CHAPTER 3

i

Kelly

A long gravel drive led up to the house. Nothing like the farm tracks Kelly knew, but a farm it officially was. Some rare breed of cattle on one side, and an organic wheat crop on the other, sprinkled with wild flowers among the green spears.

Roz was looking out of the window, apparently serene, though her fingers were twitching on her skirt.

‘Nearly there. We’ve made it.’

‘Yeah. It’s lovely.’ Another twitch. Roz’s old East-End accent, usually smoothed to the faintest nasal twang, reasserted itself. ‘A bit posh, innit?’

Kelly laughed. ‘Mum, it’s Rog and Mandy. I don’t suppose they’ve grown horns or anything.’

Roz smiled, nervously. She had lived comfortably with Roger and Mandy Padstow when they had been tepee-dwelling activists, dividing their commitments between Gaia, Wicca, road planning, and the ever-niggling internal politics of the commune, but here in Dorset she felt inadequate, all her old insecurities bubbling up again.

Kelly had no such qualms. People were people to her, wherever they lived, however they dressed or spoke. To her, Roger and Mandy would always be the couple with whom she grew up, models of easy confidence and kindly authority, with quirks that she could handle.

There had, of course, been no official leader in the commune, but Roger and Mandy had been the most articulate and rational of them all, the ones best at dealing with authority, perhaps because, whatever their radical views, they preserved the social confidence of their educated middle-class origins.

Raised in the commune, Kelly had no instinctive yearning for nuclear family structures. She had no grandparents, but she did have Roger and Mandy, and she imagined that grandparents must fulfil a similar role; wise people who could advise and support, and take over in crises. Except that grandparents would be much older. The Padstows’ two children had been Kelly’s commune siblings. It had probably been the children, Kelly thought, lacking any cynicism, that had led them to quit the commune a couple of years after she and Roz had moved out with Luke Sheldon. Now Mandy wrote books on life/work/health balance and Roger ran an IT company and together they farmed (organically) this estate in Dorset and produced (or their workforce produced) expensive brands of yoghurt and wild boar pâté.

They’d always kept in touch with Roz and Kelly. Not so much with others from the commune, who saw the Padstows as traitors to the cause – whatever it was. Roz had always been too needy for their approval to question the changes, but she did feel intimidated by their worldly success. Kelly was neither intimidated nor impressed, nor resentful. The Padstows were friends, in the commune or here in their six-bedroom semi-mansion in Hardy country, where their activism had transmogrified into buying the Guardian and donating to Oxfam.

Kelly steered the battered Astra down the drive, listening to the pop and rattle of the semi-detached exhaust as they rolled into the broad gravel between the house proper and the converted barns. She parked up between a Range Rover and a sleek black saloon with tinted glass. Roz’s fingers were twitching at her skirt again, but Kelly was unfazed. She jumped out of the Astra, hoisting up the door to make it shut, just as Mandy and Roger appeared on the steps.

‘Hiya!’ Kelly waved happily, then hopped round to the passenger door to release her mother. ‘Don’t try to open it, Mum. I need to do it from this side.’

‘Here, let me help.’ Roger eased the door open with her. He crouched on the gravel, looking in at Roz. ‘How’s my dreamer?’

‘Roger! It’s really great to see you,’ Roz said. The bone-rattling journey from Pembrokeshire had not been pleasant for her, but Kelly could see her relax at the sight of the man she had always trusted.

‘Let’s get you out then.’ He smiled at Roz, still smiling as he looked up at Kelly, though she could see the alarm in his eyes. Roz was looking a thousand times better than she had a couple of months ago, but a hundred times worse than she had looked the last time Roger had seen her, a couple of years earlier.

‘Kelly.’ Mandy had joined them and hugged her, before reaching out to hug Roz too as she emerged from the car. ‘Roz. My poor Roz. What has been happening to you? Let’s get you into the house.

‘Roger?’ She looked askance at her husband.

Kelly kicked strategically to open the boot, so that Roger could haul out Roz’s suitcase, a hessian bag of medications and herbal remedies, and Kelly’s bulging kitbag. ‘Thanks for asking Mum down. I can’t get her to sit still at home. She thinks she ought to be doing things.’

‘Well, we won’t let her overdo things here, don’t worry. She can relax and get better. Mandy knows how to manage her.’ He took the kit bag from Kelly as she was hoisting it on her shoulder. ‘How are you doing, Kelly?’

‘Oh, I’m managing fine. You know me.’

‘Yes, I do.’ He swung his arm, loaded with the suitcase, round her and gave her a squeeze. ‘My sunshine soul. Always riding high on every wave. Trouble is though, Kelly, you’re such a competent little manager it’s easy to take you for granted. This couldn’t have been easy for you. But you got her here.’ He looked at the Astra. ‘Just.’

‘Don’t think it’s going to get through the MOT this time. It conked out on us once around Chippenham, but I got it going again.’

‘Sure.’ Roger ushered her towards the house. ‘Kelly copes with everything.’

Gracious living at the Padstows’… Style with Feng Shui; designer porcelain with wholegrains; handcrafted woodwork with state-of-the-art electronics. Roz approved of the aromatherapy candles and Kelly loved the books and neither appreciated the market value of the Persian rugs or the bronze Buddha. They ate in the vast kitchen with its oak and granite, its Aga and Le Creuset casseroles, its immaculate quarry tiles and atmospheric under-lighting.

‘I expect you are both still vegetarian,’ said Mandy, busy with goat’s cheese and rocket. ‘We eat veggie quite often, don’t we, Roger, even if we’re not very strict about it anymore.’

