In Bitter Chill (23 page)

Rachel leaned forward in her chair and Nancy, imperceptibly, shrank back. When she’d arrived, she got them both a cup of tea from the woman doing her rounds with the trolley, hoping to catch Nancy in a relaxed state before she started her questions. But already something was up. Nancy had a heightened colour in her cheeks and her eyes looked watery, although Rachel could swear it wasn’t with tears. Rachel added a dash of cold water to Nancy’s hot tea and she listened to her slurp it while holding the saucer in her quavering hands.

‘Nan, I need to ask you something.’

Nancy looked around the room and finally settled on a spot above Rachel’s right shoulder. ‘What is it, love? Man trouble?’

Rachel snorted, which brought a smile to her grandmother’s face. ‘Not me. I don’t expect trouble and I don’t get trouble.’

It was the wrong thing to say. Nancy bent back down over her tea and concentrated on taking another slurp.

‘Nan. I went to the records office last week. I needed to do some research for my job.’

Her grandmother looked relieved. ‘Burying yourself in those files. Look what they do to your nails.’

Rachel ploughed on. ‘I found the record of you giving birth to Mum, in 1946. In Bampton cottage hospital. It’s on file there.’

The relieved look had gone from her grandmother’s face. ‘But that’s private,’ she said, outraged. ‘That’s confidential information. How come you were allowed to see it?’

‘Nan, it’s not private. Some things are allowed in the public domain after a period of time. Most of it is the same information that can be seen on a birth certificate, it’s just a different way of accessing the information.’

Nancy folded her arms across her chest. ‘So what was it you wanted to talk to me about?’

Rachel took a deep breath. ‘It said on the record that you had another child.’

There. It was out. And Nancy was struggling between outrage and guilt, if her expression was anything to go by. The silence stretched out. Rachel could hear a trolley being wheeled down the corridor outside as the tea woman moved on.

‘So what?’

‘You mean it’s true?’

Nancy clanked her cup down onto the saucer angrily. ‘That’s the trouble with everyone today. They want to find out your business. Nothing’s private any more. So I had a baby before I was married. I made a mistake, that’s for sure. But between me and my mum we got it sorted. We made a new life and forgot the old one. And now you’re bringing it up for no reason.’

‘But Nan, it’s important,’ wailed Rachel.

‘Important to who? You? It’s got nothing to do with you. I got pregnant and then I did the decent thing and had him. Not that I didn’t try the other.’

‘But what happened to the baby?’

‘Him. It was a him.’ Nancy was shouting now. ‘It was a baby boy. And he was adopted. And just as well that it was a boy, as my mother wouldn’t have minded getting rid of that. She never had any time for men.’ Now Nancy did look near to tears.

‘But Nan, who adopted him?’

‘I don’t know. Mum sorted it out. There was a couple in Bampton who couldn’t have any kids and she gave him to them.’

‘Is everything all right?’ A care worker had put her head through the doorway, clearly concerned with the sounds of arguing coming out of the room. Nancy and Rachel ignored her and she withdrew.

‘The police were here earlier.’

‘Here? What did they say?’ hissed Rachel.

‘Apparently my name appears in a notebook of that dead woman.’

‘Mrs Lander,’ said Rachel. So she hadn’t needed to keep Penny Lander’s name from her nan. She already knew there was a connection to her. ‘What did you tell them?’

‘I told them nothing.’

‘Oh, Nan, this is serious.’ Rachel was near desperation. ‘They must think there’s a connection.’

‘Connection to what? If the child I gave birth to has killed a woman then it’s nothing to do with me.’

‘But what about me?’

‘You? What do you mean?’ For the first time the fright was apparent in her eyes. ‘What do you mean?’

‘They think the case is connected to my kidnapping.’

‘But why would your uncle, who you’ve never seen, want to kidnap you? It doesn’t make sense.’

‘Nothing in this case makes sense.’ Rachel stood up and walked over to the window.

Nancy was back in the past. It must have felt safer there. ‘I tried it all. Sunday night it was the gin bottle. I went into the Red Cow in Llandaff North, even though I’d never been in a pub before, and asked the woman behind the bar for a bottle. I might as well have advertised to the whole pub that I was pregnant. The barmaid looked daggers but handed over the gin. One pound, five shillings and thrupence it cost me, I can remember the price now. I had to borrow the money from my friend Phyllis, with no hope of paying her back.’

Rachel could feel her mouth open. Was her nan talking about trying to have an abortion?

‘On Monday evening, we had a bad bombing over Cardiff docks. Mum had gone to a shelter near work and I should have been in the one in the garden. But instead, I took the tin bath from the peg behind the kitchen door and filled it with water so hot that my skin was scalded red. Nothing. The next night I tried the gin and bath together and nearly passed out with the heat and the pain.’

