‘You only have one dad, that’s what I mean. He’ll never love you any less and you’ll never replace him with anyone else. That’s just the way it is.’
I nod, taken aback by his words, by the perception and understanding Patrick seemed so unable to give me, but before I can say anything he gets up from the edge of the pool. ‘Toilet,’ he says, and walks off.
* * *
ZJulia’s actually home when we get back from the pool. Léa and Luca rush into the sitting room and start wittering away to her in French so I leave them to it and retreat to my bedroom to send the email that’s been brewing in my head all afternoon. I hope Jorge’s right, that Dad will stick by me even if he doesn’t want me to do this. I know I have to do it because I’ll never get any kind of peace within myself unless I find out who I am and what happened. But still, I intend to protect myself by being evasive. If Daniel knows what happened back then, he’ll understand what I’m saying. If he doesn’t, then he’ll just dismiss me as a nutcase and I’ll have time to consider whether to enlighten him or not.
Dear Mr Buchs,
The words sound strange in my head as I type them on the screen. Daniel Buchs, my probable biological father.
Please excuse me for disturbing you again, but it’s very necessary. Something happened to me a long time ago. I don’t know why, or how, but it’s become very important to me to find out what actually happened. I now know you were married to Brigitte – Anna – and I think you and your former wife may be able to provide me with some answers. If you really have no idea what I’m talking about then I apologise and hope you’ll forgive the intrusion. But I can’t help but think that you might know something about what happened to me in a hospital in Lausanne in September 1976. So I beg you, please reply with any information you may have.
With very best wishes,
Jessica Faulkner (daughter of Sylvia Tallis and Jim Millson)
I hit send before I can change my mind and feel my stomach plunge. It’s done. I’ll soon know, one way or another, whether Daniel and Anna have any clue that the woman they call their daughter was somehow swapped at birth with their real child – me.
As I shut the lid of my laptop, I hear crying in the other room. Léa, screaming in French and wailing in a babyish tone I haven’t heard from her before. I walk into the room to find out what’s going on and see Julia sitting on the sofa with an exasperated expression on her face, her arms around Luca, who sits on her lap. Léa’s leaning over one arm of the sofa, her face red and streaked with tears.
‘What’s going on?’ I say. When Léa sees me, she runs to me and flings her arms around my waist. She says something else in French and I hear my name in there, and though I don’t have a clue what she’s saying, from the stony look on her mother’s face I gather it’s not a compliment about her.
‘I can’t go to Léa’s tennis competition next Saturday, but she doesn’t understand how important work is at the moment,’ Julia says. Her expression tells me she clearly expects me to side with her. ‘Much as I’d love to see her play, I just can’t get away.’
‘But it’s a Saturday.’ It comes out of my mouth like a reflex and Julia frowns, purses her lips.
‘Right now, Saturday is a working day for me. There’s an event at the stadium, all the sponsors will be there and I must be too,’ she says, then to Léa, ‘C’est la vie, chérie. That’s life.’
I feel Léa’s tears dampening my shorts and I stroke her hair, wanting to bundle her into a hug and tell her it’s okay, I have time for her, even if her mother doesn’t. But I don’t say that. I nod at Julia, a brusque recognition of what she’s said, an acknowledgement that she’s my employer and I won’t contradict her, even if I think she’s crazy to put her work ahead of her family. She meets my eyes as her daughter clings to me and I see disapproval in her face – as though I’m the one who’s in the wrong – and I feel fury rise up in me. How dare she be critical of me when I’m the only one of us putting a smile on her kids’ faces these days? How can she be so cavalier with her family, this precious, precious thing, when some people aren’t lucky enough to have one?
‘Come on,’ I say to Léa. ‘I want you to show me what you’ve done in that new drawing pad we picked up last week.’
I take her hand and lead her into her bedroom where she flings herself down on the bed.
She doesn’t speak. I sit there and turn the pages, complimenting her on her drawings as my heart bursts for this eight-year-old girl who I didn’t know six weeks ago, but who right now feels more my own than Julia’s.