Kelly, who had peeked inside a fridge the size of Belgium and seen a beef joint, two small partridges and a plate of Parma ham and chorizo, had already deduced that the Padstows had moved on from tofu and pulses, but if they were willing to pose as vegetarians again for Roz, that was very nice of them.

Afterwards, while Mandy fussed over Roz, settling her into her new quarters, Roger said, ‘Come and see the Dexters.’

Cows, not neighbours. Kelly obliged. They walked together through the summer twilight, chatting as if their paths had never diverged. Roger was still, after all, Roger. He might wear a quilted gilet but he still had a ponytail. He talked of Dexters and White Parks and Maris Widgeon wheat, and Kelly talked of lambing and dyer’s madder and St John’s wort.

‘So what are you going to do, Kelly?’ Roger straddled a five bar gate as they looked out across the rolling landscape. ‘How are you going to cope with Roz?’

‘I’ll do fine. She’s much better than she was, you know. Not really an invalid. Just needs to take care.’

‘Are you going to keep your smallholding on?’

‘Of course!’ The thought of leaving it had never occurred to her.

‘It’s a lot for you to cope with, if you’re dealing with Roz as well.’

‘I can cope.’ She looked at Roger, trying to assess his reasoning. ‘Why’s it worrying you?’

‘Because we worry about you. Both of you. We care hugely about Roz, you know we do, but we care just as much about you.’

‘Yes.’ Kelly laughed, swinging up onto the gate to sit beside him. ‘I know you do. Thanks. I know how much you’ve done for us.’

‘I wouldn’t say that we did that much.’

His demurral was fake, so she brushed it aside. ‘You know you did. Mum’s always been, always will be, well, a bit flaky. She was just a kid, wasn’t she, when she joined you. Without you, I don’t know where she’d have finished up.’

He smiled, remembering. ‘She was always fragile. I like to think we helped. We watched her blossom. But then she opted to leave with Luke and we thought that was it. We’d lost her. It was never going to work.’

‘Happy families,’ explained Kelly. ‘I think that was it. She always had this fuzzy goal of something “normal” and she thought marrying Luke would be as normal as it could get.’

‘We thought, to be honest, she was one of those women just doomed to fall for the wrong sort of man. I don’t want to bad-mouth Luke, but we all knew he’d never be able to give her the sort of support she needed, and she was never going to be the sort of woman who’d stand up to him.’

‘She did though, in the end.’

‘Yes! Yes, she did. Well done her.’

‘You see, your influence won through in the end, because she realised we could make it on our own.’

‘You think it was down to us?’ Roger laughed, with a hint of wistfulness. ‘We all knew the Luke business wouldn’t last and I thought she’d come back to us. Instead, she found her own feet. And you know, Kelly, that was down to you. She had you to care for, you to focus on, and even though you were a kid, you were there for her. Our little Kelly. Even now, I don’t think she’d cope on her own. She’s always going to be half in this world and half out.’

‘In a very nice way.’

‘Oh, a very nice way. Blind to all the nastiness of life. Does she still believe all your surplus lambs are living wild and free on the Preselis?’

Kelly laughed. ‘She still believes Gwynfor takes them off our hands because he wants to give them a happy home. Well, he really did want to keep the first one. Rambo. Very productive, apparently. I haven’t told her that the others go to market with the rest of his sheep, and she doesn’t choose to ask.’

‘That’s Roz. I’m sure she could work it out if she chose but her motto has always been, “See what you want to see.” Always in charmed denial over anything uncomfortable.’

‘It doesn’t hurt.’

‘Except it’s why she’s in the state she’s in now, isn’t it…’

‘Yes, I know.’ Kelly picked at splinters of wood. ‘Wouldn’t dream of going to a doctor, but she must have known things were wrong. She’s been dosing herself up with herbal stuff for years. But you know what she’s like. It’s a bit like the rates. If she refuses to acknowledge something, maybe it will go away.’

Roger ruffled her hair. ‘Of course. You know exactly how she operates. Because you’re the one who sorts it all out for her. But it’s going to be a lot more than keeping an eye on the rate demands from now on, Kelly.’

‘I know.’

‘That’s what’s really worrying us. I know you can cope. No one can cope like Kelly. But what’s happening to your own life? Are you going to spend it all as your mother’s nurse and minder? Nothing for yourself?’

‘I have plenty for myself. Everything I want. I’m very efficient; I can multi-task.’

‘What about college?’

‘I’ve been to college.’

‘I mean university, getting a proper degree.’

‘Why would I need one?’

Roger looked away, over his rolling acres, with a twinge of embarrassment. ‘You can control her diabetes, but her kidneys are never going to improve, are they? At best, you’re going to be managing it. At worst, she’ll go downhill. Kidneys are tricky things.’

‘I know. I wanted to give her one of mine.’

Roger grimaced. ‘Of course you would, Kelly. Please don’t rush into anything. I’m not saying don’t do it, but think long and hard about it.’

‘No need. I’m not suitable. They did tests – Mum didn’t want it, but I needed to know, and there’s no match, blood and tissue, so my kidneys are no use to her.’

‘That’s that then.’ He was relieved. ‘And I suppose she has no idea where her family is. She used to speak about a brother, but she never had any contact with him while she was with us. Any other relatives?’

Kelly rested her chin on the gate. ‘The thing is, in a purely genetic sense, there might be.’

Roger sensed the hesitation, the way she was looking at nothing in particular, certainly not looking at him. Kelly always looked directly at the person she spoke to. He swung his leg over and jumped down from the gate. ‘How do you mean?’

Kelly chewed her lip, still gazing into the middle distance. ‘Mum’s terrified there was a mix-up at the hospital.’

‘With her treatment?’

‘No, in the maternity ward, when I was born. A nurse told her labels had got switched.’

