I ran as far as the train station. I had either made, or disturbed, plenty of people’s day on the way. I leaned against the station wall to get my breath back. I still laughed and sobbed, but only from my mouth. The tears had dried up as I ran.
I made myself take deeper, slower breaths. Calmed my heart and pulse. I had bent some of the pages in the envelope where I had been gripping it so hard.
Three taxis waited outside the station. I took the first one.
I was still breathless inside the cab. My head throbbed from the exertion of running so far. But also from the exhilaration. I had felt free as I ran. Oblivious to stares and funny looks. I hadn’t cared what people had thought as I’d skipped passed them.
I now felt that I had everything I needed to move forward. Names and dates, places and jobs.
It felt like the time I had gone fishing with Dad and we both knew, even before we got to the lake, that we would catch something. That we would have a great day. It turned out to be our best day ever at the lake.
The Internet was a vast lake. But I knew which fish I was looking for, and I knew where they were. Or at least where they used to be.
I sat up straight in the back of the cab. Stared out at the world. Looked at it full on. Face to face. I pulled my shoulders back, tensed the muscles in my face and neck. My jaw felt firm. I taunted the dark part of my mind. Told it to “come on then — if you think you’re hard enough”. I started nodding. Building myself up inside. Putting on my invisible armour.
Then I noticed the taxi driver looking at me in his rear-view mirror. I smiled. And blushed. I looked out of the window again. This time I felt like the world was looking back at me and laughing.
As I walked up the path to the front door, I couldn’t help feeling that if I didn’t have my key, I could just punch the door open with my fist. If the handbag thief turned up today, boy would he be in for a shock.
I had my key.
Once inside I made myself a coffee and plonked myself in front of the computer. I put the clear envelope to one side and rested the sheets of paper on top of it. I took a pad and pen and put them on the other side.
As soon as I went on-line, the story about the missing girls was everywhere. Despite a massive search, neither girl had been found, or even sighted. I read every version of the story available. From the BBC to Yahoo and Reuters.
As I read I tried to look deeper into the story. Searched for clues that only I could find. Clues about Neil, or Doctor Jones, or Colin. As I watched the video footage of the area I looked for things I might recognise. Things I had seen in my dreams. I even looked for me. Looked for any mention of a mystery woman. One with scars on her head, front and back. One who was insane enough to hurt teenage girls. I took some solace in not finding anything.
Reading about the missing girls made my heart heavy for Michael and Rose. I opened the pictures folder on the computer and clicked through them. Rosie’s fifth birthday, Michael’s eleventh. I felt a sadness and a joy at the same time. I wanted them back. They should be at home. Should be with their mum and dad. It wasn’t fair on them to be staying away.
I left the folder open on the computer and clicked back onto the Internet.
On Google Maps I found 18, Bay View Road, Cawsand in Cornwall. The village of Cawsand looked stunning. A lovely bay of clear water, blue and green. Craggy rocks and promontories. I could almost smell the freshness.
How could they have taken me away from that?
Footpaths trailed off through thick, green woods. I could imagine trudging along them, occasional glimpses of the sea through gaps in the trees. Sunlight warming my body on the beach, cool water tickling my toes. Perhaps I would have had a boat. Maybe a windsurfer. I’m sure I would have fished.
I switched back to my photos and found one of Mum and Dad. They had given me everything I wanted. But more than that, they had wanted me. The only consent form they had signed, was one saying that they consented to giving me all the love they could. I clicked on a picture of Dad, with his fishing rod. His face was wet, although the day looked bright. He smiled out at me, as he always did when he was fishing. I smiled back.
Back on Google Maps I printed out the page with Cawsand. The map version and the satellite image version. I found 18, Bay View Road, and highlighted it. I shuddered inside. Presumably I had lived at that house, if only for a few weeks. And even if I hadn’t, my parents definitely had. Using the distance measurement in the corner of the map, I ran my finger from the house to the beach. I reckoned it was no more than 150 to 200 feet away. If I had grown up there I would have woken to the smell of the sea every morning. It would have been with me through the day. At night it would have infiltrated my dreams. In the summer I would have had to kick the sand from my toes before coming in the house. My hair would have been rough and straggly from the salt water. My body browned from days of swimming and playing on the beach.
A shadow came over me. I felt a chill. The sun disappeared behind a heavy cloud. My mother wasn’t a safe pair of hands. My birth mother. She was unstable. This imagined childhood would never have happened. Instead I would have been in danger. Hiding from her. Trying not to say anything to tip her over the edge. Withdrawing into myself. Spending long hours in my bedroom. Gazing out of the window at the other children. Children going to the beach, going for walks along the dusty woodland paths. Coming back with salt in their hair, and sand in their toes.
