She nods again and then reaches for my hand.
‘And as for all the stuff back when you were a kid, you need to let that go now, Beth. It must be so hard for you, going around now telling everyone about it. We’ve all done things we wish we hadn’t. I know you, Beth. You’re a good person, OK? And if you want me to come back and work for you again, I’ll do it in a heartbeat now. I’ve missed you all.’
‘Thank you, Robin. Thank you so much.’
There’s a lump in my throat suddenly, but I haven’t finished yet, and I need to keep it together, so I gently slip my fingers from hers.
‘Robin, there’s one more thing,’ I say.
Her expression changes from curious to astonished as I tell her that it was my real mother who attacked Alison, and when I relay what Alison told me about my mother being one of my friends, someone I already know, she can barely sit still.
‘No! But that’s unreal! Oh Beth, you’re not telling me this because you think …?’
‘Robin, I don’t know. I just have to ask everyone, you know? And I remembered that I caught you looking through my stuff once or twice,’ I say. ‘Things moved in my drawers, my passport, stuff like that. I wondered if that might mean something. I’ve no idea what, but …’
She screws up her face, her cheeks flushing bright red.
‘Oh God, I’m so embarrassed,’ she says. ‘I’m just nosy sometimes. I can’t help myself. Other people’s passport photos, you know; they’re always funny. And the stuff on your desk, bits and pieces about patients’ medical conditions, I just find it fascinating. I know it’s confidential, and I’d never tell anyone any of it, but … well, it’s like those A&E programmes on telly; I can’t stop watching them. But now I know that’s made you think that I could be … Oh, shit. It’s not me, Beth. My goodness. Honestly I wish it was me; you’d be such a great daughter, but I could never have children. I had severe fibroids when I was in my teens. I was in so much pain … Anyway, in the end I had a hysterectomy at eighteen. It was a pretty radical thing to do back then, and it took away my chance to be a mother, but I got my life back, and when you’re that age you don’t care. At least, I didn’t. I felt differently later on, but at least my job means I have children in my life, and I’m an auntie too, and … Oh Beth, I’m so sorry. It’s not me.’
She shakes her head sadly, and again I get that hollow feeling of despair inside.
‘I’m sorry you never had children. I’m sure you’d have been a lovely mum, and I really do wish … but hey, it was a long shot,’ I say. ‘And now I’m running out of options, Robin. Unless Alison was lying to me – and I honestly don’t think she was – not about that. And there’s the DNA thing, too. I’m a bit flummoxed, to be honest.’
‘So what are you going to do now?’ she asks.
‘I don’t know, Robin. I really don’t know.’
Chapter 44
What I do is go to the police.
It was Crystal who pointed me in the right direction. Not long after Robin left yesterday saying she’d be back in the morning to do the school run so I could get on with what I needed to do, Crystal and Jacob arrived with the children. They’d already fed them and I sent them upstairs to get ready for bed while I quickly updated my ex and his girlfriend.
‘So that’s it,’ I said. ‘I can’t think of anyone else who’s been in the house recently. What do I do now?’
‘Doesn’t that just mean one of your friends is lying?’ asked Jacob doubtfully.
I shook my head.
‘I really don’t think so. They all seemed so gobsmacked by the very suggestion,’ I said. ‘And if it was one of them, wouldn’t now be the perfect time to admit it? I don’t understand though. I’ve just run out of options.’
I groaned. This was impossible. Ridiculous. All of it.
‘Right, well you need to go to the police and ask them about the DNA – remember what we talked about?’ said Crystal. She was still in her work clothes – a navy pinstriped pencil-skirt and matching jacket, a white silk blouse, with her slim calves in sheer tights. It annoyed me sometimes that I liked her so much.
‘The police said there was more of your mother’s DNA, as well as the sample on the lamp – at least one older sample elsewhere, right? So tell them that you might be able to help them if you know where the other sample was found. Exactly where, I mean. Upstairs, downstairs? In your bedroom, in Eloise’s room, in the kitchen? Wherever. If you know where, it might help you work out who.’