Roger opened his mouth to speak, thought better, shut it, then started again. ‘You mean she thinks you’re not her child?’

‘Sort of.’

‘Kelly, I wouldn’t worry about it.’

‘I don’t!’

‘I mean, I wouldn’t give the story much credence if I were you. Seriously. Your mother has always been, well, a bit paranoid. That’s exactly the sort of story she would hit on, like a focus for her fear. You were all she had, so she was terrified of losing you.’

‘I do know how she works.’

‘Yes, of course you do. And you must know how improbable it is. Things like that don’t really happen. Not without people noticing, not without a huge furore and legal action and heads rolling. God.’ He winced. Kelly could tell he was thinking now of his own children. ‘It would be a parent’s worst nightmare.’

‘Would it?’ She was Kelly again now, looking at him so directly he felt he was in the dock. ‘Would you stop feeling like Tanja’s dad if you discovered there’d been a mix-up at her birth?’

‘God, I don’t know. No, of course not, but – no, but I’d want to know, I’d need to know what had happened to my real child.’ He saw the disappointment in her face and blushed. ‘But of course Tan would still be my child. Hell, it’s just not that simple. And listen, Kelly, don’t waste your time thinking about it. It’s not true. Roz is your mother, and she had half a dozen doctors and nurses in that maternity ward witnessing your birth. So there’s not a blood match with your mother. That’s bad luck maybe, but it doesn’t prove anything.’

‘No,’ agreed Kelly. Why say more? Roger was not seeing this the way she saw it. No point in telling him that the blood and tissue tests might have proved nothing, but the other test had.

She thought about it as she lay in bed, in Tanja’s room. Tanja was in London. After Cambridge she had got a job in television. Current affairs, nothing to do with animals. She had always liked animals as a little girl and, judging by the horsey theme in her fluffy bedroom, she had continued to like animals in her teens. Or at least she’d liked to hunt them. Not a glimpse left of the little gipsy Kelly had known. Funny things, people. They never seemed to know what they wanted or how to be happy. Kelly had always found knowing what she wanted easy.

Except for this. Was this feeling dissatisfaction? She was determined to know. Determined enough to connive, to search the internet for maternity tests. All in secret. Even the tests Dr Matthews had arranged for the tissue matching had distressed Roz. The thought of a specific maternity test would have killed her. So Kelly had managed by subterfuge – the mouth swabs, the forged signatures.

She didn’t feel guilty about it. Kelly wasn’t paying for the test in order to reject or accept Roz. Nothing was going to alter their relationship. It was just the thought of that other girl out there. She had to know.

When Kelly had first jumped in with an offer of one of her kidneys, she had experienced a queer flutter of pleasure, the satisfaction of sainthood. She had mocked herself, but what was wrong with feeling good about self-sacrifice? And as she couldn’t make that sacrifice, what if there was someone else out there who could? Would they? She would, she was confident of that. If a complete stranger approached her out of the blue and told Kelly that one of her kidneys could save an unknown woman, she was certain she wouldn’t hesitate. That glow of virtue. Kelly had a strong sense of morality. Her own, based on her own values. A morality that would have urged her to save someone else if she could, but that didn’t stop her tricking her mother over the maternity test.

The result had come on the day they’d heard from Roger and Mandy, inviting Roz to stay with them for a while to recuperate.

Roz was not Kelly’s mother.

Kelly had read the report, put it aside and concentrated on persuading her mother to accept the Padstows’ invitation, making the arrangements, kicking the Astra into some sort of life, persuading Joe to move in for a few days to take care of the animals. Those were the things that mattered. The maternity test didn’t.

But now Roz was here, it was time to think about the test. Somewhere out there was the child that Roz had carried for nine months, the girl whose blood and tissue might match. Kelly had arranged the test in order to know. What to do with the knowledge? She would have a week or two to think about it, while Roz was in Roger and Mandy’s care, but she had no idea what steps to take. Somewhere in her imagination lurked a nebulous image of serendipity, an accidental meeting of two young women who recognised each other by magical instinct. But it was never going to happen that way. Any meeting would have to be engineered and Kelly had no idea how to begin.

This house seemed alien in the night, with its trappings of affluent chic. She needed to be back at Carregwen, mulling over the options with the chickens, discussing it with Eleanor and Rigby the goats.

Then in the morning everything changed.

Before breakfast, she carried her kitbag out to the car and found it gone. She returned to the house. ‘Mandy, where’s the Astra?’

Mandy, busy with dried fruit, hurried to reassure her. ‘It’s all right. Rog will explain. Roger!’

He came through from the conservatory, a wet towel round his shoulders.

‘Explain about Kelly’s car,’ ordered Mandy.

He smiled and held up placatory hands. ‘It’s at Darnley’s garage, Kelly. I arranged for them to come and take it. Urgent repairs.’

‘But I can’t afford—’

‘Don’t worry about that. I’m dealing with it. Be honest, Kelly, it’s not safe, is it? How you got here without killing yourself, God knows. I didn’t want to see you driving off in it. The garage is going sort out the major problems. Can’t guarantee they’ll fix every rattle, but—’

‘How long are they going to be? I need it. It’s all right really. I know how to keep it going.’

‘I’m not letting you loose in it, the way it is. Don’t worry, we’re not holding you prisoner. The garage can work on it while you’re gone, and it will be ready when you come back to pick your mother up. And in the meantime, you can take Mandy’s Corsa.’

‘No.’

‘Yes,’ insisted Roger, with Mandy nodding enthusiastic approval.

She would have refused if it hadn’t been too late. But the Astra was gone, probably already disembowelled over some pit and she couldn’t wait forever. Joe couldn’t be left in charge of Carregwen indefinitely. A few days and then she’d need to order more feed. And she had two jobs to get back to.

