It was also an experiment that wasn’t hard to unravel. Any of the couples who were looking at a child who didn’t look a bit like either of them but had a striking resemblance to their doctor wasn’t likely to be handing out the benefit of the doubt. It’s not hard to have private DNA testing done these days, and at around five hundred pounds, not particularly expensive either, compared to the cost of IVF treatment and the expense of actually having a child. A few weeks and the couple would have their answer. And if the mother’s partner wasn’t the biological coparent, you wouldn’t have to be a contender on Mastermind to work out that the chances were that the other egg had come from the person most concerned with the procedure.
The more I found out, the more the idea of a random burglar sounded as likely as Barry Manilow duetting with Snoop Doggy Dog. Forget her colleagues in Leeds. They’d still be there tomorrow. Right now, I needed to check whether there was a murderer on my own doorstep.
• •
Lesley Hilton was Sarah Blackstone’s first experimental mother. According to the files, she lived with her partner on the edge of the Saddle worth moors, where the redbrick terraced slopes of Old-ham yield to the Yorkshire stone villas built by those of the Victorians who managed to get rich on the backs of the ones toiling in the humid spinning mills. It was far from the nearest address to me, but Lesley’s daughter Coriander must be around eighteen months old by now, and if she was Blackstone’s baby, it might be obvious. It was as good a place to start as any, and better than most.
The house was one of a group of three cottages set at the foot of a steep field where sheep did the job I’d have cheerfully paid a gardener to do. Anything’s preferable to having a herd of wild animals at the back door. The original tawny colour of the stone was smudged with more than a century’s worth of grime. So much for the clean country air. I yanked an old-fashioned bell pull and heard a disproportionately small tinkle.
The woman who opened the door looked like a social worker in her fisherman’s smock, loose cotton trousers and the kind of sensible leather sandals that make Clarks Startrite look positively dashing. She was short and squarely built, with dark blonde hair cut spiky on top. She peered at me through granny glasses, her chubby face smiling tentatively. ‘Yes?’ she said.
I’d been working on a decent cover story all the way out along the Oldham Road. What I had was pitifully thin, but it was going to have to do. ‘I wonder if you could spare me a few minutes?’ I started. ‘This isn’t easy to talk about on the doorstep, but it concerns a Dr Sarah Blackstone.’
Either Lesley Hilton had never heard the name before, or she had more acting skills than a family outing of Redgraves. She looked blank and frowned. ‘Are you sure you’ve got the right house?’
‘You are Lesley Hilton?’
She nodded, her head cocked in what I recognized as the classic pose of a mother listening for a toddler who is probably dismantling the TV set as we speak.
‘I think you probably knew Dr Blackstone as Dr Helen Maitland,’ I said.
This time the name got a reaction. Her cheekbones bloomed scarlet and she stepped back involuntarily, the door starting to close. ‘I think you’d better go,’ she said.
‘I’m no threat to you and Coriander. I’m not from the authorities, I swear,’ I pleaded, fishing out a card that simply said ‘Kate Brannigan, Confidential Consultant’, with the office address and phone number. I gave her the card. ‘Look, it’s important that we talk. Dr Blackstone or Dr Maitland, whatever you prefer to call her, is dead and I’m trying to—’
The door closed, shutting off the expression of panic that had gripped Lesley Hilton’s features. Cursing myself for my clumsiness, I walked back to my car. At least I hadn’t blown it with someone who knew that Dr Helen Maitland was really Sarah Blackstone. I’d have put money on that. And if she wasn’t aware of that, chances were she hadn’t killed her.
I fared better with Jude Webster, another of the early births. According to the files, she’d been a self-employed PR copywriter when she became pregnant. Judging by the word processor whose screen glowed on the table next to the pack of disposable nappies, she was still trying to earn some money that way. She had glossy chestnut hair which, considering the depth of the lines round her eyes, owed more to the bottle than to nature. Even though little Leonie was at the child minder, the buttons on Jude’s cardigan had been done up in a hurry and didn’t match the appropriate buttonholes, but I didn’t feel it would help our rapport if I pointed that out.
The news of Sarah Blackstone’s real identity and her death had got me across the threshold. I hadn’t even needed a business card. Maybe she assumed I was another of the lesbian mothers come to bring the bad news. ‘I’m sorry,’ she now said, settling me down with the best cup of tea I’d had in weeks. ‘I didn’t catch your connection to Dr Maitland…Dr Blackstone, I mean.’
Time for the likeliest story since Mary told Joseph it was God’s. ‘As you know,’ I started, ‘Sarah was a real pioneer in her field. I’m representing women who are concerned that her death doesn’t mean the end of her work. What we’re trying to do is to put together a sort of case book that those who follow in her footsteps will be able to refer to. But we want it to be more than just her case notes. It’s an important piece of lesbian history. The experience of the women who led the way mustn’t be lost.’
Jude was nodding sympathetically. She was going for it, all the way. Pity she had acted totally blankly when I’d first mentioned the name Sarah Blackstone. ‘You’re so right,’ she said earnestly. ‘So much of women’s achievements and contributions just get buried because the books are written by men. It’s vital that we reclaim our history. But—’
‘I know, you’re concerned about confidentiality,’ I cut in. ‘And let me tell you, I can fully appreciate why. Obviously, the last thing my clients want is for people’s privacy to be compromised, especially in circumstances like these. It wouldn’t serve anyone’s interests for that to happen. But I can assure you that there will be nothing in the finished material to identify any of the mothers or the children.’
We danced around the issue of confidentiality for a bit, then she capitulated. My Granny Brannigan always remarked that I had an honest face. She said it made up for my devious soul. Within an hour, Jude had told me everything there was to tell about the consultations that she and her partner Sue had had with Dr Blackstone. And it was all a complete waste of time. The first two minutes with the photograph album revealed a child that was the image of Sue, right down to an irrepressible cowlick above the right eye that wouldn’t lie down and die. This time, Sarah Blackstone had missed.
By late afternoon, I knew the laws of probability had been on the doctor’s side. But then, aren’t they always? Ask anybody who’s ever tried to sue a surgeon. At least two of the kids I’d seen bore more than a passing resemblance to the dead doctor. I was astonished the parents didn’t seem to notice. I suppose people have always looked at their children and seen what they wanted to see. Otherwise there would be even more divorces than there are already.
At ten to five, I decided to hit one more and then call it a day. Jan Parrish and Mary Delaney lived less than a mile away from me in a redbrick semi on what had once been one of the city’s smarter council housing estates. When the Tories had introduced a right-to-buy scheme so loaded with inducements that anyone in employment would have had to be crazy to say no, this estate had fallen like a line of dominoes. Now finding a resident who still paid rent to the council was harder than finding food in Richard’s fridge.