I have spent so much time at my laptop these past twenty-four hours I feel like I’m having an affair with it. It is my life force, my soul mate; I deify it. It’s part of me; it’s my right arm. I think the world revolves around it. When my phone rang earlier I searched the keyboard of my laptop wondering how to pick up. Thank heavens for the internet. In days of yore I wouldn’t have been able to sit in the relative comfort of my own pad in Bloomsbury searching the world’s archives, I’d have had to visit a library or a private detective to learn more about my history. But here, thanks to one Sir Timothy Berners-Lee, I have the world at my fingertips.
I feel guilty. I’ve always felt my baby was my constant companion, my best friend. To be usurped by a piece of technology doesn’t seem right.
Stuff that. I have a job to do.
Private detective. Private detective.
Oh my God. I know one. Who’s now a vicar. Maybe I should give him a call.
I check my phone and see I still have the vicar’s number in my contacts list so, grabbing the bull by the horns, I call him. I’m not even sure what I’m going to say to him. It rings for what feels like an eternity before an answerphone kicks in. It’s his landline so it’s an official vicarage message – fancy not being there for your parishioners – and eventually there’s a beep and I stumble over my words but finally come out with . . .
‘Oh, hi. Father. It’s me. Rachel. Rachel Taylor. You like . . . buried my mum the other day. I have a favour. I think. It’s just. Well. Certain things have come to light since Mum died and . . . well, I need to pick your brains about something. I need to speak to a private detective, I think. To try and trace someone, well, some people possibly, from when I was little. And I wondered if you had any contacts who might be able to help. In London, preferably. That’s just where I am. I think you have my number. But if you haven’t it’s . . .’
And then I give the number and hang up. I don’t even say thank you. Rude!
I then remember it’s Sunday morning. He’s probably taking a service. So, maybe he is there for his parishioners after all.
Anyway. Back to the internet. What have I learned?
Right. So. If I am baby Diana Wilson, this is what I know about myself.
I was born in a maternity hospital in Birmingham a few days before the royal wedding in 1981. My parents Linda and Les took me home the next day. On the day of the wedding, my Mum was washing-up in the kitchen and she’d left me in a pram on the patio bit of their back garden. She left me there for only a few minutes. When she went out to check on me, the pram was empty. A nationwide hunt began to find me and get me back. Nearly a month later I was found in a cottage in a village in North Wales with the woman who had stolen me. I was well cared for. The woman who stole me was called Shirley Burke. She was nineteen and had been seeing a married man for a while. When he had threatened to end the relationship she had pretended to be pregnant to lure him away from his wife. A neighbour at the North Wales cottage raised the alarm as she felt Shirley Burke resembled the facial composite of the baby-snatcher that had been shown on the news. Shirley Burke claimed to be mentally ill, but was still sent to prison for years. The country was elated that Diana had been reunited with her relieved and jubilant mother Linda.
Right. So.
The most shocking thing about this is that my parents seemed to be married. Well, they were at least an item when the abduction took place. I had always been brought up to believe that my dad was some dim and distant one-night stand that my mum never bothered with and who’d not had the slightest interest in me or bringing me up. He was so dim and distant, in fact, that he wasn’t even mentioned on my birth certificate. But then my birth certificate had my new name on it. Rachel Taylor. And it said my mum’s name was Jane Taylor. Had Mum forged this? Had she paid someone to make it up? Or could you change names on birth certificates when you changed names by deed poll? That didn’t seem right. My mind is swirling at how duplicitous my mum has been.
Where is my dad now? Is he still alive? Did he have any idea where I was living all these years? Or was Mum being honest all that time? Did he have no desire to see me? All those times at school when I was sick with jealousy that all the other girls had dads, no matter how distant they were, and I had a big fat zero. Had that been a misinformed waste of time? A complete waste of energy?
It certainly is starting to look that way.
I was apparently discovered in a house called Lovers’ Leap Cottage in a village in Wales called Loggerheads. I have searched and searched on YouTube to see if there are any documentaries or news clips, but there is nothing. I certainly don’t register there. If I enter ‘Diana Wilson Baby Snatch’ it just comes up with similar cases in America from very recent years.
