knew he was dying.’
Mouse sat, digital pencil in hand, hardly daring to breathe. Would Alice say she couldn’t see the paperwork? She briefly wrote on her iPad, words that made no sense but served to diffuse the tension inside her.
‘Would it be possible to see the file?’ Mouse held her breath.
Again there was a long pause, as if Alice was going over thoughts she must have been having ever since Mouse had rung to make the appointment.
Suddenly she spoke. ‘I know Katerina Rowe, your business partner. And because I know her, I’m going to let you see it. You can’t take it away, but I assume that fancy gadget can take photos?’
‘It can. And I’m sure you’ll be pleased to know Kat had a little girl yesterday, Martha May. They’re both home now.’
‘Oh, that’s wonderful. I have a little gift for her that you can take when you leave. She’s led many services at our church, a lovely lady, far too good for that thug she accidentally married. They caught him yet?’
‘Not as far as we know.’ Mouse smiled.
Alice stood. ‘Would you like a cup of tea?’
‘That would be lovely, thank you.’
Alice went out of the room, and Mouse heard the cold water run. The sunlight had moved around slightly and was coming through the leaded windows, lighting up the interior. Alice had used a subdued chintz, perfectly in keeping with the furniture. The inglenook fireplace was welcoming, and as Mouse watched a log crumbled and dropped. She desperately wanted to place another log on the fire, never having had the opportunity before, and giggled to herself at the thought. Pyromania, that was the word for it.
Alice returned to the lounge bearing a bread board with buttered scones, and Mouse stared at it. ‘Is that a mouse carved into it?’
‘It is. It’s a Robert Thompson. He carved a mouse into all his work, and I’m lucky enough to own one.’
‘It’s my name, I’ve been called Mouse all my life. Apparently I looked like a little mouse when I was born, and the name stuck. My nan and Kat always call me Mouse, and I expect I’ll be Aunty Mouse to Martha.’
‘You are clearly loved then. Tom was a very much loved and wanted child. James and Margot couldn’t have children, adoption was their only option. He was just six weeks old when he came to live with them.’
Mouse waited, sensing there was more to be said.
‘Margot died from a heart attack, but James had already been diagnosed with lung cancer before she went. He lived an extra six months. It devastated Tom, but I always felt Judy didn’t really support him. They seemed to live separate lives, and after Tom died I honestly didn’t expect to hear from her again. Why is she doing this, Beth? Do you know? She didn’t care two hoots when he was alive, and now she’s fulfilling his last wish. If it was.’
‘That’s exactly what she said when we agreed to take the job, that it was Tom’s wish she track his mother down. Did you know his birth mother? I know in the sixties they used to arrange private adoptions.’
‘No, and even though I know her name, it doesn’t ring any bells with me. Her address is on Tom’s birth certificate, but she doesn’t live there now. Her birth certificate is in there, too. Tom obviously intended finding her, because he would have applied for a copy of that, it wouldn’t have come as part and parcel of the adoption pack.’
Alice stood and walked to the small sideboard that fitted perfectly into the alcove. She took out the folder, and passed it to Mouse.
‘You can photograph whatever you need, but I would prefer to hang on to the originals. It’s all I have of Tom. Judy never asked me if I would like anything to remember him by, and I was too stubborn to ask. Inside the folder is a copy of a photograph of Tom, taken a couple of years ago. You can take that with you. You may need it when you find his birth mother.’
‘Of course I won’t remove the originals and thank you so much for the photo,’ Mouse said. She took the folder and pulled out the documents tucked neatly inside.
‘I’ll get our cups of tea,’ Alice said. ‘And please help yourself to a scone. You’ll need to build up your strength with a new baby to be an aunty to.’
