Finding Lucy

by Diana Finley

  We walked round to the narrow street at the front of the row and gazed into the small front yard of number 14.

  ‘Can I help you?’

  A youngish woman holding a toddler on her hip was looking over the fence from the adjoining house. She eyed us suspiciously. Guy walked towards the fence.

  ‘Sorry to trouble you,’ he said. ‘Do you happen to remember a woman called Shelley Watts and her family? She used to live here back in the Eighties.’

  ‘’Course I remember about her – everyone round here knows about her. She’s the one whose bairn was taken, isn’t she? Why are youse asking?’

  I joined Guy at the fence.

  ‘Oh, we wanted to get in touch with her. I’m her … I’m a … relative of hers. I haven’t seen her in years.’

  ‘Oh aye?’ She looked me up and down. ‘Well, she moved away. Long before my time. Shirley might know where she’s gone, like. Reckon Shirley’s been here for ever. Number 16. Here, I’ll come with youse and ask.’

  The woman hitched the child higher on her hip and walked out of her own yard and into the yard of the house on the other side. She banged loudly on the door and shouted.

  ‘Shirley!’

  After a few minutes, the door was scraped open and an elderly woman peered out.

  ‘Hiya, Shirley! These people are relatives of Shelley Watts. D’you remember? Number 14? D’ya know where Shelley went after she left here, Shirley?’

  The old woman slowly surveyed first her neighbour, and then Guy and myself. I smiled and nodded, in what I hoped was an encouraging manner.

  ‘Shelley Watts? Oh aye, poor lass. She left number 14. After that baby of hers went missing. Broke her heart, it did. That was a long time ago. They never found the baby. Reckon she musta bin murdered. So sad it was – she was a pretty bairn.’

  A lump formed in my throat. I tried to swallow but couldn’t shift it. ‘Do you know where she moved to, after she left Tanners Lane?’ I asked, my voice strangely croaky.

  The woman stared at me and twisted the hem of her cardigan.

  ‘They say she moved to Moorside. The council helped her, after her fella got put back inside. Good thing too, if youse ask me – he was a reet bad ’un. Them other bairns of Shelley’s got taken into care. I heard she got them back later, though. I haven’t seen her in years, mind.’

  ‘There was an entry for S. Watts in Moorside,’ said Guy, studying his notes. ‘That must be her. Here it is – Belside Crescent. Let’s go and see if we can find her. You’ve been very helpful. Thank you both very much.’

  ‘She were a rough sort, mind,’ added the old woman.

  * * *

  We parked along Belside Crescent at a slight distance from the address. We could just see it: ‘a small, semi-detached house in a row of others, varying only in the colour of their pale exterior wash. I stared at it. Guy stared at me. We’d been sitting there in the car for many minutes. I was trembling from head to foot.

  ‘Shall I at least go and check it’s the right house? That it’s her?’ Guy asked quietly.

  ‘Just give me another minute.’

  I tried to steady my breathing. Guy stroked my arm tenderly.

  ‘Poor baby, don’t worry. It’s worse anticipating it. It’ll be all right once we’re talking to her.’

  ‘Guy, what if she doesn’t agree? What if she insists on going straight to the police or the newspapers?’

  ‘Maybe it’s a risk we have to take. We could still do our best to protect Alison – but I honestly believe she will agree once she knows the circumstances – if it’s you asking.’

  I sighed. ‘OK then. You go and ring the bell and … and tell her. Then come and get me if it … seems all right.’

  He kissed me and got out of the car. I watched him walk towards the house. I felt a strong urge to cover my face with my hands; to peek through my fingers like a child watching a frightening film. My heart was beating so loudly the sound must have filled the car.

  Guy was at the front door. Nothing happened for a few moments. I held my breath. Then the front door opened and I saw a youngish, brown-haired woman step outside. I breathed out an ecstasy of relief. It was the wrong house! She was far too young to be Shelley. Thank God. We’d better just drive away. Try again another time. No need to submit to this agony just now.

