Pale as the Dead

by Fiona Mountain

  Then, carefully tucked away in the bottom of a little silver tea caddy she used for bangles, she found a diagram Marcus had done for her, the face of a Stone Age boy, with strange lines like meridians criss-crossing his features.

  She remembered the exact occasion he’d drawn it.

  September, three years ago. Marcus was driving back up to Manchester in the morning. It was the second weekend they’d spent together. They were sitting on the floor by the fire, eating baguettes and cheese washed down with red wine. He’d slipped her glass from her hand, set it on the floor, taken her face between his hands.

  ‘You know. No one will ever be able to recreate your face after you’ve gone.’

  ‘Why’s that?’

  ‘What I do is all based on averages. Standard faces for different ages, different sexes and races,’ he spoke with a soft cadence, as if he was reciting a poem rather than explaining a scientific technique. ‘You take the typical width of a mouth, or nose, the distance between the chin, the cheek bones and between the eyes. Then you make variations dictated by the measurements and irregularities of a particular skull, and so you create an image that’s individual. But your face. It wouldn’t fit any predetermined model.’ Like a sculptor he smoothed along the line of her cheekbone with his thumb. ‘These bones are as fragile as a bird’s. Yet it’s a strong face. And your eyes.’ He touched the lids. ‘Statistically they’d be too large, in proportion to the rest of your features. The angle of them, a little foreign. You could never recreate that. And no one would know you had these little pale freckles across your nose, how thick and shiny your hair is, the way it curls like this around your ears.’

  She thought it was the most lovely, unusual thing anyone had ever said to her. She leant forward and kissed him. His hair had smelt of woodsmoke.

  She’d asked him to tell her more about his work and he’d fetched a pencil and paper and drawn the Stone Age boy for her.

  * * *

  She lay awake with the curtains open. The moon was full and round, so bright you could see the craters on its surface. A silver face with black pits for eyes. She tried not to listen out for strange sounds, but the slightest thing made her tense up. The slightest bump and creak from the ancient timbers, the gurgle of the hot water tank filling up, the wind rattling the casements. Tonight they all sounded like footsteps, doors being opened, someone crawling in through the window, picking the lock, creeping up the stairs.

  She thought of Katherine. How strange Marcus’s sister should have that name. The same name Natasha’s real mother had given to the hospital. Catherine. The woman who psychologists would no doubt blame for the fact that Marcus wasn’t here right now.

  Impossible to think the person who’d carried you inside them for nine months left because she didn’t love you. So you tell yourself that she left because she wanted something better for you. She left you because she loved you. Ergo, love equals abandonment.

  A vicious circle. So you make sure no one ever gets the chance to abandon you again.

  Marcus’s voice drifting up through the floorboards, low and familiar, talking to someone in the way she thought he talked only to her, teasing, gentle. She’d crept out to the top of the stairs to listen, heard him say, ‘I’ll see you soon, I promise.’

  She’d taken one giant leap then to what seemed the only conclusion. He’d always vowed there was one aspect of Steven’s life he’d never emulate but she hadn’t believed him. Instead she’d listened to the voice inside her head that said no one was to be trusted, everyone left in the end. So she’d sent him away before he had a chance to tell her he was leaving.

  He’d come up to bed, tried to touch her but she’d shied away, lay beside him staring at the wall until his breathing became deep and regular. Then she had packed up all his things, systematically working through the house.

  In the morning he’d not been able to find his toothbrush.

  ‘Why don’t you look in the boot of your car?’

  He’d stared at her dumbfounded.

  ‘I thought you were different but you’re just the same.’ She’d not given him the chance to lie. Not given him the chance to explain.

  And now it was too late. Because of a stupid, stupid, misunderstanding.

  You slept to escape. But she couldn’t sleep.

  She went downstairs and turned on the iMac. She opened a new e-mail message box, typed in his address. At first she wrote, ‘Katherine came to see me today.’ Then she deleted that, not wanting to risk causing friction. Instead she said, ‘I was wrong. I should have trusted you. I’m sorry.’

  There seemed nothing more to say.

  She pulled her notebook towards her, opened it at a fresh white page, attempting to make her mind as fresh and blank as the paper. A new leaf. She tried out different scenarios. Adam cheating on Bethany, with Angie, or Diana. Bethany cheating on him with his partner, Jake Romilly. Bethany made an appointment to see her doctor just before she disappered. Was she pregnant and knew Adam wouldn’t want the baby, wouldn’t make any commitment to her? Perhaps she wasn’t even sure it was his baby. The irony made it seem almost inevitable, nearly convinced Natasha it had to be true. Bethany and Jeanette, separated by one and a half centuries, but united by a common dilemma.

  Illegitimacy no longer carried the shame of Jeanette’s day, but it still wasn’t easy, single mothers were often frowned upon. And it was still the mother that bore the burden in the end, had to make the decision, to risk having to rear a child on her own if the father wanted out or she didn’t want him on a long-term basis. Or have the pregnancy terminated. A hard, cruel word. It should be easy to see why some chose to go ahead and have their babies, then gave them away. Walked out of the hospital and left them behind, or put them on a doorstep a week later.