All this searching has certainly made me interested in Loggerheads. In that cottage. In that street. Having read that it was a neighbour who had tipped the police off, I want to go there. I want to find that person and say thank you. Thank you for twitching your net curtain and being nosy enough to know that something was awry.
The last article I managed to find – and I couldn’t find many because of course my abduction predated the invention of the internet – was an interview with Linda a few years after we had been reunited. It explained a lot, and left a load of new questions too. I found it in a collection of interviews by some old tabloid hack. Ursula Sanders was a middle-aged woman, long since dead, who did emotional pieces with high-profile women. My mother being one of them. Some student in Durham had typed out all the recordings of her interviews and put them online as part of their dissertation.
God knows what they were studying, but I was very grateful they’d done this odd thing.
Oh, and she interviewed Barbara Taylor Bradford, but that’s for another day.
I’ve printed it out and will carry it everywhere from now on. Proof of who I am and what I went through. Proof I’m not who I always thought I was. They feel like magic papers that hold the keys to a weird and wonderful kingdom. A kingdom I was once part of but now have no idea whether it really existed or not. But here is the proof. For what it’s worth.
This is what it says.
US: Linda, if I may . . .
LW: Of course.
US: I’d like you to cast your mind back, if you could, to those dark, dark days when Diana was taken. Can you talk us through what actually happened when . . .
LW: Shirley Burke?
US: When Shirley Burke broke into your back garden and took tiny little Diana.
LW: We’d had her home from hospital a few days. It was the beginning of the summer holidays and the weather was lovely, so I’d taken to putting her in her pram and parking her out on the back patio for a bit each morning, before it got too hot at midday. Les was off work as it was the Royal Wedding and he was pottering and I was washing up. The radio was on. ‘Stand and Deliver’ was playing by Adam and the Ants. I quite liked them so I turned it up. How I wish I’d never turned it up. And then I popped out to check on Diana and that’s when I saw . . .
US: What did you see?
LW: The pram was empty.
US: What did you think?
LW: I thought Les must’ve come round the side of the house and taken her so I called to him. Asked if she was all right. When he came into the kitchen empty handed I knew immediately something was wrong.
US: A lot of people let their babies sit outside in their prams, don’t they?
LW: They do. I did. And I regret that.
US: It wasn’t an open invitation.
LW: Looking back it feels like it was. On one level I know it’s normal. But on another, I know I kind of hated myself more than I hated Shirley Burke back then.
US: Which must be hard.
LW: It really is.
US: Going back to that day.
LW: Okay.
US: I believe the next thing that happened was that the area went into lockdown.
LW: Yes. But it was too late. By the time the police arrived we’d lost twenty minutes. Shirley Burke was already driving off in a car with Diana in the back. From then on in it was bedlam. I can’t remember too much about it if I’m honest, but it was when I saw policemen searching the bins outside the house that I realized they thought that I might have had something to do with it. They’d cordoned off all the local streets, thinking if might have been a neighbour or a kiddie but . . .
US: Take your time Linda.
LS: I don’t remember much about any of the time Diana was away. I just catch images of myself sometimes. Hoovering the nursery. Scrubbing everything with bleach to within an inch of its life. Watching stuff on telly. Inoffensive, daft stuff. Happy families in adverts. I’d be sat there thinking, oh it’s all right for you. With your home-cooked meals and your ten million kids. Where’s mine? My baby had just vanished into thin air. I was worried no-one believed me. I thought I was going mad. Thankfully someone had seen Shirley Burke at the bus stop over the way and they were able to help the police with a facial composite, otherwise who knows if we’d’ve got Diana back?
US: The police were pretty convinced she was alive all along, weren’t they?
LW: They were. They said they were sure whoever had taken her had lost a baby and would be looking on Diana as their own and so wouldn’t harm her. Whatever the circumstances were, this woman would be treating her well. I just hoped this was true, of course.
US: It seemed that the whole nation was holding its breath.
LW: Well, I certainly was. I had a few fainting fits actually. Never had them before or since. I think it was because I just kept forgetting to breathe.
US: And then almost a month later . . .
LW: We got the phone call. Les and I were in the middle of . . . well, let’s just say a very heated argument. He was trying to get me to face facts.
