by Susan Lewis
‘Then I got pregnant and he didn’t even hesitate; he wanted to marry me, and it was what I wanted too, so after knowing each other for only four months we made the commitment. My parents were horrified. They hadn’t even met him, and said they had no wish to either. They just wanted me home so they could sort out the mess I was in. They were furious, absolutely beside themselves, but at the time nothing, no one, seemed to matter to me but him. Afterwards, I realised he probably only married me to get easy access in and out of England, but I was so convinced by his euphoria on our wedding day that I truly believed he loved me.’
She swallowed, took a breath and started again. ‘We moved to Liverpool quite soon after the wedding – at least I did. His work commitments meant that he had to spend most of his time in Europe, but he came to see me at least once a month, more often after Hugo was born.’ She seemed to drift for a moment, caught in the memories of a time Alex suspected felt almost unreal to her now.
‘It was wonderful being close to my parents again,’ she continued. ‘I’d missed them so much, more than I’d realised, and for Hugo’s sake they tried harder with Gavril. I knew they still didn’t trust him, and I’m sure he knew it too, but I don’t think their opinion ever mattered to him. He was pleasant enough to them though, and even seemed grateful at times for the care they took of me and Hugo. I never told them, because I couldn’t bear to, that I’d realised even before Hugo was born what a terrible mistake I’d made. I knew they’d try to make me divorce him and I was afraid of what he might do if I did. He’d never been violent with me, but by then I’d started to suspect what his business was, so I knew his morality, as well as his background, was very different from mine. Worse, far far worse, was the fear that he’d take Hugo away.
‘So I stayed married to him, even pretended to love him and be pleased to entertain the friends he brought home. They were always men, hard drinkers, smokers, gamblers ... They spoke so many languages, Russian, Spanish, Chinese, that I could never understand what they were saying, but I didn’t have to be fluent in anything to work out what they were talking about. It made me sick to my stomach to think of the young girls, kids most of them, that they were smuggling into the country to sell on for prostitution. Perhaps they were doing the pimping themselves, I never knew. I couldn’t allow myself to know too much, it would be too dangerous and I had to think of Hugo.’
She lifted her tea, but didn’t drink, and Alex could hardly begin to imagine the hell she was reliving.
‘Hugo was about eighteen months old when my parents decided to buy a house overlooking the sea in Kesterly,’ she went on. ‘It was where we used to go for our holidays as children, and they’d always planned to retire there. For the first couple of years they had the place they were still working, so we only used it in the summer, and at Christmas, but then my dad had an accident at the docks and had to take early retirement. So they sold up in Liverpool and moved down south, and because my job at the local chemists was easy enough to give up, I talked Gavril into letting me and Hugo go with them. The intention was for Gavril to sell our house in Liverpool so we could buy somewhere close to my parents, but it never happened. Gavril hung on to it – I guess it had become too handy a meeting place close to the docks for him to give up. I was glad of it though, more than glad, because by then I hated him almost as much as I feared him, so the last thing I wanted was him coming to Kesterly too. What we were all hoping for, more than anything, was that he’d get caught during one of his smuggling operations, or that he’d at least run out of interest in me and Hugo and leave us alone. But for almost two years he came every month to see us, taking over our lives, our home, practically everything we did, scaring us all half to death, even Hugo who he prized above everything, or so he said. Then you came along, and he was so besotted with you that he began insisting we move back to Liverpool where he’d be able to see more of us. The thought wasn’t only horrifying because of having to be near him, but because of what he might do to us if he ever found out the truth about you.’
Alex’s heart caught a beat as she frowned in confusion.
Anna’s eyes came to hers and she smiled tenderly as she said, ‘You don’t know, do you?’
Alex was barely breathing. ‘Know what?’ she whispered.
‘Gavril Albescu wasn’t your father.’
