No Child of Mine (43 page)

‘She’s half asleep,’ the nurse answered, ‘but have a little chat with her while I go and check if the ambulance is here.’

With Millie’s personal possessions already on their way up north the room seemed forlorn, almost desolate, though Alex guessed it wouldn’t be long before someone else’s belongings were transforming it again. Probably as early as this afternoon, given the demand for places.

Sitting on the edge of the bare mattress, she turned the wheelchair so Millie could see her. ‘Hello there,’ she smiled, as Millie’s eyes flickered open. ‘You’re looking very chic today.’

‘Oh, Alex, there’s lovely,’ Millie sighed with a smile. ‘I’ve got me coat on. I’m going to Mexico.’

‘Mexico?’ Alex repeated, wondering where that had come from, and guessing a travel programme must have been on in the background while she was dozing.

Millie nodded, and her eyes drifted off to where her doll’s house used to be. A moment later they were closed and her head was lolling forward again.

Gently easing it back to rest it on the cushion behind her, Alex abandoned the small and selfish hope she’d had of asking about her mother, and simply held her fragile hand instead. Millie was too far into the wilderness now; it wouldn’t be fair to test her with questions that would probably just end up confusing her even further.

‘I’m going to miss you, Millie Case,’ she said softly. ‘You’re very special to me, I hope you know that, and you’ve always made me feel special too, for as long as I can remember.’

She took a tissue from a box on the windowsill and dabbed away the drool that had started to run from the corner of Millie’s mouth. She was remembering how Millie used to wipe her mouth when she was little after she’d eaten chocolate cake, and how Millie had taught her to bake one. It was also Millie who’d helped her to embroider the word
Pegs
on a bag they’d made together, and who’d shown her how to pack soil tightly round a plant to make sure all its roots were covered. Millie had always seemed thrilled when she’d done well at school, ready to hear all about it; and she’d never shouted at her for climbing too high in a tree, or for pedalling her bike across the lawn and leaving grooves.

She found herself wondering if Ottilie had a bike.

‘I’ll come to see you as often as I can when you’re in your new place,’ she said gently to Millie, ‘and I’ll send you letters that I expect a nurse, or your niece or nephew will read out to you. They’re looking forward to seeing you, and I know everyone will take very good care of you.’ She didn’t know that, but she wanted to believe it, and it was important for Millie to believe it too, if she was taking anything in.

‘Your things are already on their way, so I expect they’ll all be set out nicely by the time you get there to make it like home from home. And you’re not to worry about the journey, OK? The ambulance crew will look after you and stop every now and again so you can have a drink and go
to the loo.’ How was she going to do that when she was unable to manage it on her own? Presumably they’d thought of this, and suspecting Millie was already thickly wadded up with incontinence pads she said, ‘I’m glad you don’t really understand what’s going on, because I don’t think you’d like it very much, but knowing you as I do I guess you’d try to find a way of laughing about it.’

Millie shuddered a sigh and started to smack her gums. ‘Lost me teeth,’ she croaked after a while.

Checking her bag and finding them safely tucked away in their case, Alex was about to reassure her when the nurse came back.

‘OK, Millie, your chauffeur’s here,’ she said, coming to stroke Millie’s cobwebby hair.

Millie snuffled and tried to lift her head. ‘There’s lovely, a chauffeur,’ she wheezed. ‘Is he wearing a hat?’

Alex and the nurse smiled. ‘I’m sure he’ll put it on if you ask him,’ the nurse replied. Then to Alex, ‘Would you like to wheel her down?’

Getting up and taking the handles of the chair, Alex could feel the heaviness in her heart becoming more onerous with each step she took. She’d thought, after finding out her mother wanted to be in touch, and having something to look forward to, that it was going to be easier to say goodbye to Millie today, but it wasn’t, at all.

‘You be good now,’ she said, pressing a kiss to Millie’s papery forehead before one of the ambulancemen took over in order to push the chair up the ramp into the back of the vehicle. At the top he turned Millie round so Alex could see her, and Alex felt a hundred fractures running through her heart as Millie lifted a spindly old hand to wave.

‘Have a lovely time in Mexico,’ Alex said shakily. ‘Don’t forget to send me a postcard, will you?’

