‘How exciting!’ Gilly said as she opened a bottle of wine. She held up a glass and raised an eyebrow, but Sarah shook her head. She still had copy-edits to work on tonight.
She’d run out of time to go shopping so had been forced to conjure up a pasta dish from some past-its-best mince, and despite her best efforts, it didn’t look quite right. ‘I’m afraid it’s not very appetising,’ she apologised. ‘Let’s hope it tastes better than it looks.’
Gilly added a liberal dose of red wine to the pan. ‘Never found anything that couldn’t be improved with a slug of alcohol.’ She tasted it. ‘Yummy. But come on, surely you must know Lord Glendale? Fancy you being connected to aristocracy.’
While Sarah had been making supper she’d filled her friend in on the day’s events.
‘I doubt very much that I am connected to him, although my grandparents might have known him.’
It was another possibility she’d thought of and an increasingly likely one. From the little her mother had told her about her grandparents they’d been wealthy at one time. ‘That could explain why he had a photograph of my mother in his possession. Perhaps he just wanted to return it to its rightful owner.’
‘Returning a photo is one thing, making your mother a legatee is quite another. Doesn’t he have family?’
‘I thought about that too so I looked him up in Debrett’s at the office.’
‘Debrett’s?’
‘It’s the Who’s Who of aristocracy. It lists all sorts of information about British aristocrats: antecedents, living and deceased relatives, schools, universities… all sorts of stuff. Anyway, I found him easily enough. He was the only son of the third Earl and Countess of Glendale, Simon and Isabel Maxwell, so until he inherited the title he would have been Lord Richard Maxwell. He was born in nineteen fifteen, educated at Fettes in Edinburgh, studied law at Cambridge and joined the RAF in nineteen thirty-nine. I’m pretty sure it’s him in the photo.’
‘Or a friend of his?’
‘Possibly – but I’m going to go with my instinct that it’s him.’
‘What else did it say?’
‘He never married and there are no children listed. His parents are both dead as are two uncles – one in the First World War, and the other, the original heir to the title, in nineteen twelve. It doesn’t give a cause of death but he was pretty young. There’s also an aunt listed – a Lady Dorothea – who was pretty impressive. She served in both wars and was called to the bar in nineteen twenty-four – one of the first women to do so. She retired in nineteen fifty-five. Although there’s no date of death next to her name, it’s unlikely she’s still alive. She probably died after the edition I looked at was published.’
Gilly set two plates on the table and held out her hand. ‘Can I see the photo?’
Sarah shook her head. ‘Mum wouldn’t let me have it back.’
‘She knew him, then?’
‘She claims not. But she recognised the woman as Magdalena. I wish I did have the photo to show you. She was stunning. He was bloody gorgeous too.’
‘Wonder why he never married, then? Might have been gay, of course. They kept that sort of thing pretty quiet in those days.’
‘Trust me, he wasn’t gay. He had a painting and a couple of photos of Magdalena in his bedroom. If you’d seen them you would know he had to have been besotted with her. And he had a few of Mum’s paintings.’ She explained about the seascapes on his drawing-room wall.
‘How intriguing! Maybe being single he had some sort of godparent role?’
‘Perhaps, but in that case why has he never been part of her life until now?’ She tipped the pasta into a bowl before setting it in the centre of the table. She grinned. ‘God, this takes me back.’
‘Me too.’
They’d met the first day Sarah moved into Halls. She’d been sitting on her bed, feeling a little sorry for herself, when a red-head, with the curliest hair she’d ever seen, burst through her door. ‘Thank God,’ she’d said. ‘I’ve been going crazy waiting for someone to show up.’
From that moment on she’d been dragged along in Gilly’s wake, her new friend insisting they attend virtually every event in Freshers’ week and signing them up for every male-dominated society and club. After first year, they’d shared a series of crummy flats until they’d graduated, after which they’d gone their separate ways – Gilly moving in with Tim, and Sarah to London. But they’d always kept in touch and, since Sarah had moved back to Scotland, they saw each other at least once a month. Except for Gilly’s appearance – the wild red curls had been cut into a Princess Di style and coloured blond – her friend hadn’t changed. She was still a live wire, still the same restless, risk-taking Gilly. Sarah wished she could be more like her.
‘So what next?’ Gilly asked, winding a strand of spaghetti around her fork.
‘I’m not sure.’
‘What does your dad say?’
Sarah pushed her plate away. She didn’t seem to have much of an appetite these days. ‘I haven’t spoken to him yet.’
Gilly raised an eyebrow. ‘But you’re going to, right? He might have all the answers – or some of them.’
Sarah shifted uneasily in her chair. ‘I plan to phone him later.’
‘I’m amazed you didn’t call him straight away. I know you two don’t get on but, Christ, Sarah, if anyone can clear up this mystery…’
Not getting on was one way of putting it. Since his marriage to the woman he’d left her mother for and their subsequent move to South Africa, she and Dad had virtually lost touch, although, of course, she’d phoned him to tell him about Mum’s stroke. Foolishly, she’d allowed herself to believe that, just this once, he’d remember he had another daughter apart from the one he had with his second wife, but if she’d expected him to jump on the next plane to come and see them, she’d been disappointed.
