Eve was looking at the letters again. She got them out nearly every night now, after Daniel was in bed – even though she knew most of them by heart. For some reason she needed to keep reading and rereading Flora’s words. It was probably because she knew this was all she was ever going to have now. Her mother clearly didn’t remember anything about the letters – why she’d written them, or who she’d been writing to. She didn’t even recognise her own handwriting, so she was never going to be able to help Eve solve this mystery.
In some ways, there wasn’t a mystery to be solved. Flora had been let down by the man she loved and left to give birth to and raise their baby on her own. Either Alan Baker hadn’t known that this girl he’d spent the summer with was pregnant, or he’d chosen to ignore a regular flow of letters from her. But either way, he hadn’t been there for Flora or her baby.
As the baby in question, Eve was still considering trying to find this mystery man: since she’d discovered her mother’s well-kept secret it had felt as if her life was one big loose end which needed to be tied up, and tying together the flailing anchorless extremities of her existence could only happen once she’d tracked down her father. But, as time went on and the initial shock of her discovery waned, she was feeling less optimistic about her chances of finding him. If Alan Baker hadn’t wanted to be found forty-five years ago, it was unlikely she’d be able to track him down now – even though it was now so much easier to find out information about people than it had been back in the seventies.
She’d also realised that, if she wanted to track him down, it made no difference whether he’d deliberately ignored Flora’s letters, or had just moved on from the Brighton address without knowing anything about them. Eve had no idea what part of the country he was from, how old he was, or what he did for a living. She doubted very much that he had been the respectable civil servant in Flora’s version of events but, with so little to go on, there was no starting point.
Although she knew the quest was an impossible one, she still couldn’t help feeling he might be lurking somewhere amongst the 24,175,644 results for Alan Derek Baker which had been thrown up by her internet search.
During lulls at work, or at home in the evenings, she often logged on to Google and clicked through some of the search results. She had got as far as the twenty-seventh page. There were Alan Derek Bakers across the world, doing all sorts of fascinating things.
She found birthday wishes to them in local papers, impressive run scores achieved by them in cricket matches. There was an Alan Derek Baker who had written books on seismological movements in the Western Seaboard, and another who ran a successful veterinary practice in Cape Town. An Alan Derek Baker in Scotland had apparently patented a leaf blower that ran on vegetable oil, while another in Kent had a painting hanging in the National Gallery. A. D. Baker was listed by Companies House as the director of a company that made exercise equipment, and yet another A. D. Baker was a driving instructor based in the East Midlands.
It was incredibly unlikely that any of these men were her father, but invariably there wasn’t even enough information about them for her to look into it any further.
A couple of nights ago, she had found an Alan Derek Baker who was living in Worthing and linked to Sussex University, in Brighton. Her pulse raced as she typed in the new information, excited by the coincidence, desperate to find out more. Maybe her father had become a lecturer? A career in the civil service might have led him into politics or the law, from where he had moved into education as he neared retirement. He could now be an emeritus professor at Sussex: his gowned portrait on the wall of some department.
She eventually found out more. This particular Alan Derek Baker was a PhD student in the department of engineering and design. And he was thirty-eight years old.
‘This is so stupid,’ she’d said out loud, slamming shut her laptop and putting it on the sofa beside her, next to the shoebox full of letters. ‘Just bloody stupid.’
She was going to have to think of another way. Part of her was tempted to get in the car and drive to Brighton, but that was a crazy idea. It was a six-hour round trip for a start, so she’d have to wait until the weekend when Daniel was with Ben; even if she did go, how likely was it that the current resident of 17 Lewes Close had any connection with whoever had lived there in 1979? Some people did stay in their homes for a long time – Flora had been in her flat for more than fifty years – but plenty of others moved on as the years went by: downsizing, upsizing, moving to a different area for work. Alan Baker was almost certainly long gone – if he’d ever been there in the first place.
Maybe she could talk to Flora again? Despite her mother’s hysteria the other week, nothing seemed to have happened as a result. Flora wasn’t depressed or more confused than usual. She certainly didn’t seem to have suffered any psychological trauma as a result of her daughter’s thoughtlessness.
‘She’s doing well!’ insisted Nathan, every time Eve asked. ‘She’s happy, she’s busy, she’s getting to know more of the other residents. She even took part in our afternoon bingo session the other day – despite refusing to join in last week and telling me she’s always hated bingo.’
If Flora really was fine, maybe Eve could ask her about the letters again? She would just have to choose her moment this time, and think of a gentle way of bringing up the subject. She got up from the sofa and carried the shoebox into the hall, putting it on the stairs so she’d remember to take it back up to her bedroom later.
Turning around, she caught sight of the small, framed photo on the hall table. She had only put it there a couple of days ago, so was still slightly surprised every time she saw it. She picked it up now and studied the two figures, standing side by side, their heads bowed towards each other, the beach stretching out in the background behind them.
They were such an attractive couple: Flora’s dark hair tumbling across her shoulders, Alan several inches taller than her, his arm around her shoulders, pulling her close and radiating affection for her – even through this slightly faded black and white photograph. Surely this man hadn’t just knowingly walked away?