Page 163 of Murder in the Family

Well, everyone loves a cliff-hanger, don’t they.

ALAN CANNING

(sarcastically)

And here’s all of us thinking bolts from the blue were exclusively Bill’s department.

(Bill grins but doesn’t rise to it.)

LAILA FURNESS

(to Tarek)

What more can you tell us about Caroline’s baby? Do we know when it was born?

TAREK OSMAN

Well, none of her friends that we’ve spoken to seems to have known anything about it – no one brought it up, that’s for sure.

And in terms of a date of birth, there’s really only one period before she married Andrew Howard where Caroline goes off the radar for any length of time.

ALAN CANNING

(nodding slowly)

That summer after she left school – when she was at the uncle’s in Birmingham.

TAREK OSMAN

Edgbaston, right—

MITCHELL CLARKE

Sothat’swhy she was ‘sent away’. It wasn’t to get over an unsuitable bloke, it was to get rid of his even more unsuitable baby—

BILL SERAFINI

It certainly looks that way.

LAILA FURNESS

But she was only 16 at the end of that summer, which means she must have been underage when the child was conceived.

BILL SERAFINI

All the more reason for the family to want to cover it up.

ALAN CANNING

Have you been able to find any record of the birth?

TAREK OSMAN

I’m afraid not. It’s a reasonable bet it was at a Birmingham hospital, but we don’t have any way of narrowing down the date, and if she had the baby adopted we won’t be able to access the original birth certificate anyway – only the kid themselves could do that. The original would have been replaced by a new one after the adoption was finalized.

MITCHELL CLARKE

We don’tknowshe had it adopted—

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