She returned with the drinks. ‘Tom was very good to me,’ she confided. ‘A friend of mine died, a friend who lived here, and I had always loved this little cottage. I had enough money to buy it outright because it was very run down, needed lots doing to it. I was living in a rented property, so it made sense to buy this, and do the repairs as time went on, but Tom paid for everything that needed doing, and six months after I bought it, I had this.’ She waved her arm around. ‘Since then I’ve added the little extras, and I love it here. And of course I was only five minutes away from Tom and Judy’s house.’ A look of sadness crossed Alice’s face. ‘I miss him so much.’
Mouse didn’t pause to read any of the documents; that would be a job for later. She laid them one by one on the coffee table, and photographed each piece with the iPad.
She snapped everything, even the little envelope addressed To my darling son, Thomas Edward. Inside the envelope had been a letter written by the birth mother, but Mouse knew if she read it she would end up crying. Best to leave it until later, when she was with people who understood her occasional tears. She placed the photo of the remarkably handsome man in her document case.
The scone was on a par with one of Nan’s scones, and after finishing her tea Mouse stood to take her leave.
‘Thank you so much for all of this, Mrs Small.’
‘It’s Alice,’ the elderly lady said with a smile. ‘And if you need anything else, don’t hesitate to ring me. I felt very antagonistic towards you when you arrived, thought you would be on Judy’s side, but you’ve been impartial, and extremely pleasant.’ She handed Mouse a carrier bag. ‘This is the little gift I’ve made for baby Martha, and please congratulate Katerina for me.’
Mouse took the bag. ‘I most certainly will. If you think of anything else, no matter how insignificant, please ring me. I’ve left my card on your coffee table. Just so you know, I won’t be telling Judy I’ve seen you. We don’t make a point of telling our clients how we get information. They only pay us to get it.’
Alice nodded. ‘Thank you. I understand what you’re saying.’
Alice remained in the doorway until the big car disappeared around the bend. The afternoon had gone much better than she expected; she hadn’t wanted any of this to happen, but Judy had taken it out of her hands. Damn the woman. She should have been the one to die, not her husband.
Chapter 4
Mouse glanced at her watch, and made the decision to call into the shop and print out the pictures from her iPad. If baby Martha gave them a quarter of an hour break at some point during the evening, they could all look at them and discuss the next move.
She pulled up outside Connection, raised the shutter and let herself in through the front door, stopping the alarm before it woke the neighbourhood. Locking the door behind her, she downloaded and printed all of the pictures, knowing Kat found it easier to view a piece of paper rather than a computer screen. The thought made Mouse smile, as it had done so often since she had met the church deacon. Dinosaur Kat.
Mouse put the pictures into three cardboard files, and reset the alarm before going outside to lock up and lower the shutters. She turned to go to the car and shivered. ‘Get off my grave,’ she grumbled. She looked around, aware of the ever-present Leon threat and almost wishing he was standing by her side; her shoulder no longer pained her and her fitness was at Wonder Woman level. One day he would pay for injuring Kat… one day.
Mouse could see no one. In fact the centre of the village was remarkably quiet. She climbed into the car, and drove home, eager to tell her co-workers everything she had learned.
Leon watched her drive away, wondering where Kat and Doris were. They usually formed a coven of wit
ches; it was rare to see Beth Walters on her own. He hated not having cohorts he could use to watch the three women, but with his henchman Brian locked up for life, and the entire business disbanded, he had no one he could trust to do anything.
Leon’s home in Spain was ready and waiting, he had collected everything he needed from his old home; he just needed to see this baby when it was born. A mixed-race child would prove its parentage, and he could then take steps accordingly. A white child, and he could walk away.
Mouse opened the front door quietly and stepped into the hall. Silence. She looked into the lounge and then walked through to the kitchen. Deserted. Still keeping noise to a minimum, she headed upstairs. She tapped softly on her nan’s door, and opened it. Doris was asleep on the bed. Mouse smiled, and backed out.
Kat’s bedroom door was open, and she was also asleep, her hand tucked in between the bars of Martha’s crib, holding her daughter’s tiny fingers. Martha’s delicate coffee-coloured skin was a stark contrast to Kat’s.
Mouse slipped her phone out of her jeans pocket and took a picture. It was stunningly beautiful.