  Guy appeared to be talking to the young woman. She was nodding and saying something in response. They conversed for a while. Suddenly a small child appeared at her legs, maybe three or four years old. I couldn’t see whether it was a boy or a girl. The woman grabbed the child and picked it up. She turned and went back into the house. Guy remained on the doorstep. He glanced over in my direction. What was he doing? Why didn’t he just come back to the car so we could go? I was getting agitated. ‘Just let’s go, just let’s go,’ I said under my breath.

  After a further age, another woman emerged slowly from the house. Guy retreated backwards in order to allow her to stand on the front step. It was too far to see the woman’s features clearly, but I could tell she was older, perhaps in her fifties. She seemed a bit hunched and held her hands over her face, covering her mouth. She stood on the step looking at Guy, swaying backwards and forwards a little.

  He reached for her and put his hands on her shoulders. It was a gesture I recognised. He was comforting her. The younger woman appeared behind the older one and put her arms around her, as if to support her. She seemed to have left the child inside somewhere. Guy said something to them and they both looked towards the car where I was sitting, frozen. I realised I had my hands clasped over my mouth too, as if in reflection of the older woman’s gesture. Guy began walking towards me.

  ‘Oh no, no, no,’ I whispered, cringing into the car seat. He opened the door and reached inside to hug me, hold me.

  ‘Come on, sweetheart. Don’t be frightened. It’s her. It’s Shelley, and she wants to see you. She wants to see you so much.’

  I started to cry immediately. He took my hand and led me to the house, with one hand under my elbow, as if supporting my weight.

  She was still clutching her face. Tears were spilling from her eyes, which were open, unblinking, staring at me. The tears cascaded unchecked down her cheeks, over her hands. Her hands were red and broad, I noticed, lined and prominently veined. Her hair had the pale, frothy look of grey or white hair frequently dyed blond. We stood looking at one another for a moment. Then there was nothing else to do but fall into each other’s arms, hugging and crying, standing back to look at each other some more, then embracing again. She was shorter than me, her build sturdy and square.

  ‘Stacy, Stacy, my baby,’ she sobbed. ‘My beautiful little girl.’

  It took some minutes before I could speak.

  ‘I didn’t expect to feel this way …’ I said, ‘I thought Alison was my mother; she always had been. I didn’t know about you. I didn’t know I needed you … so much.’

  Tears coursed down my face. Guy, behind me, squeezed my shoulder.

  ‘It’s OK, sweetheart, it’s OK,’ he muttered into the back of my neck. I nodded, not taking my eyes off Shelley.

  We were introduced to Leanne, my eldest sister apparently, who had opened the door to Guy, and Ruby, the youngest of her three children. Leanne’s other two children were at school, they said. A new family was opening up to me, a family that had not existed until this moment. We were shown into a small sitting room, stuffed with large pieces of furniture. Ruby sat on the floor, gazing up at us, one finger in her mouth, the other hand holding a doll. An image of another doll flashed through my mind for a moment. Just as we were about to sit down, Shelley said she had to check something.

  ‘It’s not that I don’t believe you and that. It’s plain to see you’re Stacy, but it’s something I’ve got to do. I’ve been waiting all these years to do it; promised meself.’

  ‘What are you talking about, Mam?’ asked Leanne.

  ‘Our Stacy had a birthmark, a brown diamond shape on the back of her neck. Would you mind?
Will you let me look … to be sure?’

  I turned around and lifted up the hair from the back of my neck.

  Shelley gasped. ‘Oh my God … oh my God!’

  She started crying all over again. Guy and Leanne moved closer to peer at my neck.

  ‘It’s there, all right,’ said Leanne.

  ‘No doubt about it,’ agreed Guy.

  * * *

  Somehow, amid fresh mugs of tea and plates of biscuits, we fitted more than twenty years into that first afternoon. I learned about my family, about lives linked to mine yet lived in my absence and without my knowledge. We were told about each of my other brothers and sisters, their partners and children: a great array of names to list and learn and one day to meet; a great deal of personal information about each of them to absorb.

