Page 31 of A Cornish Winter's Kiss

‘Fine. How are you? How’s the holiday apartment?’

‘Good. Rufus loves it, although the seagulls seem to live to torment him.’ Jude smiled at the thought of the dog barking madly at the birds who pecked on the glass, seemingly with the sole purpose of winding him up. ‘How’s Viv?’

‘She’s fine. Asking when you’ll be coming to see us.’

‘Is she?’ Jude wondered if his father would ever have even mentioned it if he hadn’t called.

‘Yes. Let her know, will you?’

‘I will.’ He hadn’t intended going before Christmas, but that sense of duty was prodding at him again. There was something else he needed to say first though. ‘I wanted to call you to let you know that I’ve put my name on the adoption contact register.’

‘Right.’ His father’s response didn’t give any indication of how he felt about it and Jude wasn’t sure whether he’d even understood.

‘It means my biological mother will be able to contact me, if she’s on the register.’

‘Right.’ It seemed to be his father’s new favourite word, and Jude still had no idea how he felt about it, so he was going to have to ask.

‘Do you mind?’

‘Why would I?’ It was a reasonable enough question, but it was one Jude couldn’t answer. There might have been adoptive parents who’d feel threatened, or jealous, sad even, but they probably had very different relationships with their children than Charles had with Jude.

‘Do you think it would have upset Mum?’ He held his breath, willing his father to say something that would make him feel closer to Ros again, even just for a moment. He still missed her so much, even after all this time, but he’d pushed that down for years, hiding it, even from himself. It had been Emily who’d made him face it.

‘No.’ It hadn’t been the reply Jude had wanted. It was too simple, too easy, and anger surged inside him, making him snap back in response.

‘How can you possibly know that?’

‘Because we talked about it.’ His father sighed lightly. ‘When we discovered where you’d been born, we knew your biological mother must be local and I wanted us to move away. I thought it would cause problems when there was such a big chance of crossing paths with her, but your mum wouldn’t hear of it. She wanted it to be easier for you to find the woman who’d given birth to you if you wanted to one day. Even if that never happened, she thought it was important you maintained a link to your other family. Even if that was just by staying close to where your roots were. It would have been hard for her, I’m sure, for you to suddenly have these other people in your life, but you always came first to your mother and she’d have wanted whatever you did.’

There was a note of something in his father’s voice that Jude couldn’t define. For a moment, he wondered if Charles might find it hard to see his son with another family, but his father could hardly complain about that. After all, he already had another family of his own. Asking Charles the question would probably just cause more hurt. The least said between them always seemed to be for the better.

‘It helps to know she would have been okay with me doing it. Thank you.’ Jude wasn’t sure what he’d expected his father to say in response, but he should have known what was coming.

‘Don’t forget to let Viv know if you’re coming to see us before Christmas.’

‘I will. Bye, Dad.’ There’d been no wishes of good luck, and no requests to let him know if Jude’s search came to anything. It clearly didn’t interest Charles, because it didn’t involve him, and the fact that the outcome might matter so much to his son didn’t even seem to come into the equation. It had been so easy to believe that love might be everywhere when he’d been at 10 Lowenna Close, but all of a sudden Jude was back to being far less certain that it was.

14

The conversation with his father had strengthened Jude’s desire to search for his biological mother. He needed to know the circumstances of his adoption, but more than ever he wanted to know how it had felt for her to give him up. Had she spent her whole life waiting for him to get in contact, or had she not even put her name on the register? He’d spent hours googling when he’d got home, and all he’d got for his efforts was a growing sense of frustration and impatience.

The waiting time to hear back from the adoption contact register suddenly seemed interminable. He knew his mother’s name, but he couldn’t find anyone who seemed to be a match on social media, unless of course she had a different surname by now. It was like trying to find a needle in a haystack. By 2a.m., Jude was considering checking the marriage register, but he had no idea what he was doing and there was a voice in his head warning him that he was poking a hornet’s nest.

Leaving the process to the official channels was safer and, as much as he wanted to know what had led up to his adoption, he didn’t want to contact someone who was desperate not to be found. But then he thought about how long it might take and thelooming deadline for the revisions to his book, which he seemed completely incapable of concentrating on, and he knew he had to do something. That was when the googling started again and he eventually hit on the idea of using an intermediary service. It was getting light by the time Jude sent the email to the one which seemed the best fit, explaining what he wanted and giving them his name and number. He’d had no idea that the call back would come so quickly, and he was still asleep when it did.

‘Oh, hi, is that Jude Cavendish?’

‘It is.’ Jude’s head felt fuzzy, as if he’d been up drinking all night rather than spending it down a virtual rabbit hole on the internet, trying to work out the best way of finding his biological mother.

‘Great, I’m Courtney Davies, from Reunion Connections, and I understand you’d like to use our service to find your biological mother?’

‘That’s right. I’ve already added myself to the adoption contact register, but it feels like a long wait to hear back from them, and of course there’s a chance she might not even have added her name. So I wanted to try and speed up the process of finding her.’

‘Our service might not make the process any quicker, however we do have a dedicated team who will follow up queries with local authorities and government agencies when responses are slow. If that feels like something you might not have time to do yourself.’ Courtney sounded like she was reading from a script, but Jude didn’t need much convincing. He didn’t want to get involved in the bureaucratic process, because he could already see how easily it could become all-consuming, and he had a book to rewrite.

‘I can see the benefits of leaving all that to you.’ Jude had seen on their website that the agency had a fixed fee, so he knewwhat he’d be getting into if he asked them to act on his behalf, and it felt more than worth it.

‘Okay good.’ Courtney sounded a bit more enthusiastic. ‘And I understand you believe you have your biological mother’s name?’

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