‘Come in, Georgina.’ Helen waved her in. ‘I can’t believe it’s been two weeks already.’ She shut the office door, took Georgina’s coat and hung it up on the coat stand.
‘Did you go to see the launch today at Short’s?’
‘The Empire Friendship?’ Georgina said, going to take her seat.
‘That’s the one, although why they’ve named a cargo vessel Friendship in the middle of a war is beyond me.’
‘No, I didn’t get to see it,’ Georgina replied.
‘Of course you didn’t. Too busy working.’ Helen waved her hand at the chair in front of her desk.
‘Before I forget,’ she said, pulling out a Pall Mall, ‘if Rosie asks why you’re here again, I think it would be best to say that we have come to a compromise and that although you are clearly overqualified for a simple clerical job, you are going to do some part-time work for me, which you’re doing at home. Agreed?’
‘Perhaps, if it comes up in conversation,’ Georgina said, taking her seat, ‘I can say that I’m helping with the annual audit and can work faster and more efficiently at home.’
‘Yes, good idea,’ Helen said, settling herself in her chair behind the desk.
She lit a cigarette.
‘I didn’t realise you and Rosie knew each other?’
Georgina nodded.
‘Our mothers used to be friends.’
Helen waited for more details, but none were forthcoming. She knew not to push. It wouldn’t have been professional. Still, the fact that Rosie’s and Georgina’s mothers had been close cemented Helen’s belief that Georgina had kept something back about Rosie’s private life. One day she’d find out what it was. For the moment, though, she had enough secrets of her own to uncover.
‘So,’ Helen said, reaching into her handbag, ‘I’ve done as you asked and brought some family photos.’
Georgina shifted forward in her chair and craned her neck to look.
‘That’s my grandfather, Mr Charles Havelock, whom I’m sure you know,’ Helen informed her. ‘He must have been about fifty in this shot … and this is my grandmother, Henrietta.’
Georgina stared at the photograph.
‘Did you know your grandmother at all?’ Georgina asked, as she pulled out her notebook and took the top off her pen.
‘No, not really. I was only a baby when she died. To be honest, no one really talked about her all that much when I was growing up. I always got the impression that she was a little odd. Peculiar. I remember Mother telling me once how she would call her staff “the cavalry” and gave them all nicknames. Usually characters from her favourite books.’
They both looked at the photograph.
‘She does certainly look quite unusual,’ Georgina commented, staring at the bird-like woman wearing a huge tafetta skirt with a tiny waist. A knot of hair was piled up on her head, thick strands hanging loose around her narrow neck. ‘Very pretty, though.’
They looked back down at the sepia photograph and scrutinised the woman’s heart-shaped face. There was something quite captivating about her, despite the garish make-up she was wearing.
‘What did she die of?’ Georgina asked, genuinely curious.
‘Good question,’ Helen said. ‘I’m not sure.’
Georgina focused her attention back on the stern-looking Mr Havelock. She reckoned the photograph must have been taken about twenty-five, possibly thirty, years ago. You could just about see the man he would become. He still had his blond hair, although it was now more grey than blond and thinning. The eyes were the same, though.
‘And here’s one of my mother, Miriam, and her sister, my aunty Margaret, when they were about sixteen and seventeen. I think at the time they were at some finishing school over in Switzerland, so this must have been taken when they were back home for the holidays.’
‘Mmm, I see what you mean about the resemblance,’ Georgina said.
Over the past two weeks, she had spent a few days watching Bel and had managed to get a photograph of her with her little Brownie. Bel had been walking around Mowbray Park with her daughter and Georgina had got a shot of her while pretending to take pictures of the bomb damage.
‘Well,’ Helen said, ‘I thought it would be a good idea to get photos from around the time Bel would have been conceived.’
Georgina looked at two pretty but unsmiling blonde girls staring at the camera. If she put her photo of Bel next to them, the three of them could easily have been mistaken for sisters.
‘Is it all right for me to take them?’ Georgina said.
‘Yes, of course,’ Helen said, handing over the photos.
Georgina put them in her handbag and sat up straight.
‘To recap, then … From what I’ve found out so far, I don’t think that your mother, your aunty Margaret or your grandmother could be Bel’s mother.’
‘That’s not surprising, but how can you be so sure?’ Helen asked.
‘Because I have managed to get hold of a copy of Bel’s birth certificate and it clearly states that Pearl Hardwick is her biological mother.’
Georgina looked at her notes.
‘The date of birth being the sixth of January 1915. There is no name under the “Name and Surname of Father”. That space was left blank.’
Helen took a drag on her cigarette, listening with rapt attention.
‘Is there any way she could have been handed over at birth?’ she asked. ‘The certificate forged?’
‘Highly improbable,’ Georgina said. ‘Anyone falsifying part of a birth certificate is liable for prosecution. Also, my father knew the superintendent who signed the certificate, and in his words, he was “whiter than white”. On top of which, it just doesn’t make sense that someone like Pearl would pretend a baby was hers, especially as she clearly did not benefit financially from it.’
Helen stubbed out her cigarette.
Georgina could see that she was disappointed, but not surprised.
‘So, what I now have to find out is who Isabelle Elliot’s father is.’ Georgina closed her notebook.
‘That’s going to be the hard part. Paternity is always hard to prove. Even when you have everyone’s cooperation. I’m going to concentrate on the men in the Havelock family, but I will still keep an open mind and look at other possibilities. I might find that her father is totally unconnected to your family and is some sailor boy from foreign lands—’
‘Like Bel’s sister,’ Helen mused.
‘Exactly,’ Georgina agreed.
After seeing the photographs she now had in her bag, though, Georgina thought that would be unlikely. Very unlikely.