‘In which area?’
‘The actual birthplace was Kilburn, North London, though the family was living at the time in Hampstead.’
‘… And do you know if it was a hospital or mid-wife birth?’
‘No… neither of those, I’m afraid. It was a back-street clinic.’ Elena started trembling as she remembered the pale grey walls, the stark implements and enamel kidney dishes. A frightened schoolgirl being led in by the hand by her father. ‘Birth registration wouldn’t have been made there, or possibly anywhere in the area. And maybe not until some time later.’
‘I see.’ Brief pause, and then the sound of pen on paper continued. ‘Now you said at the start that the child’s mother was a close relative. Who exactly is that, and what would this child be to you? If it’s a sister for instance, we would still need her approval to search, unless she’s since died.’
Elena had kept it at arm’s length with every call so far. Having to say it straight out repeatedly would have been too painful. Now crossing that final barrier of admittance, a barrier she’d avoided coming even close to the past almost thirty years, made her trembling run deeper and seem to drain every ounce of spirit and energy. She closed her eyes, her voice barely a whisper. ‘It’s my son I’m looking for. The son that I gave up twenty-nine years ago.’
Over the next few days, Elena’s emotions see-sawed wildly.
She cooked for the family that night after instructing Megan, a simple Beef Bourgignon, but with Katine’s seperated before she put in the red wine for the rest of them; the taste was too rich for Katine. Maybe in a few years.
But Elena found herself uncoordinated throughout. She let the meat boil down and catch at one point, then she added too much red wine and overcooked the rice. It wasn’t her normal effort.
She’d opened the red wine at the start of cooking and poured glasses for herself liberally. Too liberally by the look of silent reproach fired her by Gordon as she shrieked and turned down the over-boiling rice pot, a bit of wine slopping out of her glass as she lunged.
She almost collided with Christos while he was getting a drink from the fridge when she swivelled sharply to drain the pot, then seconds later she was at screaming pitch when Katine walked in with the latest Mopatop doll to show her.
Then it was a complete about turn, hugging them both. ‘Christos… Katine. Sorry… so sorry.’ Her eyes welled as she straightened, ruffling Christos’s hair. New Christos… old Christos. Replacements that had filled the void in her life — but so quickly had become much more than that.
Talk was light over dinner. Christos mentioned his school trying to arrange exchange trips to France for the coming Easter and that he’d like to go, and Gordon talked about a local client bitterly upset at the drop in his Far-Eastern linked pep, though Gordon had recommended more of a spread at the outset. Elena said little, and Gordon could tell that she was caught up with her own thoughts, at one point missing what Christos had said and having to get him to repeat it. Though Gordon waited until they’d finished dinner before he asked, ‘What’s wrong?’
‘Oh, I don’t know. I think this whole thing with Lorena has hit me harder than I realized.’ Only a half lie, since that had been the main catalyst. They were in the kitchen and with the light hum of the dishwasher and the TV on for the kids in the lounge beyond, they couldn’t be overheard.
Gordon shook his head and looked down. ‘Bad business. I know how you must feel. But you did everything you could.’
‘Did I?’ She wiped a counter-top brusquely with a cloth. ‘Looks to me like thanks to my over-eagerness, Lorena is now trapped there without us ever being able to help her again. Fine help.’
‘You tried, that’s the important thing.’ Gordon came up and hugged her from behind, kissing her cheek. ‘You weren’t to know he was so Machiavellian, that he’d go to the lengths of taping your conversation.’
‘I know. Perhaps you’re right.’ She shivered and shrank under his touch. With the duplicitous game she was playing, the secret she’d harboured all these years, she could hardly bear him to touch her. It brought it all too close.
Gordon pulled away with a half-pained expression, half smile, and leant over to peck her cheek again. She could tell that he’d picked up on her discomfort, but perhaps he put it down to her abhorrence with Ryall.
‘Out of all the children you’ve seen successfully placed — what, fifty or more — you can’t punish yourself so because just one gets lost on the way. It doesn’t make it any easier, I know — but you’d almost expect those sort of odds.’
Her shivering ran through more intensely. She closed her eyes. Just one lost. ‘You’re right… you’re right.’ She bit at her lip, fighting back the tears. For God’s sake just go, before I break down completely.
The next day was even harder with her starting to become expectant of a call back, and she quickly became restless. She tried to do some painting to occupy her mind, but it was useless. She found she couldn’t focus on anything else for any length of time. Back once more to agitated pacing, wondering whether Megan’s search man would find anything or not. God, even if he did, she could wait days or even weeks, and the way she felt now was that she could hardly bare to wait minutes more. Another coffee, her fifth of the morning, and finally the build up of restfulness, staring intermittently at the dormant phone, made her feel trapped, claustrophobic. She put on her coat and headed out the house towards the chine.
The air was crisp, heavy clouds moving rapidly on a stiff breeze with only brief breaks of sunshine bursting through. Their garden stretched for almost a hundred yards from the back of the house, mostly gently sloping lawn with a steeper slope for the last ten yards as the descent towards the chine started. The slope angled progressively sharper, but foliage and trees also became denser; there were regular hand-holds as Elena wended her way down the worn path she knew so well. The co-ordination of her steps and hand-grips were automatic, could have been done blindfold. The trees became thicker, taller, spires reaching hungrily up towards the light at the top of the ridge that hit her in intermittent weak dapples through gaps in the foliage, becoming less frequent as she went deeper.
And suddenly she was there. Her own private place, her cocoon from the world outside. As the path flattened out, the darkness was almost total and she could hear the babble of the stream running through. She closed her eyes and inhaled deeply, enjoying the richly laden smell of damp moss and tree bark mingled with the salt breeze drifting from the sea beyond. Here, everything remained timeless, unchanged; it was exactly as she remembered it when she’d first ventured in at the age of eight.
Eight, fourteen… now in his late twenties. All those lost years. She tried to picture what he’d look like now, but again it was the image of small boy in her mind, running along the beach at the end of the chine, the wind lightly ruffling his hair… then as she focused, tried to see him clearer, she realized it was the Christos she had now, a chink of recall from a Cyprus beach holiday when he was five. She opened her eyes again, her breath showing on the cool air with her heavy exhalation. There was nothing there. No image she could cling to.
He’d been christened, blown out his first birthday candle, grazed his knee, had his first day at school, college, had girlfriends, maybe now was even married and had a family of his own. And she hadn’t been there for any of it. Even if the call came through with something and she could find him, all of that would still be lost to her. All she could do was try and fill in the gaps in her mind — but even that small consolation seemed desperately out of reach. There was nothing there. Nothing. Just an empty, aching void.