Page 138 of The Little Teashop of Lost and Found
‘Seventeen. I’d just passed my driving test and Father had bought mea car. I knew these roads well and it was a bright night,’ she explained, as though it was all very logical andIwas very stupid.
‘But … I meant that you couldn’t have been in a fit state for driving?’
‘I’d had a great shock, but my faculties were working perfectly well, though I fear my overwhelming feelings of horror and revulsion at your arrival prevented me from checking that you reallyweredead, instead of presuming it.’
‘Horror and revulsion?’ I repeated, feeling sick.
‘I believe those to have been my predominant emotions,’ she told me precisely. ‘And an urgent desire to expunge the evidence of what had happened, so that Father never found out. Being only my stepfather, I felt sure he would have immediately disowned me.’
‘But did your mother know—’ I began.
‘My mother was a weak, hysterical, stupid woman, only concerned with concealing what had happened,’ she said, and I thought I caught the slightest trace of a dark bitterness there, the first hint of emotion she’d shown. ‘Once she’d died, I thought no one else would ever find out the truth.’
Somewhere below the Oldstone, there was a sudden rattle of pebbles.
‘Who’s there?’ she asked sharply. ‘Did you bring someone with you, after all?’
‘No,’ I assured her, going right to the edge of the lip of rock and leaning over to peer down, one hand on the Oldstone to steady myself. ‘It’s just a sheep, and I don’t think it’s likely to gossip.’
She came up behind me and her hand suddenly closed on my shoulder in a strong, bony grip. For a moment I was frozen to the spot, with the mad idea that she might be about to give me a push and so get rid of the evidence once and for all …
Then she said prosaically, ‘Come away from the edge. I have an irrational fear of heights and you are too close.’
By the time I’d turned she was already putting some distance between us and wiping her hand on her coat, as if contact with another human being, even one so closely related to her, was contaminating.
‘It’s very odd to have found my mother, yet for there to be no emotional connection between us at all,’ I said.
‘Oh – emotional connection!’ she snapped, as if they were dirty words, then added harshly,‘I was such a little fool back then. I thought Paul and I were so in love … until one day I went home earlier than I was expected and found him in bed with my mother.’
‘Y-your mother? Oh, how horrible for you – I’m so sorry!’ I stammered, stunned. ‘I can see that—’
‘You seenothing!’ she said savagely. ‘Afterwards he wrote a letter saying it had all been a bit Mrs Robinson, but he shouldn’t have let my mother seduce him and he was ashamed of what he’d done. I burned it … and after that, I only spoke to my mother when it was absolutely necessary – till the night she gave birth to you.’
My knees gave and I sat down suddenly on one of the fallen stones. ‘Yourmothergave birth to me? You mean … I’m yourhalf-sister?’
‘I suppose so,’ she said indifferently. ‘But you can imagine my feelings when I heard a noise in the middle of the night and walked into her room – and there you were on the bed, a horrible sight. I knew immediately you had to be Paul’s, because my stepfather couldn’t have children.’
My mind, at first struggling to accept all this, began to work again: it made sense. ‘Hence the shock and revulsion,’ I said slowly.
‘My mother had originally trained as a nurse, so she should have realized she was pregnant and done something about it,’ she said callously. ‘So there you were, puny and a mess. I didn’t look too closely and only found out later you had a harelip. You gave one cry and that was it, so we assumed you were dead.’
‘And decided to get rid of me?’
‘Of course. My mother was terrified that Father would find out and so was I. It was sheer luck he happened to be away on a three-month trip. She threatened to tell him it was mine, if I didn’t get rid of it – you – but I could see it had to be done in any case. And then the Oldstone just popped into my head.’
‘Because it was so remote, so there was little chance of anyone finding me?’
‘Of course: there you were, dead, as we both thought, so we neededto get rid of the evidence,’ she said logically. ‘I didn’t think there’d be anything to find by spring when the hikers were about again. The bedside rug was messed anyway, so I rolled you in that and drove out here with you.’
‘Then pushed me into the nearest hole and left me?’
Like a bit of rubbish after a picnic, I thought.
She frowned. ‘I must have left a piece of the rug sticking out.’
‘Yes, that’s what the farmer who discovered me said,’ I agreed.
‘Well, that’s that,’ she said more briskly, as if she’d just broken some bad news to one of her patients. ‘Perhaps you understand now why I wanted you to drop the whole business and of course I still prefer that Father never finds out.’