‘God bless,’ Millie whispered. ‘You’re a lovely girl.’

As Alex choked back a sob, the doors were closed, and moments later the ambulance was driving away.

Alex remained on the kerb watching until it disappeared from view, and somehow knew that she was never going to see the old lady again.

*

Though it seemed callous to carry on with her day as though Millie’s departure had meant no more than something she’d had to fit into the morning, Alex knew that the only way to cope with the sadness was to keep busy. Besides, sitting at home, thinking about the past while waiting for her aunt or her mother to ring, would only make matters worse. So returning to her car she headed off to the supermarket, as planned, going out of her way to pass the Wades’ house en route, just in case ... Though just in case of what she couldn’t actually say.

Since the traffic wouldn’t allow her to slow up much on the hill, she was given no more than a few fleeting moments to catch a glimpse of the place, which told her nothing of what might be going on inside. She thought of the way Ottilie had wanted to stay with her yesterday, and how her little hand had waved through the stair rails. If only Alex could go into the house! Had she left Ottilie feeling as though she didn’t care, had abandoned her even? Or maybe she was happier to be with her parents than seemed likely. Alex wanted more than anything to think that, and yet couldn’t quite make herself believe it.

Minutes into her trip round the supermarket she found herself in a tangle of indecision about whether to buy wine that she couldn’t afford, for a woman she didn’t even know would ring, never mind whether she was even planning to come. In the end, deciding one bottle of red and one of white would be handy anyway, she carried on filling her basket, wondering if she should be buying in enough to cook something for her mother, or if that would just be tempting fate.

Maybe weeks would go by before she heard from her, so it would be crazy to buy anything now. Maybe she wouldn’t hear from her at all.

Realising she was getting caught up in a spiral of doubt and self-torment that was going to lead her nowhere she wanted to be, she did her best to switch her mind to other things. However, as the minutes turned into hours the dread of not hearing gave way to hopelessness and then anger. She’d been so ready to paint a saintly picture of her mother in her mind, transform her into an impossible icon
of sensitivity and kindness, that she was clearly becoming delusional, desperate even, and utterly pathetic. After all, her mother was a woman who’d been able to give up her only surviving child and had never, in twenty-five years, even tried to see her, much less find out how she was. What kind of person did that make her? OK, she’d been traumatised by a terrible massacre at the time she’d made her decision, but she wasn’t in trauma now. For all Alex knew she was a fugitive, a pitiful, obsessed hanger-on who’d spent her life keeping the monster she loved from the hands of the law. The monster who’d slain her parents, her sister, an innocent man,
their son
.

And where was he now? Waiting in the shadows, hoping to meet his daughter at last? Sending his battered wife to fetch her?

If he wanted to see her, if the subject even came up, Alex knew she’d slam the phone straight down again. For her entire life she’d been trying to forget that she carried that man’s genes, to keep hidden the fact that she was the child who’d escaped the Temple Fields murders. She shuddered at the very idea of people pitying her, or worse, wondering if she had it in her to do the same. God knew, she’d wondered it about herself often enough – to have the rest of the world shrinking from her in doubt, or avoiding her altogether, would be a living hell.

On arriving home at the end of the afternoon and finding no message on the machine, she braced herself and rang her great-aunt to ask if she’d at least found the number.

‘I’m afraid not,’ came the reply, ‘but I’m sure she’ll call again when she’s ready.’

Fervently hoping her aunt was right, while wishing she knew when that might be, Alex rang off. She had to do a better job of distracting herself than she was managing, or she was going to drive herself crazy. For this evening at least, it shouldn’t be too difficult, because thankfully she’d arranged to get together with Mattie to draw up a list of judges and potential acts for
Mulgrove’s Got Talent
.

In the end it was just after noon the following day when the phone rang, and somehow Alex knew instinctively
that it was going to be her mother. Quite how she knew she had no idea, it was simply there in her heart, and for one crazy moment she felt too afraid to answer. Then the receiver was in her hand and to cover her nerves she was saying a ludicrously strident ‘Hello?’

The woman at the other end sounded hesitant and throaty, with the trace of an accent, as she said, ‘Is that Alex?’
Liverpool?
It was where her mother was from, but it didn’t sound like that.