‘Oh, Nan.’

‘Come Wednesday, I remember standing at the top of her stairs and looking down wondering how best to kill myself. And that’s how Mum found me. Ready to throw myself down the stairs. And she was more annoyed with herself for not noticing. She wasn’t normally one to miss something like that.’

‘Who was he? The father of the baby, I mean.’

‘Tom Watkins was his name. So persistent, he was, and off to North Africa with the South Wales Borderers that I thought a bit of comfort and warmth would do us both some good.’

‘Is that why you came to Derbyshire? To start over again?’

‘Mum had been working in the armaments factory in Cardiff docks. A girl from Derbyshire, who worked next to her on the production line, had told her Litton Mill was now a parachute factory and was looking for women. And they weren’t asking too many questions either. So we got on the train and waved Wales goodbye.’

Nancy looked down at the handkerchief clenched in her hands. ‘And I didn’t miss it either. None of that “How green was my valley” for Mair and me. It had been bloody hard work and I know Mum hated the German planes that used to fly over us on their way to the docks. Derbyshire was colder. But people minded their own business and it was just as well, considering.’

‘And did my mum know about the baby? About the fact she had a half-brother?’

‘No one knew, just me and Mum. She told me never to tell anyone. And I didn’t. Not even my lovely Hughie had an idea I’d had a baby before I met him. We kept it well hidden and now it’s all going to come out. And what for? What’s it got to do with anything?’

Back in her house, Rachel’s mobile and landline phones rang continuously. First Richard, who tried her mobile throughout the evening, but she also had a missed call from her neighbour Jenny. She’d left a message on her mobile, and had sounded worried. She hadn’t mentioned her daughter’s socks that Rachel was now holding once more in her hand.

This wasn’t going to hold the key to the mystery. Looking at it she felt the shock of recognition, of something pulling at her. Muddied waters clearing. But not providing the clarity that she needed.
Think,
she willed herself.
Think
. Rachel had, most of her life, believed that her mother knew nothing about the kidnapping. But the last couple of weeks had changed that. She now believed her mother had known something, even if she hadn’t made the whole connection.

For the death of Penny Lander to make sense, then her kidnapper must have been James Lander. Her uncle and the same boy child Nancy had given away all those years ago. She had a cousin too, called Justine according to her client Cathy Franklin, although she wasn’t yet clear what she felt about her. And James Lander also had a sister living in Baslow Crescent in Bampton, although she would be no relative of hers. A whole family for Rachel to digest. But if he was her uncle, what had been his motive for kidnapping her and Sophie all those years ago. To blackmail her mother?

Rachel put down the sock and leaned back against the sofa. Conversations with recent clients passed through her mind. Eileen Clarke and the woman who had changed her name, but not to deceive. Pam Millett and her wayward son. Cathy Franklin, so fascinated by the idea of blue-blood illegitimacy. She had unwittingly chosen a profession that also held the key to the events of 1978. Had it been something deep in her subconscious that had steered her towards her unusual career? The long hours that she had put in over the years had been moving her towards the solution to her own mystery.

She began to think about what some of those families must have gone through. The ones she’d been interviewing over the years. Behind her closed eyelids, strange patterns were beginning to form and she saw Richard’s face in front of her. What had he said to her that weekend?
We’re not related, Rachel – I promise you that
. But now something more horrific was beginning to shape in her mind.

She grabbed a piece of paper and began to sketch once more her family tree. The design had become so familiar to her over the years, and yet now it was pruned. With a question mark above her father’s name. From her grandmother’s name, she drew a dotted line, indicating illegitimacy, and added in James Lander and his wife and daughter. Then with trembling hands she forced herself to face what her mind was telling her. Something so terrible that, as she was weighing up the possibility, her subconscious was also rejecting it. She struggled to hold on to what was solidifying in her mind. She drew a shaky dotted line between two boxes and the whole was there.

Rachel rang the doorbell of the house. For the first time she knew the meaning of the phrase about scales falling from your eyes. She felt that a physical barrier that she’d been refusing to acknowledge had blinkered her. And now at last it was removed. And the person who had done the removing was herself. She, Rachel, had solved the mystery of 1978 where all others had failed. Well, all except perhaps one. Mrs Lander, that aloof teacher whom she’d seen only from a distance in the school, had worked it out too. And now Rachel knew why. She knew the reason for Penny Lander’s sudden obsession with the kidnapping and what had been the result. The police were nearly there too, she was sure of it. They’d interviewed Nancy and it wouldn’t take them long to piece everything together either. But these were her demons and ones that she intended to face alone.