  Guy made extensive notes. He joked that he was making a list of names, like you might find at the front of heavy novel, to remind you who everyone was. They nodded and smiled.

  We heard that my father, Gary, had lost touch with the family after his release from prison. It was thought he was living rough somewhere. His health was not good. His memory had suffered and he was often confused. It was the drink. Too much booze and drugs over the years had taken their toll, Shelley told me, and he consistently refused “rehab”, treatment and even night shelters.

  Occasionally, he’d drifted back into the orbit of Shelley or one of his children, just long enough to beg some money off them, have a good meal, maybe sleep on their sofa for a night or two, and then to disappear for further months or years. Shelley said she’d never refuse to help him if he needed it, but she ‘would never have him to live here, never again’. She said she always half expected to hear that he’d had an accident and been killed, or that he’d collapsed and died on the street.

  It was hard to absorb that they were talking about my father; the emotional gulf was too great for me to feel connected to him. In time, perhaps. Right now, any sympathy I felt for him was no more than I might extend to a stranger in difficult circumstances.

  Of course, they wanted to know what had happened to me from the time I disappeared. I explained that although over the years I had begun to have occasional doubts and suspicions, they were vague and shadowy. I was afraid of them. It was only in the last year that I learned the full story. Before that I had simply assumed that Alison, my abductor, was my mother. It shocked them to hear that I had no real memory of my former life with my birth family, nor of the abduction itself, nor of the early days of living away from them.

  My body and face flushed with illogical guilt. How could I be so heartless? Yet, at two years old, I could hardly be expected to remember the abduction. Despite that, the lack of memory felt almost like a betrayal on my part, when they remembered me and the loss of me with such pain, such intensity. How could I not remember? Surely a child should remember, mourn and long for her own parents and siblings? How could I just forget?

  ‘You have to remember Lucy was just a tiny child when it happened,’ Guy said, as if reading my thoughts. ‘She must have been deeply traumatised. Young children have ways of protecting themselves if thrust into such difficult situations. After a while she would have had to find ways of attaching herself emotionally to her abductor, to Alison, because she had no one else.’

  Shelley shook her head and reached for me.

  ‘Poor baby. My poor, poor baby.’

  It also shocked them that I did not describe Alison as the evil monster that had featured in their imaginations all these years, whom they had always believed the abductor to be. I had to explain that, on the contrary, she had brought me up with great love and care, and that I loved her too.

  We talked for hours, until we were all exhausted. Ruby had fallen asleep on the smaller sofa. I told them Alison was terminally ill, that she was unlikely to survive more than a year. I could see, and understood from their exchanged glances, that they were tempted to rejoice over this news, but restrained their impulse to do so openly. I told them that Guy and I planned to marry and that I wanted desperately for Alison to live long enough to be present at the wedding. Finally, I told them that I wanted them to agree not to reveal my reunion with them beyond the close family members – and certainly not to go to the police or media. This was met with silent, closed faces.

  ‘I know it’s a lot to ask of you. I know you must have strong feelings of anger and maybe hatred towards Alison – and that it’s justified – but I want you to understand that it would make me deeply unhappy if she were publicly pilloried and condemned by the press. I couldn’t bear for her to be imprisoned for these last months of her life. We, Guy and I, will be talking to the police, but not just yet. I need that Inspector Dempster to cooperate too, and to understand that she’s not all bad. And I need to prepare Alison.’

  ‘Don’t you think she should be punished for what she done to you, Stacy, and to our mam?’ asked Leanne. ‘She stole you for Chrissake. She broke our mam’s heart – and the rest of us. D’you really think it’s right she should just get away with it?’

  ‘I understand why you might feel that way, Leanne. Really I do. But, you see, I believe she was mentally unstable at the time she took me. She’d just lost her own mother. She was all alone, and so desperate for a child, and she managed to persuade herself that she was doing the best for me. I also believe she’s been punished enough with guilt and remorse over what she’s done. She’s terrified she’s going to lose me, and she’s so very ill now. I couldn’t bear her to suffer more than absolutely necessary, not now at the end of her life …’

  Leanne folded her arms and shook her head.