‘Yes, well. As I said, I’ll call him later. In the meantime, Gilly, Lord Glendale is the obvious link. Seeing as he can’t tell me anything, I wondered if one of the surviving family members might know something. Lady Dorothea, his aunt, has a son listed in Debrett’s and apparently he still lives in London so I phoned Directory Enquiries for the number. Unfortunately, it’s unlisted.’ Sarah picked up their plates and put them in the sink.
‘Why don’t you just go and see him? Isn’t it time you saw Matthew anyway?’ Gilly said.
Sarah ignored the last comment. She didn’t want to talk about Matthew.
‘I can’t just turn up at a stranger’s door. What if they’re furious about the will? What if there was a falling-out? I’d hardly be welcome on their doorstep.’
Gilly laughed. ‘Oh, Sarah, don’t go all Chicken Licken on me.’
Sarah bristled. ‘Don’t you think it’s time you stopped calling me that?’ Whenever Gilly had lost patience with Sarah’s reluctance to go on one of her mad-cap escapades – and throughout their time at university there had been several – she’d taunted her with Chicken Licken who’d been so terrified that the sky would fall on his head, he’d persuaded Ducky Lucky and Henny Penny to be scared too. Then they’d run into sly Foxy Loxy and he’d convinced them to come to his den where they’d be safe. Needless to say, Chicken Licken, Henny Penny, and Ducky Lucky never made it out again. Which, Sarah had told Gilly, proved that her way of thinking was the right one.
Admittedly, in this case, Gilly had a point. What was the worst that could happen? They could turn her away, or refuse to speak to her – so at the most she’d be embarrassed.
‘I could go, I suppose. There’s only one problem, though: I don’t like to leave Mum.’
Gilly raised an eyebrow. ‘You could fly down to London in the morning and be back the same evening. Or better still, stay the night with Matthew. I’ll pop in to see your mum and tell her you’ll be in as soon as you return.’
It was about time she visited Matthew. Since her mother had become ill they’d seen little of each other. And bugger Gilly and her ‘Chicken Licken’; she’d do whatever it took to find out who the Glendales were.
‘Okay, then. If Dad can’t clear up the mystery, I’ll try to get a flight to London tomorrow. If I do, I’d appreciate it if you could look in on Mum while I’m gone – you’re a sweetie for offering. But I should be the one to tell her I’ll be away. She’ll fret otherwise.’ She glanced at her watch. ‘Aren’t you supposed to be meeting Tim in the pub, like twenty minutes ago?’
Gilly leaped to her feet, almost sending her glass of wine flying. ‘Christ. I’d forgotten.’ She picked up her handbag and dropped a kiss on Sarah’s head. ‘You know there could be a story in this. Personally I can’t wait to find out what it is.’
After Gilly left, Sarah washed and put away the dishes, wiped the working tops, swept the floor and even contemplated mopping it. But if she were to catch her father before he went to bed, she couldn’t put the phone call off any longer. As she waited for him to pick up she tapped her fingers on the hall table.
As soon as the stilted small talk was over and he’d asked about her mother, she told him about her visit to Hardcourt & Bailey.
‘So do you know who Lord Glendale was?’ she asked.
‘Your grandparents were the only toffs I ever met. They might have known him, I suppose. You say he’s left Lily a house?’
‘Not exactly. And there are two.’ She explained the terms of the will.
He whistled. ‘The pair of you have fallen on your feet, haven’t you?’
That wasn’t quite how she’d describe her, or Mum’s, life right now, but she bit back the retort. ‘I don’t suppose the name Magdalena Drobnik means anything to you either?’
‘Not a dicky.’
Bugger. She’d hoped he’d be able to tell her something. ‘Lord Glendale also left Mum a photograph of herself as a little girl. Do you have any idea why he might have had it?’
‘A photo of your mother, you say? Now that’s interesting.’
‘Why?’
‘It’s not really up to me to tell you. It’s your mother you should be asking.’
Sarah gritted her teeth. ‘She can’t exactly talk for herself at the moment, Dad. Just tell me what you know. Please.’
The line crackled and for a moment she thought they’d been disconnected. Her father’s sigh came over the line. ‘Right. Fine. Did you know your mother was adopted when she was a child?’
Sarah almost dropped the phone. ‘No!’
‘I guess she still hasn’t told you then?’
Sarah swallowed hard. ‘No.’ It was so like Mum that she hadn’t. But still hurtful.
‘Sorry, love, I thought she would have by now, although it wasn’t something she liked to talk about. She only told me when we needed a copy of her birth certificate to get married.’
Sarah’s head was spinning. Was it possible Mum was Magdalena Drobnik’s child? And if Magdalena was Mum’s mother, was Lord Glendale her father? It would explain the photo and the bequest – and Mum’s reaction to the woman in the photo. Perhaps she hadn’t being trying to say Magdalena. Perhaps she’d been trying to say mother?
