‘Good news? Bad news?’ she asked, nervously aware that though Artemis’s eyes were shining with fevered excitement, her face was a shell-shocked white.
‘I want you to listen to me very carefully, Primmie, because when Rupert told me this, I didn’t at first believe it. I couldn’t. It’s both too terrible and too wonderful.’
Brett put the wine bottle down and, pushing his chair away from the table a little, placed his ankle on his knee. Kiki lit a cigarette. Geraldine took a drink of her wine, a slight frown puckering her forehead. Matt merely looked towards Primmie, concerned.
Slowly Primmie sat down. ‘OK,’ she said, her nervousness growing. ‘Go on.’
Artemis licked her lips and then said, very quietly and steadily, ‘Destiny didn’t drown twenty-five years ago, Primmie. When I said to you that as a toddler she was a little slow, it wasn’t the whole truth. Destiny had learning difficulties. They weren’t severe, but Rupert was embarrassed by them. He didn’t want people assuming he’d fathered a child who wasn’t academically bright. When I was in hospital after my car accident in 1978, he took advantage of the situation by putting Destiny in a long-term care home, phoning me, from Spain, and telling me that she had drowned.’ She licked her lips again. ‘He told me all this just minutes before he died. It must be the truth. It has to be the truth.’
For a long, long moment time stood still.
No one moved.
It seemed to Artemis that no one even breathed.
Then Primmie said devoutly, ‘Oh God.’ Slowly and unsteadily she rose to her feet. With tears blinding her eyes, she stepped towards Artemis. ‘I can’t believe this is happening. I can’t believe I’m living through this.’ Tears rolled down her cheeks. ‘If Destiny is alive, then we can find her, Artemis. We can find her and have her in our lives again.’
With sudden burning overwhelming hope, they fell into each other’s arms.
Brett, aware something momentous had happened, but not certain what, said in an undertone to Kiki, ‘Who is this Destiny person? Is she Artemis’s daughter? Her sister?’
Kiki ran a hand through her spiky red hair. ‘No,’ she said, for once looking her age. ‘She was Primmie’s illegitimate child. Artemis adopted her. When she was five years old, on holiday in Spain with her father, she drowned. Or he said that she had drowned.’
‘Jeez.’ As Primmie and Artemis continued to cling to each other, sharing the most profoundly emotional moment of their lives, he said, ‘Pretty traumatic, discovering your dead child isn’t dead at all. No wonder they’ve both gone to pieces.’
‘And me,’ Kiki said, looking dazed. ‘Inside, I’m all in pieces, too.’ She reached out for his hand. ‘I never knew her, but Destiny was my half-sister. The only sister, of any sort, I’ve ever had.’
As Brett took on board what this meant where Primmie and Kiki’s father’s relationship had been concerned and stared at her, round eyed, Matt said to Hugo, ‘The first thing we’re going to have to ascertain is whether Artemis’s husband put Destiny in a care home before going to Spain, or afterwards.’
‘If it was before, finding her should be relatively simple.’ Hugo opened a cupboard where he knew he would find a bottle of Bell’s. ‘How old will she be now? Twenty-nine? Thirty?’
‘Thirty,’ Geraldine said, as Hugo put the bottle of whisky on the table, adding quietly, so that Artemis and Primmie shouldn’t hear, ‘And if Rupert put her in a care home in Spain, then finding her won’t be simple at all, Hugo.’
She kept quiet about her worst fear, which was that Rupert Gower had offloaded his adopted daughter in Spain under a different name to her birth name. It wouldn’t have been hard for him to do so. Rupert had always had money – money that had quite obviously paid for Destiny’s care for years and years. And money would have enabled him to do anything he’d felt was necessary to prevent his action ever being discovered.
As to whether Rupert had continued paying for residential care once Destiny had reached adulthood, that depended on just how severe her learning difficulties were. Artemis had always insisted that they were slight. Rupert had judged them to be severe enough to be an embarrassing social handicap. Where the truth lay was impossible to know. If, however, Rupert had still been paying residential fees, then details of the payments would, presumably, be amongst his personal effects – and as Artemis was his widow, there would be no problem about her having access to them.