She had loved me. She had loved me so much that she made the biggest sacrifice she could think of. She gave me another chance. Another chance at life. My first throw of the dice had come up bad. So she let me throw again. And this time I got a double six.
After looking at the area I came from I typed another search term into the search engine.
Amelie Lapton — librarian.
It came back with more than 750,000 results. But had replaced Lapton with laptop.
I tried all sorts of different combinations of names and words, places and jobs. My birth mother was hard to find. I tried looking for Amelie in France but realised I would have better luck finding that elusive needle in the haystack. Every time I thought of another approach, it ended in emptiness. Nothing of her.
I shifted the search to my father.
Richard Lapton — dentist.
Initially the search was as fruitless as that of my birth mother. However, within an hour I was pretty certain that I had located him.
My father, Richard Lapton.
Eventually my searches had come up with a Richard Lapton at a golf course near Cawsand. Headland Park Golf Course was close enough to Cawsand to make me feel shaky inside. He was listed under the “veterans” page. Lapton was not that common a name, so I did nothing to suppress the burgeoning confidence inside me.
I couldn’t find any mention of my mother on the site. She didn’t appear to play golf. She wasn’t mentioned as his wife either, as some of the other member’s wives were. A sickening feeling developed in the back of my throat. I had pinned my hopes on finding her. On talking to her, about her history, about her family. Were there any health problems? Were her relatives all in France?
I didn’t want to think of her having died. I couldn’t. I took hold of some of that confidence deep inside me and attached it to my birth mother. She would still be alive. I would find her. And I would find out what lay in store for me in the future.
I searched for images of Richard Lapton. Hundreds came up. I scanned them until my eyes hurt. I had no idea what I was looking for. Someone with great teeth I guessed.
I tried to tie down a current address for him, but couldn’t. I didn’t know what else to look for.
I had tried everything to find my mother too. I had imagined that they would both come up together. Find one, find the other. But that just wasn’t happening. In the end I moved to the one search I had wanted to avoid. Death certificates.
Nothing came up for Amelie Lapton, but a nagging feeling hung over me as though I had missed something or hadn’t looked closely enough, or for long en
ough.
I went back to the page where Richard Lapton had been listed for the golf club and printed off the contact details for the club.
The easiest thing would be to ring them. Find out Richard Lapton’s details. If I explained who I was they would surely give me his address. I could even make something up if necessary. Say I was ringing from the police or the council or the hospital. I was sure it could work. But then what? Would I go down there? Down to Cawsand to find this man? “Hi Dad, I’m the daughter you gave up for adoption thirty-seven years ago. How are you doing and how’s Mum’s mental state?”.
I closed the Internet down and was left with Dad’s smiling face still looking at me. I smiled and walked to the kitchen, put my empty coffee mug on the side and picked up the phone.
After speaking with Mum and Dad I felt even lighter than I had before. It really did feel like things were coming good, in spite of the psychiatric assessment looming up. Dad’s comments and advice had always struck me as just the sort of things that dad’s normally said. But I now realised there was a deep wisdom to them. He was one of the few people I still felt I could trust, even though he and Mum had kept the adoption from me.
He urged me to proceed with caution. It made sense to go through Mary Brookes and the letter approach, but time was against me. If anything happened at the assessment which meant I was likely to be detained, then I would have even more difficulty moving forward. He offered to drive me down to Cawsand.
‘I have things I need to sort out here, Dad,’ I said. ‘I have to have a firm plan. I can’t blow it. This is so important now, it has to be done right. You are right, we don’t have the luxury of time on our side, but I still have to make sure I do it as well as possible. I need to find out as much as I can from him and my birth mother. I don’t want to mess it all up by just turning up on the doorstep.’
Dad told me that the offer still stood, whenever I needed it.
After a hurriedly made, and eaten, lunch I went for a walk to think. I knew it was a risk (walking and thinking), but the car keys were still locked away in the car and I planned on going somewhere quiet. If I blacked out, my hope was that I wouldn’t be able to do too much damage.
The afternoon air blew cold on my face. Sunlight, diminished by the clouds, tried its best to warm the earth. But it was fighting a losing battle. The sky showed a darkening colour of grey and blue smudged in together, as though some greater power was mixing things up for a storm. I tightened the belt around my coat.
The last time I had blacked out was at Mum and Dad’s. Nothing had happened since. Even the argument with Neil hadn’t brought anything on. The stress of the meeting with Mary Brookes ultimately made me laugh and sing. I could feel a new confidence about me.
So maybe I was safe. Safe to be around. Safe to have my children back home. Maybe I wasn’t mentally unstable.
