Page 37 of The Little Teashop of Lost and Found
‘Of course not – stay as long as you like,’ she said hospitably. ‘In fact, I was banking on you still being here over next weekend, at the very least.’
Honey the Labrador, who as usual had been lying under the highchair waiting for any descending gobbets of food, thumped his tail approvingly.
After dinner Sheila went off to put Casper to bed and then watch TV in the apartment until Teddy and Geeta got home, while Bel and I stacked the dishwasher and cleared up.
Then Bel suggested we take our coffee into the library and do an online search for newspaper articles about my being found up on the moors.
‘The connection’s really slow, but we could give it a go, if you like?’
‘I’m dying to,’ I confessed. ‘I should have tried to find out more long ago – I don’t know why I didn’t. I suppose part of it was this silly idea that the first time I walked down the main street of Haworth I’d comeface to face with my mother, who I’d recognize because she looked just like me, but that kind of thing only happens in fairy stories.’
‘And children don’t always look like their parents, do they?’ she pointed out. ‘Teddy and I are tall like Dad, but he had wavy brown hair, while we’re both fair and blue-eyed like Mum.’
I was longing to ask where the dark and mysterious Nile fitted in, but didn’t want to appear nosy … or over-interested. It seemed increasingly likely he was Sheila’s son by an earlier partner.
‘Were there any clues found with you?’ Bel asked.
‘Clues?’
‘Things that might help to trace your mother, like the clothes you were wearing? I read once that penniless mothers in Victorian times used to leave their babies at foundling hospitals with a token, so they could claim the baby back if their circumstances improved. They were so poor, it was often something like an acorn, or a button. Heartbreaking, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, and I imagine practically none of them ever did reclaim their children,’ I agreed. ‘Dad never mentioned anything like that being left with me, so I’ve no idea. Come on, let’s have a look and see what we can find.’
‘We’ll start with the national newspapers,’ she suggested. ‘Some of the local papers might have more details, but we can get the overview first using the year you were born and your birthday.’
‘Officialbirthday, the day I was found,’ I said. ‘I was only a few hours old at most, so it had to be that day or the one before.’
It took a bit of searching, using various combinations of wording, but finally we struck gold. It appeared I hadn’t made the major news, since there was a lot going on at the time including a big murder trial, but all the dailies initially covered the story, though it petered out when it became clear the mother was neither coming forward, nor likely to be discovered.
‘I was out before dawn looking for a lost sheep up near the standing stone on the hill – we call it the Oldstone, but it’s down on the maps as the Devil’s Finger – and I heard something,’ said localfarmer Joe Godet. ‘I thought it might be an early lamb, but it was a baby crying. It was wrapped up in a white sheepskin rug, the kind you get in all the tourist shops round here, and pushed down into a hole in the rocks. I don’t know how it survived the cold, except maybe it hadn’t been there long and the sheepskin protected it.’
The reporter went on to say that the farmer seemed overcome by emotion as he added, ‘It was a lass, a poor little thing with a harelip and scrawny as a featherless chicken.’
‘How weird – a sheepskin rug,’ I exclaimed.
‘That farmer sounds a sweetie,’ Bel commented. ‘I didn’t realize you’d had a harelip, Alice? You wouldn’t know at all now!’
‘I was lucky, because it wasn’t a serious one and Dad said I had a really good surgeon. I do have a thin scar but it’s gone silvery now and with a little makeup you can’t see it at all.’
Most of the dailies carried variations on the same story, and then I seemed to have lost my charm for the readers, because there was only one further update, in theMail:
The baby abandoned near a local landmark on Blackdog Moor in West Yorkshire has been named Alice, after the late wife of the farmer who found her. Although slightly premature, she is now doing well and will have an operation to correct a cleft lip as soon as she is strong enough. A medical source said that it was amazing what early surgery could do in such situations and there was a good chance of an excellent outcome with little, if any, scarring …
‘Well, they were right about that,’ Bel commented, looking up.
‘Despite extensive police inquiries, the mother has not been found,’ continued the article, ‘so the baby will be fostered once her medical treatment is completed.’
‘They say the Oldstone is near Haworth, but didn’t you tell me it was actually much closer to another village?’
‘Yes, Upvale is a lot nearer. I expect they only put Haworth because everyone’s heard of it.’
She got a map and showed me and really, it wasmilesfrom Haworth, while Upvale was tucked right down next to it, in a small valley.
‘I suppose I must have been bornsomewhereround here, but maybe not Haworth after all.’
‘She must have been local enough to find her way through the back lanes to the Oldstone, though,’ Bel pointed out. ‘The only other route is the hiking trail that passes it and I can’t imagine she went that way in the dark.’
‘Assuming it was my birth mother who took me there,’ I said. ‘It could have been someone else.’