The same thoughts were obviously going through Hugo’s mind, for as Artemis and Primmie finally drew apart, he said, ‘As your husband’s next of kin, you’re going to have to go back to Gloucestershire in the morning, Artemis. However much you don’t want to, there are arrangements it’s down to you to make. And you need to go through all Rupert’s personal papers before anyone else does so, just in case there should be information about Destiny in them, payments to an adult care home, that kind of thing.’
Artemis gazed at him blankly. ‘But Destiny wouldn’t need to be in a home now, Hugo. She’s thirty. She’s a woman. And she never needed special care. Truly she didn’t.’
Matt and Geraldine exchanged glances, both of them aware that it was a catch-22 situation, for if Artemis was right, Destiny would be far harder to find.
Primmie said quietly, ‘I’m going to take Rags for a walk. I need to be on my own for a little while.’
‘But it’s pitch black out there, Primmie.’ The concern in Matt’s amber-brown eyes deepened. ‘If you need to be on your own, be on your own in the house. We can all go home. Geraldine can stay with Artemis.’
‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘No, I don’t want you to all go home. I just want to walk, and think, and to have Rags with me.’
She walked out of the kitchen into the porch and at the sound of her shrugging herself into Amelia’s old Barbour, Rags roused himself and trotted after her.
Seconds later the outside door closed after them both.
‘OK,’ Hugo said, pulling a chair out for Artemis at the table. ‘Let’s get moving. With luck, there will be information amongst Rupert’s papers that will lead us to Destiny pretty quickly. If there isn’t, we’re going to have to explore other search avenues. Ideas please.’
Once out in the cold darkness of the headland, Primmie raised her face to the starlit sky and took a deep, steadying breath. Her child was alive. The daughter she’d grieved for, for so long, was alive. And she was going to find her. Of that she hadn’t a second’s doubt.
With Rags at her heels, she set off down the track towards the gates. It was icily cold, and though the Barbour kept the wind out it wasn’t particularly warm. She didn’t care. She didn’t care about anything but the breathtaking realization that a miracle had taken place. A miracle that should never, ever, have been necessary.
Rupert Gower had injured Artemis and her in a way that was so vast and terrible she wasn’t sure if she would ever come to terms with it. He’d robbed both of them of a daughter. He’d cheated them of her childhood, her teenage years and the years of her young womanhood. And what he had done to Destiny was far, far worse.
Turning left at the gates, she headed across the moonlit headland towards the cove. When she thought of the crime Rupert Gower had committed against Destiny, depriving her of Artemis’s unconditional love and supportive care, depriving her of her home, she was swamped by all-consuming rage.
Drawing great gasps of air into her lungs, she slid and slithered down the dunes to the soft crescent of luminous pale sand. Rupert was dead. What was done was done. What mattered now was not the past. What mattered was the present – and the future.
Facing the dark glitter of the sea, the night breeze tugging at her hair, she raised her face to the stars, praying that Destiny would re-enter her life – certain that when she did so she would never again leave it.
Next morning the whole atmosphere at Ruthven had changed. Instead of comforting routine, there was urgent activity. Artemis phoned to say that she and Hugo were driving back to Gloucestershire.
; ‘Naturally I’m not going to be so insensitive as to parade Hugo in front of Orlando and Sholto at the funeral. He’ll book into a nearby hotel and I’ll have the comfort of knowing he’s nearby and there if I need him. And I’m sure I shall need him. Orlando will help me with the funeral arrangements, of course, but my real priority is going to be gaining access to Rupert’s personal papers, because there must be something amongst them that will give us a clue as to the home he left Destiny in, or where she is now. There must be.’
Kiki looked completely transformed as she ate toast and drank coffee on the hoof. ‘Artemis told us last night, when you went for your walk, that Rupert’s and her holiday villa was in Marbella,’ she said to Primmie, pacing the kitchen, fired with a sense of purpose. ‘Both Brett and I think it’s more likely that Rupert took Destiny to Spain and put her in a care home there, rather than doing so in England. Regulations would most likely have been laxer, for one thing.’