‘Yes, it is,’ she replied, starting to feel oddly light-headed.

‘It’s Anna Reeves here,’ the voice told her. ‘Maybe you know me better as Angela Nicholls.’

Experiencing a rush of emotion that was both forceful and unexpected, Alex tried to answer and found she couldn’t. She was speaking to her real mother!

‘Helen said it was OK for me to call.’

Somehow managing to get the words out, Alex said, ‘Yes, yes, it’s fine.’

There was a slight turbulence in a laugh before Anna Reeves said, ‘I can hardly believe I’m speaking to you, hearing your voice, knowing you’re there, at the end of the line ... Oh dear, I’m sorry, I promised myself I wouldn’t get emotional ...’

‘It’s OK,’ Alex told her, not realising there were tears on her own cheeks. She was feeling a preposterous, irrepressible urge to turn back time and become three-year-old Charlotte again, to start over and know this woman all her life.

But you have no idea who she is
.

‘Can I see you?’ Anna asked. ‘It would mean so much to me, but I understand if you’re not willing ...’

‘No, no it’s OK. I’d like that,’ Alex assured her.
How could she not want it, in spite of how disruptive, even devastating it might prove?

‘I’m at Heathrow now,’ Anna said. ‘I’ve just got off a flight, but I can come right away. It’ll take me about three hours to get to you if I rent a car.’

Alex tried to assimilate, to make sense of Heathrow, flights, an accent she still couldn’t make out.

‘Helen told me you’re still at the Vicarage,’ Anna continued, ‘but I believe your pare—Douglas and Myra are no longer with us.’

‘That’s right.’ She was barely listening, was trying to imagine how she might be feeling were she talking to her child for the first time in over twenty-five years. The emotions would be so deep and overwhelming she might not be able to hold it together. Was that how Anna Reeves was feeling?

‘I’m sorry to hear it,’ Anna was saying. ‘I expect it was hard, losing them both in such a short space of time.’

She seemed to know more than Alex might have imagined, but it wouldn’t have been difficult to find out about Douglas from the Internet. ‘It’s been especially hard for Gabby,’ she replied. ‘She still misses them terribly.’

‘Of course. And you?’

Wanting to be truthful, Alex said, ‘Yes, I guess I do, in more ways than I expected.’

‘Perhaps you’ll tell me about them when I come?’

‘Of course.’ She didn’t want to talk about Myra and Douglas, she wanted to hear about her real family, to find out what her mother had been doing all these years. ‘Do you know where the Vicarage is?’ she asked.

‘I think I can remember the way. If I get lost I’ll call again.’

‘OK. I – I’ll look out for you.’

There was a note of wryness in Anna’s voice as she remarked, ‘You sound very ... grown up.’

Distantly amused, Alex said, ‘I’m twenty-eight, so I guess that qualifies.’

With a catch in her voice, Anna said, ‘There aren’t words to express how much I’ve longed for this day. To think I’m going to see you at last, look into your eyes, see your lovely smile ... I know it’s lovely because I’ve seen you on Facebook.’

Feeling oddly unsettled by that, Alex remained silent.

‘I found your theatre page,’ Anna explained. ‘I hope you don’t mind.’

‘No, not all,’ Alex replied, not sure if it was true. ‘I hope I ... I hope I didn’t disappoint you.’
Why had she said that, what would it matter if she had?

‘Quite the reverse,’ Anna assured her. ‘I’m afraid it’s me who’s more likely to disappoint you, but I’m going to do my best not to.’

For several minutes after putting the phone down Alex could barely make herself think straight. Somewhere deep inside she was sensing some sort of panic trying to emerge, but she wasn’t going to allow it. She had to keep control of herself and try not to spoil what was about to happen with the dread of her worst nightmares coming true. Her mother had said nothing about Gavril Albescu, and not for a single moment had she sounded like the kind of person who’d lived her life in the shadow of the maniac who’d killed almost everyone in her family, and had intended to kill her too, at least at the time. Except how did anyone who’d been to hell and back sound? Probably just as capable of conveying gentleness and warmth as anyone else.

It was crazy, anyway, to think that her mother had gone to be with her father. He’d wanted her dead, had injured her so badly it was a miracle she’d survived, so what would have stopped him trying to kill her again?