‘You say she was a little girl when she was adopted. Did she tell you who her natural parents were?’
‘Apparently they died when she was very young. That’s all she told me.’
‘Died? Are you sure? Both of them?’
‘That’s what she said. In the war.’
If Mum’s natural parents had died during the war, then Lord Glendale and Magdalena Drobnik couldn’t be her parents. Unless Mum had lied to Dad. She wouldn’t be the first person to smudge the truth. Better to be adopted because your parents had died than because they’d given you away.
‘She must have told you something else!’
‘I did try to ask, but Lily said she’d spent her life trying to forget what happened to her when she was a child – that people who thought talking about the past was cathartic didn’t have a clue what they were on about. I’d never seen her in such a tizz. And that was that. It was never mentioned again.’
‘I can’t believe I never knew any of this! She must have said how they died!’
‘I know it was something to do with the war, that’s all. You know, Sarah, loads of children were orphaned at the time and sent all over the country – particularly out of London.’
Mum had been born in 1939. Dad was right. It was perfectly possible that her parents had been killed during the war.
‘Hold on a sec, Dad – their names – at least Mum’s mother’s name – must have been on the birth certificate.’
‘That’s the thing. She never did find it – all she managed to find was an adoption paper with your grandparents’ names on it.’
So what was the connection with Lord Glendale? Unless Mum’s natural parents had been close friends of his. His family had owned a home in London and the capital had been badly bombed during the war. In which case why hadn’t he ever made himself known to Mum? To leave two properties to a woman on slight acquaintance seemed unlikely. And Mum had known Magdalena. How?
‘Sarah, are you still there? I need to go. Mirinda wants me for something.’
Mirinda could wait for once. ‘How old was Mum when she was adopted?’
‘I’m not sure. Five or six, I think. As I said, she didn’t like to talk about it.’
‘In that case she would have been old enough to remember her parents. What if Magdalena was Mum’s mother? Perhaps she was a refugee and she and this Lord Glendale had an affair and she fell pregnant? Maybe Magdalena couldn’t keep her baby. She might have been Catholic, many Poles were.’ Sarah had once copy-edited a book by a woman who had been forced to give up her baby in the forties. Perhaps the same thing had happened to Magdalena? But if that had been the case, then Mum would have been given up for adoption when she was a baby. Unless Magdalena had died and that was why Mum had been adopted. But that didn’t work. No one would bequeath properties to a dead woman. There had to be another explanation.
‘Look, Sarah, this is all very interesting but I really have to go.’
After hanging up on her father, she took the photo of Mum as a child into her study, and held it next to the framed picture of her and her mother she always kept on her desk. Sarah had been about six at the time and was clinging to her mother’s hand, looking up at her. Her mother was staring straight ahead, although Sarah vividly remembered the almost painful pressure of her fingers biting into her palm. Could Mum be Magdalena and Richard’s child? She tried to visualise the woman in the photo and the painting. If Magdalena and Mum looked alike, it hadn’t been obvious to Sarah – but then she hadn’t been looking for a family resemblance. Magdalena had blue-green eyes and blond hair and Mum had brown eyes and dark hair and Lord Glendale had been tall and blond. That didn’t necessarily mean they couldn’t be related. She wasn’t good at seeing similar features, even when friends with babies insisted they looked exactly like Aunt Geraldine or Uncle Fred.
She lifted the photo of her and Mum and peered at it. There was little resemblance between mother and daughter; where Sarah’s hair tended to curl if she didn’t dry it straight, her mother’s fell in a sleek, natural curtain. Their eyes were different too; Mum’s were almond shaped and dark brown whereas Sarah’s had a touch of green from her father’s side. Sarah’s mouth was fuller too and while Mum had always been slim, Sarah had to work to keep off the pounds. The one thing they did share was their small slightly turned-up noses. But what struck Sarah most was that the eyes of both the child and the adult versions of her mother had the same fearful expression.
What was Mum anxious about that day? Were they near a road and she was frightened Sarah might run into it? Certainly Mum was always worried something would happen to her only child. Sarah had been in her first year at high school before Mum, after a furious argument, had allowed her to walk to school on her own. Even then, one day during lunch break, Sarah had looked over to find her mother watching her from the school’s perimeter fence. That had resulted in another blazing row, but at least it had stopped her mother’s absurd, and mortifying, behaviour.
If she’d lost her parents as a small child, no wonder she’d been frightened something would happen to Sarah.
How come she knew so little about her mother? As a spasm of grief and regret gripped her, she traced the outline of her mother’s face with her fingertip. She’d never understood how Mum could be so over-protective yet so distant. She’d resented her so often – always hoping that Mum would talk to her, really talk to her, like Gilly and her mother did. But apart from once, it had never happened. Perhaps it wasn’t too late to get to know her now?
She could start with finding out what had happened to Mum’s birth parents and to do that she needed to find out more about Magdalena Drobnik and Richard Maxwell.