  Thirty-Seven

  NATASHA WOKE UP, remembered it was Friday the thirteenth and seriously considered staying in bed. Boris was having none of it, whining at the door to be taken out. As Natasha dressed, she balanced the phone receiver under her chin, dialled Mary’s number.

  No more contractions.

  ‘Let’s hope they hold off for another day at least,’ Mary said.

  ‘No sex, hot curries or trampolines for you.’

  ‘Spoilsport. Can’t hear you too well. You’re cracking up.’

  ‘I don’t see how. I’m not on a mobile. Must be your … Ha ha. Very funny. Talk to you later.’

  * * *

  Before she left the cottage, Natasha couldn’t stop herself going round the place twice, checking and then double-checking that all the windows were closed and locked.

  It felt good to be out. Black clouds massed overhead but the sun was shining right through them, beautiful and ominous.

  She decided to take Boris with her to the County Records Office in Gloucester. It would mean him sitting in the car for a couple of hours, but she couldn’t bear to leave him behind in case whoever had been in the cottage decided to make a return visit.

  The temperature had dropped in the night and frost was thick on the Alpine’s windscreen. She was out of de-icer and it took a couple of minutes scraping a small round window with a CD holder, then giving up and going back inside for hot water from the kettle, before she could set off. She drove carefully, waiting for the rest of the frost to melt away.

  At Winchcombe, Natasha checked her side mirror to overtake a coach.

  There was a red Celica a couple of vehicles back.

  There must be hundreds of Celicas on the roads. She tried to read the registration plate but it was too far away. Next time she checked, not a Celica in sight.

  On the outskirts of Gloucester, she stopped at the roundabout, indicating left for Over Causeway. She changed down into first, stole a look in the rear view. The Celica was two cars behind again, impossible to see the plates or the driver. She waited for a lorry to pass, then accelerated into a gap. The Celica followed suit. She was on the dual carriageway, checked all was clear, then overtook a Modeo and slammed her foot down to t
he floor. The Alpine’s heart revved up to seventy. With the roads still slippery no one would be foolhardy enough to follow. Except the Celica. It had no effort keeping up, and in a second it was sandwiched between her and the Mondeo. The Alpine’s back window was fogged with condensation, so she still couldn’t see his face. She was sure it was a he.

  The Celica turned off when she did at St Oswald’s Priory. She did an abrupt right without indicating, into the municipal car park opposite the County Record Office. The Celica carried on.

  She switched off the engine. Stretched her arms out in front of her, gripping the wheel until her breathing had steadied.

  Who the hell was it? The worst thing was, her brain kept throwing up an answer to that question, along with a whole host of other questions. She’d spotted the car behind her twice, but that didn’t mean those were the only times she’d been followed. Maybe her stalker wasn’t an expert, slipped up occasionally. Someone had known exactly when to break into the cottage, after all. The thought she had probably been watched unknowingly made her shudder.

  She let Boris out to stretch his legs, locked up and went into the Record Office. It was in a converted Victorian School which bore evidence of its previous existence on the walls, black and white pictures of girls in pinafores and boys in peaked caps. If you looked carefully, you could see names etched into the wooden door frames of the old classrooms that now served as libraries. There were microfiche copies of most of the ONS indexes there.

  Will was waiting in the foyer. Natasha had managed to cajole him into taking an early lunch break to help since Mary was indisposed. He put his arms around her, then held her away from him. ‘You OK? You look a bit shaken up.’

  ‘Too many nutters on the road. Nothing that a sugar fix won’t sort.’

  Natasha treated them to mugs of hot chocolate laden with swirly cream at a greasy spoon café over the road. They carved up the work between the two of them.

  It was a case of working forward through the marriage indexes to find out if and when little Eleanor married. Who she married was another matter. They might not even get that far. Until the twentieth century the indexes didn’t record bride and groom together in the same entry, so they’d have to wait for the certificate to find the name of Eleanor’s husband, then to find her children. There was a chance Natasha could fiddle a shortcut though.

  She was taking the first possible eight years of Eleanor’s marriage; Will was starting seven years later. If they had time they’d check out the Leyburns too. Logically, they should be doing that bit first, but sometimes you had to trust your gut instinct. And Natasha’s gut was screaming that Eleanor held the key.

  As Natasha sat at the microfiche reader, working systematically down her list, 1882–86, names swimming past, that conviction grew. She started to feel Bethany, drawing her on. The diary, the trail she had left behind, was leading to her finally, whether or not she had intended it. Natasha couldn’t work out how she felt about that, or about Adam, or about anything any more.

  ‘I’ve got it,’ Will announced. Natasha went over to his desk, peered over his shoulder. Will pointed out the entry.

  Eleanor Marshall was married in the London district of Westminster St James in the June quarter of 1882. Despite everything, Natasha felt the heady exhilaration she hoped to find in every case and found only in a few, the thrill of the chase. Here was the first step in the continuation of Jeanette Marshall’s bloodline she was once convinced couldn’t exist.

  ‘Well done,’ she said.

  ‘That’s it for now then.’