Rachel’s sense of triumph was also mingled with fear of what she was about to do. She’d made up her face before coming here, her hands trembling over the unfamiliar bottles and tubes. She’d taken time over her mascara, making sure that each lower eyelash was coated evenly. It was nonsense, of course, but with each dab of the brush Rachel had felt control return to her and her fear give way to fury that made her hand shake slightly. And of course the mask gave her the confidence she so badly needed. She had to distance herself as far as possible from her 1978 self and that black-and-white photograph that linked her inexorably to the past.

Outside the house, Rachel paused for a second and looked up at the door. A light had come on as she’d approached the house, illuminating the front door. It was a greyish white and made of what looked like uPVC. It was probably replaced in the last ten years or so, judging from its condition. The thick green hedge was still there – glossy green against the shiny white that had replaced the glossy black that she remembered.

Rachel pressed the doorbell again and waited, unsure if it had rung inside the house. A light was switched on in the hall and a woman opened the door. She was a shock. Tall with long blonde hair, she had a wide-hipped grace that made Rachel feel gauche. She hadn’t been expecting anyone else here and this woman was a distraction. Rachel suspected she was now only just ahead of the police and she needed to get a move on.

‘Is Bridget Lander here?’

The woman frowned. ‘She is. I’ll get her for you, hold on.’

Rachel stepped over the threshold. ‘No need. I’ll wait inside.’

The woman looked aghast. ‘What are you doing? What do you want with Auntie Bridget?’

Rachel nearly faltered as she assimilated the information. This was Justine. She cast a quick glance at the woman who was trying to shut the door on her.

‘I want to talk to her.’ With that Rachel took the step into the small hall and looked around her.

A shadow moved into view from the room on the right. From behind her, Rachel could make out the signs of a clean but old-fashioned kitchen. She refocused her gaze from the room and onto the woman. Also tall, but thin. But not the thinness that comes from weakness. This woman had a wiry strength, like an aging athlete. She was at once unrecognisable from 1978 and yet it was still her. Rachel was positive. She swallowed the bile rising up her throat.

‘Remember me?’

Bridget Lander stood calmly in the hall, her hands at her side. Justine was looking between Rachel and her aunt with growing unease. The three of them seemed stuck in a triangle, each waiting for the other to break the spell. Finally, it was Justine who spoke.

‘Auntie Bridget, what’s going on?’

The woman stirred. ‘This is nothing to do with you, Justine; you need to go back to the house and let me sort this out.’

‘But I can stay and help if there’s a problem.’

Rachel watched the exchange, fingering her pocket to check the item she had placed in it earlier was still there. ‘Why don’t you tell her, Bridget? Tell her why I’m here.’

Justine looked angry, two red spots appearing in her cheeks. ‘Look, you have no right to—’

‘You need to go, Justine’. Her aunt’s voice was harsh. It was a tone that clearly Justine wasn’t used to. She spun round and stared at her in astonishment. But she also had a determination inherited from her mother.

‘I don’t understand who this person is or why she’s here.’

Still Bridget and Rachel looked at each other.

‘I’d never have recognised you from 1978; you don’t look the same at all.’

Either could have spoken but it was Rachel who had broken the spell. Now Justine looked scared.

‘From 1978? You’re Rachel Jones, aren’t you? You don’t mean to tell me that you think Auntie Bridget was involved in your kidnapping? It’s ridiculous. You can’t come to people’s houses spreading accusations.’

‘Can’t I?’ said Rachel. ‘Perhaps your aunt would like to say something first.’

Bridget Lander calmly undid her apron from around her waist and folded it up neatly into a tiny square. She looked at her niece. ‘You really need to go, Justine.’

‘Auntie Br—’

‘I said go.’

Something in the finality of Bridget’s tone seemed to defeat Justine. Her shoulders slumped and 
she walked
 wordlessly into a room and came out with a camel-coloured coat. She wouldn’t look at either of them but said to her aunt, eyes averted, ‘You know where to find me. I’ll be at Mum’s.’

As the door shut behind her, Bridget Lander walked into a room off the left of the hall and Rachel followed. It was a large living room, sparsely furnished, with two long uncomfortable-looking sofas with wooden frames facing each other across the room. Rachel walked over to the large picture window and stared out into the neat garden. The style of the house reminded her of Yvonne Jenkins’s bungalow.

‘This is where you brought us, isn’t it? Sophie and I were brought here after you kidnapped us.’

‘Yes,’ the woman replied simply.

‘Over the years I’ve had this image in my head of glossy green and glossy black. Flashes of colour that didn’t make sense. The green was from that tree out there.’

Bridget walked over to join Rachel by the window. ‘It’s a yew. They’re often found in churchyards.’

‘And the black?’

Bridget turned to look down at her. ‘The front door. I got rid of it years ago. I’m surprised you remember. I had to chloroform you both in the car. The other girl was shrieking so much.’