She headed back downstairs and placed the files on the table. Time enough to look at them when her two sleeping beauties woke. She pulled her laptop towards her, and began to search.
Kat wrapped a towel around her wet hair, checked on her sleeping child as she went past the bedroom, and headed downstairs. She smiled as she saw Mouse. ‘I needed that sleep. And I feel better for having a shower. I’d feel really good with a cup of tea inside me,’ she said with a grin.
‘Your wish is my command,’ Mouse responded.
‘Oooh, that would be nice.’ The voice of Doris travelled as a whisper down the stairs.
They sat around the kitchen table engrossed in the files Mouse had prepared, each having individual thoughts and making notes on the documents.
Kat sighed. ‘What a brave woman. I can’t imagine having to give Martha away, and yet she was forced by narrow-minded parents to give Tom up. She had already bonded very strongly because she called him Tommy, although she used both his forenames on the envelope. I’m really pleased Margot and James respected her wishes and kept his name, it was obviously important to her. It makes me wonder why, in view of the letter she wrote to Tom. Did she have a boyfriend, maybe?’
Without lifting her head, Mouse spoke. ‘Will you put Leon’s name on Martha’s birth certificate?’
‘I have six weeks before I need to do anything,’ Kat replied. ‘It seems that I can’t put his name on unless he’s there, and that’s not going to happen, is it.’
‘I do hope Pamela Farrar is alive, when we eventually track her down,’ Doris said. ‘Love for your children is unconditional, and she will want to know what happened to Tom. She was sixteen when she had him, so she’ll only be around sixty now. There’s every possibility she’s still alive, all we need to do is find her. Simple!’
Mouse laughed. ‘Okay, clever clogs. I’m finding no trace of her through any of the normal channels, and I don’t think this one is going to be as easy as we’re all assuming it will be. And what do you know of Robert Thompson?’
‘He carves mice.’ Kat spoke first.
‘Mice are his trademark.’ Doris followed.
Mouse frowned. ‘How come I didn’t know about him then? It’s my name.’
Doris laughed. ‘You need to watch more antiques programmes on television. Then you’d know about him.’
‘Well, Alice Small has a bread board of his. It was lovely.’
‘A discerning lady, then. Look him up online, you’ll be amazed at his stuff. It’s beautiful. And expensive.’
There was a knock at the kitchen door and a tall bearded man opened it and grinned at them. His salt and pepper hair showed him to be in his fifties, a big man with many lines on his face showing his proclivity to laugh a lot.
‘Afternoon, ladies,’ Danny McLoughlin said. ‘As promised, Kat, I’m here to give your lawn its first cut.’
Kat smiled. ‘Things have changed, Danny.’ She patted her stomach. ‘We have a brand new baby in the house, so it would be better if you used the mower when she wasn’t sleeping. Come in, I’ll sort out a rota with you. Thank you so much for this, the garden’s starting to look a bit of a mess.’
‘No worries,’ he said, and stepped inside. ‘I’ll get you in the diary. I suggest once every two weeks for the grass cutting and general tidy up – shall we say two hours maximum? We’ll negotiate any bigger jobs that might crop up.’
‘Perfect,’ Kat said. ‘Can you start tomorrow? I’ll make sure I put the baby in the lounge to sleep, you won’t disturb her then.’
Danny took out his diary. ‘Okay, I can do tomorrow afternoon. Is that good for you?’
‘It is. Thinking about it, I’ll maybe take Martha to my mum’s for the afternoon, so it won’t affect us. Doris and Beth will be working, I imagine, so won’t be here. Best bring a drink with you, though. This house is on lockdown at the moment, and I can’t hand new keys out on pain of death.’
‘No problem, Kat. I usually take a flask with me anyway. Anything I need to be aware of?’ A frown briefly crossed his face. The whole village knew of Leon Rowe’s activities, and had applauded when Brian King was sent down for the rest of his life.