Of course I wouldn’t know for sure until I made contact with my birth parents. Or until I had the psychiatric assessment. And therein lay the danger. I couldn’t risk the assessment just in case I was committed somewhere. If I could just find out about my history, that would be the only way I would know for sure what my future might hold. Look back to reveal the future.
If my birth mother was living a relatively normal life, living with the madness, then I could too. Medical advances would surely mean that if she were diagnosed now, she would have been allowed to keep her child.
But I was only guessing. I had no way of knowing what happened to children whose parent was sectioned or diagnosed with a serious mental illness. I would kill before letting Michael and Rose be taken away from me. But who would I kill?
My mobile phone beeped at me. A message, from Neil. Having to work late again. Probably be back by 8pm.
Perhaps Neil was the answer. He was being worked too hard at the bank anyway. He could get a different job. Or maybe he could do some work from home. He could be there for the kids and to make sure I wasn’t going off my nut and attacking them.
If I had only three weeks before the assessment, I wanted Michael and Rose to be at home. I needed them. I needed them there to tell them how much I loved them. To show them in all the ways I could that they were the most precious and important people in my life.
I flicked off the message from Neil, and dialled Abi’s number.
By the time I got back home it was nearly 6:30pm. The dark skies had thrown the occasional raindrop towards me, but the clouds had managed to hold back the storm. Perhaps it would come later.
I rang Abi and told her that I wanted the kids at home.
‘You’ve been so wonderful, Abs, as usual, but I’ve got stuff to talk to them about and I just miss them so much.’
Abi understood.
‘I can ask Neil to pick them up on his way home from work,’ I said.
‘Is he not back yet?’ she said.
‘He’ll be back about 8ish, so he could be at yours by about quarter to. Would that be OK?’
I hoped Michael and Rose wouldn’t be too disappointed to be coming home. Hoped that they weren’t having so much fun with Josie and Jess that they would never want to come back.
I rang Neil’s mobile and then apologised for ringing him at work.
‘Can you pick the kids up from Abi’s at about 7:45pm?’
‘As long as I’ve finished here by then,’ he said. ‘I thought they were staying there for a while?’
‘I need them home, Neil. I’m feeling pretty good at the moment and I just want to see them, and talk to them.’
He didn’t say anything.
‘How’s it going there?’ I said.
‘I’ve got loads to do still. But I’m working through it as quickly as possible.’
‘Is there anyone else there?’ I said. ‘Or have you got to do it all on your own?’
‘Just me,’ he said. ‘And the security guard. And he’s not pulling his weight the way I would want him to.’
I smiled.
‘See you later,’ I said.
I hung up and put the phone back in its cradle.
Then I picked it up again.
I don’t know what made me do it.
I don’t think it was even a conscious thing.
I dialled Neil’s direct work line.
I let it ring. Echoing in my ear. A click at the other end. The bank ansaphone clicked in. Maybe I hadn’t given Neil long enough to get to the phone. I hung up and dialled again. Click. Ansaphone. Perhaps he was in the toilet. Give it a few minutes. Another try. Click. Ansaphone. Maybe he’s on another call. Can’t come to the phone. Maybe he doesn’t answer the phones out of office hours. He doesn’t want to be disturbed when he’s working late. Doesn’t have time to talk customers. One more try then.
He answers.
‘Hello?’ he said.
‘Neil? Are you OK?’
I sound breathless, I know I do. I don’t mean to.
‘I’m afraid the bank is shut, madam.’
I realise that it doesn’t sound like Neil. Not even a little.
‘I’m sorry. I was after Neil Marsden. It’s his wife.’
‘I’m afraid everyone’s gone home,’ he said. ‘I’m the security guard. There’s only me here now.’
This doesn’t make sense. I have only just spoken to Neil on his mobile. He must be in a different part of the building.
‘I think he is still there,’ I say. ‘I believe he’s working late.’
There is silence from the guard. And I instantly realise why.
‘I mean, he might not be,’ I say. ‘ I may have misunderstood when I spoke to him this morning. Perhaps it’s tomorrow night.’
My face burned. I felt embarrassed.
‘I came on at 5:30pm,’ the guard said. ‘and everyone was gone by ten to six. Everyone. I said goodbye to all of them.’
My breath caught in my throat. The phone in my hand suddenly felt like a grenade about to go off and needing to be dropped before the explosion came.
‘Oh,’ I said. ‘Ah, actually I
think I can hear him at the door now. Sorry to have troubled you.’
I put the grenade down and stepped away from it.
The house was silent. Even the breeze at the open window was hushed. No one was at the front door. Neil wasn’t home. I was sure the security guard would have known that as well as I did.
Neil wasn’t where he said he was.
He had just lied to me.
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