Sunshine Over Wildflower Cottage

by Milly Johnson

  Victoria Leighton blanched. ‘How could you—?’

  Nicholas cut her off quickly. ‘Be quiet, Tori.’

  Viv was in full control of what details to give them. They didn’t need to know everything, just enough to convince them of who she was. She would drip-feed the information as and when it was required.

  The nurse on duty that night, Elke Wilson – Elke Baumgartner Wilson – happened to be a naturalised German. She knew immediately something was strange about the guarded couple masquerading as German holidaymakers who didn’t speak much English, because the man spoke her language with a discernible English accent. So she listened and remembered. The patient had said her name was Kristina but Elke heard her husband refer to her by mistake as Tori.

  The couple had left secretly less than two hours after the birth. It wasn’t the first time a sick baby had been abandoned. She was so poorly that her chances of survival were slim, especially when compounded by the spinal deformity.

  Elke wrote down all the details she could remember: the man’s expensive shoes and his watch and that the woman’s wedding ring was silver in colour. She recorded their physical descriptions and that ‘Kristina’ should have had a blood transfusion but she refused.

  ‘I read an article about you both in February,’ Viv went on. ‘You’ – she pointed at Nicholas. She didn’t know what to call him now – ‘Mr Leighton, you were encouraging people to donate blood. Because your wife and your elder daughter are both AB positive. You needed blood after the birth.’ Viv levelled this at Victoria. ‘But then they would have discovered your blood group. It’s not the most common sort, is it?’

  Victoria Leighton was sobbing against her husband’s Barbour. ‘Make her stop, Nick.’

  ‘How can you possibly know all this?’ he hissed, the words squeezed out between his clenched teeth.

  ‘One of the nurses wrote down everything she could remember about that night on a piece of paper and stitched it into a knitted bee, a soft toy which she gave me, in case it was found and destroyed. They called me Baby Bee, you see, on account of my blood group. Social services stored the box of my belongings away until I was eighteen and old enough to decide if I wanted to see it or not. There wasn’t much in it to be fair, the wrist and the ankle tag that said Baby Bee. And a tiny hat plus a couple of cards that people had sent, wishing me love and hopes that I’d recover. Which obviously I did.’

  Victoria was burying her head in her husband’s coat as if the material would serve to cushion the words. Nicholas looked like a statue, stiffly bearing this most alien of situations because he had no idea what else to do but adhere to his stoic demeanor.

  Viv went on. ‘I went up for adoption. Plenty of people want babies but those with physical problems and a lot of operations to look forward to tend to be a bit harder to find homes for. Luckily for me, South Yorkshire had so many kids on their hands that they had a brainwave in the early nineties and encouraged loads of single people to come forward.’

  And along came Miss Stella Blackbird who had a nice steady job and was solvent, kind, clean, warm and keen to give a child the loving upbringing she’d had. She might have been rubbish at romance, but she was a hell of a mother.

  ‘I was adopted immediately as it happens,’ Viv continued. ‘Stel was . . . is a wonderful woman. She was there every step of the way for me; after every operation I woke up to find her holding my hand. She made me do yoga, exercise, swim. She battled with doctors when she had to, she wouldn’t take no for an answer ever where I was concerned. Thanks to her, I’m kind of normal height and I’m strong and I’m fit and I’m alive.’

  Nicholas Leighton was glaring at her still; his eyes were cold as Arctic ice, his face an emotionless mask.

  Victoria Leighton had stopped sobbing now, but she kept her face against her husband’s chest. Viv noticed the wet patch on his shirt. It was funny what silly little details you picked up on sometimes. That’s what Elke Baumgartner Wilson had said when Viv went to visit her. But all those many little details put together and added to over the past five years had eventually led her here.

  ‘I read that you were married nine months before Antonia came along. There are photos on the internet of the very grand occasion,’ said Viv. ‘But that was just a blessing ceremony, wasn’t it? A PR smokescreen because you really married months before that, didn’t you? A hastily organised registry office wedding between realising I was on the way, and finding out I was damaged goods. Was that to secure your first-born’s legitimacy? Makes all the inheritance stuff so much easier, doesn’t it?’