Is this how Mum felt? Is this what it feels like to have a daughter?
Even if it turns out she’s not your own after all.
* * *
I’m still fuming about Julia’s behaviour the next day when the doorbell goes. I get up from the table, where I’ve been helping Luca complete a jigsaw puzzle, and go to the door. Léa lifts her head from her book and I shoot her a smile, but she doesn’t return it and looks down again. I’ve been trying to think of things that might lift her spirits, but as yet nothing has succeeded. She’s got as much on her mind as I have, it seems.
A delivery driver is holding out a package. He nods at me. ‘Bonjour, Madame.’
‘Bonjour,’ I offer, hoping that’s all I’ll have to say.
He rattles off something that I don’t understand but I don’t need to; the box is addressed to Mme J. Chevalley and the electronic signature pad he hands me is all the explanation I need. I take it, scribble something that vaguely resembles my signature and hand it back. He gives me the package.
‘Bonne journée.’ He turns away, walks to his van and opens the door.
I take the package inside. The kids don’t even look up as I walk through the sitting room and take the box into my bedroom. I sit on my bed and stare at it.
It’s branded Coca-Cola so I know it must be something to do with Julia’s work. I’ve heard her talk about Coke, say what an important sponsor they are of the events she organises. Why it’s arrived here, instead of her office, I really don’t know. Neither do I know why I’ve brought it into my bedroom or why I feel an urge to open it.
All I know is I don’t want Julia to have it.
My heart quickens. The house feels quiet. Léa’s too subdued to be antagonising her younger brother. I think of her face, her tears, and the flash of anger in Julia’s eyes when I said, But it’s a Saturday. And I suddenly realise I don’t care what’s in the box. I don’t want to snoop anymore. I don’t give a shit. But I do want to upset Julia, just as she upset her daughter. I want to mess up the job that’s so important to her, punish her in whatever small way I can.
I get up from my bed and open the wardrobe door, unzip my empty suitcase and put the box inside.
I’ll dispose of it later.
PART THREE
FLEET STREET MANHUNT
The new six-part series Forget-me-Not (ITV, 10.00) takes a career girl’s view of newspapers and the men in them. Pat Powell (Patricia Brake) is an ambitious and attractive young journalist who wants to get to the top and enjoy an old-fashioned manhunt for ‘Mr Right’ at the same time. Aiding and abetting her in the chase is Avril Phelps (Cyd Hayman). Avril is the women’s editor of the paper they both work for and is a sophisticated divorcee who enjoys romantic adventures. [… ] Let’s hope the kissing stops for long enough to leave them time to do some work.
TV preview in the Daily Mirror, 1976
AUGUST 1976 London, UK
SYLVIA
Sylvia hadn’t wanted to act like Valerie. She’d wanted to be encouraging, the older mentor nourishing the journalistic dreams of a young woman in a man’s world. But it was taking all of her effort not to adopt Valerie’s unassailable gaze, frosty demeanour and unfailing rejection of sisterhood, and she wasn’t entirely succeeding. When it came down to it, Diane was bright, ambitious and would clearly make the most of this rare opportunity to get into Fleet Street. Sylvia attempted to screw her internal rage into a ball and throw it
in the wastepaper bin – but she missed.
‘We get plenty of requests to feature,’ she said, nodding to the page in last Saturday’s paper, where Ethel and William stared back at her. ‘We put a call out at the end of each week’s column and there’s a backlog of couples who’ve written in, so you won’t run out. You just have to select who you want to feature when and call them up to arrange the interview.’
‘And hope they don’t pop their clogs in the meantime,’ Diane said.
‘It happened once, sadly.’
‘You’re kidding!’
‘Doris, I think her name was.’ A smile tugged at Sylvia’s mouth. It wasn’t funny. But the conversation only added to the surreal nature of the day. Here she was, sitting at her desk with a considerable baby bump and increasingly swollen feet, mere weeks from leaving the job she’d always wanted, explaining to her replacement that one of the perils of writing a feature about elderly married couples is that they might die before you get to interview them. ‘We sent her husband a bunch of flowers and lined up the next one.’