Alex reeled, and almost gasped. She couldn’t take this in; it was too much, too strange, too unexpected ... Gavril Albescu, the maniac, the murderer, wasn’t her father. All her life she’d been afraid of her genes, ashamed of her birthright, and now ... She stared at Anna. ‘So ...?’ she faltered. ‘So who ...?’
In a voice that was as prideful as it was gentle, Anna said, ‘Your father was Nigel Carrington.’
Alex’s mouth fell open. She didn’t understand. Wasn’t he her aunt’s boyfriend? Quite suddenly dry, racking sobs began tearing from the depths of her. The monster wasn’t her father. She had a normal father like everyone else. Someone she could feel proud of, talk about, even think about ... As she struggled to catch her breath, Anna came to put her arms around her.
‘Why ... Why didn’t anyone ever tell me?’ Alex managed to choke, pushing her away. ‘All my life I’ve lived with the horror, the terrible shame of being his ...’
‘I know, and I’m sorry, I truly am, but it was the only way of keeping you safe.’
Alex couldn’t take it in; it wasn’t making any sense.
‘I loved your father, I wanted to be with him more than anything, but I was terrified of Gavril ...’ She inhaled raggedly. ‘He found out, of course, I don’t know how, but that wasn’t the worst of it. It was when he realised you weren’t his that he ... He couldn’t stand it. He adored you ... He told me we’d all pay for what we’d done to him and ...’ She swallowed. ‘... we did.’
As she turned away Alex watched her go to the window and put her hands over her face, as though blocking out the appalling memories of that night. She regretted pushing her mother back there, in spite of what she’d learned about herself. How terrible it must be, even after all these years, to revisit the horror of those she loved being massacred in front of her very eyes. Her parents, her sister, her son and the man she’d loved. The man she’d loved. The man who’d fathered three-year-old Charlotte; the man she, Alex, as Charlotte, should have grown up with.
Nigel Carrington was her father.
Her throat was tightening again. It was so hard to take in.
She knew so little about him. All these years she’d thought he was her aunt’s boyfriend, an innocent victim who’d been in the wrong place at the wrong time. In fact, he’d probably been Gavril Albescu’s main target that night – and so had she. The miracle of her survival was far greater than she had previously thought. Indeed, the only conceivable reason she and her mother had survived was because fate had decided that it wasn’t their time.
Why them and not her grandparents, or her aunt, or her brother, who’d all been blameless in the deception that had driven Albescu over the edge?
‘Are you all right?’ she whispered, as her mother came back to the table.
Though she was horribly pale, Anna forced the ghost of a smile as she said, ‘I try never to think about it, but I knew I’d have to today.’
‘I’m sorry, I feel as though ...’
‘No, don’t apologise. You have a right to know what happened back then, you’ve always had that right, but it simply wasn’t possible to tell you before.’
Alex searched her eyes. ‘So why is it possible now?’ she asked.
Anna took a breath. ‘Because Gavril Albescu is dead,’ she replied.
Feeling an unsteadying rush of relief at the words, Alex struggled for something to say, but what was there to say about the death of a man who’d robbed her of most of her family?
‘For as long as he was alive,’ Anna continued, ‘I never dared to come near you in case he was having me watched. He said he would, and made sure I knew it, because he sent someone to the hospital while I was still
recovering to give me a message. He said that I would never escape him, that he would always be there, in the shadows, and one day he would make me take him to you. He said many other things that I feel it best not to repeat now; they were the threats, the ravings of a madman. The trouble was, he’d already shown me what he was capable of, so I never doubted that he meant you harm. He meant it for me too, which was why, when I left the hospital, the police arranged for me to go to a safe place while my name was changed and papers were drawn up for me to start a new life. I think they might have considered using me as bait to try and catch him, but someone must have decided that I’d already been through enough, because they never did.
‘The only person from my past I was allowed to remain in contact with was Sarah, my best friend from school, the one I should have gone travelling with. She’d moved to New Zealand with her husband around the time you were born, and when she heard what had happened she flew over to visit me in hospital. She said that if I ever needed a home, I’d always have one with her, so when the time came, I got in touch with her. It wasn’t only that I had nowhere else to go, and no one else I could trust, it was that New Zealand felt far enough away for Gavril never to find me.’