‘What about me?’

‘I can’t remember, it was all so long ago. But that other girl, I couldn’t get her to be quiet.’

‘Sophie. Her name was Sophie.’

Bridget stared out of the window. ‘It was a stupid idea to kidnap you in the first place. But your mother wouldn’t let James see you. And he was desperate. Hell-bent on seeing what you looked like properly and desperate to have a conversation with you.’

‘When did he find out about me? Did he always know I existed?’

Bridget’s eyes were like hard pebbles of granite. ‘After your mother dumped him, he heard that she was pregnant but never thought anything of it. Just assumed that she’d moved on quickly. But then Justine was born and it must have got him thinking. Men can be incredibly dense sometimes. It takes nine months to make a baby.’

‘So Justine helped precipitate everything.’

‘You leave Justine out of this. It’s got nothing to do with her. All I’m saying is that it suddenly made him think through the dates. And then he saw that picture of you at the school fete. You and your mother standing side by side. And it was obvious. You look like him. You were standing there and suddenly everything clicked.’

The photo
, thought Rachel. That photo, frozen in time, of her and Mary determinedly enjoying themselves on a blustery summer’s afternoon had started all this. How utterly random and depressing.

‘And after everything had happened, I just couldn’t get over the sheer stupidity of it all. Everything ruined because of a compulsion to see you.’

‘So you kidnapped us both just so he could have a conversation with me?’ Rachel suddenly felt sick to the teeth of everything. ‘You kidnapped me and killed Sophie so your brother could see me.’

‘No!’ Bridget Lander held up a hand. ‘Sophie died accidentally. It was my fault. I got some chloroform from the hospital where I worked and used too much on Sophie. Either that or I held the pad over her nose too long. She struggled. Unlike you, who passed out straight away.’

The memory of the sickly smell assailed Rachel’s nostrils again. Nauseated, she forced herself to concentrate.

‘Where did she die? Sophie, I mean. Was it in here?’

Bridget shrugged. ‘It was here that we found out she wasn’t breathing. I tried to resuscitate her but it was no use. She’d gone. It’s harder with children – resuscitation, I mean. I learned that over the years in the hospital. Often when they’ve gone, they really have. Miracles rarely happen.’

Rachel sank to the sofa, oblivious of her surroundings. ‘But you’re a nurse . . .’

‘We didn’t mean to kill her, I told you. It was an accident.’

‘Where was my father during this?’

‘He was waiting here to see you. I was bringing you to him. But, in the end, he spent no time with you at all, as soon as we realised the other girl had died.’

‘So you decided to bury her in Truscott Woods.’

Bridget looked angry now; red blotches had appeared on her neck. ‘We weren’t animals, you know. We panicked. James wanted a look at you and a chance to get to know you. We thought if we picked you up with a friend, it would be easier.’

‘You mean you were planning to return us back to our mothers after the kidnapping? How would have that worked? Were you expecting us not to say anything?’

‘Of course not. But you were old enough to be talked to and James wanted to explain the situation to you. Say that he was your real father and that he loved you even though he wasn’t allowed to see you. So we chose a time when you’d both be together so that you could reassure each other. But the minute I started driving with you both, I knew we’d made a mistake.’

‘She started screaming.’

‘Well, it was you who noticed I’d made a wrong turn at the top of the road. You whispered something to her and she started wailing like a banshee.’

‘But why the sunglasses? Was it supposed to be a disguise?’

Bridget could only stare at Rachel. ‘I didn’t want to be recognised by either of you afterwards. It was James who wanted to see you. I was only helping him out. I was going to help him pick you up and then I wanted nothing more to do with you.’

‘What about the chloroform?’

‘The chloroform was only supposed to be in case of any problems. Instead, it sealed our fate.’

‘Sealed your fate?’ Rachel spat the words out. ‘
Your
fate? What about
my
fate? What do you think my life was like after the kidnapping? I was treated like some kind of freak. And what about Sophie? Her fate is to be buried in some grave with no proper funeral. And Mrs Jenkins and my mother. What about their fates?’

Bridget Lander was looking at her with cold eyes. ‘I’ll take on board everything you say about everyone except your mother. It was she who started this. She denied James access to you for no reason so he had no option but to try and see you in secret. James was your father. He started seeing your mother and the minute she got pregnant she dumped him. What woman in her right mind would do that? He was only a father wanting to see his child.’

‘I knew my mother. There’s no way she would have kept a father from his child without good reason. And there was one.’

‘What?’

Rachel reached into her pocket and pulled out an A3 piece of paper folded in half. She handed it over to Bridget. ‘You don’t think she might have had a reason for stopping me seeing my uncle?’