‘Crikey,’ Diane said.
‘One out of fifty-four isn’t bad.’
Diane snorted. ‘No, I suppose not.’
Sylvia explained how the letters page worked, and where she got her ideas for the ‘at home’ section; she went through the process for pitching ideas to Roger, the politics of the features meetings, and the necessity of going to the pub at least once a week. She explained all this with a pang of longing for what she was about to temporarily lose and a simultaneous realisation of how much she’d learnt in this job. When she started here not so long ago she’d been just like Diane: a puppy with a new bone, desperately excited at the opportunity and determined to retain it at all costs. But somehow, despite all her best efforts, life had made her drop that bone, only for it to be quickly snaffled up by the next young terrier in the park.
She still had several weeks to go at the paper, and it felt as though Roger was rubbing her nose in it by getting Diane in for training so early. She was to shadow Sylvia in the next few weeks, go where she went, listen to her interviews, be there in her meetings, get friendly with her contacts, until – or so it felt to Sylvia – they would merge into the same person and when she left on maternity leave Roger wouldn’t even notice she’d gone. The only thing keeping her even slightly positive about the whole affair was Jim.
Since she’d moved back into the Kennington flat, he’d been different – he wasn’t fussing over her so much, he talked less about impending parenthood and more about their work, their friends, their lives in London, like he used to, before everything changed. She told him about Diane, about the fear she felt in handing over her job to a newcomer, the panic that she’d never get it back in quite the same way. And instead of dismissing her worries with meaningless platitudes or positive-thinking mantras, he listened, he sympathised and he tried to offer ways to cope. His empathy finally allowed her to breathe out and know it for the genuine support it was.
* * *
As part of Diane’s essential training she took her to El Vino’s on a late Thursday afternoon. Sylvia sipped a lime and soda while Janice and Marnie shared a bottle of white with Diane as they filled her in on Fleet Street’s sexual liaisons, indiscreetly pointing out the main protagonists if they were present in the bar – as many were, on a Thursday in the height of silly season, when the heat was so enduring that even Big Ben had packed up.
‘Valerie and Roger, really?’ Diane asked.
Janice leant forward. ‘Rumour has it, his wife just found out and kicked him out.’
‘Rumour has it? You mean you saw something in his office,’ Marnie said.
‘Not exactly. But I may have overheard a phone call. Something about custody. He’s getting them every other weekend.’
Sylvia felt a guilty twinge of relief. Perhaps Roger’s grumpiness towards her wasn’t personal but simply a reflection of the circumstances in his own life.
‘Well,’ Diane said, when Janice and Marnie had sailed off into the throng and they were left alone on the table, ‘this has been fascinating.’
Sylvia smiled. ‘Fleet Street gossip. Par for the course.’
Diane finished her glass. Her pupils were wide, her skin slightly flushed. ‘I just love it,’ she said. ‘All this. The buzz, the gossip, the energy. I don’t know how you can bear to give it up.’
‘I don’t have a lot of choice.’ Sylvia gestured to her belly. Sometimes the baby elbowed her in the bladder so hard it made her gasp. ‘But it won’t be for long.’
Diane nodded, and that could have been the end of it. But then the younger girl’s lips formed into a thin line, her eyes creased at the corners and her head leant to one side in what was, Sylvia realised with a jolt of shock, an unmistakable gesture of pity. A gesture that said Diane was sorry for her, but that she thought her a fool, and she would make the most of her foolishness by stepping smoothly into her shoes. At least that’s what it felt like.
And that was when Sylvia knew she had to do something. She couldn’t just slope off on maternity leave with her job in the clutches of an eager Cambridge graduate without making some sort of grand parting gesture. She had to find a final story. A story that would make an impact and leave a lasting impression so forceful that Roger would be begging to have her back.
And she knew what it had to be.
