by Susan Lewis
‘Andee?’ he said tentatively.
‘And you’re Jonathan,’ she responded, going to shake his hand. How like his father he was, the same almost Slavic features and arresting blue eyes.
‘Thanks for coming,’ he said. He spoke with an accent that was slightly American and slightly Swedish. ‘I realise I shouldn’t be trying to put this burden on you, but I didn’t know who else to turn to. Pappa – Sven – is very sick. I don’t want this to make him worse.’
‘Jonathan,’ a female voice called from inside.
‘Coming,’ he replied, and standing aside he gestured for Andee to go in first.
It was a surprisingly spacious cabin, with an overwhelming scent of pine filling the air. A large picture window looked on to the woods and sea beyond, a kitchenette took up one corner, a staircase led to a mezzanine floor, and large sloppy armchairs and a sofa were grouped around an empty wood-burner. Standing in front of the burner was a slight, nervous-looking girl with dark curly hair and violet eyes; she was so heavily pregnant that Andee had an alarming vision of playing midwife in the next few minutes.
‘I am Juliette,’ she said, coming forward to shake Andee’s hand. She seemed so delicate, too petite to be carrying with any sort of ease. ‘I am Italian. My English is not so good, but Jonathan teach me every day.’ She looked at him so adoringly that Andee couldn’t help feeling moved. ‘Thank you for coming,’ she went on. ‘I hope we are not a problem for you, but we want keep our baby very much. Please will you help us?’
Slipping an arm around her, Jonathan pressed a kiss to her forehead and settled her gently into an armchair. ‘Can I get you something to drink?’ he offered Andee. ‘We don’t have anything alcoholic I’m afraid, but I can make tea …’
‘Water will be fine,’ Andee assured him, dropping her bag on the arm of a chair and sitting down next to it. In fact, now she came to think of it she was ravenous, having not eaten since breakfast, and how odd it felt to realise that meal had been in Sweden. Now here she was on the edge of Devon in a remote wooden chalet, with the sound of waves wafting in through the open window and the distant screams of playing children seeming slightly surreal.
‘How long have you been here?’ she asked as Jonathan brought her a glass of mineral water.
‘Almost a week,’ he replied. ‘We are moving around and changing cars. It feels safer that way.’
Andee frowned in concern, and slight scepticism. ‘Do you really have so much to fear from your mother?’ she asked. ‘Surely if you explain …’
He was shaking his head. ‘Forgive me, I know she is your sister, but you don’t understand what she’s like. She doesn’t listen to explanations, only to what she wants to hear, and with us all she wants is for us to give up our baby. If she finds us she will make Juliette go to the States …’
‘She can’t force her,’ Andee protested. ‘And no airline will take her at this stage of pregnancy.’
‘Kate would hire a private jet and people who would make Juliette do as she wants. As far as she is concerned Juliette must give birth in the States. That way we will have no control over what happens to our baby. The law in Texas says that it already belongs to the people who entered into the contract with my mother.’
‘Which you and Juliette also signed?’
He nodded dismally.
Andee swallowed more water to give herself some time. She had no idea how the law in England would view a surrogacy agreement that had been drawn up in America, and Juliette wasn’t British … However, she was European, which for the time being might protect her, if anything could. ‘I’ll have to speak to a lawyer to get some advice,’ she told them, ‘but one thing I do know,’ she said directly to Juliette, ‘is that Penny – Kate – will absolutely not be able to force you to go anywhere while you’re in this condition.’
Glancing at Juliette, Jonathan said, ‘Some of the people who work for her are not … They are not good people.’
Realising he was alluding to the violence that could be involved, that could extend to the kind of scenes Andee would prefer not to imagine, she became aware of her protective instincts rising. ‘So what exactly are you hoping I can do?’ she asked him.
‘I want you to help me to keep Juliette safe while she gives birth. I know she must go to a hospital, but someone must be with her and the baby at all times to make sure that no one can steal the baby away. We’re afraid that the hospital won’t allow this, so we want you to use your influence to persuade them that they must.’
Knowing she could probably do that, particularly if it was known that the baby was at risk, Andee said, ‘And after the baby comes and it’s time to leave the hospital?’
‘The baby will be British,’ he reminded her.
‘But will your mother pay any attention to that?’
‘She will have to.’
Moved by his resolve, Andee said, ‘We need to speak to her …’
‘No, she will not listen. I have tried, but she is determined to honour the agreement she has made. She always is. You don’t know what happens to those who go against her.’
Remembering the Facebook pages Alayna had found that had talked about people disappearing, Andee’s eyes flicked to Juliette. The girl’s face had turned worryingly pale. ‘Tell me what happens to them,’ Andee said quietly.
Clasping Juliette’s hand, he replied, ‘The babies are taken anyway, and the mothers … We don’t see them again. No one does.’
Andee’s throat tightened. ‘What are you saying?’
‘I am saying that people who cross my mother always live to regret it.’
‘Be more specific.’
‘OK. She sells them back to the traffickers, or to pimps and gangsters willing to pay. This is what she does with those who do not want to carry on working for her.’