  Nicholas Leighton’s jaw was tightening on the beat, like a pulse. Every time Viv opened her mouth, she could almost hear his brain recalculating her damage potential.

  ‘You see, that would be me then. As the first-born of legally married parents.’

  ‘Look, where is this going?’ asked Nicholas Leighton brusquely. He’d been tortured enough now. He didn’t do dangling on the ends of strings. He called the shots, not the other way round. But the woman in front of him had this wrapped up in a nice neat parcel with a bow on top. ‘Are you some sort of journalist?’

  ‘No, I’m exactly who I say I am. Oh, and just in case you aren’t totally convinced, I have DNA evidence.’

  ‘Wha-at?’ Victoria Leighton’s large blue eyes widened to full stretch.

  ‘She doesn’t have it,’ Nicholas said to his wife.

  ‘Actually, I do,’ said Viv. ‘Hairs on your inside of your riding hats. That day you caught me . . . Victoria, I really was sheltering from the storm. I hadn’t worked out how I was going to get hold of your DNA until the opportunity just landed in my lap. I was lucky to get a couple of hairs with the root still attached.’

  She had sent them to Hugo: a sample from the mother, one from the father and one from each girl. He had his work cut out, but there was enough to prove she was full sister to one, full daughter to Nicholas.

  ‘You don’t have my permission,’ snarled Nicholas Leighton.

  ‘No. You’re right, I don’t,’ smiled Viv. ‘But I had to find out who I am.’

  Hugo worked in a DNA analysis lab in London. He was adopted, too. It was one of the things that had brought him and Viv together. Hugo had traced his birth mother to discover she had died; he’d convinced Viv that she’d regret it if she left it too late to search for her own parents. When she discovered where the trail led to, she’d misled him slightly. She told him her suspected family were in Manchester, so she was basing herself at a safe distance in a hamlet called Ironmist. When Hugo looked it up, he found that she’d be in the vicinity of someone who could springboard her career. She didn’t tell him that Nicholas Leighton, the great advocate of young business people, and her father were one and the same.

  Nicholas and Victoria looked at each other, as if they were communicating on a psychic level. Then Nicholas Leighton turned slowly to Viv. She saw the Adam’s apple rise and fall in his throat before he asked the obvious question.

  ‘So what do you want?’

  If he had asked this question when she first arrived she would have answered that she wanted nothing other than just to see them. Maybe, if the chance presented itself, to let them know that she had survived, absolve their old guilt if they had any. She wasn’t a gold digger, her prime objective really had been to put her curiosity to bed. But a tiny part of her had held on to the hope that her parents might have wanted to get to know her, draw a line under the past and find a way to build a tentative new relationship.

  But then Viv started to fall in love with the people whom the Leightons were trying to destroy. What had begun as an uncomplicated task became a dichotomy. Whichever side she picked would alienate her totally from the other.

  But then again, Stel Blackbird had brought up Viv to be a decent human being. In the end, there was only one mast to which she could pin her colours.

  ‘I want Wildflower Cottage,’ said Viv. ‘And the sanctuary.’

  Chapter 79

  Stel looked at her
self in the full-length mirror and thought she looked bloody terrible in black with no make-up on. She went into the bathroom cupboard and got out her box of tricks and sat down at her dressing table. She applied the full works: foundation, eyeshadow, eye liner, blusher, mascara, eyebrow pencil and finally red lippy – and only then did her reflection throw back the real Stel. She didn’t feel like that Stel any more. That Stel smiled and wasn’t jumpy. That Stel didn’t think that everything she did was wrong. That Stel didn’t get drunk and forget things. That Stel wouldn’t have searched for her wet-wipes to put in her handbag solely for the purpose of removing her make-up before Ian saw her later.

  She checked her bedside cabinet drawer, but they weren’t there. Then she looked in the other one on Ian’s side of the bed but he’d emptied it and put his own things in there.

  In the drawer he had some dental floss, a box with a signet ring in it, a pen, some watch batteries and her own spare car keys. She’d thought she’d mislaid them, as happened often, and they’d turn up eventually. Why would they be in here? She opened the cupboard below, checking instinctively over her shoulder to make sure he hadn’t suddenly materialised behind her. There was a toilet bag and a notepad, the pages bound at the top with a spiral wire. She opened it and saw a long list of dates, numbers and symbols.