She looked at Alex, and Alex could almost feel the pain that showed in her eyes. ‘The only problem was the biggest problem of all, leaving you. I couldn’t bring myself to go without you, and yet I knew for your sake that I had to. I had no idea if Gavril or any of his people were watching me, but I felt that they were so I couldn’t take the risk of leading them to you.’ She bit her lip and pushed herself past the emotion. ‘Before I left the country the rector came to see me. He was such a sweet man. I knew you were with good people, and he assured me you’d settled in well with his family and that you and his daughter were already close. I asked him if you called his wife Mummy and he said that you did. It broke my heart all over again, but I realised that to take you away from the people you’d come to think of as your family would be an unforgivably selfish thing to do when I knew I’d be putting you in danger.’
She closed her eyes, as though trying to overcome the devastation of her world. ‘If Nigel had lived,’ she went on shakily, ‘maybe we’d have found a way for us all to be together, but he ... I wanted to contact his mother to let her know where you were, but she was old even then, and I knew she was terrified for her life. She only visited me once in hospital, and that was to tell me that someone had turned up at Nigel’s funeral. They hadn’t spoken to anyone, she said, they’d just hung around watching, and she’d felt sure they were looking for you. So she was very sorry, but she didn’t feel able to be a part of your life. My Aunt Helen felt much the same way. No one had approached her directly, but she’d been followed often enough to be certain that someone was watching her, and who else would it be but Gavril or one of his people?’
Her eyes looked searchingly into Alex’s as she said, ‘I’m so sorry. I never wanted to leave you, I swear it, but do you understand now why I did?’
Alex nodded. ‘Of course,’ she replied. How could she not when it was only natural for a mother to do what she must to save her child? It just felt so awful to think of all they’d been cheated of.
‘Is this too much all at once?’ Anna asked, after a while. ‘Maybe I should stop now.’
Alex shook her head, though in truth she was feeling overwhelmed ... Nigel Carrington, not Gavril Albescu, was her father. It was cause for so much relief, celebration even, that were it not for the fact that she’d never know her real father now, she might be feeling far less heavy-hearted. ‘I thought ... I read that your sister, Yvonne, was seeing Nigel,’ she said quietly. ‘I had no idea that you and he ...’
‘It was what we wanted everyone to think, that he and Yvonne were together. It gave him the freedom to come and go from the house as he pleased, to be with you and me without raising Gavril’s suspicions. I was making plans to divorce Gavril, of course, and Nigel was all for telling him straight, but I was so afraid of what Gavril might do that I wouldn’t let him.
‘I guess the biggest tragedy of all is that the day before it all happened, my father and Nigel had gone to the police to offer to work with them in whatever way they could to help them arrest him. It was the only way we’d ever be rid of him, we felt. The police took them up on the offer, but there was no time to set anything up. It all happened ... We got a call about ten minutes before he arrived to say he was coming. I don’t know who rang, it must have been one of his people ... If we hadn’t received that call we’d never have had time to hide you.’
She looked down at her tea as she said, ‘You’ll probably have read about the attack being revenge killings for reporting the trafficking to the authorities. It was what the police wanted everyone to think. They felt it was best no one knew you weren’t Gavril’s, it would only increase the danger you were already in. Thank God they took that decision – if they hadn’t ...’ She shook her head, neither needing nor wanting to finish the sentence.
‘A lot of arrests were made over the weeks that followed,’ she continued, ‘but Gavril somehow managed to slip the net and as we know, they never did manage to find him.’
‘Did you know where he was?’ Alex asked.
Anna shook her head again. ‘I expect he was shipped straight out of the country before any blocks were set up. Maybe he returned to Romania, but I’m sure they looked for him there, so who knows where he went. He had contacts all over Europe and Asia, and any one of them could have helped him to change his name, probably even his appearance, to keep him out of jail. In truth, I have no idea how he managed to escape the law for as long as he did.’