US: Which were?
LW: The facts as he saw them were that Diana was dead and I needed to get used to the idea.
US: You’re no longer with your husband, are you?
LW: We were put under a lot of strain.
US: Do you think if Diana hadn’t been taken you’d still be together?
LW: Who knows? I don’t like to think about it. At the end of the day she was taken and we did split up. I can’t change either of those things, even if I wanted to.
US: And getting her back wasn’t exactly a bed of roses, was it?
LW: No. I found it really hard to bond with her. I’d not seen her for about three or four weeks. I couldn’t settle and as a result neither could she.
US: You couldn’t settle?
LW: I kept thinking someone was going to take her. I still haven’t let her out of my sight really. But no. I found it very difficult to bond with her at first.
US: And now?
LW: It’s a lot better.
US: I’m pleased to hear that, Linda.
LW: Thank you.
US: How do you feel about Shirley Burke now?
LW: I hated her for a long time but now I feel sympathy for her.
US: I think some people will be surprised by that.
LW: I’m only being honest. She was a kid. She was desperate. I think it’s pretty evil what she did, but I do, I feel sorry that she felt she had to do that. It was never going to end well for her. But she was too young to see that.
US: It might not have ended well for you.
LW: But it did. So . . .
US: You’re quite the tabloid star now aren’t you Linda?
LW: I’m not receiving a penny for this interview. I never set out to be a tabloid star, to have my face in the papers, and I don’t enjoy it one bit. But I understand that people are interested as it’s such an unusual story. But I am doing this one interview, and then that’s it. No more. I will disappear and no-one will ever hear about me or Diana ever again.
US: Bold words, Linda, if you don’t mind me saying!
LW: Well, I mean it. I will not have let Shirley Burke destroy my life, and I swear to God I’d never let her destroy Diana’s.
US: So you will disappear?
LW: I’m toying with going to Australia. Maybe New Zealand.
US: But your infamy may follow you.
LW: I won’t let it. No offence, Ursula, but this interview will be tomorrow’s chip paper.
US: I’ll try not to take offence at that.
LW: I will. I’ll disappear. And you watch. Shirley Burke might have messed with my family. But Diana will be the one to have the last laugh when she’s a happy, content child, and a well-adjusted grown up. We will have the last laugh.
I have read and re-read that interview what feels like a million different times. It is so illuminating. And it means that Linda and my mum were definitely the same person. It’s so interesting to me because here she is, having gone through one of the most gruelling ordeals imaginable, and on the one hand she is being all sweetness and light and forgiving and, Oh the poor wee thing, Shirley Burke – but then her passive-aggressive side comes out and she can’t help but be vile and hideous and all, You won’t be hearing from me again even if you’re fascinated by me, as well you might be.
It made sense why she had changed our names. She was clearly a household name. Or maybe I was. And by moving to a brand-new place, somewhere she had no ties, presumably she felt she could have her well-earned anonymity.
And how clever of her to make out she was heading down under. It meant no-one would be looking for her in this country. It meant she could retreat to the New Forest and get on with that anonymous life.
But what about my dad?
Les.
Les Wilson.
How did he feel about all this? Did he believe I was living in New Zealand?
And did I want to find him? And if I did, how would I?
Surely there couldn’t be that many Les Wilsons knocking about. It isn’t exactly a common name. But how old would he be now? Mid-sixties? Surely he’d still be alive. I couldn’t be the one who has all the bad luck and loses both their parents before they hit seventy, could I? The sort of person who tracks down a parent and finds they only died the week before.
I don’t want that happening, so it’s probably best to get cracking with any sort of search immediately. I fire up Facebook and enter the name Les Wilson in the search bar. Several profiles come up and they are all women. Maybe he’s transitioned? If he has he is looking pretty good on it. Or she is. Or they. No, she.
Anyway.
I re-enter Leslie Wilson and scores of them come up.
Okay, so it isn’t as uncommon a name as I originally thought.
I scroll through them and click on their profile pictures and on the whole they look too young to be my dad. There are a couple of Leslies who have non-committal photos of tigers or place settings at a dining table; one even has a picture of his pick-up truck. I feel I should contact them all and explain who I am, but as I go to do it my fingers freeze above the keyboard. I just can’t.