And so this morning, here I am, sitting nervously in a small, overheated Gloucestershire police interview room. Sunlight streams in through the row of small windows high on the wall and dust motes dance in the air around us. We’ve already had a preliminary chat, and it sounds as though Alison has been as good as her word.
‘We’ve had absolutely no luck so far in tracking down Alison Allen’s attacker,’ the officer sitting opposite me says. He’s the one from Saturday, the one with the intense blue eyes and pointy cheekbones.
‘The search for your biological mother has drawn a blank so far, although maybe that’s not too surprising, if nobody really has heard from her for thirty years. It’s likely she’s living under an assumed name, maybe with forged identity documents. Who knows? We still suspect that Mrs Allen might know more than she’s telling us, as it does appear that she let her attacker in – and probably more than once, according to the forensic evidence, thus implying that they do know each other. But she says she can’t remember anything, and since head injuries do sometimes erase memories, we have to give her the benefit of the doubt on that one for now. She’s a very ill woman, unfortunately.’
He pauses, glancing at the notebook on the table in front of him, and I silently thank Alison for keeping quiet, for not revealing that she knows exactly who attacked her, while still wishing she’d bloody told me.
‘So, Mrs Holland, can you give me some more detail now, about Mrs Allen and her impersonation of your real mother? We’re finding all this very difficult to understand. How long has it been going on, for a start?’
I swallow. I’ve been dreading this bit.
‘Not long. I think it was a bit of an experiment, really. She’s very arty. She works in a gallery and she’s into drama too – acts in am-dram productions. And I think she just wanted to see if she could pull it off – to become another person for a little while, to see if she could convince people she was someone else. A bit like a living art installation. I mean, it was cruel, yes. I fell for it, and so did everyone else in my life. But I don’t think there was anything sinister about it. She wasn’t trying to steal money from me or anything. She was on a sabbatical from work, and it was a project for her, a way to challenge herself. And she pulled it off, didn’t she? Pretty impressive, when you think about it. She said she was going to tell me the truth at the party on Friday, and apologise and go home. But obviously something went wrong.’
The police officer’s looking at me with a sceptical expression, and I know that as far as lies and cover stories go, it’s about as weak as it gets.
I’ve blown it, I think, mentally cursing the idiocy of myself and Crystal. When we talked it through last night, we’d both decided it might just work.
‘There’s enough truth in there to make it stand up,’ she said. ‘The art gallery, the acting, the fact that she wasn’t trying to steal from you … well, she was trying to steal your life and your happiness, in actuality, but it wasn’t for financial gain. Yes, it would be a very, very peculiar thing for anyone to do. But people do peculiar things every day, and if you just tell it straight, you might get away with it. And Beth … if you ever tell anyone that I, a respected barrister, have been helping you to mislead the police like this, I will have to kill you, OK?’
She looked deadly serious for a moment, then a smile twitched at the corner of her mouth. I wanted to hug her, so I did. I was grateful, so very, very grateful to her, and to Jacob, for understanding and for not pressuring me to tell the police the truth about wh
at Alison really did and why.
‘What’s the point?’ Jacob said. ‘She might go to prison, she might not, but if she’s as sick as she says, well … and if she is telling you the truth about your real mother, and you find out who she is, then she’s done you the biggest favour ever, in the end, hasn’t she?’
But now the police officer’s nodding slowly, and it seems that by some miracle he’s accepted my ludicrous story.
‘Pretty horrible thing to do if you ask me,’ he mutters. He makes some more notes on his pad. ‘But if you don’t want to press charges …’
‘I don’t,’ I say quickly. ‘She’s so ill, as you said. And while it was a shock when I found out, there’s no lasting harm done. She was quite good fun to have around, a lot of the time.’
And she was, wasn’t she? I think. Not everything I’m telling you is a lie.
Now he’s wrapping up the interview. He closes his notebook and puts the cap on his pen, telling me to call him if I remember anything at all that might help the investigation. I know I need to get my question in now, quickly, before he ushers me out again.