Since Andee knew as well as any detective just how rife this sort of crime was throughout the sink estates and run-down areas of Britain, indeed the whole of Europe, areas that many people only heard about on the news one day, and forgot about the next, she said, ‘And those who do carry on?’
‘You can do this by being a surrogate again, or by becoming an escort, as she calls it. Of course it is prostitution, but not the same as for those who go to the Serbian or Latvian gangs. Those she has no more to do with. She will not take them back, even if they beg. The ones who choose to stay she takes care of. They live in nice apartments in Ostermalm and Belgravia, she selects their clients for them – men and women – and she keeps videos and dossiers of the most powerful ones to use if she needs to.’
‘You mean for blackmail?’
He shrugged. ‘I suppose so, but I have never known her to do this. I think it is a kind of insurance.’
Kate Trask’s modus operandi almost to the letter. Although somewhat reassured that Penny’s surrogacy project meant she hadn’t followed her morbid fascination with Trask in every respect, Andee’s head was starting to spin.
After a while she said, ‘Do all the young people come through traffickers?’
He shook his head. ‘No. Some of them are from poor families in remote regions who are recruited directly by her outreach workers – this is what she calls her scouts. Deals are done with the parents or guardians and they are taken away to live the kind of life they are promised, but only on her terms. Some are students, Juliette was one, looking to make enough money to pay their fees. My mother has a very large network of scouts looking out for vulnerable young people with beautiful faces and good health.’
‘How many people are we talking about?’
‘Twenty, maybe up to fifty a year.’
‘Are they all used for surrogacy?’
‘Most, but if they turn out not to be fertile they are given the choice of becoming an escort or going back to their families.’
‘And do any of them make it back to their families?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe some.’
Andee looked at Juliette again and wondered how much of the English she u
nderstood. Presumably she knew the story, which was why she was so afraid.
‘We have thought,’ Jonathan told her, ‘of letting this baby go and having another, but we made it together and we already love it, and we will always know that it is out there somewhere. Giving away a child that’s yours is just not possible – unless of course you are my mother.’
The bitterness dug into Andee’s heart, along with sadness and a desire to embrace him. He wouldn’t welcome it, and it would embarrass them both, so she didn’t attempt it, she simply said, ‘I’m sorry.’
He looked away, clearly wishing he hadn’t shown his feelings.
‘Tell me,’ she said, ‘until you knew the truth, who did you think Kate was?’
He shrugged. ‘Just someone who worked with Pappa and who also lived with us.’
‘You had no particular relationship with her?’
‘No, because she didn’t want one with me. She doesn’t like children, and she never pretended to.’
‘So you thought Ana was your mother?’
He nodded.
Sensing how devastating it had been for him when he’d found out the truth, she said, ‘How old were you when Ana died?’
‘Eleven.’
Her heart ached with pity. ‘But your father didn’t tell you until many years later who your real mother was?’
‘He told me when he became ill. By then I had already finished university and I was working with Kate, not recruiting, but I knew most of what was going on. At first I thought it was all a good thing, but then I realised what was really happening and I told Pappa I wanted out. This was at the time he was informed by the doctors that his cancer was terminal. He felt then that he must tell me everything he knew about my other family, how my mother had disappeared from your lives when she was in her teens, how she had given us to him after he’d paid her … Ana never knew that he was our real father. I don’t know why he didn’t tell her … I think because he didn’t want her to know that he was involved in supplying surrogate mothers for childless people.’
‘So he started the business?’ Andee asked, having already guessed as much.
Jonathan nodded. ‘He helped Kate to, and she is the one who has turned it into what it is now with a specialised travel company, the clinics, the apartments mostly in London where the young people stay before and after they have done their duty.’
Andee was thinking of the terrible grief he had suffered in his short life, to lose his twin brother when he was only four, then the woman he’d always believed was his mother seven years later. Now here he was, faced with the fear of losing his child. ‘I’m glad Sven told you about me,’ she said softly.
His eyes became desperate. ‘Does that mean you’ll help us?’ he asked. ‘We’ll do anything to keep our baby, and we’re afraid that if we turn to the police … We can’t turn to them. There is a contract to say this baby belongs to somebody else, and my mother’s lawyers …’
‘I’ll do my best,’ Andee promised, not at all sure what her best might be.
It was as she was leaving and they were outside on the veranda that she asked, gently, ‘How did Ana die?’
‘She had a fall,’ he replied. ‘It happened at our home in Djursholm.’
‘I thought she couldn’t walk.’
‘She couldn’t. She was in a wheelchair. There is a lift at the house. One day she reversed herself into it, but it wasn’t there so she fell and …’
Andee’s eyes closed as her heart tightened. She wanted to ask if Kate had been around at the time, but she wasn’t sure she was willing to hear the answer.
As Andee made the drive back to Kesterly she called Gould to assure him she’d be there within the hour, then her mother to let her know she’d be home soon.
Why on earth, she was asking herself, as she started across the wilds of Exmoor, had Penny tried to make her believe that Jonathan was the child of incest? What sort of twisted mind did she have even to suggest such a thing? The sort of mind, Andee had to accept, that could accuse her own father of abuse that had never happened.