She stayed for breakfast in the conservatory, and reassured herself that Roz had slept well and that Mandy knew exactly what to do with all the medications and the dietary instructions, then she let Roger escort her to the double garage where her new chariot awaited her. Electric windows, air conditioning, a CD player and Sat Nav. It felt like sitting at the controls of a spaceship. She hadn’t been in a car like this since taking her test.

‘Don’t worry about a thing,’ Roger assured her, tapping on the sunroof as she started the engine and waited for the growls, grinding and whines that she associated with internal combustion. They didn’t come. It felt like cheating, letting the car roll softly out onto the gravel. Not real driving at all – nothing to fight. She manoeuvred it onto the drive, just to convince Roger she could handle it, then she stopped to say goodbye.

‘You know how everything works? Lights there. Windscreen wiper. Sat Nav.’ Roger leaned in to adjust it. ‘It’s on. Do you want me to show you how to use it?’

Kelly laughed. ‘I’ll manage. I usually get there in the end.’

‘You always will, Kelly. Look, phone charger; you’ll keep in touch, won’t you?’

‘Of course. Every day. Not that I don’t trust you.’

He grinned. ‘Don’t worry, we’ll mind her like our own.’

She waved, he waved. She headed down the drive, then sat back and began to get the feel of the ridiculously well-appointed car.

It was the Sat Nav that did it. Kelly navigated by instinct and memory; it had always worked in the past. But the Sat Nav on the Corsa’s dashboard kept showing her the world that lay before her, the junctions, the forks, the crossroads. Constant temptations. She was heading north for the M4, and there on the map was the motorway running west for home. And running east. East to the M25 and the home counties, a world she knew nothing about but that was, in a sense, her birthright.

She pulled into a lay-by before the motorway and sat gazing at the map, zooming in, zooming out. East to London, the M25 and the satellite towns that clustered round the capital. Lyford. Turn off at that junction, the Sat Nav invited her; drive the twenty odd miles to Lyford and Stapledon General Hospital where, according to her birth certificate, she had been born. The hospital where labels had been switched.

Kelly nibbled the houmous and sun-dried tomato ciabatta that Mandy had given her. Maybe Joe could manage for another day or two. And she was owed some leave. They’d understand at work. Her mother was ill, after all. She looked again at the map, spreading its motorway tentacles out to her, as she sat in a car that would happily cruise anywhere, without being kicked or tickled into obedience. Fate, surely. How could she refuse?

She drove to the M4 and turned east.

Lyford. An urban sprawl, too big to be a mere town, but too formless, too lacking in identity to be a city. Too close to London to have any regional significance, and just too far out to share the capital’s glamour. High rise blocks and concrete fly-overs superimposed on defunct car plants and forgotten gas works. Mushrooming housing estates and small-scale industrial complexes spilling out from a civic centre that had once had delusions of Art Deco style and that now nursed its pedestrian zoning under the shadow of a vast shopping centre and multi-storey car park. Kelly noticed narrow Victorian lanes and a gracious Medieval church as she strolled round the shopping precinct, wondering what it would have been like to have been brought up here. This was her place of birth but she felt no link to it. She’d been a couple of weeks old when she had left it behind.

Kelly had no affinity with towns, but she wasn’t intimidated by them either. They were, to her, rather sad. Studying the well-stocked contents of the shops, reading the police notices seeking witnesses to a murder outside the Crown and Anchor, and chatting with the sellers of The Big Issue, she thought that, all things considered, fate had dealt kindly with her by taking her from here.

She asked in one shop for directions to the hospital and was sent to WHSmith’s for a street map, but as that seemed a waste of money she returned to the car park where she had left the Corsa and tried the Sat Nav. So easy. Just follow the fly-over, then take the Stapledon link road past the football ground.

Lyford and Stapledon General Hospital. 1960s panelling in an ocean of tarmac. Busy, busy, busy. The sort of place where everyone was so rushed, the workload so heavy that surely mistakes could happen. Labels could accidentally be switched.

Kelly walked in through the glass sliding doors into the foyer milling with elderly hobblers, pregnant women looking hopefully for vacant seats, wan-faced children kicking concrete pillars, legs in plaster protruding from wheelchairs like battering rams, reluctant visitors buying flowers and magazines.

A man and two women staffed the reception desk, directing, snapping, pointing, furiously entering data into keyboards like a champion team at an advanced level of Space Invaders. Kelly mingled with others waiting for attention – there was no queue, just a mêlée of anxiety and irritation. She let others squeeze in before her. She had no urgent illness. Finally, she was face-to-face with one of the women at the desk, with sharp, pinched lips, determined not to give an inch to the barbarians. Her badge said Julie. She didn’t look like a Julie. A Cynthia or a Selina maybe. Something serpentine.

‘Any chance you can help me? I was born here, in 1990, and I want to speak to someone about it. Do you keep the records? Is there someone I can talk to?’

Julie stared at her as if she could see the bulge of a suicide belt under Kelly’s jacket. ‘What do you mean, records? You want your birth certificate?’

‘No, I’ve got that.’ Whatever paperwork Roz had started with had long ago been lost, but there had been some reason, later, why she had had to apply for a copy. After leaving Luke; one of Roz’s first steps alone into the world of adult responsibility. Kelly could still remember her mother opening the envelope, expecting some sort of official reprimand, and then laughing with relief as the certificate emerged. Date, name, mother’s name. No father’s name, but that had never been an issue. Place: Lyford and Stapledon Hospital.

‘There were problems when I was born,’ she continued, watching Julie’s eyes skirt past her towards the crowd behind.