‘I was just wondering,’ I say casually, ‘about the location of the DNA samples? You said DNA from my biological mother was found on the pelican lamp, but that there were other samples, possibly older? I just wondered if you could tell me where exactly? Would that be possible?’
He furrows his brow, looking at me questioningly, then shrugs.
‘Suppose it can’t hurt,’ he says. ‘Hang on, I’ve got the full report here somewhere.’
He flicks through a cardboard file that’s lying on the table and pulls out a sheaf of papers.
‘Right, DNA, DNA …’ he mumbles, turning the pages slowly. Then: ‘Ah. Here it is. There was matching DNA on the lamp, on the front door – probably from when she was entering and leaving the house – and on some books.’
‘Books? Can you be more precise?’ I say, puzzled.
He checks the report again.
‘Yep. There were a few books in a pile, on a small table in the lounge. Agatha Christie books, it says here. Your biological mother’s DNA was found on those.’
Chapter 45
I’m standing at the edge of the car park opposite the surgery, looking down the road towards Nadia’s doorway. It’s another warm morning, nearly midday now, and the sky is azure blue. The street is quiet. A man with a small, over-fed dog ambles along the far pavement and a mother with a pushchair walks briskly past me, her baby silent under a pink blanket. I’m almost too overwhelmed, too stupefied, to take the few steps I need to take now, and so I stand and I breathe and I look. She’s there, as she always is, face tilted up towards the sun, her eyes closed. Even from this distance I can see that she looks calm – serene almost. And then, quite suddenly, as if she can sense my presence, she opens her eyes and turns her head. Our eyes lock and a shiver runs through me.
Mum? Are you really my mother? How can you be, Nadia?
And then she raises a hand, slowly, so slowly, and I know. And I know that she knows I know, and that she’s been waiting for me, all this time. I start to walk, then somehow break into a run, and seconds later I’m falling to my knees beside her.
‘Hello, Beth,’ she says softly.
‘Nadia?’ I say. ‘Mum?’
‘Nadia to most, these days. Always Alice Armstrong, deep down,’ she says.
Her greeny-grey eyes are filling with tears now and I stare at her, really looking at her for the first time, remembering eyes like those filling with tears so often, so very long ago, when we were both thirty years younger. Remembering, but unable to comprehend any of it, terrified to believe it. I breathe in her stale aroma and remember the strange, musty smell in the house on Friday when we found Alison unconscious on the floor. I try to look past the straggly grey hair, the tattered clothing, the deeply lined skin, and try to see the woman underneath. Hope shivers like a baby bird inside me. With a trembling hand, I reach out to touch the baggy black sweater she’s huddled in – no coat covering it in the warmth of this late spring day. I gently push the neckline down to expose a hint of pale collarbone. And there it is.
Three little stars.
One star for her, one for Dad, one for me.
Oh my God. It’s her. It’s really her.
‘Mum,’ I say, and now there are little firecrackers of joy and confusion going off inside me. I still don’t understand any of this but it doesn’t matter anymore because finally, finally, I get to say it, and this time to the right person. Because she is. I know she is.
‘Hello, Mum. Welcome home.’
Chapter 46
‘How will Father Christmas bring Nana presents, Mum? Will they unlock the doors for him?’
I’m sitting at my desk in my bedroom, writing a few final Christmas cards to deliver by hand this evening. Finley has sidled in, leaning his chin on my shoulder and pressing his warm little body against my back. He’s eight now, and I’m not entirely sure he really believes in Father Christmas anymore, but I love that he still pretends to – for me probably. It’s Christmas Eve tomorrow, and the presents are all wrapped and piled under the big tree in the corner of the lounge and the front door is decorated with a pinecone wreath. Downstairs in the kitchen, Eloise and Cleo, one of her friends from school, are singing along to Mariah Carey, their voices high and sweet.
I put my pen down and turn to look at my little boy, gently pushing an errant strand of blond hair back off his forehead.