Thinking of all she’d learned about Penny in the past few weeks, Andee decided her sister must be full of hatred or revenge for sins only she could perceive. Aside from those emotions, Penny was empty – devoid of basic human kindness, understanding and compassion that came naturally to most. Her conscience clearly didn’t react the way other consciences did. Hers was unreachable, had no power over her thoughts or actions.
It wasn’t hard to see why some had dubbed her a narcissist or a sociopath, for she exhibited all the signs, which meant that trying to reason with her would be like trying to reason with someone who didn’t speak the same language. It wasn’t possible to stir a heart that had no feeling, any more than it was possible to turn back time and hope to start again.
Andee wasn’t aware of the tears on her cheeks as she took a turn towards the Burlingford estate, she only knew that there was a horrible ache in her heart as it tried to hold on to how she had felt about Penny during the years she was missing. She desperately didn’t want her sister to be the person she was showing herself to be, nor did she want her mother to go through the pain of losing her daughter all over again. But it would happen; it had to, because Penny didn’t want them in her life any more now than she ever had. She’d only come back because of Jonathan’s attempts to turn to Andee in his time of need. If it weren’t for the baby that she probably didn’t even view as her own flesh and blood, she’d never have come back at all.
Quietly devastated, as much for Jonathan as for her mother, Andee returned Gould’s car and drove her own back to Bourne Hollow. She’d talk to Gould in the morning; now she needed to be with her mother so they could decide together what they were going to do next.
Chapter Sixteen
Andee watched her mother going through a range of harsh emotions as she listened to what Andee had learned over the past few days, including how Penny had tried to make her believe that Jonathan was John Victor’s son. It was plain from the way Maureen’s eyes closed at that point that she’d lost all ability to understand what had made her younger daughter the person she was.
Andee continued gently trying to avoid distressing her mother any further, particularly when it came to confirming that Penny hadn’t been lying when she’d told them she hadn’t wanted to come back to them, not even after the horrific time she’d spent at the mercy of gangs.
‘Does that mean she never cared about us at all?’ Maureen said, seeming hardly able to believe it.
‘I don’t know,’ Andee replied softly, trying her best to lessen her mother’s feelings of rejection, failure, guilt and whatever other torturous emotions were assailing her. ‘She obviously formed some sort of attachment to Sven and his wife, but how real that was …’ Nothing would induce her to reveal her fears about Ana’s death right now; she didn’t even want to think about it herself.
‘Do you think she cares anything for what her accusations did to Daddy?’ Maureen asked. ‘Oh God, if I’d known what he was going through. Why didn’t he tell us?’
Her mother’s pain and anguish were even harder to watch than Andee had feared. She kept trying to imagine how she’d feel if Alayna turned on her in the same way, and knew it would be devastating beyond bearing.
‘Why did she hate him so much?’ Maureen murmured. ‘Why did she hate any of us? We were never cruel or neglectful; we were a normal, decent family …’ She put her hands to her face. ‘It has to be my fault, I must have done something, or maybe it’s what I didn’t do …’
‘Ssh,’ Andee soothed. ‘I think we have to tell ourselves that she’s just wired differently to us. We knew she was unpredictable, unusual, even before she left, and given what she went through during the time she worked for the gangs … The drugs alone will have had a disastrous, and lasting, effect on her, not only physically, but mentally.’
Maureen was clearly still having a hard time absorbing it all. ‘How could this have happened?’ she whispered. ‘I j
ust don’t understand it.’
Giving the only answer she could, Andee said, ‘I think for now we have to put ourselves and our feelings to one side, and consider how determined she is to get the baby away from Juliette.’
At that Maureen’s eyes hardened. ‘We can’t let her,’ she growled. ‘It’s not her child to take. Where are the youngsters now?’
Understanding she meant Jonathan and Juliette, Andee said, ‘Not far away, and they’re safe for the time being, but we need to bring them to Kesterly so we can be nearby when she gives birth.’
Maureen nodded. ‘Of course. Yes, we must do that.’
‘I’m going to ask Blake to collect them tomorrow,’ Andee continued, ‘and provided Graeme and his sisters agree, they’ll stay at Rowzee and Pamela’s coach house up by the moor until it’s time.’
‘Oh, I’m sure they’ll agree. You know how soft-hearted Rowzee is, Pamela too.’
‘But they mustn’t know there’s any sort of problem,’ Andee cautioned. ‘They’ll only want to come rushing back from their holiday to try and help. It’ll be best for everyone if they merely think that a relative of ours needs a place for a couple of weeks before his girlfriend gives birth.’
‘Which is the truth.’
Andee nodded.
Maureen’s eyes were suddenly bright with tears. ‘To think of that dear boy and all that he’s been through,’ she whispered shakily, ‘and now this. We have to make sure he knows we care, that we welcome him as a part of our family, because he is. Just as much as Luke and Alayna.’
Going to hug her, Andee said, ‘I’m afraid the birth will only be the first hurdle. We have to work out what to do when Juliette and the baby leave the hospital.’
‘They should come here. We’ve got room.’