‘I don’t understand. What do you mean by problems?’

‘Stuff, you know. Do you keep records that far back? I just want to ask someone what happened exactly.’

A slight ripple of relief. This was outside reception business; a problem Julie could legitimately pass on to someone else. She spun round in her swivel chair and picked up a phone. ‘I have someone here wanting to speak…’ Her voice sank to a discreet whisper, drowned out by the crowds. Kelly could hear, ‘Birth… problems… issues.’

Julie swivelled round again, picked up a pen and wrote quickly on a pad. ‘Down the corridor, take the lifts to the second floor, first left and ask at the desk for Mr. Manderville. Thank you.’ She brushed Kelly aside.

Kelly looked at the paper in her hand. Manderville. Right. That was a start.

Mr Manderville was an administrator. Jowly and unsmiling. He wore a suit, an aura of impatience, and an expression of extreme wariness. ‘Miss Sheldon, is it? Yes. You have a query, I gather, about old records? I’m not sure that we can be of any help to you. Records are, of course highly confidential, although if they pertain to yourself, the Freedom of Information Act may allow—’

‘Oh sure, it’s just about me,’ said Kelly, looking round his office which was plush, any sign of activity organised into neat clipped piles. ‘I’ll tell you what it is. I was born here. I’ve got the certificate – March 13th, 1990. But it turns out that something went wrong.’

Before she could say more, she could sense a visor coming down, the wagons circling. ‘I can assure you, Miss Sheldon, that if any problems arose during a birth, they would have been dealt with in an entirely professional manner. Complications can and do arise, of course, but the hospital cannot be held liable in any way without serious proof of malpractice. Do you have any reason to believe that the medical staff attending your mother were remiss in any way?’

‘No, no. Nothing like that. Nothing wrong with the birth. Mum said the staff were very kind.’ She felt his defences wobbling, so she added, ‘Very professional.’

He sank back in his chair, fingers pressed together, nodding and frowning gently to show that he was willing to listen. For a couple of minutes at least.

‘No, it’s not about the birth, exactly,’ she went on. ‘It’s just that Mum says a nurse told her labels had been mixed up. Labels on the babies. Wrong babies with the wrong mums.’

That floored him. He sat up again, shoulders broadening before her eyes, ready to charge. ‘Absolutely impossible, Miss Sheldon. Your mother must have misunderstood. Believe me, there is no possibility that such a mistake could have occurred. We take the utmost care—’

‘This was twenty-two years ago,’ she reminded him. ‘I don’t suppose you were working here then. Things could have been different.’

‘You’re quite right, Miss Sheldon, I was not employed at the hospital twenty-one years ago and not in any way responsible for any mistakes even if they had occurred. But I assure you the hospital would not have allowed such mistakes to happen even then. Procedures were in place. Errors, however improbable, would have been noticed and rectified immediately. Whatever your mother believes she heard, I assure you no nurse would have told her any such thing.’ A twitch, resembling a smile, appeared at the corner of his mouth. He was sure here. Not confident about the switching of labels maybe, but confident that no nurse would have been fool enough to confess the mistake to a mother on the ward. His smile broadened. Perhaps he thought he was looking avuncular and reassuring. ‘I believe that nursing mothers can be a little sensitive. Nervous. Quite understandable of course. Bearing a child for all those months and then the trauma of the birth itself. Very easy for the imagination to run riot. We find that many mothers suspect terrible illnesses, deformities, all manner of horrors. Our nurses do a fine job in reassuring them.’ He didn’t know what he was talking about, Kelly could tell, but he was an expert at talking without meaning.

There were few people that Kelly truly disliked, but she suspected Mr Manderville was going to be one of them. He was verbally hustling her aside, and she hadn’t come all this way to be hustled.

‘Yes, well, the thing is, it’s all true,’ she said. ‘We’ve had tests done, DNA and all that, and they prove I really am not my mother’s daughter. Not genetically. So that is why I want to see the hospital records and find out how the babies came to be swapped. She’s sick, you see, my mum. Diabetes and now kidney trouble, and it turns out I can’t give her a kidney because I’m not genetically related. But someone else is, and I want to know who. All you need to do is give me the names of other babies, girls anyway, born at the same time, in the same ward, and then we can figure out who got mixed up with who.’ She smiled brightly at him, watching his jowls quiver. ‘That’s all.’

‘Quite impossible, Miss Sheldon,’ he replied, a thin reedy note entering his voice. ‘Such mistakes…unthinkable. There will be another explanation. Lyford and Stapledon General cannot be held in any way responsible…’

Kelly stood under the cantilevered canopy at the hospital entrance, watching grey clouds build up over the equally grey roofs of Lyford. The hospital and its management, terrified of any hint of legal culpability and compensation pay-outs, had slammed down the shutters, and pulled up the drawbridge, ready to man the battlements to the bitter end. In other words, they were not going to raise a little finger to help her. Well then.

Kelly was a tolerant girl, not easily provoked, but when she felt she had a just cause, she could be a terrier sinking her teeth in. If the hospital refused to give her the information she needed, she would find it by other means, and she knew just how to do it.

ii

Vicky

A knock on the front door. Gillian wiped her hands on her apron and hurried through to the hall. A special delivery? She saw a shape behind the pixelating glass. An indistinct, obscure figure, but Gillian recognised it almost before focusing on it.

She flung the door open. ‘Vicky!’

‘Hello.’ Suitcases at her feet, coat over her arm. Face emotionless as ever.

‘What are you doing knocking? Here, let me take those. Give me your coat. Oh Vicky!’ With arms weighed down, she struggled to embrace her daughter. ‘Have you lost your key?’