What do I say?
Hello, Les. Remember that baby who was nicked?
IT’S ME!
LOL.
Actually, LOL would be hugely inappropriate. But as I think that, I realize the whole thing is completely inappropriate. Contacting someone out of the blue and telling them you’re their child? It’s a Jeremy Kyle wet dream, isn’t it?
But then I remember someone saying it was quite the done thing these days and that Facebook is littered with kids getting in touch with parents who never knew they existed, and within seconds of a friendship request you could be checking out your long-lost mother’s taste in soft furnishings by nosing at her photo album, headily titled ‘Through-lounge since decorating’, etc.
Do I really want to see what Les Wilson’s taste in home decoration is like?
No. But I want to reach out to him. Let him know I’ve not really been ignoring him all these years. Let him know that Jane/Linda kept him very much a secret from me. See if there is anywhere we could go with this. Whatever this is. Whatever this might be.
I have to say I haven’t hankered for the presence of a father figure in a very long time. I pretty much got accustomed to that before I hit puberty. But now I know that Jane/Linda was lying all those years . . . well, it feels impolite not to reach out the hand of friendship.
This is a man who must have been as traumatized by what Shirley Burke did as my mum was. For God’s sake, he’d tried to sit her down and get her to contemplate a scenario where not only had I been abducted, but I had also been killed. He had had to think about, and no doubt believe, that his baby daughter, his first-born, had been snatched from beneath their very noses and was probably dead. He then had to convince his wife of this. The poor man, to have to go through all that – his heart must have been breaking. It really didn’t bear thinking about.
And then what did his missus do? After they split up she disappeared into the night with a change of name, not only for the baby but also for her, never to be seen or heard of again. What must that have been like for a young man? A young man who had been through so much?
Had he met someone else? Remarried? Had he gone on to have other children?
Oh gosh. That is something I’ve not considered.
Has he got other kids?
Do I have a brother or sister out there? Brothers or sisters, maybe?
Or maybe he was so traumatized by what happened to me he couldn’t face having any more.
I have to find out.
I look at my phone to see if the vicar has returned my call, but I know he hasn’t. Maybe he, with his hotline to God, can find out through the power of prayer and by tonight I’ll be Skyping Les and reminiscing about the good old days.
But of course there were no good old days.
Everything about this story of mine is bad. Sad. Maybe he won’t want to hear from me.
I check the phone again. No missed calls. Oh well.
Instead I Google ‘Hire Cars: Central London’. I need to take another bull by the horns.
I also need to get more Granny Smiths.
It’s easy enough to work out where the police found me with Shirley Burke. The address is there in black and white in each internet article I have found. And renting a car is a lot easier than I thought it would be, though admittedly the drive from Bloomsbury to North Wales takes a lot longer than I anticipated. Nearly six hours, but that’s mostly down to roadworks on the M6, and the fact that I enter the wrong postcode in the satnav to begin with. After several wrong turns, and another that sees me going halfway up a mountain called Moel Famau, I eventually wend my way to the bizarrely named Loggerheads. For some reason the name alone makes me think that Liz Taylor and Richard Burton should have had a house there. And then another in the next village, Divorce. ‘We were at Loggerheads, then moved to Divorce.’
But of course there is no village called Divorce.
I am wittering in my head.
I am nervous.
Time to face the music.
Eventually I find the street and park up.
I stand in this, the very street where I was once held captive, and hope against hope that I will feel something. That there’ll be some flash of recognition. But of course . . . the last time I was here I was about four weeks old, no more than that certainly. I feel nothing but disappointment.
I soothe myself with a crisp apple. It improves the mood.
I can’t even work out which house was once upon a time Lovers’ Leap Cottage. None of these houses look like they could ever have warranted the moniker ‘cottage’. I was expecting a pretty street, a backwater of holiday homes, luxury gaffs where rich footballers might not look out of place. I expected to see a van parked up with POOL CLEANING SERVICES written on the side. I wanted this to be more of a cul-de-sac than a street, the sort of place where you’d expect to see Renée Zellweger popping to the shops on a dirty weekend with Hugh Grant.
