Witch Hunt

Chapter Thirty-Six




The problem with being blown out of your mind is that, when you return to it, you find large chunks have been burnt out. I suspect that it’s a survival technique the human species has developed to prevent the paralysis of trauma. But it is irritating in cases like this, when I’m trying to give the full picture, to find that I only have a frazzled and fragmented rag of coherent recall.

I’m not sure what happened in the immediate hours post-discovery, so I won’t guess. This is what I do know: for a while I sat in the doorway of my mother’s bedroom, endlessly turning the note over, reading and re-reading the words until they made no sense. Eventually, I don’t know when, but probably sometime before midnight, I noticed on the back an indistinct scrawl, some kind of annotation in my mother’s hand: South East, F8. I don’t think I gave it much thought. I was too busy sifting through my childhood, exploring the holes. But like I said, it’s all a bit of a blur now.

I can remember the following day, I got myself together and went to see the man I thought of as my father in the Suffolk pub he partly owned.

I remember that he was late.

More than ten minutes late, and I was boiling myself into a fury. So that when he did finally turn up, striding into his realm, greeting some of the regulars he knew so well, I had to grip on to the table to prevent myself flying at him.

He saw me sitting over by the window in the furthest, most private part of the pub, but even then didn’t come straight over. He stopped, had a word with the manager then sauntered across the lounge, greeting me with a ‘Mercedes, darling. Are you okay? I got your message. You sounded …’

He bent over to give me a kiss, but I squirmed away from his touch.

‘Don’t,’ I said, though I was bursting to say more.

Dad took a step back. ‘You okay? I’m sorry I’m late. It was Lucy’s assembly and afterwards there were coffees and you know how these things go …’

It was the wrong line to take. Though he didn’t realise it, the last thing I wanted to hear was that he’d made me wait because he was spending time with his real child. His blood relative.

I leant forwards and snarled, ‘Who are you?’

Dad’s mouth dropped open. His eyebrows soared skywards, little bumps of wrinkled skin gathered above them; then, as a faint glimmer of understanding seemed to appear on the horizon of his mental landscape, they narrowed and slid down his forehead. His eyes made intense small movements, darting from side to side. Apart from that his face was impassive, petrified into a familiar non-expression that I had seen so many times in my life. At last I perceived it for what it was – a mask that hid many contradictions and conflicting emotions. Though, from an early age I had presumed it to be indifference, I saw now it was paralysis.

He stepped back and put his hand to his brow then, as if falling, sat down and grasped the edge of the table.

I didn’t move to help him, but looked on and watched.

Once he’d gathered himself he looked at me. His face had fallen and he had a ruined look about him.

Half-heartedly he asked, ‘What’s this all about?’

It was written all over his features that he knew what was occurring. He just didn’t want to have to deal with it.

‘This,’ I spat and threw the document onto the table. While watching him I’d unconsciously screwed it up into a ball. I hadn’t meant to. I didn’t want it to look like disrespect but my fists had clenched down hard. And suddenly it was there. In the middle of the table.

Separating us.

The lie.

Dad cleared his throat. He was pale. ‘What is it?’ he asked, staring at me, squarely into my eyes.

I wanted to look away but I wasn’t that weak.

‘You know what it is,’ was all I said.

Dad exhaled steadily. I watched his white linen shirt rise to take in the next breath, then hold it like he was never going to let go. Then he said, ‘Oh.’

As simple as that. ‘Oh.’

I was so appalled I let my hand slam down on the table, drawing glances from the landlord and regulars. Dad waved them back.

For a long minute we looked at each other like there was no one else in the room.

Dad’s chestnut eyes were welling up, stricken by emotions nobody else would ever be able to understand. All I could say was ‘They’re brown. Your eyes. Mine are grey. Why didn’t I get it?’

Then, before I knew what I was doing, I got up and marched out of the door.

I could hear the people in the pub murmuring and the shouts of Dad to come back but I couldn’t stop myself. Really, all I wanted was a denial. Some kind of explanation that would lay the rogue document to rest. A straightforward explanation that it was a joke or a fake. But his reaction had been authentic and now I knew in my heart he was not my father.

I made out towards the reservoir, rushing over grasses and bushes but not seeing or feeling a thing.

After a while he must have caught up with me because I felt his hand on my arm. I wrenched it away but he clung on and brought me to him. As old as he was he was still strong, and surrounded me with his arms. And though I struggled, my heart was not in it. Trapped in his embrace I submitted to his overarching hug.

