A Perfect Christmas

Chapter THIRTY


Glen and Jan were anxiously waiting while Cait searched the safe drawer.

She had gone through the procedures of getting both the key to the cupboard and the safe key itself from where her mother had hidden them, and then opened them both. From where she was kneeling on the floor she took a moment to flash a look over at Glen and Jan as if to say, well, here goes, then pushed her hand against the front of what she had thought to be a solid metal base. A metal drawer shot out to reveal its contents.

Glen and Jan meanwhile had been holding their breath, praying that the drawer contained what they had come for. From their position neither of them could see anything. Unable to contain herself, Jan blurted out, ‘Does it hold anything, Cait, or is it empty after all?’ Her mind was screaming, Please, please, say there is something. No more than Glen’s was, though.

Cait put them out of their agony by nodding and telling them, ‘Yes, there is a pile of papers here. Let’s just hope that amongst them is something to do with Lucy.’ She put her hand into the drawer and lifted out a sheaf of papers and began to search through them. On top of the pile was a thick document, the official lettering on the front page informing Cait it was the one Glen had signed, mistakenly believing it to be a power of attorney. Cait replaced that in the safe drawer. She then found the deeds to the house in the names of Samuel and Nerys Thomas, and put them back in the drawer too. The document below that concerned the car. Now there were only three pieces of paper left. She scanned the top one and her face screwed up in utter bewilderment.

‘Oh!’ she exclaimed.

Both Glen and Jan urgently asked, ‘What have you found, Cait?’

She shook her head. ‘But it doesn’t make sense . . . It’s a death certificate.’

Jan clasped her hand to her mouth in shock.

Glen froze as a vice-like pain squeezed his heart. He uttered, ‘My daughter is dead? Oh, no, please don’t let that be . . .’

Cait shook her head. ‘No, Glen, she isn’t.’

They both gasped in relief to hear this. ‘So who is the death certificate for then, Cait?’

She looked across at them both in utter confusion. ‘Me,’ she told them.

They looked back at her in surprise. It wasn’t possible for her to be holding a death certificate in her own name when she was still very much alive!

Before any of them could fathom how this state of affairs had come about there was the sound of the bedroom door opening and, to their horror, they saw Nerys walk in.

At the shock of seeing her, Cait let out a gasp of fright.

In the process of taking off her stylish coat to hang it in the wardrobe, Nerys swung round to see Cait down on her haunches by the open cupboard, the door of the safe wide open too.

Throwing her coat on to the bed, Nerys furiously exclaimed, ‘What are you doing in here? You’re not even supposed to be living here any more and you know this room is forbidden to you without my permission.’ She then noticed the sheets of paper Cait was holding and her look of anger turned to one of panic. She demanded, ‘Give me those. Now! NOW!’ she screamed frenziedly as she started to head towards the cowering girl. Then she froze in her tracks when a male voice told her in commanding tones, ‘Leave her be, Nerys. She’s helping me.’

She swung round in surprise to see two strangers standing across the other side of the room. ‘And just who the hell are you?’ she demanded. ‘And what is Caitlyn helping you with?’

Glen took several steps forward so she could see him better and said, ‘You don’t recognise the man you married and then framed for a crime he didn’t commit?’

Nerys frowned, studying his face, before mouthing, ‘Glen!’

He said sardonically, ‘At least you remember my name.’

‘Why are you here? What is it you want?’ Then she thought she knew, and smirked. ‘Oh, if you think . . .’

Glen finished for her. ‘That you’ll hand me back what you took from me?’ He gave a sardonic laugh. ‘You went to a lot of trouble to take if off me and make sure there was nothing I could do about it, so I’m not stupid enough to believe you’ll surrender a penny. I have to take my hat off to you. It was a clever plan you came up with, to give yourself a comfortable life without having to work for it . . . with no thought whatsoever for the others you destroyed in the process.’

‘So why are you here?’ she snapped nastily.

‘To find out what you have done with my daughter. Show me you have at least a shred of decency, Nerys, and tell me where I can find her, so I can get her back with me, where she belongs.’

She vehemently insisted, ‘If she gives me those papers back, right now, then I will tell you.’ She looked over at Cait, eyes fixed on the pieces of paper she had not as yet inspected.

A puzzled Cait couldn’t understand why her mother was so desperate to get her hands on them. Her brain whirled into action. They had to hold information that Nerys was terrified of anyone finding out.

She made to look at them but was stopped by a frenzied cry from her mother. ‘Don’t you dare read those! They are my private papers. Give them to me NOW.’