‘And so the records of residential care homes in the Marbella area need checking out,’ Geraldine interposed from where, in a white-piped navy silk dressing-gown, she was putting slices of bread into the toaster.
‘And they need checking out in person, not by phone.’ Kiki patted the small leather travelling bag she’d brought down into the kitchen with her. ‘Which is why Brett and I are setting off this morning for Spain.’
Primmie didn’t even go through the motions of telling her that she couldn’t possibly do such a thing. Childcare organizations in Spain were already on top of her investigative list.
‘But will you be able to get a flight at such short notice?’ she asked.
Despite the tension they were all feeling, Kiki grinned. ‘We’re not flying, Primmie. We’re going on the Harley. And the way I ride it, we’ll be there just as soon as going by plane!’
With Artemis and Hugo en route to Gloucestershire and Kiki and Brett en route to Spain, Primmie sat at the kitchen table with the telephone and pen and paper and Geraldine sat opposite her, her mobile in one hand, her black notebook open in front of her.
‘I’ll check out Destiny’s medical card number with every possible government office,’ Geraldine said. ‘It’s a long shot, but it might come off.’
‘I’ll start with the Salvation Army. They are the most experienced people I know when it comes to searching for missing family members.’
‘You’re going to need lots of copies of Destiny’s birth certificate, Primmie,’ Geraldine punched in a number on her mobile, ‘so make a phone call to the Public Records Office as well.’
Primmie did so and then, after a long, exhaustive telephone call to the Salvation Army Missing Persons Programme, phoned Joanne, knowing that she, of all her children, would be best able to give calm, concrete help.
She wasn’t let down.
‘It is,’ Joanne said flatly from her office in London, high above Hanover Square, ‘the most terrible story I’ve ever heard. If it hadn’t been that Rupert Gower obviously knew he was dying, he would never have told Artemis, would he?’
Primmie’s silence was her reply.
Joanne didn’t pull any punches. ‘Then I’m glad he’s dead. What he did was monstrous. Totally and utterly unforgivable. As for the copies of Destiny’s birth certificate, don’t wait to receive them in the post. I’ll collect them and drive down to Cornwall with them. I want to see you, Mummy. I want to give you what support I can.’ She paused and then said, ‘As far as the Public Records Office is concerned, there may be another certificate there, apart from Destiny’s birth certificate. If she is now thirty, she could have married. A recent marriage certificate would have her address on marriage on it. I’ll do a search covering the last fourteen years – and I’ll phone Millie with the news.’
‘Thank you, darling. I’ll phone Josh. I doubt he’ll register just how cataclysmic Destiny still being alive is for me, but he’ll be as supportive as he can be. And thank you for the idea of there possibly being a marriage certificate. If there is, it would be the best possible short cut to finding her.’
When she and Geraldine had rung every phone number they could think of that could possibly be useful, Geraldine took a break by taking Rags for a walk and Primmie switched on her computer.
The list of helpful websites was huge. Taking a deep breath, she logged on to the first of the sites her search engine had pulled up for her – Comprehensive People Search – and registered Destiny’s details.
By early evening she was still ploughing through every website she could find, making notes of whatever advice they gave where searching for a missing person was concerned, registering Destiny’s details time and time again.
It was so like what she had been doing for weeks past in trying to trace Francis that before logging off she switched to the American Missing Persons sites. There was no ticked box against Francis’s name on any of those sites on which his name was posted; no messages waiting to be read.
Closing down all the sites, she opened her email. There was nothing there, either, apart from a cheery message from Lucy, this time from California, where she had stopped off after finally leaving Hawaii. Lucy always used internet cafés to send and receive messages. She pondered Lucy’s hotmail address, wondering whether to tell her by email about Destiny or to wait until she next telephoned her, and decided that the news would be more appropriately given over the phone.
With that decision made, she continued to sit in front of her computer, suddenly aware of the simplicity of hotmail addresses.
What would happen if she typed in Destiny’s name as a hotmail address? It was an unusual enough name to perhaps not need other letters or figures after it. Lucy’s email address was simply LucyDove@ hotmail.com.
