Grave Doubts Part 35

Lulu sounded in control. What had happened to her baby? Perhaps it had been given up for adoption. Some of her sympathy for Lulu disappeared as she opened the remaining letters.

Dear Ruth, Great news. Roger he's the prop has expressed an interest in my work! He's very kind...

There was a lot more about Roger and Nightingale skimmed it, interested only in how Lulu was adjusting to life with or without her baby, but of that there was no mention at all.

Dear Ruth, You don't need to keep giving me the updates you know. I think it's better in fact if you didn't.

I have an exhibition planned for the week before Christmas. Will you come?

The only item left in the bundle was a clipping from a society magazine dated the following year. It was a professional photograph of Miss Lulu Bullock on the occasion of her engagement to Mr Roger Appleby, son of Colonel and Mrs A Appleby of Windsor. Lulu looked lovely and the engagement ring was so large it seemed to weigh down her hand.

No regrets then.

Nightingale bundled the correspondence together, curiously disappointed. The sense of adventure with which she had embarked on her exploration had evaporated, leaving her tired and with a threatening headache. That night, it took a long time for sleep to come and when it did it was full of dreams of abandoned children crying and of her father's laughter behind a succession of closed doors. At one o'clock she fetched a fresh gla.s.s of water and lay awake listening to the grandfather clock chime the hour. Some time after three she drifted down into another fitful sleep haunted by dreams of her childhood from which she struggled awake as the birds were singing.

After breakfast Nightingale went for a long run along the cliff top before collapsing onto the sharp sea gra.s.s to stare at the sky. She was physically fitter than she had been for years. The painful thinness had gone, to be replaced by sleek tanned muscle. Her face was years younger and had lost lines of tension that she'd thought would be permanent. She refused to become a nervous wreck again.

Back in the house she drank a pint of orange juice and lemonade and started gardening, her mind full of bitter childhood memories. She had been a strong child but her brother had been sickly. Simon had been treated as precious and delicate whilst she had been the tough one, expected to get on with life without any fuss.

At first she'd tried to earn her parents' affection by being the most amazingly brilliant child. School prizes, Brownie badges, swimming cups, netball trophies, she had delivered them all. Nothing changed. Drops of moisture splattered the leaves of the sunflowers she was staking. She told herself it was sweat and sniffed loudly.

When being the best daughter in the world hadn't worked, she had become the worst. A rebel, rude, untidy, difficult. She was expelled from school twice before fourteen and her mother gave up on her. Her father had used detached humour to cajole her when what she'd really wanted was a hug. That's all it would have taken, a few cuddles from him and her mother, Mary, the ice queen.

A memory of a family picnic came back to her. She'd been stung by a wasp and her aunt and father had scurried around, sucking out the sting, putting cream on it, soothing her with promises of ice-cream. Her aunt had enveloped her in a huge cuddle, kissing the swollen hand to make it better but her mother had pulled her away. 'For heavens sake, don't molly-coddle her. She's too spoilt already!' She had been eight.

Nightingale sniffed again and went to deal with the dead slugs until a strong westerly wind brought in a front of rain that enveloped the farm in a solid curtain of water. She had a compelling urge to leave the house and put on her waterproof before pulling the front door tight closed. At once she was surrounded and deafened by the rain. It had the force and density of a power shower and she abandoned her original plan to walk up to the top of the cliff and watch the storm in the bay. Instead, she turned downhill, towards the tiny hamlet and the church.

Amelia was arranging flowers on the altar. As she closed the heavy oak door it creaked and Amelia spun around in surprise. Nightingale threw back her hood and waved in rea.s.surance. Her dark hair was plastered close to her skull, longer and more unkempt than ever. Amelia opened her mouth in shock. Her hand flew to her chest as if to ward off a blow, then her face cleared.

'You startled me, Louise.' She tried to smile but her eyes remained wide and staring.

'Sorry.' Nightingale walked down the chequered aisle, automatically stepping over the worn bra.s.s tombstone. 'I needed to get out of the house.' Amelia was still staring at her, flowers forgotten as water trickled over the alter cloth and dripped on to the tiles below. 'Can I give you a hand?'