Instead I am greeted by a row of non-descript three-storey council maisonettes. How bloody grim! Cottage, my foot! Is this all Shirley Burke could afford? Poor cow, literally. What do I do now I’m here? I can’t just stand here, take a few pictures on my phone, then go home. I have to do something or today will have been a complete waste of time.
I look up beyond the maisonettes and see the mountain disappearing into the clouds. The weather is bright on the ground but I can’t see the top of the mountain. It’s eluding me. Like this street is eluding me right now, the truth is eluding me. Which house was my hiding place? I have to find out.
I walk up the path nearest to me and ring on the doorbell. I know there is someone in as I can hear a telly blaring in the living room. Through the glass of the door I see a silhouette approach. The door swings open and a woman about my age is there. She gives me a Yes, how can I help you? look, though says nothing. She is fashionably dressed and immaculately manicured. She’s too cool for words. In the split second before either of us speaks I wonder if this is her second home. That she has another in London and this is her Welsh getaway. Bizarre choice but hey ho.
I realize neither of us is speaking and the ball is in my court.
Here goes.
‘Yes, I wonder if you could help me? I was wondering if you knew anything about the history of this street?’
She sort of shakes her head and looks a bit confused.
‘Do you know, for instance, which house used to be called Lovers’ Leap Cottage?’
She shakes her head. ‘We’ve only been here six months. Try Norma in the post office. Her family have been here forever.’
I look around, but can see no post office.
‘Sorry, the old post office. It’s that house there.’
She points to the dilapidated prefab opposite. I thank her and trudge across. Before she shuts her door I hear her calling to someone inside, ‘Lettice? Turn that down, please! Mummy needs to express.’
So. These houses may look incredibly ordinary, but it seems they’re inhabited by posh people.
I ring my second bell.
And this time I have a bit more luck. Luck in the shape of Norma.
It turns out Norma’s family have lived here forever, though Norma – a sprightly sixty-year-old – was working away when the drama unfolded on this street so has little first-hand recollection of it. But she knows a woman who will remember. Her old pal Sandra’s mum Myrus was the woman who tipped the police off.
Myrus. That’s not a name you hear every day. It’s a wonder that didn’t make it into any of the articles I’ve read. But maybe she too wanted her own anonymity.
‘Myrus?’
‘Yes. Myrus.’
Sounds like a mash-up of Miley Cyrus. But I keep this to myself.
‘Is she still alive?’ I ask.
‘Why do you want to know?’ Maybe she thinks I am a journalist or something.
‘I’m baby Diana.’
And at that Norma pales and invites me in and says she’ll find Sandra’s phone number. It’s odd seeing her reaction. It’s almost as if at the sound of my name she has become a quivering wreck. Her hands are shaking as she checks through pieces of paper on her messy kitchen table, and she keeps brushing her hair back nervously. Eventually she finds a number scrawled on a notepad and picks up the phone to call. But then she drops the phone and screeches a loud ‘SORRY!’ It’s like she’s about to burst out crying.
Gosh. What an effect I have on people, suddenly.
‘Are you all right?’ I ask quietly. And she turns to me.
‘You have to realize. You were the biggest thing that ever happened in this village.’
I feel myself blushing. I feel a piercing of shame. I put this village on the front pages of the newspapers. Through no fault of my own, but I did. It was so long ago, but look, it may as well have been yesterday as far as this woman is concerned.
She makes her call.
Long story short, an hour later I’m in an old people’s home about ten miles away, chatting to Myrus. Her daughter has come to sit in on the conversation, probably for ghoulish nosiness more than anything. She warned me on the way in that Myrus has a dreadful short-term memory now, but remembers things from the past with crystal-clear precision. Thank God.
She’s a very ordinary looking woman. This wrong-foots me. She could be any old lady you see walking down the street with a drag-along shopping trolley. Any old lady at a bus stop. Any old lady fumbling in her purse at the checkout. And yet she is quite extraordinary in my personal history. Without this woman I might still be in thrall to my abductor. Without this woman I would not be the person I am today. I want her to look incredible. I want her to turn heads with her eccentricity or importance. I want every step she takes to create seismic shocks. But she’s not that sort of person. She’s me, she’s you, she’s everyone. She’s ordinary. She just, once upon a time, did something out of the ordinary. And I am extremely grateful.
