The Long Way Home: A moving saga of lost family

by Whitmee, Jeanne

  ‘A reception desk in the hall — just a small one where guests could check in and out and pay their bills. There’s plenty of room and it would make the place look more professional.’

  ‘You’ve really thought it all out, haven’t you?’ David said, impressed in spite of his amusement. ‘I’d like to think about all this. Tell me all of it again and I’ll write it down.’

  ‘No need.’ Marie took a notebook out of her bag. ‘I’ve done it for you. I’ve costed it all roughly too and made a few notes. I even enquired about the cost of the alterations. The rooms already have the plumbing, so it wouldn’t be too bad. Of course …’ She bit her lip. ‘You might need planning permission, I don’t really know, but that shouldn’t be a problem. I’ll make enquiries about that too if you like.’

  David took the notebook from her and looked in admiration at the neat figures. That night he went to bed with a feeling of tingling excitement and an interest in the business that he hadn’t felt for years. He was beginning to think that Hannah Brown had done him a bigger favour than she knew. He’d found a treasure in Marie O’Connor.

  Chapter 2

  Leah walked in the Mayoral procession, her eyes demurely downcast. She wore a cream linen jacket over a citrus yellow silk skirt and top and her long dark hair was dressed in a sleek French plait.

  It was ten years since she had walked in the procession for the first time. At eight years old it had been a special occasion and fun. She’d walked proudly, her head held high, convinced that everyone had turned out just to see her. She’d been with Jack and Hilary Dobson just six months then. They’d adopted her two years after the tragic death of their only child in a road accident, mainly — and misguidedly — because she bore an almost uncanny resemblance to their daughter. She’d worn a cream straw hat and a pale blue voile dress for that first Mayoral procession. She’d never had anything so nice in all of her life and she’d thoroughly enjoyed herself. But that had been before she’d discovered the reason why the Dobsons had adopted her — and the fact that she fell hopelessly and heartbreakingly short of their expectations.

  The Mayor-making was a tradition that went back several hundred years in Nenebridge, and over the years Leah’s view of it had gradually become cynical and jaundiced. After the Mayor’s ceremonial investiture the councillors and their wives and families walked in a long procession from the Town Hall to the parish church for the service of commemoration, and then back again afterwards for wine and canapes in the Council Chamber.

  At the front of the procession walked past Mayors wearing robes. Leah’s adoptive father, Jack Dobson, was one of these. His smallish stature was flattered by the purple velvet robe trimmed with brown coney fur, making him look almost distinguished. The centre section of the procession was made up of the new councillors, both male and female, looking, in Leah’s opinion, self-conscious and rather silly. But, bringing up the rear in regal splendour was the new Mayor, his deputy and entourage. Dennis Mason wore the red, ermine-trimmed robe and foamy lace jabot with a certain panache. The cocked hat suited him too, covering up his shiny bald head, but he wasn’t quite corpulent enough to show off the magnificent chain to its full glittering advantage. Leah looked at him with half-closed eyes and amused herself by imagining him wearing it to slice bacon behind the counter of his grocer’s shop. Not that he did that any more since the shop had been turned into a supermarket. The bacon, once expertly sliced by his father-in-law wearing a long white apron, now came in hygienic hermetically sealed plastic packs. Nevertheless, the image gave her a certain pleasure.

  Glenis Mason, the new Mayoress, was a little bird of a woman in a frumpy green dress and a brown straw hat. The heavy consort’s chain hung uneasily about her shoulders, making her look as though she were shackled. People said Dennis had married her for her money, and the shop that had once belonged to her father; it was probably true. Leah certainly couldn’t imagine him marrying her for anything else. She tried to visualise them in bed together, limbs entwined in a lusty panting embrace, and had to bite her lips hard to keep from giggling.

  Accompanied by the town band, inappropriately playing ‘When the Saints Come Marching In’ they marched through the streets, passing groups of shoppers who paused to glance in desultory fashion at the pompous display.