Amelia turned with a start and mopped at the spreading stain with her ap.r.o.n.

'I've only two more arrangements to see to, thank you.' She kept her back towards Nightingale as she spoke but her body radiated defensiveness, as if she had been caught out in some indiscretion.

Nightingale shook her head in puzzlement and retreated towards the font and its vibrant pantheistic carving. She traced the relief with the tips of her fingers. There was something essential about the font. Despite Lulu's strange lifestyle and beliefs she could believe that it had been sculpted with faith to hold this most holy water. Behind her Amelia bustled. Perhaps it was the moodiness of the day, or a bad reaction to the weather, but Nightingale found herself irritated. She was reminded of the story of Mary and Martha. Amelia was Martha, hardworking and earnest, relied upon but fundamentally missing the point.

'There!' Amelia placed an arrangement at the base of the font and stood back with satisfaction. 'Pointless putting delphiniums in at this time of year. They never last. I told Lily that when she brought the flowers in but she wouldn't have it. These crysanths are far more practical.'

Nightingale glanced at the clump of determined maroon flowers and quickly looked away. She resumed her tracing of the sculpture.

'I like this piece. Somehow, it calls out to me.'

Nightingale's simple statement provoked a nervous twitter from Amelia.

'Yes very nice,' she said, head bowed. She was tweaking the flowers, fussing at them unnecessarily with her podgy fingers. Nightingale had no doubt that she was seeking to avoid her eye and her detective's curiosity brought her to full alert.

'What was Lulu like?'

Amelia reached over to pick up her coat from a pew, her back to Nightingale.

'Why do you ask?'

Something, an instinct or a thought so buried in her subconscious that it had as yet no shape, prompted Nightingale to answer as if she knew far more than she did.

'Why do you think I ask? Don't I have a right to know?'

The anger and hurt in her voice surprised them both. Amelia turned around but kept her eyes on her handbag as she fiddled with its clasp.

'It was a long time ago, Louise. You may be upset but I think it best for the past to be left undisturbed.'

'But it's my past, and I have a right to be told everything, don't I? They're both dead now, what harm can it do? You're a Christian. You're supposed to believe in truth and compa.s.sion. If you have nothing more to tell me, swear so now, in this church.'

Amelia looked at her at last and Nightingale was ashamed to see tears in her eyes.

'I can't do that; it's not my place to tell you. I made a promise and even if the person I made it to has gone, I still can't break it.'

'Can't or won't?' Any sympathy she had been feeling towards the older woman vanished in a flash of frustration that brought fire to her eyes. Amelia stepped back, her bag held defensively in front of her. Nightingale sensed that she was weakening and pressed on, mixing lies with half-formed thoughts.

'Do you think I don't know already? I'm not stupid! Why can't you confirm the truth for me? All these weeks, you've been pretending to be my friend yet you've been keeping things from me, very important things that I deserve to know. You've left me to investigate and guess. That's hardly kind is it? I can't believe that you could have been so cruel.'

As she spoke, Nightingale was horrified to find that her pretended emotions became real. She had been scared by Amelia's reaction. Perhaps there were even more secrets to be uncovered beyond her father's infidelity and the half-sister she'd become determined to find. Her vision blurred with tears she was too angry to want to shed.

'How could you?' She threw the words back over her shoulder towards Amelia's ashen face and fled the church.

The rain soaked her head at once, chilling her. She pulled up her hood and ran on, glad that her tears would be washed away.

By the time she reached Mill Farm she was exhausted and bitterly regretting her outburst in the church. What had she been thinking? She'd engaged in manipulative interviewing techniques, only to be trapped by them into an emotional display it would be hard to forget. Amelia must think her dangerously unstable. Their friendship was probably finished. She didn't regret that quite as much as she knew that she should given the woman's kindness towards her but she still felt guilty.