In the address line she typed in [email protected], and the simple message Please respond to sender. And then, after a moment’s thought, [email protected], with the same message. Surtees was, after all, the name Destiny had been born under. Perhaps Rupert had put her in the care home under that name, not her adoptive surname.
Weary beyond belief, her neck and shoulder muscles aching after the long hours she had spent hunched over the telephone and the computer screen, she typed another address into a new message as an afterthought: francissheringham@hotmail. com. This time her message was a little longer.
The Francis Sheringham I am seeking is the Francis Sheringham of Cedar Court, Sussex, England. Dearest Francis, if this reaches you, please, please contact me. I’m living at Ruthven, Calleloe, Cornwall, and this is very possibly a matter of life and death. Primmie.
Then, having done all she could possibly do for one day, she went
back downstairs to make herself a restorative cup of tea.
Any hopes she’d had that Artemis would find documentation amongst Rupert’s personal papers relating to Destiny were quickly dashed.
‘There isn’t a thing, Primmie. My solicitor has been with me, making sure I have access to everything I should have access to, and it’s a complete blank. The will is straightforward. Nothing left to Serena, because Rupert must have thought it unnecessary to alter his present will when it would have been null and void on our divorce. She isn’t left high and dry, being a spoilt little rich girl, but Sholto still seems to think it unfair.’
Two weeks later, the funeral over and the house she had lived in for thirty-two years with Rupert locked up until it could be put on the market and sold as part of Rupert’s estate, Artemis returned to Calleloe with Hugo to find that Kiki and Brett had drawn just as complete a blank in Spain and that Primmie’s efforts with hotmail addresses had also come to nothing.
It was all very dispiriting.
‘We may be in for a long haul, but we’ll get there in the end, Primmie dearest,’ Matt said, his heart hurting at the depth of her dejection. ‘For the next few weeks let’s cheer ourselves up at the thought of Hugo and Artemis’s wedding. What date have they finally decided on? Is it Easter or May?’
It was May, and though there was no let-up where phone
calls, emails, hours on the Net and telephone calls to government departments in their search for Destiny were concerned, there was at least the joy of a wedding to look forward to.
‘Has Artemis told you that when she moves out of the flat and in with Hugo – which she’s ridiculously refusing to do until they’re married – Hugo is going to let Brett have the flat?’ Kiki said to Primmie as Primmie came in from a rain-lashed yard after ensuring that her animals – including the donkey she’d acquired in September, when the children were with them – were snug and warm.
‘That’s smashing news, Kiki.’ Primmie shook rain from her hair. ‘The caravan can’t be much fun in weather like this.’
‘The caravan has been a haven almost as magnificent as Ruthven.’
Kiki rarely expressed depth of feeling and Primmie took advantage of her mood, ‘You never talk about how you’re now feeling, Kiki, but I’m assuming life isn’t as bleak for you as it was when you arrived here.’
Kiki, seated cross-legged on one of the rag rugs Rags favoured, hugged her knees. ‘It isn’t. When I arrived I couldn’t see the point in carrying on living – there simply didn’t seem to be anything to carry on living for. The only thing was, when I actually stood on top of the cliffs I’d decided I’d throw myself from, I knew I could never do it. I didn’t have the bottle. Because I was here, with you and Geraldine and Artemis, my failure to follow through mattered less and less. Ruthven has been a lifeline. I’d forgotten what regular living was like. And so things are OK now. I’m writing. I’d started a novel of sorts months and months ago, which was getting nowhere. It is now. And Brett is ace. It helps.’ Her solemnity vanished, ‘Whether he’ll still be around when I’m seventy-two and he’s the age I am now, remains to be seen.’ There was laughter in her voice. ‘It wouldn’t surprise me, though. I’ve every intention of being a very hip old lady!’
The next morning the rain had vanished and the January sky was a bright, hard blue. ‘I’m going into Calleloe,’ Primmie called out to Geraldine, who was, as was her habit nowadays until at least half past nine, still in bed. ‘I’m out of soap powder and we need bacon and oil and a long list of other groceries. Is there anything you particularly need bringing in?’
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