  As she walked, Leah made up her mind firmly that this year would definitely be the last that she would do this. Last year her father had been Mayor. She’d sworn that would be her last year, but her mother had insisted on her accompanying them this year as the Masons were family friends. She comforted herself with the fact that if she played her cards right next year would see her far away from Nenebridge. There was nothing to stay here for. She’d promised herself some time ago that the moment she was eighteen she would do two things. First she would get herself a job in London — any job that would get her away from Nenebridge and into the heart of things. Then she would set about finding her real mother, something that had been an obsession with her ever since she was old enough to realise that she must have one.

  As the years passed she’d grown more and more convinced that the woman who had given her birth must have been someone quite special and different. As a child she fantasised endlessly. In one favourite daydream she saw herself as having been born into an aristocratic family and stolen away by gypsies. In another her mother had been a titled lady who had fallen in love with a woodcutter’s son and been driven from her home and inheritance in disgrace. Later she visualised a scenario of even higher melodrama. She was the result of an affair between a poor but beautiful young woman and a member of the royal family. She had royal blood in her veins and should by right carry a title. But her poor mother had been forced to give her up and to live in exile for the rest of her life. One day, she promised herself … one day when she had become rich and famous, as she certainly meant to. She would make it her business to uncover the truth. She would find her mother and make it all up to her. She would buy a lovely house by the sea where they would both live happily together forever.

  Leah had celebrated her eighteenth birthday last October. Already she had allowed six months to go by without making a start on her grand plan. But she had it all in hand. Oh, yes — she was working on it.

  The walk to the church seemed boring and endless. They took the familiar route, over the bridge and along the High Street, past Dennis Mason’s ‘Qualimarket’ where the staff had turned out to watch — it was more than their jobs were worth not to — past Clayton’s, the town’s one and only department store. Then came the post office, the ironmonger’s, the television shop, and finally Woolworths. Leah reckoned that most of the councillors could have walked it in their sleep.

  It had been different when she was younger and able to take refuge in her own private daydreams. At past Mayor-makings she’d been many things: a beautiful princess on her way to be married to the richest prince in the world; a tragic French comtesse on her way to the guillotine, where she would be rescued at the last minute by a handsome Sydney Carton figure (usually played by her current heart-throb); an Olympic swimmer, returning home in triumph with a dozen gold medals. In those days it had been fun. But as she grew up Leah found that daydreams no longer satisfied her. For some time now she had been restless. She wanted something more substantial than a fantasy world and now that she had come of age she was determined that nothing would stop her getting it.

  The years Leah had spent in the children’s home had left their mark on her. Year by year she’d seen other children find new families and homes, or kind friends who’d visit and take them out at weekends, but somehow her turn never came. As a child she was small and underweight, with stick-like arms and legs and poker-straight dark hair. Her pixyish little face with its high cheekbones was dominated by the huge dark eyes, and premature disillusionment mixed with longing had turned her expression from wistful and waiflike appeal to glowering sullenness. Within her hearing, someone had once unkindly likened her to a bad-tempered bush baby and prospective parent
s with images of blonde curls, rosebud mouths and laughing baby blue eyes passed her by without a second glance. She’d been fostered out twice, but on each occasion the family had returned her to the home in a matter of weeks. She was branded ‘difficult’, ‘troublesome’ and ‘uncooperative’, the main objection being that she tried to push out other children in the family and claim all the attention for herself. No one seemed to realise that Leah was starved of love; that all she longed for was just one person to call her own — someone to love, who in return would love and care only for her. They saw her as selfish and spiteful. A self-centred little attention-getter who didn’t deserve all the trouble people went to for her. She’d lost count of the number of times that had been said to her.

  When Hilary had first seen her she couldn’t believe her eyes. The child was so like Fiona, their beloved daughter. Fiona had been the only casualty in a car accident they’d been involved in on their way home from a holiday. She’d died of her injuries after lying in a coma for three weeks. Jack blamed himself mercilessly and the couple mourned their daughter’s loss for almost two years before their family doctor had suggested adopting a child to save them both from severe clinical depression.

