“The police have got the results from the DNA tests, Angela. I haven’t had it officially, but I’ve been told they are a match.”
“Alice.” Angela breathed in the name. “It’s Alice.”
She didn’t hear anything else Kate said. Her head was full of her child. I’ve found her.
She could feel Kate trembling when she took her hand again.
“I’m so pleased for you, Angela,” she said, and the two women sat looking at each other, eyes locked together.
Angela felt she could have sat like that all day, but Mick said: “Can you look at me, love?” and she turned her face to his camera, not knowing whether to laugh or cry.
Kate stood up to let him get his pictures and went to perch on the arm of an armchair. Joe was standing near the door. He kept looking at Angela and away, as if he couldn’t bear to see.
When Mick put his camera down, Kate went back to the sofa.
“You need to ring the officer on the case, Angela,” she told her. “He said the results would be back today, didn’t he? So you can ring him and ask. He must tell you.”
Kate sounded worried and Angela wondered if she was being told the whole story.
“Is there a problem?” she asked.
Kate looked down at her hands.
“The thing is, Angela, I’ve been told very much off the record that there is a match, so I need to get it officially before I can write the story. Do you see?”
Angela nodded. She wasn’t really sure she did see, but she wanted to help the reporter. She’d found Alice.
“What do you want me to say to DI Sinclair?” she asked.
Kate wrote down the questions to ask and said Angela should insist if the officer wouldn’t give her answers.
“You have a right to know, Angela. You are Alice’s mother and you have waited long enough,” she said.
Angela picked up the phone and dialed the direct line she’d been given.
The detective answered straightaway and Angela tried to play her part.
“Hello, DI Sinclair, it’s Angela Irving.”
“Mrs. Irving, how can I help you?” he said, all business.
“I’m sorry to bother you, but you said you would have the results today and I am going out of my mind waiting.”
“I know it must be very difficult for you,” DI Sinclair said, his voice softening. “But I’m just waiting for the results to be typed up.”
“But when will that be?”
“Tomorrow, I hope,” he said.
“I don’t think I can wait until tomorrow, DI Sinclair. It is making me ill, the wait,” she said. “I’ve waited too long already.”
Kate pointed to the next question she’d written down for Angela.
“Do you know what the results show?” she asked obediently, and DI Sinclair hesitated.
“Yes, Mrs. Irving. I’ve had a verbal report from the technicians, but I like to have all the paperwork in front of me before I release the information. And I’d planned to discuss it with you and your husband, face-to-face. I’m sure you understand my caution.”
“Please tell me what you know, DI Sinclair. I’m begging you.”
There was a silence. Angela looked at Kate and held her breath.
“It’s a match, Mrs. Irving,” he said finally.
“A match,” she said out loud for Kate’s benefit, and the reporter punched the air like a tennis player at Wimbledon.
“Yes. The DNA sample we took from you matches the DNA from the remains. The baby’s skeleton, I mean.”
“So it is Alice,” Angela said and started to cry.
“As I said, Mrs. Irving, I haven’t had it in writing, but yes, it does appear so. I’d still like to come and see you and your husband tomorrow to discuss the results and how we will take the case forward. I’d like to bring a Family Liaison Officer as well. So that you always have a point of contact. Is that okay?”
“Of course, of course. Thank you so much for telling me. I don’t know what to say. Please come. What time do you want to come?” she said, falling over the words.
“I’ll be with you at nine thirty, if that’s okay,” he said. “I’m glad the waiting is over for you. I will see you tomorrow morning.”
Kate’s feet were still dancing when Angela put the phone down.
“Well done, Angela. You did so well,” Kate said. “Tell me everything he said.”
Angela looked at her, hollow eyed, the initial euphoria of getting the news draining away rapidly.
“My baby is dead,” she said.
THIRTY-EIGHT
Emma
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 11, 2012
I hear the news on the radio. The newsreader with the posh voice, Charlotte someone, says that a missing baby has been found after decades, and I freeze. On a building site in Woolwich, she says. A baby called Alice Irving, she says. Taken from a hospital in 1970. And I stare at the radio. This is all wrong. The baby has a name. And a mother.
There’s a clip of the mother, saying how relieved and devastated she is. I stand listening in the kitchen and crying with Mrs. Irving. I’m as relieved as she is. But for different reasons.
Nobody will be coming to my door. No reckoning. Not yet.
Later, when I go to buy a pint of milk at the corner shop, I see the headlines in the papers and buy the one with the exclusive interview with Alice Irving’s mother. I try to read it as I walk home, but I keep stumbling and bumping into garden walls so I put it under my arm in the end. Don’t want to look like a madwoman.
At home I read every word, poring over the details, reading some bits out loud. I can’t quite take it in, but I feel a sort of euphoria rising in me. Maybe everything is going to be all right.
THIRTY-NINE
Jude
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 11, 2012
She heard the news on the radio as she waited for the kettle to boil. She was only half-listening as she wrote a shopping list in her head, but the words “Alice Irving” stopped her at natural yogurt. She turned up the volume until it shrieked in her ears and her neighbor thumped on the wall.
FORTY
Kate
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 11, 2012
Simon the Editor stopped at her desk as soon as he arrived that morning.
“Well, you must be pleased with yourself, Kate,” he said, grinning his yellow smile. “Great interview and most-read story online.”
She grinned back at him, happy to be back in the sunlit uplands of the Editor’s favor.
“And you,” Simon said, turning to the hovering figure at his elbow, “your first front-page byline.”
Joe looked like he might burst with pride. Kate had given him an additional reporting credit—his name in italics at the end of the story where it turned to page four and five—but the back bench had bumped his name up to join Kate’s on the front. She’d ground her teeth over it when she’d checked the page proof, but she understood. Joe Jackson was the Editor’s golden child.
“Right, what’s today’s story, then?” Simon asked. “What are the police saying? Any leads on who took her?”
Joe looked like a rabbit in the headlights.
“We’re talking to the cops, Simon,” Kate said.
“And we’ve got a second bite at the Angela Irving interview. Life without Alice,” Terry called across as he stood to join the impromptu news conference.
“Sounds good,” the Editor said and walked off.
Joe looked at Kate and beamed. “Thank you for giving me a byline, Kate,” he said. “I really didn’t do much.”
She grunted. Then relented. “You did a good job, Joe. Now let’s stop the backslapping and find out what happened to baby Alice.”
? ? ?
DI Sinclair was not a happy bunny when she called him.
“Did Mrs. Irving ring you yesterday, Miss Waters?” he asked. “Your story was completely premature. I’ve only just got the file.”
“I called her, DI Sinclair. We’d already done a story with her and I knew the results were due yesterday.”
“Did you ask her to ring me?”
“DI Sinclair, do you really think a woman who has waited forty-odd years to find her child needs telling? Angela Irving was desperate to know.”
“Yes, okay. I just wasn’t ready and the press office has been inundated.”
Kate’s mouth twitched, but she stopped herself from smirking. He’d be able to hear it in her voice.