The Happy Family by Jackie Kabler (electric book reader txt) 📕

There’s a lump in my throat suddenly, but I haven’t finished yet, and I need to keep it together, so I gently slip my fingers from hers.

‘Robin, there’s one more thing,’ I say.

Her expression changes from curious to astonished as I tell her that it was my real mother who attacked Alison, and when I relay what Alison told me about my mother being one of my friends, someone I already know, she can barely sit still.

‘No! But that’s unreal! Oh Beth, you’re not telling me this because you think …?’

‘Robin, I don’t know. I just have to ask everyone, you know? And I remembered that I caught you looking through my stuff once or twice,’ I say. ‘Things moved in my drawers, my passport, stuff like that. I wondered if that might mean something. I’ve no idea what, but …’

She screws up her face, her cheeks flushing bright red.

‘Oh God, I’m so embarrassed,’ she says. ‘I’m just nosy sometimes. I can’t help myself. Other people’s passport photos, you know; they’re always funny. And the stuff on your desk, bits and pieces about patients’ medical conditions, I just find it fascinating. I know it’s confidential, and I’d never tell anyone any of it, but … well, it’s like those A&E programmes on telly; I can’t stop watching them. But now I know that’s made you think that I could be … Oh, shit. It’s not me, Beth. My goodness. Honestly I wish it was me; you’d be such a great daughter, but I could never have children. I had severe fibroids when I was in my teens. I was in so much pain … Anyway, in the end I had a hysterectomy at eighteen. It was a pretty radical thing to do back then, and it took away my chance to be a mother, but I got my life back, and when you’re that age you don’t care. At least, I didn’t. I felt differently later on, but at least my job means I have children in my life, and I’m an auntie too, and … Oh Beth, I’m so sorry. It’s not me.’

She shakes her head sadly, and again I get that hollow feeling of despair inside.

‘I’m sorry you never had children. I’m sure you’d have been a lovely mum, and I really do wish … but hey, it was a long shot,’ I say. ‘And now I’m running out of options, Robin. Unless Alison was lying to me – and I honestly don’t think she was – not about that. And there’s the DNA thing, too. I’m a bit flummoxed, to be honest.’

‘So what are you going to do now?’ she asks.

‘I don’t know, Robin. I really don’t know.’

Chapter 44

What I do is go to the police.

It was Crystal who pointed me in the right direction. Not long after Robin left yesterday saying she’d be back in the morning to do the school run so I could get on with what I needed to do, Crystal and Jacob arrived with the children. They’d already fed them and I sent them upstairs to get ready for bed while I quickly updated my ex and his girlfriend.

‘So that’s it,’ I said. ‘I can’t think of anyone else who’s been in the house recently. What do I do now?’

‘Doesn’t that just mean one of your friends is lying?’ asked Jacob doubtfully.

I shook my head.

‘I really don’t think so. They all seemed so gobsmacked by the very suggestion,’ I said. ‘And if it was one of them, wouldn’t now be the perfect time to admit it? I don’t understand though. I’ve just run out of options.’

I groaned. This was impossible. Ridiculous. All of it.

‘Right, well you need to go to the police and ask them about the DNA – remember what we talked about?’ said Crystal. She was still in her work clothes – a navy pinstriped pencil-skirt and matching jacket, a white silk blouse, with her slim calves in sheer tights. It annoyed me sometimes that I liked her so much.

‘The police said there was more of your mother’s DNA, as well as the sample on the lamp – at least one older sample elsewhere, right? So tell them that you might be able to help them if you know where the other sample was found. Exactly where, I mean. Upstairs, downstairs? In your bedroom, in Eloise’s room, in the kitchen? Wherever. If you know where, it might help you work out who.’

And so this morning, here I am, sitting nervously in a small, overheated Gloucestershire police interview room. Sunlight streams in through the row of small windows high on the wall and dust motes dance in the air around us. We’ve already had a preliminary chat, and it sounds as though Alison has been as good as her word.

‘We’ve had absolutely no luck so far in tracking down Alison Allen’s attacker,’ the officer sitting opposite me says. He’s the one from Saturday, the one with the intense blue eyes and pointy cheekbones.

‘The search for your biological mother has drawn a blank so far, although maybe that’s not too surprising, if nobody really has heard from her for thirty years. It’s likely she’s living under an assumed name, maybe with forged identity documents. Who knows? We still suspect that Mrs Allen might know more than she’s telling us, as it does appear that she let her attacker in – and probably more than once, according to the forensic evidence, thus implying that they do know each other. But she says she can’t remember anything, and since head injuries do sometimes erase memories, we have to give her the benefit of the doubt on that one for now. She’s a very ill woman, unfortunately.’

He pauses, glancing at the notebook on the table in front of him, and I silently thank Alison for keeping quiet, for not revealing that she knows exactly who attacked her, while still wishing she’d bloody told me.

‘So, Mrs Holland, can you give me some more detail