  59750 ✓

  59772 ✓

  59772 ✓

  59790 ????

  59820 ✓.

  Halfway through the pad were more dates and next to each, letters and symbols – some sort of code. On the back page he had written: 2512, her phone pin.

  Basil wandered upstairs on silent paws and jumped up on the bed. Stel shrieked, throwing the pad up in the air and realised that she was a nervous wreck. She put the pad back where she thought it had been, but then wasn’t so sure she’d got it right. Oh God. What if he’d left it there in a certain way to test if she’d looked through his things?

  Stel closed the cupboard and just prayed she’d positioned it correctly. Then she set off for Linda’s house at speed because she was running late.

  It was when Stel switched on her ignition and the mileage flashed up on the display as 59826 that the numbers in Ian’s notepad made sense: he had been recording her car mileage.

  Chapter 80

  Nicholas and Victoria Leighton stood in open-mouthed amazement. Viv prepared herself because she knew this was when things were likely to get nasty. Cornered rats struck out. Nicholas Leighton would throw every piece of ammunition he had at her now. He’d try and discredit her, make her feel like an opportunist, threaten her, play indifferent, appeal to her better nature. In the game of psychological warfare she was a cadet up against his Brigadier.

  ‘Imagine what the newspapers would say about all this.’ Viv tried to remain focused, firm. She was acting against her nature, she was preparing to blackmail him. But she had entered a game of crush or be crushed and had to see this through to the end. ‘Not to mention all those charities you’re associated with. And’ – she tapped her lip tauntingly – ‘you’re going to inherit a title from your childless cousin one day, aren’t you, which you might be able to pass onto your eldest child. Oh, hang on, that’s me.’

  Nicholas’s face crunched up in rage. That piece of information stung him right where it hurt.

  ‘I mean, you just might have managed to do a PR spin on bulldozing a crumbly old animal sanctuary, what with all those lovely new houses being built on the land, but I’m not sure that being Special Adviser to the Department for Pastoral Care would be appropriate for a man who abandoned his own child, do you? And we really must talk about my share of the estate . . .’

  Leighton had decided he had heard enough. ‘What the fuck do you really want, you ridiculous . . . You . . . you . . . freak. You nearly killed my wife.’

  ‘I told you. I want the land that Wildflower Cottage stands on. I want the valley,’ said Viv. Her confidence was returning because he was lashing out now, flailing. That was a portent of weakness not strength. It might have been a good sign, but his words still wounded her.

  ‘How can I possibly give you that?’ he scoffed with a hard disbelieving laugh.

  ‘I don’t want you to give it to me. I’m asking you to give it back to the Merlo family. Sign it over to them for ever. The sanctuary must remain, and Heath must be allowed to build a veterinary practice, but never a housing estate. If you do that, you’ll get off really lightly because I’ll never pursue you for an inheritance or any other favour. Not even a kidney. Your daughters will never know that their parents had another child. You’ll be a hero, the animal-loving rock stars will love you even more and you’ll be able to rise through the ranks as a celebrated man of the people who put local interests first. Or . . . ’

  She left the word swinging in the air like a creaky motel sign in a horror movie.

  Nicholas was stock-still, belying the chaos taking place in his brain. The wires in his head must be sparking like fireworks, thought Viv. He couldn’t exactly leave this one with a team of advisers.

  Victoria Leighton’s eyes locked on the stranger in front of her.

  ‘You don’t look anything like us,’ she said.

  ‘That will make it easier on us all,’ said Viv. She meant it kindly.

  ‘You should have died,’ said Victoria.

  The words plunged into Viv like a cold-steel knife; their impact caused her a moment of real physical pain. She turned her head to the side, focused on the view of the gate to let the sudden rush of tears sink back to their resting place.

  ‘What possible guarantee can you give me that I will never hear from you again if I do as you ask?’ said Nicholas.

  Victoria looked at him in total disbelief, ‘Nick, you can’t seriously—’

  ‘Be quiet, Tori.’