  He’d recommended the children’s home and they’d visited the place to oblige him, without enthusiasm, but from the moment Hilary set eyes on Leah her mind was made up, and any misgivings Jack had were quickly forgotten when he saw his wife smile again as she had not smiled since Fiona’s death.

  Fiona’s room had been kept exactly as it was during her short life, with its shelves of toys and books, its sprigged wallpaper, pink carpet and frilly bed cover. Leah could hardly believe her luck. Jack and Hilary were so attentive too, showering her with gifts and treats. Lulled into a false sense of security, Leah revelled in it all. It was only some weeks later that she overheard Hilary telling a friend that although her husband had had misgivings, to her it was ‘as though our darling Fiona had come back to us’. Only then did she realise that it was second-hand love — not intended for her but given through her to the little girl in the many photographs that were scattered around the house. She hadn’t taken much notice of them before and certainly hadn’t noticed the likeness to herself. But now she begun to study them, comparing them with her own reflection in the mirror. And it was on the day that she deliberately smashed then jumped on the big one that stood on Hilary’s dressing table that the rot began to set in.

  ‘Are you going to send me back?’ she asked defiantly after the shocked scolding she’d received.

  The reply had been more devastating than anything she had ever experienced. Beside himself with rage, Jack had taken her by the shoulders and shaken her, staring at her with eyes that glittered with hurt and anger.

  ‘We can’t take you back,’ he’d told her in a voice that grated on her senses like sandpaper. ‘We’ve legally adopted you. You know what that means, don’t you? You’re our child — our child, Leah. You’re not, and never will be our daughter, but by God I’ll make sure you behave as though you are. The three of us are stuck with each other now and we’ve got to make the best of it. But what you’ve just done, my girl, is going to take a lot of forgiving.’

  Hilary had protested at Jack’s harshness, making an instinctive move to comfort the child, but Leah had held out her hand as though to fend off a blow. ‘I don’t want to be your daughter,’ she cried out, her eyes bright with the tears she refused to shed. ‘I don’t want to be like Fiona. I hate your stupid Fiona. I want to be me.’ The expression in the huge dark eyes made Hilary recoil. She saw only stubborn defiance and ingratitude in the child she had so hoped to make their own. The spiteful reference to her beloved Fiona had cut her to the heart. She turned away with a muffled sob and left the room clinging to her husband’s arm. They left Leah there, in the pink, frilly room, closing the door behind them without seeing the hopeless crumpling of the child’s face. Their own hurt and disappointment blinded them to the fact that she was desperate for their love, not their forgiveness.

  Eventually she was forgiven. In their own way Jack and Hilary tried to make up to her for the sticky beginning to their relationship. They made sure that she wanted for nothing. She was well fed and clothed; well educated. But the love Leah craved so much was the one thing they could never give her. As the years went by she learned to live with it, getting her own back in child-like ways; raiding the fridge for goodies, pilfering the loose change Jack was in the habit of leaving on the dressing table. It was her way of coping until the day when the quest for her own true self could begin.

  *

  The church was packed and the procession advanced down the centre aisle to their reserved pews at the front. The congregation turned to look at them, the women curious to see what the councillors’ wives were wearing; the men, to see if the councillors they had voted for looked worth their salt. The Town Constable, resplendent in his beribboned knee breeches, placed the mace on its stand beneath the pulpit and the service began.

  Leah had taken good care to be on the end of the pew. Glancing to her left she saw that Councillor Tom Clayton was across the aisle from her. She gave him the slow, smouldering smile that she had learned was lethally effective, and was rewarded by the dark red flush that spread up from his neck and into his cheeks above his dark beard.