And while the wind and the reeds shushed us I clung for dear life to this man, now a stranger to me.

We didn’t move from the spot, but sat down there. Dad gave me a hanky.

I wasn’t speaking.

After a decade he said, ‘You’re my daughter, no matter what you may come across. I have raised you. You are my child.’

I was confused and said, ‘But I’m not. Not literally, am I?’

Dad’s voice was calm. ‘There’s no biological link, it’s true. But you are mine. You always have been. All that nappy changing counts for something, you know.’

I rolled over on the grass and knocked down a reed. One of the rushes was digging into my thigh so I snapped it and threw it ahead. ‘Who is my dad then?’

He looked away and said, ‘I don’t know.’

I snorted. ‘Really?’

‘No.’

‘What do you know?’

He sighed heavily. ‘Where did you find it?’

‘Underside of her jewellery box.’

‘Oh,’ he said again.

I said, ‘Why didn’t you ever tell me? Loads of people have stuff like this … Adoption and stuff. It’s not the fifties for God’s sake. I mean, some of my friends have had single mothers and don’t know their fathers. They’ve never been misled.’

He held his hand up to silence me. It was a commanding move and it worked.

‘You think I didn’t want to tell you? Mercedes, there have been so many times when I could have just said it.’

I stared at the reservoir. Wind was rippling across the surface of the water. A family of ducks swam into the reeds. ‘Uncle Roger knows doesn’t he?’

He didn’t say anything.

‘He said to me, at his birthday, that I wouldn’t be a match if I donated my kidney. I thought it was a polite way of declining my offer. But now … Why didn’t you tell me?’

Dad ran his fingers through his short curly hair. It was the only gesture that gave away his nerves. He looked off in the other direction to the distant hills.

‘Because your mother never wanted me to. It was important to her that you never knew.’

We sat for moments in quiet silence. Then I said, ‘Why?’

He said, ‘I don’t know. Honest to God, I don’t.’

I wiped my face with his hanky. ‘So what I want to know is how much of what you’ve told me is true? How did you meet? It obviously wasn’t a smooch at the youth club?’

Dad sort of yawned and didn’t speak for a minute. There was an inner struggle going on: loyalty to my mother opposing my demands. But there was only one relationship that had any hope of continuing, so eventually he caved in.

‘She seemed to come out of nowhere. Literally. I mean, I never thought that anything like that would happen to me. It was in the spring of ’78. I was on my way back from a job in St Albans. That night we had terrible torrential rain. It was dark. The rain was clogging the windscreen. I didn’t see her. One minute it was all rain and empty lanes, the next, there was this girl in the beam of my headlights. I swerved off to the side to avoid hitting her and when I got out she was on the road. My wing mirror had clipped her. She was dazed, I think. Just sitting there like that, in that way she had, looking up at me, doing her best to look brave. It was as if she was expecting to see someone she knew. She had thrown herself across the pram awkwardly, blocking my path to it and it was on its side. I don’t think she’d realised that. And I could hear crying. As I reached the pram she tried to push me away. But she was weak and it didn’t take much to get round her and right the pram. And there you were, more or less okay, thank God. Apart from a light scratch on your head.

‘Your mother was bleeding from a cut on her side. I wanted to take you both to the nearest hospital. To be honest, I was concerned that Rosamund might have internal injuries and I didn’t want any comeback on the insurance. But she wouldn’t hear of it. She got hysterical and was about ready to leg it up the road. So I stopped insisting on a visit to

A & E and told her I was taking her home – no arguments. After some persuasion she agreed. The pram wasn’t fit for purpose anyway.

‘The address that she gave was some sort of hostel.’ He broke off and shook his head, seeing it again. ‘The conditions in there. Oh Mercedes, you should have seen it: damp on the walls and mould on the inside of your cot. The paint was flaking off and there were bits of plaster all over the carpet. And she was so young and thin. Of course, she was beautiful too. I think I’d been smitten from the first moment I’d seen her in the middle of the road. That black hair; a bit Elizabeth Taylor. I couldn’t leave her in that dump, I just couldn’t. So I brought you both home.

‘Of course, she was resistant at first. But I think she was so weak that she gave in. I remember that she spent a long time looking at me. Staring at my hair and something over my head. I told her she could have the spare room for a bit and that she looked like she could do with a good feed. That’s when she agreed. I wouldn’t wonder if she might have been half starved. It was hard back then. You didn’t get the sort of help you do these days. And for a baby you were small too.