  ‘I can’t offer you any guarantee other than my word,’ replied Viv.

  ‘Your word?’ Nicholas’s eyebrows rose in disbelief. ‘The word of a blackmailer?’

  ‘The word of your daughter,’ Viv said.

  ‘You aren’t our daughter,’ he replied. His lip curled at such a disgusting thought.

  ‘I think you’ll find the DNA analysis says I am. A legitimate heir, too, if I chose to announce myself.’

  Something came to Nicholas that confused him. ‘Wait a minute. So, let me get this right. What do you get out of all this?’

  ‘Nothing,’ said Viv.

  She didn’t want anything. Well, okay, millions of pounds would be good but in order to get them she’d have to either destroy the Leightons’ reputation or resort to extortion and she wasn’t that sort of person. Her blood might have made her a Leighton, but in her heart she was all Blackbird.

  ‘I will give you my word and my guarantee, as God is my witness, that if you agree to let Heath Merlo keep the land and’ – this just came to her, but she was glad it had – ‘as a worthy charity cause, you encouraged donations to it for the animals since, after all, it would make sense for their local friendly Ironmist estate to support them financially . . . I will forget that I was born with your name. If you attempt to destroy my friends at Wildflower Cottage, then I will destroy you.’

  The Leightons considered her words then Nicholas exploded. ‘This is preposterous.’

  ‘You have no choice, is what I’m saying,’ said Viv, her tone firm but quiet, cement and velvet.

  Nicholas Leighton rested his hands on his hips and stared hard at Viv. But she’d been stared at by worse. Ursula for one.

  Then he exhaled and on the breath he said the words, ‘All right.’

  ‘Nick . . .’

  ‘What can we do?’ Nicholas rasped at his wife.

  ‘I want you to visit Heath Merlo within forty-eight hours . . .’ Viv chose that time-scale because they always said it in films. Then she looked at her wrist and only just stopped herself from laughing as she thought of saying, let’s synchronise our watches. ‘ . . . Let’s make it twelve noon on Wednesday, and tell him what action you’ve decided upon. You’ll get all
the credit for it. I will pretend that it is as big a surprise to me as it will be to them. Feel free to get the press involved for your benefit. It will make you a community hero. The people of Ironmist are lovely, you know. It wouldn’t do you any harm for them to think better of you.’

  Nicholas stared hard at the young woman in front of him. He did not recognise her as one of his own but if he had, he would have commended her ability to checkmate him so absolutely. She had reminded him of someone when they first met and now, after this prolonged encounter, he knew with certainty who it was. Her summer-blue eyes and her bronze-golden hair were just too similar to Cecilia Leighton’s for comfort. He thought that he would have the portrait of her that hung on the grand staircase removed with immediate effect.

  Nicholas opened the car door for his wife and she clambered in. He turned to Viv, punctuating each word with a stab of his finger, ‘If you ever . . . ever even think of . . .’

  A full threat display, thought Viv, likening him to one of the birds of prey at the sanctuary. But this ruffle of his feathers had no effect on her. Her family honour had been her shield today. The Blackbird honour.

  ‘If I have nothing to fear from you, you have nothing to fear from me,’ she returned.

  Nicholas crunched over the gravel to reach his side of the car.

  ‘Now get off my land,’ he said and sped off the same way he had arrived.

  Chapter 81

  Mick Pollock’s internment arrangements were typical Gaynor Pollock-style.

  ‘Bloody hell, have we got the wrong church and turned up at Winston Churchill’s funeral?’ asked Linda, as the hearse arrived at the church draped in a Union Jack flag. The others bit their lips and tried to stay sombre. There was something about the solemnity of a funeral that spawned a breeding ground for inappropriate humour.

  What Gaynor called a ‘simple cross’ contained half the blooms of the Chelsea Flower Show. Gaynor, Leanne, Paula and Mick’s brother and his wife followed in a black Daimler so shiny that it looked like a huge beetle. Gaynor emerged from it in a stunning black ensemble and a hat the size of a spaceship. Leanne’s longline jacket was at least a foot longer than her skirt and her heels were so high that Linda’s feet ached just looking at them.