She looks to be in her eighties. But she is perkily dressed in a grey leopard-skin puffa jacket that’s quite slim-fitting and trendy looking, and she is wearing smart black slacks and has definitely put a brush through her white hair. She seems to spend forever when I first arrive holding my hands and looking at me up and down, turning her face this way and that, like she’s eyeing up a cow at auction. Will I pass muster?
I eventually sit down and her daughter serves us tea and biscuits and – no idea why – explains that she bought Myrus the jacket last Christmas. With vouchers. Maybe she’s trying to explain why her mother is wearing a coat indoors.
I ask her if she remembers much about when I was a baby and ended up staying on her street.
She smiles at my polite use of the word ‘staying’, and I instantly know this woman is good news.
‘Oh yes. Like it was yesterday. You were quite the story.’
It’s now I realize that although we are in Wales, Myrus has a cockney accent.
I ask her what Shirley Burke was like.
She has a think.
‘She was a funny looking thing. You wouldn’t look twice at her. Small. But not petite, if you know what I mean. I was always interested in newcomers, being a bit of an outsider myself. I mean, look at me. Eighty-four this March, been here since nineteen sixty-three, and they still don’t see me as a local.’
She drops a sugar cube into her tea with some dainty silver tongs. I marvel at how I’ve not seen such an action in a very long time. I wonder if she had the tongs in 1981. Whether she used them to sweeten her tea when I was crying in a cot a few doors away.
‘She had the sort of face you’d want to slap, actually. Sorry. That’s an old saying of my mother’s. She certainly weren’t no oil painting, dear.’
Dear. No-one has called me ‘dear’ in forever.
‘She was pregnant of course. Or so we thought. Well, we know now she was only pretending . . .’
‘Sorry?’
‘She was here a week or so before the baby appeared.’ She corrects herself. ‘Before you appeared. Forever walking up and down the lane, all fat with the baby due. Then she disappeared for a few days. Then she come back.’
‘She was pregnant?’
‘Well, it turns out now she was having us all on, leading us on a right old merry dance. But I remember vividly her ankles were all puffy.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘She was wearing some sort of padding, to make out she was pregnant. And she had the walk down to a tee. Always stopping on the corner and rubbing her back and sighing. I felt sorry for her. That’s why I noticed her. Plus she was on her own. Back then it was very unusual for a woman with child to be on her own. Specially round here. Ain’t exactly Hackney Marshes, is it?’
‘No. No, I suppose not. But what made you suspicious of her?’
‘It sounds daft now, but . . .’
‘I’m sure it doesn’t.’
‘I got talking to her one day. The way you do. And something just didn’t add up.’
‘In what way?’
‘It was the way she talked about her husband. Yet she didn’t have no ring on her finger. And I know the couple what owned that house was a married couple. I just got the feeling she weren’t telling me the truth. I felt sorry for her, truth be told. Thought she was the mistress. A kept woman. I turned out to be right.’
‘But that’s not necessarily, in itself, that odd. Or was it, back then?’
‘Oh, it weren’t that, dear. It was just that she told me she was having a boy. Quite adamant about it, she was. Nice little boy, and she was going to name him after his daddy. Douglas. And of course Douglas was the name of the man what owned the house.’
‘You’ve got such a good memory.’
‘For back then I have. I can remember stuff from the war like it was yesterday. But ask me what did actually happen yesterday and we’d both be buggered.’
We share a smile.
‘And then of course she came back from the hospital and . . . well, you weren’t a little boy. She was all flustered about it.’
‘So you met me?’
‘Only on the path. Taking you from her car.’
‘How did I look?’
‘You were sleeping. But you were ever so bonny. But of course this was the same day it was reported the baby had been taken from the lady’s back garden. And that baby was a little girl. Something in my gut said it was you. Only I didn’t dare say. Then Douglas turns up and they seemed perfectly happy so . . . what business was it of mine?’
‘So what made you contact the police?’
‘Douglas seemed to have disappeared. God knows where he’d gone . . .’
‘Back to his wife, probably.’