  There was no way Natasha could stand to wait for the certificate. ‘Not necessarily.’

  It was almost one o’clock, the Centre filling up with researchers who came to work on their own family trees in their lunch breaks. Will said he had to be getting back to his proper job. Natasha thanked him, followed him out to the foyer, punched in the number for the London Metropolitan Archives, and asked to speak to Stuart Russell, a former colleague from the College of Arms. She gave him the volume and page numbers so he’d be able to look up the certificate. It should take fifteen minutes or so. She went over the road for a bowl of soup and a coffee, then came back to the Records Centre.

  Stuart called back two minutes later. ‘The groom was Samuel George Miller.’

  Natasha thanked him, promised to return the favour if ever she could.

  She rang Toby. His phone was turned off, a good sign since mobiles weren’t allowed in the reading rooms of the Family Records Centre and there was no way Toby would have it turned off unless he absolutely had to. He was most likely still at work.

  Natasha took Boris for a turn around the block, past launderettes and dry cleaners, grocers and betting shops, almost dialled up to remote access her e-mails but stopped just in time and made a bargain with herself. She’d only allow herself to look at them when she got home.

  It didn’t really matter if Marcus didn’t reply immediately. She’d keep trying until he did.

  Toby responded to her message half an hour later. Natasha asked him to look up Samuel Miller’s will, and drank another bitter coffee from the machine at the Records Centre while she waited. At this rate she’d be flying home. Toby called back and said the chief beneficiaries were Miller’s son, and grandsons John and Charles, with a few personal trinkets left to his daughter, Frances Leyburn.

  ‘Did you say Leyburn?’

  ‘Sure did. Anyway, there’s an amendment to the will made two years after the original, leaving everything to Charles, because the other boy died. From the dates, I reckon he’d have been about twenty-one. I knew you’d ask me to look up Charles Miller’s will so I’ve done it already. He left all his worldly goods to his wife May and her children, Elaine and Jack.’

  ‘That’s great.’ It meant she’d skipped four generations. Didn’t have to scour through all the birth registers for Eleanor’s children, grandchildren and their children and grandchildren.

  She took a gamble the diary would be handed on down the female line where possible. May and then Elaine. Back to the marriage indexes, the more recent entries, with neatly typed records, groom and bride together. She found it after about an hour. Elaine’s marriage, to an Andrew Wilding, in Stratford-Upon-Avon in the autumn of 1967. Bethany’s parents. Perhaps.

  Stratford. The photograph of a canal that Bethany had given to Adam.

  What you dread is never as bad as you think it will be. And what you long for is never quite as good. But when a decision’s made for you, there’s a feeling of relief, no matter what.

  She’d found her. Or almost.

  Had to be sure.

  The birth registers. Based on the assumption that Bethany was now aged around eighteen to twenty-one.

  It occurred to Natasha, as she scrolled through all the Wilding baby girls born in Stratford around two decades previously, that if Bethany was not Bethany at all the final conclusive stretch of the search could prove an arduous one, and extortionately, perhaps prohibitively, expensive and time-consuming. She’d have to ask for reference checks to be done on all the certificates to find which of the female babies had parents called Elaine and Andrew. Wilding was not a particularly common name but there were a dozen or so in each register.

  Something in her resisted just contacting Andrew and Elaine Wilding and asking if by any chance they had a daughter who fitted Bethany’s description.

  She needn’t have worried. The Wildings had had to wait over a decade for their daughter but she was there. In the index covering the September quarter of 1981, there was the entry for the birth of Wilding: Bethany, E.

  She went outside to call directory inquiries and get some air. The road was deserted, except for a boy in an England shirt who was kicking a football at a brick wall in what would have been the playground of the old school. The sky was a sickly yellow. The street lamps had come on, glowing amber, and overhead blinked the lights of a jumbo jet.

  Natasha dialled 192 and was told there was only one A. Wilding who lived in
Stratford. She scribbled the number down on her notepad.

  Everything was falling into place, as if, once she’d turned her attention to Eleanor, she’d passed some kind of test, cracked the code. Everything was more straightforward than it might have been. The Wildings could have moved years ago, or possessed a more common name. But no.

  She started to dial the Wildings’ number then stopped. She didn’t want to talk to Bethany’s parents on a mobile. She found two pound coins in her pocket and went back inside to the payphone. A woman was already using it. Natasha tried not to pace impatiently. Eventually, the woman hung up, flashing Natasha an apologetic smile as she left the cubicle.

  Andrew Wilding answered. She listened to his voice intently, trying to catch any nuances of sorrow or anxiety, but it was impossible to glean anything. She told him she was a genealogist, researching the Wilding name. ‘I’d like to come and talk to you if that would be OK?’ She made an effort to sound calm. As if she had all the time in the world.

  Andrew Wilding seemed a little baffled by her call. He asked when she was thinking of coming and appeared surprised when she said the next day. He expresed concern at her having to make a special journey, wondered if he couldn’t perhaps answer her questions over the phone?

  ‘I’m afraid I’m tied up tomorrow but the day after would be fine,’ he said. She told him she was planning a trip to Stratford anyway, so it was no bother.