‘I didn’t want to take anyone by surprise.’ A sarcastic delivery but with a little girl’s plea somewhere inside.

‘It’s the best surprise.’ Gillian ignored the needling. ‘Why didn’t you tell me you were coming? Your room is ready, of course, but I haven’t aired the bedding properly or anything. Oh, come in, come in. Vicky…’ Her voice was breaking up. ‘I’m so glad you’ve come home.’

‘Well.’ For a second their eyes met. She saw a brief glimmer behind Vicky’s thick lenses, but of what? Something that wanted to come out, but Vicky wasn’t going to let it. She looked away, hanging her coat up, depositing her suitcases neatly at the bottom of the stairs. It would be that terrible, unspeakable row. Perhaps she was embarrassed, or still too wounded. But she had come home, that was all that mattered. She hadn’t disappeared forever.

‘Is Joan here?’

‘No. She and Bill are in Scotland. They tried to book a trip to Spain but the insurance – you know, their age and Bill’s angina – so they’ve gone to Scotland. Can you imagine it? Your gran doing a coach trip of the highlands and glens?’

‘It will be a trip round the distilleries, I expect.’

‘Yes, of course. I hadn’t thought of that.’ Why were they babbling on about Joan, as if she mattered? But she did. Her absence meant that mother and daughter could have a breathing space. ‘Come through,’ said Gillian, and firmly took her daughter’s hand, leading her through to the living room. In the clearer light, she laid her hands on Vicky’s shoulders and looked at her. Pale, but then she was always pale. Not noticeably sickly at least. She could feel how thin she was through the baggy sweatshirt. Was she eating properly? Was she coping? All that work, so many hours, so much studying.

‘How are you, darling?’

Vicky shrugged.

‘I wish you’d kept in touch more, let me know how you were doing. I didn’t like to keep ringing.’ Not after the first couple of weeks of ignored calls. ‘You’re over-working yourself, I know you are.’

‘Work is fine.’ Vicky took a deep breath. ‘Is this what we’re going to do then? Discuss my studies?’

‘Not if you don’t want to, darling. I am interested, you know I am, but—’

‘And it will save us having to discuss the other thing. The thing you never quite got round to discussing for twenty years.’

‘Oh Vicky.’

‘I’ll go up and dump my bag upstairs, shall I? Any chance of a cup of tea?’

‘Yes! Yes, I’ll make tea. You sort yourself out.’ Gillian almost ran for the kitchen, where she could weep at her own cowardice. Where she could splash herself with boiling water as punishment for never getting anything right.

Vicky’s arrival had been so unexpected. Gillian’s instinctive desire to evade any nastiness – pour oil on troubled water – had kicked in before she could brace herself to do the right thing.

She was braced now. And the tea was brewed. It would be stewed if it wasn’t drunk soon. She poured a mug and took it and a biscuit upstairs.

Vicky was standing at Joan’s bedroom door, looking in.

‘Thanks.’ She took the proffered mug. ‘What’s happened here?’ A clean room. White walls, new carpet, new curtains, new bedding, most of the old trash gone. An anonymous room, barely marked by Joan, although there were already tell-tale cigarette burns in the carpet.

‘There was a bit of an accident,’ Gillian explained. ‘So we redecorated it.’

‘Well, you can replace the fucking lot,’ Joan had said, coming home to find the havoc. ‘You can’t expect me to sleep in that. Not safe in my own house with a mad woman. Lock you up, they should.’

So Gillian had taken her at her word, moving in like the guardian angel of house clearance, stripping, burning, consigning to the tip. An act of furious spite so unlike her that she didn’t know how to present it except as an act of contrition, the sort of gesture that all her neighbours in the street would think so like Gillian.

Only Joan had understood it was an act of defiance. And two could play at that game. The cigarette burns had been deliberate. She wanted the room put right, at Gillian’s expense, but she had barely used it since. She was virtually living with Bill now, talking about selling up, using the house money, with Bill’s, to buy a place in Spain.

All talk. Joan couldn’t sell the house from under them, Gillian was fairly sure. It had been their money, hers and Terry’s, that had enabled Joan to buy the house. They had rights. Equity or something.

‘Looks clean,’ said Vicky. She sniffed. Air freshener. ‘I wouldn’t have recognised it.’

‘No, well, it needed a make-over.’ Stop it. Stop chattering. It had to be now. ‘Vicky. If you want to talk… I know we should have talked years ago. I know it’s all my fault, but if you want to talk about, you know—’

‘My adoption.’

‘Yes. I’ll tell you anything you want to know.’

‘I already know all I need to know.’

‘You do?’

Vicky returned to her room, picked up the bag on her bed and rifled through. She held out a sheet of paper. ‘I wanted to be quite sure the adoption wasn’t a lie, so I got hold of my full certificate. The one I suppose you took care not to have in the house.’

Gillian put her hand to her mouth. She’d never admitted it, but Vicky was right. She’d kept the short version, the one that looked identical to a birth certificate, telling herself that there was no need to fuss with further paperwork. ‘I was wrong.’

Vicky shrugged. ‘Whatever. I applied for it. Thought it might give me more, but it doesn’t. I’m a certified mystery. Legally, no one knows who my mother is.’

‘That’s right. You were found.’

‘Yeah, yeah, that’s the official line. But it was all there, wasn’t it? The truth. In the papers. I found the story. In the Herald.’

‘Oh. Yes.’ Of course. It explained Vicky’s last wild claim as she’d boarded the bus that she’d found her mother. She’d unearthed the old story in the newspaper. ‘Yes, it was in the Herald.’

‘I don’t get it though. Why people didn’t connect the dots. Too much bother? Or was it just that there were so many women around, wanting babies, like you, it was easier just to let it go?’