‘She didn’t have many belongings: a couple of skirts and jumpers and some baby clothes.’ He frowned sadly at the memory. ‘It wasn’t meant to be a long-term affair. For the first few months she kept talking about moving on. She’d been running from something. And don’t ask me what that was – she never spoke about it. Even after we were married. It took me about a year to convince her she could trust me. I think she did in the end. Eventually, months turned into a year and we got around to tying the knot. You know, I loved her, Mercedes. Truly …’ he tailed off and took a deep breath.

‘I only ever wanted her to be happy. But she couldn’t be; something kept her worried all the time. And she was so protective of you. So absolutely of the conviction that you should never know of your history other than the story we agreed on. It was one of her conditions when we got hitched. But I respected that, and it didn’t bother me. I was prepared to take you on. You were lovely.

‘You could say we created a fiction out of love. And you grew into a bright happy child.’ He reached over and rubbed my calf. ‘Of whom I am very proud.’

I could see it in his eyes. And all at once I wanted to forgive him. Both of them. Of course, there was a reason for it. Of course there was. And it was true – I had had a happy childhood.

I sighed and leant back on my hands, thinking back over the years. ‘But I always thought I was an Essex Girl, Dad.’ I noticed how I had referred to him and in that moment I knew, that despite the knot of pain in my guts, I had already forgiven him. He would still always be my dad.

‘You are. You are such an Essex Girl. Or rather, Essex woman now. I know this is difficult. But you have to realise that this was done with your best interests at heart. You understand that, don’t you? Knowing what your mother was like.’

I could get it. But I couldn’t get it, if you know what I mean.

‘I should find my dad,’ I said eventually. ‘The biological one. I suppose.’

‘No.’ He said it quickly, with conviction. ‘Please don’t. Whatever had happened in your mother’s life there is one thing I know for sure, and that was that she didn’t want anything to do with him.’ He was looking over my shoulder into the past. Silence fell on us for a moment then he said, almost to himself, ‘He was probably someone she met back home.’

I jolted upright. ‘Back home?’

‘London.’ He looked doubtful and touched his face with his hand to brush away an invisible hair. ‘She only referred to him once, in her own words, as an “unexpected sperm donor”. Her parents had wanted her to give you up for adoption but she refused and got kicked out of home.’

‘That’s a bit harsh.’

‘Not really. It was the seventies. There was still a stigma attached to unmarried mothers. And,’ he pressed both palms into his eyes and rubbed, then leant back and looked at me, ‘she was just sixteen when she had you.’

That didn’t make sense. Mum was fifty-two. We had celebrated her fiftieth a couple of years back.

‘Another little tweak of the facts for appearance’s sake.’ I could see him swallowing down his feelings as he reached back through the years. ‘She’d be fifty this December, had she lived.’

It was hard to take. Why change her age? But I couldn’t dwell on it. I didn’t want to see him like this – all struggling and emotional. He was meant to be strong and fearless and, well, my dad. Dads didn’t do that.

I nodded. ‘Her parents: are they still alive? Do I have some family I’ve never met?’

Dad sighed again and looked at the broken grass beneath my feet. ‘I’m afraid not. They were elderly and died some years ago. Rosamund never made contact with them. She was so angry. I don’t think she got over them tossing her out like that.’

‘You think? You don’t know?’

He nodded. ‘She clammed up whenever I asked, so I learnt not to and, to be honest, after a while I couldn’t care less. Your mum became my wife, and shortly after, you became my daughter. I wanted to adopt you but your mother didn’t want to get official channels involved, so we did it unofficially.’

‘But I have a birth certificate that lists you as my father? Not this one.’ I wagged it in front of him. ‘Another. I’ve used it for my passport. You’re on it. Place of birth: Rochford, Essex.’

‘I am your dad, Mercedes. A man from Shoeburyness helped me organise that. It was just a case of getting the correct stationery, and bunging a few quid in the right direction.’

I took that on board in silence, watching the clouds sail towards the south-west. ‘Didn’t you want to know more about her?’

He reached out and grabbed my hand, rubbing it for emphasis. ‘I loved her and I loved you. I felt lucky that she’d allowed me to accompany her on her way. I never wanted to make her feel uncomfortable. I wanted to protect her and look after you. And if that meant not asking any questions, then that was a small sacrifice to make.’

But that didn’t add up entirely in my mind. ‘But you left us.’