‘Leon’s been back. We have panic buttons and locks that Houdini couldn’t fathom. We also have random police cars driving up and down, keeping an eye on us. Nothing to worry about, although if Leon is still in the area, I imagine they’ll worry him.’
Danny nodded. ‘Let’s hope he comes when I’ve got a spade in my hand.’ The deacon was a very popular lady in the area, and everybody had been upset by what she had been forced to go through. Rowe disappearing had caused uncertainty and more than a little fear in Eyam, but that had slowly settled down when he hadn’t resurfaced.
Now it seemed he had.
Danny closed his diary with two appointments made, and headed for the door. ‘Take care, Kat.’
‘Don’t worry, I will.’
The letter had a little heart drawn on the top. Kat read it for the second time with tears running down her face; her hormones were all over the place, aching for what the young sixteen-year-old had been forced to go through.
My darling boy, my Tommy,
I will always love you, and the pain I am feeling now is killing me. I cannot keep you, my parents cannot bear the shame. I haven’t told them who your father is, even though they have asked so many times, because I don’t know. I was attacked and beaten until I was unconscious, as I walked home from work.
I woke up in the hospital, and had to answer lots of questions but I couldn’t tell the police anything. I didn’t know the man who beat me. Four months later I found out I was pregnant.
I was sent to a mother and baby unit in Chesterfield before I started to show too much, and my parents told everybody I had gone to a cousin’s on the south coast to recuperate after the attack.
I had you, my darling son, and we were together for six weeks, then they took you one day.
I didn’t get the chance to say goodbye, and they made me write you a letter the next day before sending me home to my parents. They never saw you.
But I did, and I pray you will go to a good home, where they will love you as much as I do.
My love, my life, my precious child, my Tommy.
Always know it was not my wish that you be adopted. You are mine and always will be.
Mummy
Xxxx
Beth put her arm around Kat’s shoulders and held her tightly. ‘Hey, come on. Maybe you shouldn’t be involved in this case, it’s a little close to home at the moment, isn’t it?’
‘It’s heartbreaking.’
‘They were such narrow-minded times,’ Doris joined in. ‘I remember them well.’
‘Lots of babies were adopted then?’ Mouse spoke with concern.
‘Definitely, although things were starting to change in the seventies, when Tommy was born. I suspect Pamela’s p
arents couldn’t handle it because she had been raped. Maybe it would have been different for her if this was a child born of a love relationship and not a brutal one. If babies were conceived in the seventies, the parents of the baby tended to marry. It began to change in the eighties and nineties; marriage lost its popularity, women became more independent and brought babies up on their own, but of course the era that was really to blame for everything was the sixties.’ Doris sat back with a smile on her face.
‘They were good then, the sixties?’ Mouse asked. ‘You enjoyed them?’
‘Mouse, I lived them. Free love, drugs, you name it, it went on. The country had put World War Two behind it, and the post-war babies became teenagers. We thought we ruled the world. No, we knew we ruled the world. Wonderful, amazing years. We didn’t have freedom from parental authority, so we took it. It was the best time of my life, and remember we didn’t have technology, we had music, glorious music that can’t be matched today.’
Kat laughed. ‘Stop it, Nan, you’re making me jealous. Would you go back to those times, give up your technological expertise, your phone, your iPad?’
‘In a heartbeat. I met my Harry in 1964 when I was just fourteen, and we married five years later. We danced the sixties away. The Beatles, the Stones, all the Liverpool groups, Rod Stewart, unbelievable music. And it’s all still played today.’
‘It wasn’t all about music though, surely?’ Mouse asked.
‘’Course it was. It’s what we had. By the mid seventies we were starting to grow up, having families, colour televisions, it was a period of massive change. Which is why it’s so strange that Pamela was forced into giving up her baby. Times were becoming much more liberal, but clearly not liberal enough for this young woman’s parents.’
Kat stood. ‘I hear a baby.’ She headed upstairs, and they could hear her talking to Martha, via the baby monitor. She returned, cradling the baby in her arms.