‘I don’t know.’ Gillian couldn’t understand her daughter’s words, but she didn’t want to risk another flaming row. ‘I did want a baby. I wanted you. As soon as I read about you, I wanted you.’

Vicky smiled. ‘You wanted a child whose mother left her for dead.’

‘No!’ Gillian threw her arms around her. ‘Left to be found, to be given to me.’

Vicky’s smile was almost a rictus of pain. ‘You really do like to block out the darkness, don’t you? You’d even give murder a rosy glow. She tried to murder me, but that’s fine because it made things right for you. Or are you really asking me to believe that it made things right for me?’

How much could Gillian take without being stung? ‘That’s what it was all for, all my love and care – to make things right for you. If it didn’t, I’m sorry. All right? I’m sorry if I wasn’t the mum you think you should have had. I’m sorry if all I’ve done is make you unhappy and lonely and bitter. I never intended it to be that way.’

‘Oh come on.’ Vicky stomped downstairs. She was already in the kitchen, washing out her mug as if it contained elements of biological warfare, when Gillian followed her.

‘What? I should have told you from the start that you were adopted? Yes, of course. But I was a coward. I didn’t keep silent out of spite.’

‘No.’ Vicky turned away. She was willing to attack, but she wasn’t so keen on being the one under fire.

‘So just tell me where I went so terribly wrong,’ insisted Gillian, following her into the living room. ‘How did I make life so hateful for you? I nagged you, I pushed you. Is that it? I know. I shouldn’t have pushed so hard. I should have been more concerned about you making friends, being happy, getting out and having fun.’

‘Fun!’ Vicky gave a shriek of bitter laughter. ‘Oh yes, we all need to have fun. Good for us.’

‘Yes! You should have made more friends. You should have got out more, gone places, the cinema…’ Gillian groped for ideas, unsure where young people went these days. ‘Discos. You should have been out meeting people instead of being trapped—’

‘You mean boys. I should have been out meeting boys. A bit of how’s your father, that’s what a girl needs. Isn’t that what Joan taught you? Well, don’t worry about me being abandoned on a virgin shelf. I lost my sour little cherry a long time ago.’

‘Vicky.’ Gillian floundered. Sex wasn’t something she had ever discussed with her daughter. She’d always had ideas of doing it properly, tenderly, but Joan’s constant lewd remarks would have spoiled it all. A bit of how’s your father, yes that was Joan. Surely, Gillian had told herself, the school would sort it out. When Vicky started showing an interest in boys, when she started bringing bashful young boyfriends home, that would be the time to speak more intimately. But Vicky never had brought a boy home, any more than she had brought female friends home. She had sat in her room with her books, that was all.

And now she was claiming sexual experience. Declaring it with scorn. Vicky was meeting people, loving people and Gillian knew nothing about it.

Or was Vicky’s boast a sad little lie? She had never done anything to make herself attractive. A frump who had never caught the eye of any man, but who would say anything to avoid admitting it.

She reached out to put her arms round her daughter, but Vicky retreated across the room. ‘I’d better unpack.’

‘Yes, love,’ said Gillian, in despair.

A jacket into the narrow wardrobe, underwear into its drawer, shoes neatly under the bed, laptop on the little desk. Vicky breathed deep. It was stupid to have come home. If it was home. She was better off at college, a different person. She was generally liked by Zoe, Drew, Caz, Jack and all the other happy normal students. Vicky, the asexual swot, never a threat to the girls, never a distraction to the boys, always available to help them out when they were too hungover to make head or tail of their assignments, but never missed when she failed to appear at the pubs and clubs, because everyone assumed she was someone else’s friend. She could relax among them because they would never ask, they would never know.

But instead she had chosen to come home. Why?

It was stupid. She’s been home for five minutes and the antagonism was all her own doing. She should get a grip, look on the bright side. Joan wasn’t there.

Terry came home, glad to see his daughter. Gillian, hypersensitive to their inadequacies, was taken aback by Terry’s cheeriness. Had he really not grasped their horrible quarrel and Vicky’s flight? Probably not. Terry had always watched from the sidelines, this family stuff a bewildering puzzle. Perhaps he always reacted to Vicky with pleasure, but Gillian, so obsessive in her own love, had never seen it.

‘You doing all right at that university then, girl?’ he asked, as they gathered at the table. ‘At the hospital and so on?’

‘Fine,’ said Vicky, letting him give her arm a squeeze.

‘Doctor Vicky, eh. Well, well.’

‘One day.’

‘Me and your mum can’t believe it, can we, eh, Gill? Doctor.’

Vicky shrugged. ‘It’s just a job. Same as yours.’

‘Oh, I don’t know about that. Hey, you come to the garage with me tomorrow, yes?’

‘Er.’ Vicky was caught off guard. It wasn’t like Terry to invite her to the garage.

‘Got something to show you,’ said Terry, chuckling as he tucked into his cottage pie and peas.

Had they always communicated, Gillian wondered, watching Vicky climb into the car beside Terry in the morning? Normal father and daughter and she’d never noticed? No. She could see, as they drove off, that Vicky was as bewildered as she was.

Terry’s repair garage, run with his buddy Colin, set up with their redundancy money from the car plant, was just like Terry really. Cluttered, unambitious, grubby, but getting by, ever hopeful and never demanding. Successful enough to keep the wolf from the door and what more could a man ask?

‘Come on through,’ said Terry.

So Vicky followed him into the corrugated workshop, picking her way round patches of black oil, coiled cables, abandoned nuts and bolts and worn tyres, out through the double back doors into the yard where cars were waiting for MOTs, new exhausts and respray jobs. She joined him as he fumbled in his overall pockets for a key.