‘I didn’t want to,’ he said. ‘Your mother was so aggrieved about the effect that her illness was having on us, she was going to leave herself. I wouldn’t hear of it. I persuaded her to stay but I said I’d clear off. You were sixteen then, going on twenty-five. Out on the town night after night, with that young hellcat Maggie Haines. You always were far too grown-up looking for your own good. And you did all right, didn’t you? Made it into university and never looked back.’

‘I always thought you left us. That’s another thing you kept back.’

He shook his head. ‘I think your mother thought she was doing me a favour. Releasing me from the difficulties of life with her and her depression. But I never felt like that. I loved her. But I didn’t want to be a burden either. That’s why I went. And I think she found some kind of peace with Dan. Their temperaments were more compatible. They’d been through the same kind of illness. I think she ended up quite happy with him.’

‘Like you’re happy with Janet?’ The petulance in my voice was hard to disguise.

‘My life with Janet is different. Janet’s stable and strong. I feel like we’re on an equal footing. She’s upfront and honest. You know that what you see is what you get. Your mum was always partly a mystery to me. Sometimes I felt like I was bewitched. Our life was full of ups and downs. But passionate too.’

I didn’t want him going into details of the ‘passion’ bit. I said, ‘I never thought we were an ordinary family. And now I know we weren’t.’

‘Every family has a secret,’ said my dad. ‘And the secret is that they are not like any other family.’

‘Profound,’ I said.

He made an attempt at a smile. ‘Not mine. Nicked it off someone else.’

I sniffed and dabbed my nose with his hanky. ‘True though.’

He pulled his knees up and made to stand. ‘And now you have to forget about it. For your mum’s sake. It’s what she wanted.’

‘Actually,’ I said and unfolded the crumpled-up ball, ‘I’m not entirely sure that that’s true. Look.’ I spread the certificate over the grass and turned it over, directing Dad to the scrawl. ‘Do you know what that means? South East, F8.’

He blinked at the crumpled sheet. ‘I’ve never seen it, you know.’ I looked at him, taking in the tired features and messed-up hair. I wanted to hug him but I couldn’t. I just said, ‘But do you know what the letters mean?’

‘It’s not a postcode?’

I shrugged. ‘Dunno.’

He took it out of my hands for a closer look. ‘Coordinates?’

I sat back. ‘Mum’s got a map of some sort on the wall.’

‘I doubt it means anything.’

‘Probably not.’

‘You’re going to have a look aren’t you?’

‘I’m going straight there now.’

I stood up and gestured towards the limp piece of paper in his hands.

‘Do you want company?’ he said, handing it over with some reluctance. He wanted to destroy it, I think.

I took it and said ‘No. She might have been trying to tell me something before she, you know, died. She said something about a box, though I thought she meant my book, and I didn’t let her tell me. I …’ Words were becoming futile in the face of unfurling guilt. ‘I think I should do this on my own.’

He moved onto all fours then stood up and put his hands on his hips. ‘Well I’m here if you need me.’

‘I know,’ I told him. And I did.

When I got back to Mum’s house it felt like I was returning to the scene of a crime where something violent and unwholesome had occurred. The house let me in, but it felt violated. Ripped out its heart. Changed the memories.

I didn’t spend long downstairs and leapt up the stairway two steps at a time.

I noticed my grubby fingerprints on the doorframe as I entered Mum’s old bedroom. This time I flicked the lights on so I could clearly view the map on the wall.

Encased in a thin glass cover, I traced out lines from the two sets of coordinates. Where they met, I could see a pinprick left by a drawing pin. And it was right in the middle of a village – Ashbolten.

That rang a bell.

Where was that from? I’d read it recently.

‘Shit,’ I said as it came to me. It was the place mentioned in the article Gerald had given me at the National Archives. Where the Nathaniel Braybrook diaries had been found. Could it be so? Had she been there? She had never mentioned it to me. But there was obviously a great deal she had neglected to talk about.

I examined it more closely. A cross had been pencilled in black, just south of the town. Above it Mum had written: Treetops.

My mind flew back to the article. It had been torn roughly but I had made out a ‘p’ and ‘s’. Treetops?

Why on earth would she have gone to Ashbolten?

It made no sense.

Nothing did. Everything was confusing. I sat down and thought for a bit. When I’d thought things through I took a photo of the map on my phone.

Then I went downstairs with a new clarity. Two dominant threads in my life were converging.