Evening fell with the steady rain and she went to bed ridiculously early. An alien noise woke her. By the light of the torch by her bed she checked the time: ten to ten. She'd been in bed either one or thirteen hours and was too disorientated to work out which it was.

There was another noise outside. Nightingale struggled into jeans and shoes and went to investigate. Perhaps a violent gust of wind had woken her but she knew that she'd be unable to sleep until she had made sure that she was on her own.

She'd reached the top of the stairs when she heard a loud clang. It was the distinctive sound of an old milking pail being knocked over and she knew exactly where she had left it, by the back door. She switched off her torch and waited for her eyes to readjust to the dark.

The drumming of the blood in her ears mimicked the sound of the rain outside as she made her way silently downstairs, remembering to step over the rotten corner treads that would barely take her weight. Outside faint light trickled around into the yard from the front of the house. Inside the dark was impenetrable. She shuffled forwards, using her left hand to find the kitchen table and chairs whilst she grasped the torch firmly in her right.

A sudden banging at the back door almost made her cry out in fear.

'Louise? Louise are you there?' It was a woman's voice. Amelia.

With a curse softened by relief Nightingale switched on her torch and opened the door. Alcohol fumes. .h.i.t her.

'Oh thank G.o.d! I saw the house in darkness and I thought... Oh never mind what I thought. You're all right, thank G.o.d. Hang on a sec while I go round to the front and turn my car lights off before they flatten the battery.'

She clattered off with the torch. Nightingale lit the lamps and was encouraging the Aga back to full heat when her visitor returned.

'You're soaked through, Amelia. Sit here and get warm. Tea or hot toddy?'

'Hot toddy please.'

Why was she not surprised?

Amelia stretched her hands and feet towards the stove and sighed deeply.

'That's better.'

'What on earth are you doing here?'

'I was worried about you. I kept thinking about what you'd said, about how I should have shown compa.s.sion. And you were in such a state. The more I thought about you the more concerned I became. In the end I just had to come and make sure you were all right.' She shook her head. 'I feel a fool now of course, and it seems I got you out of bed.'

'Don't worry. Here, take this.' The water wasn't quite boiling but it was warm enough.

Amelia took such a long drink that Nightingale felt obliged to refresh her gla.s.s at once. She felt a little guilty that her outburst had caused a sixty-something lady to drive on unmade roads through darkness on a filthy night. But she didn't feel guilty enough to avoid trying to take advantage of the other woman's concerns.

'Have you come to tell me?'

'But you already know.'

'I need to hear it out loud to believe it.'

'I've said nothing for so very long, not even to Ruth, although I'm sure your father told her. How did you find out?'

'By reading my aunt's papers, finding photographs, matching the dates I know with entries in her diaries.'

Amelia took another long drink then rested her forehead against the warm gla.s.s.

'I should have realised. You're so bright, just like your mother. Of course you were going to find out. Well at least I won't be breaking my promise if you already know. Your father made me swear on the Bible in the church a few days after you were born. He kept coming to see me quite often for a while,' she smiled wistfully then grew sad, 'but his visits tailed off and soon stopped altogether.'

Amelia took another drink and looked surprised that there had been so little left. Nightingale made them both fresh toddies, hers weak, Amelia's full-bodied, and brought cheese and biscuits to the table.

'Go on.'

'He was upset for weeks, torn apart with grief. I can't describe it. We would often hold each other and cry together. When he came to my house that night, George was away of course as he always b.l.o.o.d.y was, I thought he was looking for Lulu but it was me he'd come to see.' She smiled, triumphant. 'I just hugged him until he could speak.'

Nightingale leant back from the circle of lamplight so that her face was in shadow and her look of confusion hidden. She was baffled by Amelia's words but held her silence, afraid that a question would stop the flow. Amelia drank more of the toddy, her eyes bright with the memories she was reliving.

'You know it's such a relief to be able to talk at last. Ever since you arrived I've thought of nothing else. The memories bang around inside my head. When you walked into the church that first Sunday I thought I should have a heart attack.'

'You knew who I was?'