  I tried again: ‘Now that we’ve found you, now that we’ve met, I want to stay in touch, stay close to you all for always – and to meet the rest of the family. You’re my family now, and I never want that to change, but if the truth were out in the open, we couldn’t be together. I’d have to hide away, to protect Alison.’

  Silence hung in the room, as everyone considered the conditions I had set out. Shelley, sitting next to me on the sofa, clung to my arm.

  ‘All these years,’ she said, ‘I’ve been sure you were alive. It’s what kept me going. But I’ve had terrible nightmares that whoever took you might have treated you bad. That was what was hardest to bear. Well, what she done, this Alison, was wrong. Taking you away from your mam and your family was wrong, very wrong; it was cruel, it was wicked; terrible, terrible wicked – and she’s caused me a whole lot of heartache. I can’t tell you just how much. She thought I was just some useless slag, what couldn’t fetch up a child properly, like. Well, she was wrong there. Maybe I wasn’t the best, but I did love you. I always loved you. I loved all my kids.’

  She paused and shook her head, tears springing from her eyes again.

  ‘But at least she didn’t hurt you. At least she’s been good to you, Stacy, and I’m so, so thankful about that. I don’t know if I can ever forgive her, not really, but for your sake, I can try. If she’d ’a hurt you, treated you bad, I’d ’a wanted to kill her. I don’t mind admitting it. I’d ’a happily cut her throat. But she didn’t. She treated you well. I can see that, from how much you care about her.’

  She squeezed my hand and stared into my face. Leanne stood up and paced the room, sucking on a cigarette.

  ‘Yeah, OK. That’s all very well, but it might not be very easy to get everyone else to agree to keep quiet, might it not?’ she said. ‘What about our Ryan, for instance? You know how badly he took it, how it upset him something terrible.’

  She turned to me. ‘He’s never stopped missing you, Stacy. You were his special little sister. He thought he were to blame when you went missing.’

  ‘Yeah, well, I’ll talk to Ryan. I’ll talk to all of them,’ said Shelley, her eyes steely, her mouth set firm. ‘Just leave it to me.’

  ‘Thank you, Shelley. That means so much to me,’ I said.

  ‘Here now, what’s with this “Shelley” business? I’m your mam, aren’t I?’

  Gu
y and I exchanged glances.

  ‘You are my mam, and I’ll never deny it, or you. But for years I’ve been calling Alison “Mummy” or “Mum”, and I’ve just told her that can’t go on; that I’ll be calling her by her name instead from now on. I’d like to do the same with you. Otherwise it could get so complicated and confusing. Calling you Shelley doesn’t mean I think of you as anything less than a mother.’

  Shelley wrapped me in another tearful embrace.

  ‘Who’d ’a thought our Stacy would turn into such a clever and thoughtful lass?’ she said.

  ‘I’m going to have to sort something out about my name too,’ I said, looking at Guy, ‘about “Stacy”.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ said Shelley. ‘Stacy’s the name you was given when you were born. It’s your name.’

  ‘Well, I know that, but I’m not sure I feel like Stacy any more. For all these years I’ve been called Lucy. Ever since I was taken. Lucy’s the only name I can remember being called. But I have to admit I don’t exactly feel sure about Lucy either now … Lucy was the name of a dead child. Alison saw it on a gravestone and decided to use it. My name was stolen too, just like I was. It just doesn’t seem quite right any more.’

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  2006

  Alison

  It wasn’t easy hearing about Lucy and Guy’s visit to Shelley. I’m not one to overdramatise, but it made my blood run cold. My feelings were very confused. On the one hand I felt an overwhelming need to hear everything that had happened, on the other hand it caused me great pain; coming to terms with how wrong – how shallow – many of my perceptions had been, especially about Shelley, with whom, reluctantly, I now had to share the term of “mother”.