‘Well, this is it. And I popped round with a little cardy I’d knitted for the baby. And she seemed ever so put out about it. And I asked if I could see you. And she was adamant I couldn’t coz you were sleeping and . . . well, something didn’t add up.’
‘How d’you mean?’
‘She didn’t seem to have any friends popping round. Or family. And most new mums love nothing more than showing their baby off to all and sundry, and she really didn’t.’
‘Of course. Yes, that would be odd.’
‘And I went home and I found the artist’s impression thing in the newspaper. And the more I looked at it, the more I thought, oh God. It’s her. So I called the police. Next day I had a few of ’em camped out in the house, binoculars at the window, the works.’
‘Watching her?’
‘Well, they weren’t waiting to pay the milkman.’
I’ll give her that. God, she’s sharp.
‘Two days later the whole street was cordoned off. Coppers everywhere. I watched it all from the attic window. Heart thumping in my chest. The main one knocked on the door. I saw her open it. Bit of chat, then I remember, clear as day, she stood to one side and they went in. She looked . . . she looked resigned to her fate. She looked relieved. A minute or so later he comes out with you in his hands. And that was it. ’Course, the whole village was glued to their TV sets for days after. Biggest thing that’d ever happened round here, as you can imagine. Still is, really.’
‘We still get people talking about it in the pub,’ her daughter pipes up. Gosh. I was paying such attention to Myrus I’d forgotten she was here. ‘Mum was quite the celebrity, weren’t you, Mum?’
‘They asked me to open the village fete.’
‘She said no, like.’
‘Oh, I said no. Didn’t want a fuss. Just wanted, I don’t know, order restored.’
‘Were you called to be a witness? At the trial?’
‘I’d have been happy to, of course. But no. Silly little girl pleaded guilty to everything so they didn’t kick up much of a fuss, trial-wise. Which was probably just as well, for your mum. How is she?’
‘Oh. Well. Sadly she died a little while ago.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry to hear that.’
‘Actually I knew nothing about any of this till . . . till after she died and . . . and I found some old newspaper clippings and put two and two together. She changed my name and . . . well, it’s all been a bit of a shock.’
‘Blimey, really?’
‘Yes.’
‘Might be for the best,’ the daughter chipped in.
‘Sure she knew what she was doing,’ Myrus agreed.
‘I’m sure. But it’s left me with a lot of questions, obviously.’
‘Of course. Gosh, that must’ve been a shock, dear.’
I nod. No flies on Myrus.
‘Can you tell me which house on that street was Lovers’ Leap?’
She looks at me like I am mad. ‘Of course I can, dear. It’s changed hands a lot over the years but it’s Christine’s place now. She does Hair B&B now.’
She’s looking at her daughter.
‘Airbnb,’ her daughter corrects her.
Myrus shrugs. ‘People’ll stay anywhere these days. Still, the views are nice.’
I look at my watch. It’s past five in the afternoon. A quick estimate of driving times mixed with a rising sense of excitement urges my next question.
‘I wonder if anyone’s staying there at the moment.’
It’s the daughter’s turn to shrug. ‘One way to find out.’
Lovers’ Leap is now named Moel Famau View. As we stand outside I hear Sandra on the phone speaking rapidly in Welsh. I gaze at the house, hoping it will spark some memory. It sparks nothing. It’s possibly the worst-kept house in the street. When Sandra hangs up I’m not surprised when she says, ‘You’re in luck. No-one’s staying here this week. It’s yours for the night.’
I imagine the reviews on Airbnb to be pretty harsh.
But then I am not staying here for five-star luxury. I am staying here as a trip down Memory Lane.
‘D’you think I’m weird?’ I hear myself asking. I can’t help it.
She shakes her head.
‘What happened to you was weird. I’d want to do exactly the same.’
And this makes me feel better.
She says the owner will be here within the hour.
I’m about to make small talk when my phone goes and I see it’s the vicarage calling. I answer quickly.
‘Tom. Hi. Father. Sorry.’
Sandra looks at me like I’m mad, as well she might.
I point to the phone and mouth the word VICAR. Which I don’t think she gets. And as I do I hear Tom saying, ‘Rachel. Hi. I’ve got the details of a private detective for you. Still need them?’
‘Yes.’ And then I almost shout, ‘YES!’