'Of course. Father Patrick had told us that Henry's daughter might be coming and when you walked in it was obvious. You look exactly like her. It's quite extraordinary. Oh there's a trace of your father in the set of your jaw and you have his eyes, but there was no doubting who you were even though you're tall whereas Lulu was a pet.i.te little thing...'

She couldn't breathe suddenly. The sense of panic was so strong that she found she was panting in breaths that failed to deliver sufficient oxygen. Amelia was oblivious. Her cheeks were rosy, her eyes shone as she wittered on. Nightingale brought her breathing under control and made her face expressionless.

'Louise?'

Nightingale reached out to add whisky to her weak toddy and was alarmed at the uncontrollable tremor in her hands.

'Louise are you all right? You're shaking all over.'

She managed a nod that she hoped was convincing but the look on Amelia's face told her it was not. A long drink of the toddy didn't help.

'I'm fine.' Except that her voice now made it obvious that she wasn't.

'You didn't know.' Amelia was horrified. 'You tricked me!'

The accusation stung some sense into Nightingale.

'That's not true. I'd found out that my father's affair had continued right up to and after his marriage and that I...that he'd...but not that I was...that...' Her voice trailed away and she shook her head in denial. 'I don't understand. I have my birth certificate. It can't be true.'

The older woman's anger disappeared in the face of Nightingale's obvious misery. She reached out a work-reddened hand and patted Nightingale's, still gripped about the toddy gla.s.s.

'Did you never suspect? Were there no doubts?'

Nightingale recalled her sense of displacement, constant arguments with her parents, her mother's icy exactness and denial of love. She nodded.

'When I became a teenager but I put their treatment of me down to disappointment.' She lowered her head on to the rough wood of the table. 'Oh G.o.d! I even accused my mother once of pretending that I was her daughter when I wasn't.' The memory chilled her and she shivered. 'That was when she thrust the birth certificate in my face.'

The vision of her mother's fury and the fragile piece of paper waved like a flag of victory reappeared in her mind. She had s.n.a.t.c.hed it from her mother but she was going to have to stop thinking of her like that from Mary, and read every word. There was no mention of her middle, preferred name, Louise. The real reason for the apparent omission was obvious now. She wasn't Diane Nightingale.

'What happened to the other baby, to Diane?'

'She died, aged one day. Your mother, sorry Mary, had the twins at Mill Farm. They were a little premature but well and a good weight so the midwife said they were fine to stay at home. The Doctor sorted your mother out and that was that. Diane was the smaller of the two but she was healthy enough when she was born. Neither of them gave any cause for concern.'

'And when she died, they decided to adopt me.'

Amelia shifted uncomfortably but kept her free hand on Nightingale's wrist as she sipped her own drink.

'It didn't work out quite like that. You were born the night after the twins, a full term baby. Lulu had come back to the village to live with your aunt but she hadn't registered with a doctor. She was a wild child, back to nature, all of that. She wanted a natural birth and persuaded Ruth to be her "birthing partner" I think she called it. Your aunt was nervous but she was so besotted with Lulu that she went along with it.'

The contempt in Amelia's voice made Nightingale draw her hands away under the pretence of taking another drink.

'Then your father and m...Mary arrived unannounced in August and Lulu had to leave the farm. I put her up at my house. George was away on a trip to the Middle East otherwise I would have said no but Ruth was a decent friend and...'

'My father begged you?'

'How did you guess that?' It was so clear to Nightingale that Amelia would have done anything for her father that she didn't bother to answer. 'I didn't want her upsetting Mary.'

'You mean upsetting my father, don't you? You still loved him. He knew that and of course he would turn to you if there was a problem.'

It was clear from the expression on Amelia's face that she'd taken the comment as a compliment.

'Please go on, for my father's sake. You were such a true friend to him, don't fail his daughter now. He would want me to know the whole truth.'

'I'm not sure.' Amelia drained her drink and looked hopefully at the bottle. Nightingale made another toddy, willing the alcohol to relax Amelia's inhibitions.