A story that had been brewing in her head ever since returning from Switzerland. A story that would highlight a cause and potentially bring some justice to a vulnerable young woman.
* * *
When Roger came back from a meeting the next morning, she knocked on his office door.
‘Can we talk?’ She poked her head into the office and instantly regretted it. The combined pong of body odour and cigarettes nearly made her retch. She wondered if he’d spent the night here.
‘It’s not the best bloody time right now, Tallis, but go on then, be quick.’
She sat down, tried to breathe through her mouth and told him about meeting Anna, how she was sent to work on a farm as unpaid labour at the age of eight, how her host family later deprived her of school. She told him about what she’d found scouring the British Library: a private foundation set up in Switzerland in the forties to help kids on ‘forced placement’ after a magazine reported mistreatment in the foster care system, and a report about a 1970 court case involving two children subjected to abuse in an institution. Clearly there was something amiss in the Swiss care system.
‘I think this needs to be written. I want to interview her – and maybe others. Evelyne mentioned Anna had a sister who was also taken, maybe I can find her and get her story too. But I’ll need some research time and resources. And a trip back to Switzerland.’
‘Tallis, I told you—’
‘Insurance. I know, I know.’ She brushed a damp piece of hair behind her ear. ‘Look, I’ll do the trip in my own time and fund it myself,’ she said, suppressing the little voice that said you’re meant to be saving. ‘I’ll sign a waiver if you want me to. Keith and the board need never know I went – until I get the story no other paper has and then I’m sure they wouldn’t mind a jot. But I want to know if you approve of the idea, if you’ll publish it.’ She leaned forward. A trickle of sweat ran down her boss’s temple. ‘Roger, I really, really want to do this. I think it’s important. Will you back me?’
He sat back in his chair and sighed. ‘You know something, Tallis? You remind me of my younger self.’
She hesitated, smiled. ‘Is that a yes?’
AUGUST 2016 Lausanne, Switzerland
JESS
The ball thwacks against Léa’s racket and whistles past the girl at the other end of the court.
‘She’s got a mean passing shot.’
Michel nods. ‘You play?’
‘No, but I’ve watched a lot of Wimbledon,’ I say. ‘Agassi was always my favourite. Loved the fact he eventually married Steffi Graf. Tennis fairy tale.’
‘You’re showing your ag
e,’ he says.
‘I know.’
He laughs and we clap enthusiastically as Léa thumps another groundstroke down the line, leaving her opponent standing. A slight, blonde girl with ruddy cheeks, she looks like she’s about to cry, and I feel sorry for Céline. She’s on the receiving end of an eight-year-old in a seriously bad mood – but to give Léa credit, she’s channelling her grumpiness usefully and is likely to win the match if she carries on like this. I never knew pre-teen tennis could be so competitive.
I sit back on the bench and feel my body relax beneath the August sun. It’s nice to be here, finally, after such a stressful morning. Léa screaming that she didn’t want to go. Refusing to put on her tennis outfit until Julia threatened to take away her new Harry Potter book. And then Julia rushing around, harried, because an important package for her event that day hadn’t turned up in the post. She’d had it sent to the house specifically, she’d told me, because time was tight and she didn’t want to have to drive to the office before the event if it arrived on the Saturday morning.
Are you sure nothing came in the week, Jess?
I shook my head, unable to even mutter a response. Sickness grew in my stomach as I pictured myself putting the packet in the recycling bin near the pool. The deviousness of it. The pointless stupidity. But I know I can’t go back on it now.
Léa and Céline get up from their chairs and throw each other evil glares as they prowl to their respective ends of the court. It’s Léa’s serve. She throws the ball high in the air and pummels it down, but it’s slightly long.
‘Maybe she could be the next Graf.’
Michel laughs. He takes off his baseball cap and wipes the sweat off his forehead. I think of Jorge by the pool, water droplets on his tanned skin. ‘I don’t know, I don’t want to push her too hard. She’s only eight,’ he says.
The Other Daughter Page 21
