Page 132 of The Little Teashop of Lost and Found
‘I’m just going to go and tidy up and dump my bag,’ I said. ‘I’ll be right down.’
I was only about ten minutes, mostly spent untangling my hair, which the wind had blown into a demented cloud in the few short steps from the car to the house, but when I went back downstairs and opened the kitchen door on a babble of conversation, there was a sudden silence and everyone turned and stared at me, as if they’d never seen me before in their lives.
‘What is it?’ I stammered, totally disconcerted. ‘What’s happened? Is there something wrong?’
‘No, not wrong. Come and sit down, darling,’ Sheila said. ‘Teddy’s got something to say to you – some exciting news.’
‘Yes …’ Teddy said, running a distracted hand through his fair hair and opening his blue eyes wide. ‘It’s the DNA result, Alice. I’m still finding it hard to believe, but I’ve checked carefully and—’
‘We’ve got the same father!’ Bel broke in impatiently. ‘Alice, isn’t thatamazing?’
She sprang up and gave me an impulsive hug, but when she let me go the room spun so dizzyingly that I sank down on to the empty chair next to Nile. He took my hand and held it in a warm, strong clasp.
‘You mean … Paul Giddings was my father?’ I asked blankly.
‘It’s true, Alice,’ Nile assured me.
‘But how can that possiblybe? And how do youknow?’ I appealed to Teddy.
‘Oh, I realized as soon as I started to look through your results,’ he said. ‘Dad was right at the top of the list of your closest relatives, linked to his entry in the database with our family tree, and of course I know the user name for that.’
‘You’re Bel and Teddy’s half-sister, darling,’ Sheila said, looking surprisingly joyful about it. ‘There, I just knew you were part of the family the moment I met you!’
‘Another sister for me and Nile,’ Geeta said.
‘Leave me out of it: I don’t feel remotely brotherly towards Alice,’ Nile said. ‘In fact, for the first time, I’m glad I’ve no blood relationship with the Giddingses at all!’
‘It rubs off, though: you’re a Giddings in all other ways,’ Teddy told him.
I barely took in what they were saying, for I was still struggling to take in the whole overwhelming revelation. ‘But it’s bizarre!’ I said at last. ‘I mean, howcanit be true? There must be a mistake!’
‘No, there isn’t,’ Bel assured me. ‘Teddy’s the expert and he says so.’
Then Nile asked the million-dollar question. ‘What we haven’t discussed yet is: if Paul is Alice’s father, then can we trace who her mother was?’
‘Not through the DNA test results, because all the rest of the relations listed are ones I recognize, so not her mother’s side,’ Teddy said.
‘You know, in all the excitement, I hadn’t thought of that!’ Sheila said. ‘Let’s count back to how old Paul would have been at the time you were conceived. You’re thirty-six, aren’t you, Alice?’
I nodded mutely, my hand still comfortingly held by Nile. One freshly discovered parent seemed enough to get used to at the moment. ‘And my birthday is the second of March, though they thought I was slightly premature.’
‘So … we’re looking at early in the summer before Paul started his first year of university – is that right, Teddy?’
Teddy, who had been scribbling numbers on a bit of paper, nodded. ‘I think so. He told me he used to spend the long holidays visiting Oldstone, until he dropped out after the first year of his degree course and went to Germany.’
‘We met in Germany,’ Sheila said reminiscently. ‘Love at first sight …’
‘So he must have had a girlfriend up here the year before he met you,’ Geeta said rather tactlessly, though it didn’t seem to throw Sheila.
‘Well, when we visited Oldstone soon after we got engaged, wedidrun into someone he’d once dated,’ Sheila said. ‘I’m sure I’ve told you that.’
‘You can’t mean Dr Collins?’ Bel exclaimed incredulously. ‘I don’t think she was born with human emotions. In fact, she’s probably an android.’
‘But she would only have been a teenager at the time and was probably an extremelyprettyandroid,’ pointed out Sheila. ‘She still would be attractive, if her expression and manner weren’t so off-putting.’
‘It can’t be Dr Collins,’ I said with certainty. ‘I’ve met her and … there wasnothing, no spark of recognition or anything. It must be someone else!’
‘I don’t know, darling. It seems improbable that he would have had another mystery local girlfriend at the same time,’ she said. ‘The other thing is that when Paul and I ran into her at the Upvale garage, she cut him dead, and that was when he told me they’d had a brief teenage fling, but they’d broken up and it was his fault.’
