Page 133 of The Little Teashop of Lost and Found
She looked up, her expression troubled all at once. ‘Oh dear! I think now he must have dumped her and gone off to university, mustn’t he?’
‘It sounds like it, but Paul can’t have had any idea she was pregnant, if so – I mean, if she really was Alice’s mother,’ Nile said.
‘That’s true!’ Sheila looked relieved. ‘He wasn’t the sort of man to walk away from someone in trouble.’
‘Why wouldn’t she tell him?’ I found myself asking.
‘I don’t know. Perhaps she didn’t realize she was pregnant until long after he’d gone and she couldn’t get in touch with him, except through his grandparents. She wouldn’t want to do that.’
‘She might have been afraid to tell her parents, too. Or even didn’t know she was having a baby until it arrived. That’s more common than you’d think,’ Bel suggested.
‘I’m already having trouble accepting who my father is, even though Teddy seems sure about it, but there isn’t any proof that Dr Collins is my mother. It’s all speculation …’ I said, feeling dazed.
‘I know, it’s been a shock, albeit a good one. Let’s not worry about it at the moment, but celebrate your being part of the Giddings family, Alice,’ Sheila said, as if finding your late husband had fathered a child with a previous partner was something joyous and welcome.
‘Nile, there’s a bottle of champagne in the fridge – go and open it at once!’ she commanded. ‘And, Geeta, find the best glasses – this calls for a toast!’
I went into the village shop to buy stamps and when I emerged, I saw Emily Rhymer on the other side of the road, with one of those over-large rough-haired dogs she favours. She stopped and gave me a very strange stare, then nodded as if she’d just confirmed something she’d only previously suspected, before walking off.
Of course the Rhymers, a local clan, were all a little odd, but Emily more so than the rest. Still, I felt somewhat unsettled by this, since she was the woman I’d passed in the lane leading to the Oldstone that night so many years ago …
But then, even if she had her suspicions, without proof she could hardly come out and accuse me after such a length of time, and I suspect that gossiping is a pastime just as alien and incomprehensible to her as it is to me.
45
Mixed Messages
‘I’m still overwhelmed that suddenly I’ve got a family of my own – and Sheila was so very generous about it,’ I said to Nile next morning.
I’d been so overcome by emotion and champagne that I’d hardly slept and we were the first down to breakfast other than Sheila; there were signs that she’d already eaten and gone to her studio.
‘She’s honestly delighted. It wouldn’t be in her nature not to be,’ he assured me. ‘The only thing that upset her was that Paul didn’t know about your mother being pregnant, so she had to cope alone. Ornotcope, considering what happened.’
‘That doesn’t sound like Dr Collins, does it? I mean, the whole scenario doesn’t seem to chime with anything I know about her character.’
‘But she was a teenager at the time, not the woman you’ve met now,’ he pointed out. ‘We all do silly things when we’re young.’
‘I still find it hard to accept that she’s my mother – but then, I have to agree with Sheila that she’s really the only candidate. I don’t see how I can find out, though, without asking her straight out, and she’s scary.’
‘If it is her, she’s obviously not going to come forward and contact you, or she’d have done it by now,’ he said, putting a freshly brewed cup of coffee down in front of me and pushing the toast and butter nearer.
I was thinking. ‘I wonder … remember I told you that Emily Rhymer originally suspected a girl from Upvale of being the driver of the Mini that passed her in the early hours of the morning, after I was abandoned?’
‘Yes, but didn’t she see her later the same day, going about things perfectly normally?’
‘She did … but if the girl was Dr Collins, then she was probably as cold and self-contained then as she is now, and wouldn’t show any emotion, would she?’
‘I suppose it’s possible,’ he conceded.
‘So if I ring Emily up and tell her who I suspect is my mother, maybe she’ll confirm or deny that that’s the personshewas thinking of?’
‘Perhaps she will – but isn’t the entire Giddings clan enough family for you?’ he asked, raising one eyebrow.
‘Oh, more than enough!’ I exclaimed. ‘But still, I just want to know the whole of it, having got this far.’
And when I got Em on the phone later and told her what we’d found out, then asked her point-blank if Dr Collins was the girl she’d suspected of being my mother, she confirmed it.
‘I thought it was her straight away, because she was seventeen and her father had just bought her a new Mini after she passed her driving test. And there was something else that made me think: when the police had finally finished with us and we were going home, I noticed the iron gates in front of the Collinses’ house were closed, but they’d been open when I’d walked past them earlier.’