‘Here it is.’ He fished out the key he wanted, gave her a big smile, patting the roof of a Mini. Lime green. ‘I figured, you’ve done so well… Like to give my little girl something for it all.’

Vicky stared at the car. ‘You’re giving me this?’

‘Yes. Why not? Not much, I know.’ He patted it again. Twelve years old. He had worked hard on the rust spots, done as good a job as he could. ‘But a little run-around, you know.’

Her throat caught. Not with gushing joy. She didn’t know what she was feeling. A noose at her neck, snapping her back. ‘Why?’

‘Well, you work so hard and I’m that proud of you. Thought you deserved it. What’s the point of running a garage if I can’t find a car for my little girl?’

‘But I’m not your little girl.’ She had to say it. ‘I’m adopted.’

Did he realise that this was a revelation to her? The focus of all her simmering bitterness? Apparently not. He must have assumed she’d always known. Gillian’s business, that sort of stuff. ‘Well, I suppose. Keep forgetting. Just think of you as my little girl.’

It wasn’t a remark that she could deal with. ‘You’d have preferred a boy, though, wouldn’t you?’

‘Oh.’ Terry scratched his head. ‘I don’t know about that.’

Of course he would. He would have known what to do with a boy. Take him down the Rec every Saturday to play football. Help him build a train set. Terry was a simple soul who regarded women with respect and utter incomprehension. It was just the way he was. She couldn’t blame him for that.

‘So, you like it then?’ he asked.

‘It’s…very nice.’ And he was a nice man. Not her father, but a nice man, making a generous gift, to a child who wasn’t really his and wasn’t even a boy. ‘I don’t know where my licence is.’ Not true. It was on her shelf where it had been since the day she’d received it. First driving lesson on her seventeenth birthday; a present from her quasi-parents. That first lesson had been such a thrill, liberating. Then the thing had happened and nothing had been thrilling anymore. Not liberating, not even bearable. After that first joyous lesson she had forced herself to complete the course, taken her test and put her licence away. ‘Not even sure I can remember how to drive.’

‘Like riding a bike. You can’t forget.’ His face lit up. At last, something he could do with his little girl. Not football, not train sets, but something. ‘I’ll take you out in it. Let you get the feel of it.’

She laughed, bit her lip, killing the mirth because she hadn’t come home to laugh.

‘This afternoon? Col will be in—’

‘No.’ She wanted to be back in control. ‘Tomorrow maybe. I’ve got things to do this afternoon. In town.’

‘More books, eh?’

‘People to see.’

iii

Kelly

‘Yeah, you can give us the details now.’ The girl at the desk of the Lyford Herald pushed a notepad and pen at Kelly. Her job was to deal with classified ads, and her day was one long stream of adverts for unwanted sofas, Ford Fiestas, fridge freezers. Hard to work up a decent show of enthusiasm for any of it. She went back to another call while Kelly wrote her message.

‘Lyford-Herald-classified-ads-Emma-speaking-can-I-help-you?’

Kelly had poured through the classified section of last week’s Herald in WHSmiths. Mostly cars, but two sunbeds and one set of disco lights. No hay bales and split logs, which was what she was used to. She’d looked at the Evening News too, but decided that a weekly paper would be a better bet. The Herald looked solid. Going since 1893, according to its banner. The sort of paper people would sit down to read properly, not just skim through and dump in the bin.

She smiled as she wrote. Did she know anything about newspaper readers? The nearest thing she read to a paper was the Alternative World news-sheet handed out at the wholefood store. Still psychology must just be common sense, and she had plenty of that. But not plenty of money, so she had to choose carefully where to put her ad, and this was it. The Lyford Herald.

‘There.’ She pushed the notepad back at the bored Emma, who counted the words.

‘Wanted. Any girl born in Lyford and Stapledon General Hospital in the week March 13th-19th, 1990. Please contact…’ She started to absorb the meaning. ‘This is legit, right? Nothing, you know…’ She was wary. She’d got into trouble once before for accepting an ad for youth performances, which, when it was vetted, was promptly passed on to the police. ‘Kids. It’s not some kind of – you know?’

Kelly wasn’t entirely sure what the girl meant, but she recognised panic. ‘Not kids. We’d all be twenty-two.’

‘Oh yeah.’ Emma grinned. She was only twenty-three herself.

Kelly explained, to put her mind at rest. ‘That’s when I was born, see? 13th March. 1990. It turns out there was some kind of mix-up, because we’ve had tests, and I’m not really related to my mother, not genetically, even though my birth certificate says I am. So there must have been a mistake in the hospital.’

‘Oh, wow!’

‘Which wouldn’t have mattered really, except my mum’s sick, might need a new kidney eventually, and because I’m not related, I can’t give her one. So I thought I could find out who the other baby was.’

‘Yeah!’

‘I thought, if I put an ad in the local paper, perhaps the other girl is still living in Lyford. It’s worth a try. I can stay another week, maybe, and see what pops up.’

‘Right! So you’re not from round here?’

‘Pembrokeshire. We moved to Wales when I was a baby.’

‘Oh, so you’ve come all the way to Lyford to search for this other girl.’

‘Yes. To ask at the hospital really, but since they won’t help, I’m going to stay on for a few more days. Mum is staying with friends for a couple of weeks.’

‘Yes, I see.’ Emma was a would-be cub reporter. She didn’t like to jot down the details openly, but she was memorising fast. ‘So, okay. We’ll get this in this week. You’ve just made the deadline. And can you let us know if anyone responds?’

‘Sure.’ Kelly beamed. ‘I’ll come back and tell you all about it.’

A good, useful visit; two girls made happy by a few random words.