Chapter 31

‘Now it’s your turn.’

They were sitting in a coffee shop, in Oxford Street, with several large carrier bags propped against their chairs. Tired out after searching rail after rail of possible items of clothing for Claudia, but flushed with success, they were having a break and enjoying a reviving cup of coffee.

‘I’m so glad you picked that royal blue jumper, and the scarf sets it off to perfection. You look really good in blue.’ Fran appeared not to have heard Claudia’s remark.

‘You don’t think it’s a bit bright?’ Claudia found it hard to relinquish the grey tones of the past.

‘I like the fact that it’s bright. At last you’re going to wear something really interesting and attractive.’

‘When I first saw it I thought I could wear it with a grey skirt.’

‘Why doesn’t that surprise me?’

‘Then you got me trying on those black trousers. I hadn’t realised how comfortable trousers were.’

‘And very smart they look too. What’s more, you can wear them with pride. You don’t stick out in any of the wrong places. And that stylish jacket – what a change from your previous “uniform” ones. I’d take you anywhere in that – it looks really nice on you.’

Claudia blushed. She’d never had anyone comment on her looks, not since … well, it was a nice feeling. ‘Thank you for your help,’ she said. ‘I would never have made those choices without your kindly persuasion. Fran …’

‘Yes?’

‘There are things I need to know. I’ve bared my soul to you. I risked hurting you when I told you how I had left you behind in the hospital. I was so frightened I might lose you.’

‘Would that have mattered?’

‘I don’t think I could have endured it a second time.’ Claudia stared at the cup of coffee. ‘And since then I’ve done some more thinking. I want to know why you came looking for me, and why you have been so persistent, in the face of no encouragement whatsoever. If you could live happily without me for almost forty years, why did it suddenly become important to you to find me?’

‘That’s just it.’ It was Fran’s turn to become pensive. ‘I didn’t exactly “live happily”, as you put it. I was well cared for by my adoptive parents, and no child could have had more love lavished on it. I know that, and for that very reason I’ve been puzzled by this insistent voice inside me that kept wondering who I was really was. You see, I knew I didn’t really fit in that home. Dear, dear people as they were, my parents lived in a tiny world that was quite enough for them – but it wasn’t for me. When I became curious about things, and started asking questions, they couldn’t answer me. When I grew up and began to achieve academically, I knew I had left them far behind. It was something they couldn’t possibly share. Dear Barbie, with her clichés which she brought out on every occasion – she didn’t know how to voice an original thought. And Percy was such a thoroughly good, kind man, but could never see beyond the immediate horizon. The older I grew, the more the conviction came to me that out there, somewhere, was the person who could tell me where I came from and why I am like I am, with these dark physical features and a brain that is never still.’

‘So why did you leave it until now?’

‘Barbie was very secure in her home, and with her little family, but there was one thought that tormented her. It was that I might not be satisfied with her as a parent and would go looking for my birth mother. She was convinced that if I found my natural mother I would no longer belong to her. So I made her a promise – and it was a very hard one, at the time. I promised her and Percy that I would never do that. I felt they deserved my loyalty, because they had done so much for me, and the last thing I wanted to do was to hurt them. So I have waited until they both died before starting my quest.’

‘Did you forget the idea, while they were alive, or did you always cherish the notion that one day you would go looking?’

‘Something happened to me one day – an incident that was very nearly the end of me. It was a long time ago now, in fact when I had just left school – but when I thought I was going to drown I suddenly knew with startling clarity that I didn’t want to die before I had found out. That day decided me, but I never told Barbie and Percy. I simply buried it until such time as I knew I could openly start the search.’

‘Oh, Fran – you nearly drowned? What a dreadful thought! To think you might have died! To think … well, it doesn’t bear thinking about. Whatever happened?’

‘Ah,’ said Fran. ‘That’s another story. Are you sitting comfortably?’

Then she embarked on an account of that day on the beach at Lantic Bay, painting a vivid description of the current that dragged her out, and the waves closing over her head. And she spoke of the boy who swam out to rescue her – a boy who wore odd shoes, with one heel higher than the other.