Just then a voice was heard calling weakly from downstairs, ‘Nerys . . . Nerys, I need you, darling.’

At her husband’s summons she pushed Glen out of the way so she could call back down the stairs. The voice that only moments ago had been harsh and nasty had become tender and caring. ‘I won’t be long, darling. I’m just . . . seeing to something. Make yourself comfortable by the fire and I’ll be down in a minute.’ Then she spun back again and told her audience, ‘My husband needs me. Now get out, all of you, before I have the police called. And you,’ she wagged a warning finger at Cait, ‘give me those papers back before you leave.’ She marched across, hand outstretched to snatch them from the girl.

But Cait wasn’t about to let her until she had discovered just what it was her mother was so desperate to keep secret. Quick as a flash, she jumped up and dashed over to the bed, throwing herself bodily across it. She meant to twist over to the other side and position herself behind Glen and Jan for protection while she discovered what her mother was trying to hide. She’d bargained without Nerys’s determination to stop her. Lunging after Cait, she grabbed her legs, digging her nails deep into her flesh and pulling her back towards her so that she could grab the papers out of her hand. Both Glen and Jan dived immediately to Cait’s aid. Jan threw herself at Nerys, trying to pull her away from her daughter, while Glen fought to wrench her hands off the girl’s legs. In the confusion no one noticed that the offending papers had slipped out of Cait’s hand when she had flung herself down on the bed, before they had fluttered to the floor on the other side . . . all but Glen, that was. Finally he managed to ease Nerys’s grip on Cait’s legs, and Nerys and Jan toppled over and landed on the floor. As soon as Glen had pulled Cait safely out of reach of Nerys, he dashed across to retrieve the papers from where he’d seen them land.

Nerys meanwhile had scrambled up from the floor. Seeing Jan was nearly back on her feet too, she gave her a heavy shove and toppled her back down again. She looked round wildly for Cait and saw she was no longer on the bed but standing on the other side of it, with no papers in her hand. Nerys started frantically searching the floor. Meanwhile Jan was up on her feet and had dashed over to Cait to put a comforting arm around her, pulling her close.

It was Glen who stopped Nerys from searching for something she wasn’t going to find.

‘Looking for these?’ he asked, holding the papers out towards her.

She froze rigid. Her face seemed to pale alarmingly, her eyes to fill with abject terror. It was apparent to her that he had read the information the papers contained.

Looking back at her with disgust and loathing, he said harshly, ‘You know what I can do to you and your precious husband with this information I have on you both. I’ll strike a bargain with you instead. Tell me what you did with my daughter so that I can get her back with me where she belongs. Give me back my house and my business. You can keep what money you have in your bank. Then both of you can pack your bags and make sure you get far enough away that you never risk bumping into me again. Either you agree to my terms or you know what the consequences will be. Oh, and one more thing. You agree to leave Caitlyn with us. You’ve obviously never loved your daughter . . .’

Nerys gave a shrill laugh. ‘That’s because she’s not my daughter. My daughter is dead! When you lose a child you dearly loved, the pain and heartache of that loss never goes away. Then I saw a chance to put a stop to the never-ending torment through the arrival of another child in my life. I would make this child mine, change her name to my child’s, and then she would become her and it would be like we’d never lost her.

‘I tried and tried but I just couldn’t love her, and neither could Samuel. Our love for our own child, our flesh and blood, was too great to share with another. I began to hate the sight of the other child, resent her for being alive when my own daughter was dead, but by that time it was too late for me to get rid of her so I had no choice but to put up with her until she was old enough to fend for herself. So have your precious daughter back with my blessing. Go on, take her now. Get her out of my sight!’

Glen froze at the significance of what Nerys had just told him. He spun his head to look over at Cait, huddled next to Jan who was holding her protectively. Jan was looking back at him, her face wreathed in shock. He couldn’t see the look on the face of the girl he now knew wasn’t Caitlyn Thomas at all but his own beloved daughter Lucy. She had her head buried in Jan’s shoulder and he could see she was quietly sobbing. He desperately wanted to rush to her now, gather her in his arms, declare his undying love for her, but their reunion would have to wait as first he needed to deal with this selfish wicked woman before him, get her out of his and his daughter’s life for good.

He gave Jan a look that asked her to stay here with Lucy and look after her while he saw to what he needed to do. Then he took hold of Nerys’s arm tightly and, with her screaming at him to let her go, dragged her out of the bedroom and down the stairs, into the lounge where the other selfish, wicked individual, oblivious to what had been going on above his head, was waiting for her to attend to him. Pushing Nerys inside the room, Glen turned and shut the door firmly behind him.