  In the early days Leah grew used to being teased at school — for her smallness and her thinness mainly. Academically she was quite bright and could keep up with the best. She never minded the teasing. It was better than being ignored. As she grew into puberty she became interested in swimming and tennis, both of which helped develop her. By fourteen she had filled out and begun to grow taller. The pinched, triangular little face became heart-shaped; its sharp cheek and jawbones softened; the large eyes now enhanced her face instead of dominating it. With her glossy dark hair and sweeping lashes she had blossomed from an ugly duckling into an attractive teenager, a fact which gave her a great deal of satisfaction. She felt she deserved it.

  By fifteen she had developed a slender but shapely figure and it wasn’t long before she discovered her sexuality and the appeal she held for the opposite sex. She recognised it as a powerful and potent weapon. Not something to be used carelessly. With a shrewd perception far beyond her years, Leah valued it as an asset, not to be tossed away lightly but stored away to be used later to its full advantage.

  Tom Clayton was forty-five. Born and bred in Nenebridge, he had attended the local grammar school and finished his education at the Technical College where he studied commerce. He then joined the staff at his father’s department store and learned the business from the bottom up, in the time-honoured way. He’d inherited Clayton’s five years ago when his father died. Since then he’d not only brought the Nenebridge shop up to date with his considerable business acumen and flair, but opened two more branches in a nearby town.

  At twenty, Tom had married Angela Reed, the daughter of a prosperous local farmer. Angela was five years his senior; a tall, rather gaunt-looking woman whose energies, both emotional and physical, were lavished on the horses she trained and bred. There were those who said that she preferred her horses to her husband and that she had refused to give him any children. She never accompanied Tom to Civic occasions. Next year he would be Deputy Mayor, taking the full office the year after, an achievement which, as all his friends knew, was close to his heart but which Angela clearly and openly despised.

  Leah noted Tom’s flush with some satisfaction and lowered her eyes to her hymn book. The service droned on, seeming to last for several hours, but at last it was over and time to leave. The Mayor and Councillors were first to leave, filing out, one pew at a time, to walk past the standing congregation, passing the Rector who waited to shake their hands in the porch, finally emerging into the sunshine to pose for the waiting press photographers. Leah contrived to walk out of church with Tom.

  ‘I’m glad you were able to come,’ he said quietly as they waited to file past the Rector.

  ‘Woul
dn’t have missed it for the world. I always enjoy the Mayor-making,’ Leah lied, giving him her sultry smile.

  ‘You’re looking very attractive this morning, Leah.’

  ‘Thank you. You look very distinguished yourself, though not nearly as distinguished as you will next year in Deputy Mayor’s robes.’ She glanced up at him under her lashes and noted triumphantly that his cheeks were flushed again.

  One of the journalists waiting in the churchyard was Terry Grant. Leah had known Terry for some time. He’d come to her school when she’d won the tennis tournament two years ago, and after he’d interviewed her for the local paper he’d asked her for a date. They’d been seeing each other on and off ever since. Leah liked and admired Terry because he knew where he was going. He had the same single-mindedness as herself. He was the only person to whom she had confided her dreams and plans of the future. Terry had dreams too. His ambition was to be a reporter on a national newspaper. Last autumn he’d been made assistant editor of the local rag and he’d confided to Leah that he meant to leave for pastures new as soon as he felt he had enough experience. He waved across the sea of heads and began to make his way towards her.

  ‘Hi. Enjoying yourself?’

  ‘Get lost, Tel,’ she told him out of the corner of her mouth.

  He raised an eyebrow at her. ‘Oh, charming. I love you too. What’s up?’

  ‘I’m busy,’ she hissed. ‘I thought you were too. Someone else will scoop your story if you’re not careful.’

  He laughed. ‘Call this a story? Now — I bet you could tell a much more interesting one if you chose to.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  He waved a hand round the churchyard. ‘All these so-called civic dignitaries. I bet you’ve got the inside dirt on a few of them.'

  Leah smiled sweetly. ‘If I had I wouldn’t give it to you. I’d be too busy using it myself.’