‘How does this hair grow so fast? I’m glad Daddy’s taking you to the barber’s this afternoon,’ I say. ‘Father Christmas would be leaving your presents somewhere else otherwise, ’cos he wouldn’t recognise you.’
His eyes widen, then he grins.
‘Don’t be silly. He knows e-ver-y-thing. So will he? Be able to bring Nana presents?’
‘Of course he will,’ I say. ‘Prison walls are no problem for him. The reindeer can fly right over them.’
He nods, satisfied, then turns and skips from the room. I watch him go, my heart swelling, and I marvel yet again at how accepting children are and how quickly they adapt to the strangest changes in circumstances. A grandmother who wasn’t, and now a grandmother who is. She’s not with us, not yet – she’s currently residing in Eastwood Park women’s prison in south Gloucestershire. She insisted, in the end, on handing herself in to the police, who charged her with grievous bodily harm for the assault on Alison. At the end of May she pleaded guilty in court, and was sentenced to three years in jail, which, I hope, means that with good behaviour she’ll be out by this time next year. She’s a model prisoner, by all accounts, content with her warm cell, regular meals, and the safety afforded by the prison walls. Despite her lifestyle of recent years it is, the police told me, the first time she’s ever been in trouble, the first time she’s ever been arrested.
‘Pretty remarkable for a woman who’s lived on the streets for as long as she has,’ one of them said. I felt a rush of guilt mixed, weirdly, with pride and love.
Sixty years old and going to prison, for me. She did it for me. To protect me, when she finally worked out who Alison was and what she was about to do. She wanted to stop the party, to stop Alison before her final attempt to destroy me,
Her story was extraordinary, relayed that first afternoon as we sat together in my kitchen, before I drove her to the police station to make her confession.
‘A clean slate, love. When I’m out, we can start afresh, if you want me.’
‘Oh, I want you. You’re not getting away from me again,’ I said, and she smiled her gap-toothed smile, and nodded shyly.
It was almost eerie how comfortable I felt with her, and yet I had from the beginning, hadn’t I? I’d sat there in a doorway with a homeless woman I’d known as Nadia, chatting about anything and everything, and I’d felt at ease. At home.
She cried a lot that first afternoon. I did too as we relived the past, gently raking over her final days with me and Dad. She explained how unhappy she’d been in
the marriage. The rumours I’d heard had been true – the age gap had been just too big. She told me how she’d finally plucked up the courage to just walk away. How she’d moved abroad, travelling around Italy and France and Spain, looking for excitement and glamour. She’d had a string of boyfriends, none of whom gave her what she was looking for because she didn’t really know that herself. She’d gone from low-paid job to low-paid job, drifted across Europe, and eventually found her way back to the UK, where she’d opted out of society, camping on beaches and sleeping in hostels. And that had continued for years.
‘I started using Nadia instead of Alice because I didn’t want anyone from my past to find me,’ she said. ‘The shame of leaving you never left me, Beth. And to come back as a homeless dropout, well, that made the shame even worse, because what was it all for? I thought about trying to track you down so many times, but I always talked myself out of it because I didn’t think you’d want to know me. I didn’t think you’d ever forgive me, and who would blame you?’
She’d found herself back in Bristol eventually, and that was when she’d bumped into Alan, an old friend of Dad’s – one of the few he’d had kept a little contact with over the years. Somehow he’d recognised my mother when he’d passed her on the street.
‘I don’t know how,’ she grimaced. ‘He used to fancy me, you know? And look at me now. But he did; he stopped and we talked, and I begged him, begged him, not to tell anyone he’d seen me. He obviously felt sorry for me because he agreed. And so I plucked up the courage to ask him if he knew where you were these days, and he told me your dad had told him you were working at a surgery in St James Road in Cheltenham and, well, the rest was easy.’
She looked so much older than her sixty years, so wrinkled and so haggard, sitting there in her shabby, musty, oversized clothes. And yet, that day, she looked like the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. My love for her was already brimming over.
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