‘So how did you find out he was dead?’
Anna swallowed dryly. ‘His sister, Erina, contacted me to let me know.’
Alex’s eyes widened. ‘How did she find you?’
‘I’ve no idea, but it shook me up terribly when she did, because it probably meant that he’d known all along where I was and could have struck at any time.’
‘Do you think that is the case?’
Anna nodded. ‘There were times when I felt as though I was being watched, but then nothing would happen so I’d end up putting it down to paranoia. If it weren’t for those feelings I’d have tried to find you a long time ago, but I was terrified that it was all he was waiting for. I still don’t know if it was all in my mind, but the fact that Erina got in touch to tell me he was dead ... She must have known that he still had a hold over me, that it was important for me to know that I no longer had to fear him. In her message she said that it was a great relief to her that he was no longer in the world, and she felt sure it would be for me too.’
‘Weren’t you afraid it was a trick?’
‘Yes, of course, but Bob – he’s my husband who I’ll tell you all about later.’ Her expression had visibly softened. ‘I know you’ll love him if you meet him and I hope you will, because he’s one of those people it’s impossible not to love. For now, though, all you need to know about him is that he had everything thoroughly checked out before either of us was ready to believe that Gavril Albescu really had gone to meet his Maker.’
‘So when ...’ Alex cleared her throat. ‘When did he die?’
Anna nodded, as though she’d expected the question. ‘About a year ago. It’s taken most of that time for us to be fully convinced that it really was him who’d been killed in a shooting in Ghana, but once we were I was desperate to come and find you. The only problem was deciding on the best way to do it. Bob was all for inviting you to New Zealand, mainly because you’re living so close to where everything went so terribly wrong ... He’s worried about how upsetting it might be for me to be back in the area, but I knew I could handle it as long as everything went well with you.’
Alex’s heart skipped a beat. Were things going well between them? On the face of it they seemed to be, more or less, but there were still so many emotions and fears churning around inside her that she couldn’t be sure how she was really feeling about any
thing. Unwilling to explore it now, she said, ‘How long have you been married?’
Anna smiled. ‘We’ve recently celebrated our twentieth wedding anniversary, so quite a long time.’
Twenty years. Two whole decades of being happy and loved, living in a world with people Alex couldn’t even begin to imagine, while she, Alex, had felt like an outsider in her own home. She’d spent so much time wondering where her mother was and why she didn’t come. She had the answers now, but still wasn’t sure they were enough. ‘And do you ... Do you have any children?’ she asked.
‘No,’ Anna answered, her eyes coming to Alex’s. ‘I only have you.’
Though it was selfish, Alex realised it was what she’d hoped to hear.
‘Bob has a son and a daughter from his first marriage,’ Anna went on. ‘He’s ten years older than me, so they’re both in their thirties. They live close by and Shelley, his daughter, is married to Philip. They have a little boy, Craig, who’s just turned eight and is utterly adorable, and a ten-year-old, Danni, who’s the bossiest yet sweetest little minx on the planet.’ She was smiling so fondly that Alex found herself smiling too. ‘Bob’s son Rick,’ Anna continued, ‘is engaged to Kate who is the niece of my dear friend Sarah who I’ve already told you about. They’re due to get married next summer.’
Not quite sure what to say to that, Alex simply let her continue.
‘They’re all very keen for me to pass on how much they’re hoping to meet you,’ Anna said. ‘Bob’s even posted a greeting online with an invitation to come whenever you like, and he’s offering to pay for your ticket.’
Feeling herself withdrawing from that, Alex replied, ‘That’s very generous of him, but I don’t think ... I mean, I’m not sure ...’
‘Don’t worry, you don’t have to make a decision about anything until you feel ready to. It’s just his way, and mine, of letting you know how welcome you’ll be if you do decide to come.’
