Father Unknown

by Fay Sampson

  ‘So you’ll tell the police?’ Suzie asked.

  ‘I’m sorry. I need some time to take this in.’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘And you say nobody knows where she is? Could she have gone off somewhere to get an abortion, do you think?’ His eyes begged Suzie for an answer.

  ‘No,’ Millie put in. ‘Absolutely not. We talked about it. That awful Mr Dawson wanted her to have one, and she wouldn’t. So he hit her.’

  ‘Poor little sod,’ Reynard whispered. ‘What made you think she’d come here?’

  ‘You’re her father,’ Suzie said, a little too crisply.

  ‘Besides,’ Millie said, ‘she sent me a card. She wouldn’t tell me where she’s hiding, but it had this picture of Anne Hathaway’s cottage. So we guessed she’d be here.’

  ‘Here.’ He repeated the word dully, and swallowed. ‘No. I very much wish she had come here, but she didn’t.’

  He sat for a long time, gazing down at his hands on the table.

  Nick stirred and rose from his chair. ‘I’m sorry. This must have been a bit of a shock for you. I’m sorry we had to be the ones to break it. We’ll leave it to you to tell the police, shall we?’

  Suzie got up too. ‘You can’t think of anyone else she might have gone to? In this part of the country?’

  Just for a moment, she thought there was a flash of hope in his eyes. Then it faded. ‘No. No, I’ve no suggestions.’

  ‘We’ll go, then.’ She put out a tentative hand to touch his arm. ‘I’m really sorry.’

  Calliope turned up her little face to her mother. ‘Is Tamara lost?’

  ‘Yes, honey. I’m afraid so.’

  Persephone brandished her plastic cutlass. ‘Good riddance! She always spoiled things. Daddy was never the same when she was here. I chased her away, didn’t I?’

  ‘Yes, sweetie. You’re a big, bad pirate. Do you want to feed the swans?’

  Petronella led the children down to the water. As she passed Reynard’s chair, her hand caressed his neck.

  ‘Please let us know if there’s any news,’ Suzie said.

  Nick took out a business card and laid it on the table. ‘I hope you find her.’

  Reynard Woodman sat with his head bowed.

  Millie swung the white gate shut behind them.

  ‘What do we do now?’

  Nick paced the landing stage back in Burwood. From here, they could see along the river to the trees beside Wood Cottage. The house itself was hidden from view. A cruise boat was nudging into the jetty. The summer afternoon was drawing to a close.

  Suzie stood back to avoid the disembarking passengers. ‘There was something.’ She spotted a wooden seat in a quieter part of the waterfront and led Nick and Millie to it. ‘I think he was mostly telling the truth, don’t you? He really doesn’t know where she is. And I don’t think he had any idea she was pregnant. But I’m sure there’s something he’s not telling us. Right at the end, when I asked if there was anyone else round here she might have gone to, I saw his eyes change. It was only a moment, but I really thought he was going to come out with a name. Then it went. He said no, quite definitely. But I think he was stonewalling. There is someone. I’m almost sure of it.’

  ‘Not that that gets us any further,’ Nick said. He leaned forward to study the river, where the bow wave of the boat was still sending its wash against the bank. ‘If he’s keeping the name to himself, we’ll have to leave it to him. He’s her father. It’s out of our hands now. And he’s said he’ll tell the police. That’s a weight off my shoulders, I don’t mind admitting. I’d have done it days ago, if I’d thought they’d take us seriously.’

  ‘He didn’t,’ Millie said.

  ‘Didn’t what, love?’

  ‘Say he’d tell the police. You two kept asking him. But he never actually said he would.’

  ‘He was in shock,’ Suzie said. ‘It was a lot to take in at once. Tamara missing. Expecting a baby. And the hints we were dropping that it might not just be a teenage affair.’

  ‘Well.’ Nick straightened up. ‘I don’t know about you two, but I don’t feel much like hitting the road again and driving all the way home this evening. How about strolling up to the Bear and Staff and seeing if they’ve got a couple of rooms for tonight?’

  ‘Good idea,’ Suzie said. ‘I’d like that.’

  ‘No!’ squealed Millie. ‘No, Dad, I don’t mean I don’t want to stay the night. We’ve got to. I’ve just thought who it was he didn’t tell you about. I’m an idiot! Why didn’t I think about it sooner?’

  ‘Who?’ Suzie asked. ‘You mean there’s somebody else besides her father?’

  ‘Her aunt. You remember I told you? Tamara wasn’t so keen on going to her dad’s as she used to be. But there was that time she went shopping in Birmingham. Her aunt took her.’

  ‘And where does this aunt live?’

  Millie’s enthusiasm faded. ‘I don’t know. Tamara didn’t say. But it must be close, mustn’t it? If she could come over and visit when Tamara was here?’

  ‘Do you know her name?’

  Millie frowned. ‘It began with an F . . . Frances! That was it.’

  ‘And her surname? Is she married?’

  Millie shrugged. ‘You’re the one who’s into family history, not me. I didn’t ask her the details of her family tree.’

  ‘It’s a very long shot that she’s still Frances Gamble, but we could try. If not . . . Well, we can hardly go round looking for all the women in Warwickshire called Frances.’

  ‘We could get back to Reynard Woodman. Ask him,’ Nick suggested. ‘Although, if you’re right, Suzie, we shouldn’t need to. He’s already realized she’s the next most likely person Tamara would go to. He’s probably got on the phone to her already.’

  ‘Would she tell him?’ Millie asked. ‘It was supposed to be such a secret that Tamara wouldn’t even tell me where she was. If this aunt wanted him to know, she’d have told him by now, wouldn’t she?’

  ‘That is odd,’ Suzie reflected. ‘The girl’s in trouble. She’s pregnant. She’s been beaten, maybe even sexually abused, by her stepfather. She’s afraid he’s going to force her to have an abortion. And yet she hasn’t told her real father.’

  ‘Like there was only one person she thought she could trust,’ Millie agreed.

  ‘Steady on,’ Nick objected. ‘What have you women got against fathers? He seemed a perfectly decent bloke to me. He was really cut up about Tamara. You could see that.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Millie said. ‘He’s a lot different from what he was when he lived with Tamara. But he’s still a knockout, isn’t he? He’s got that gorgeous smile. And when he hugged me, it was just like the old times, when we were little. He was the most fantastic dad then . . . Sorry, Dad! I didn’t mean it like that. You’re brilliant too.’

  ‘But I’m not the charismatic Reynard Woodman. Which brings us back to the question. If he’s such a fantastic dad, why didn’t she run to him? And why hasn’t she told him she’s only a few miles away?’

  They walked slowly up the village street.

  ‘Could it be the kids?’ Millie said. ‘That one in the pirate gear obviously doesn’t like her.’

  ‘She seemed to feel her nose was put out of joint when Tamara was there,’ Suzie said. ‘That Reynard only wanted to be with Tamara. Which makes it all the more curious that she’s not there now.’

  ‘Maybe she’s scared to tell him she’s pregnant,’ Nick suggested. ‘After her experience with Dawson.’

  ‘He’s not like that!’ Millie exclaimed. ‘You can’t compare those two in the same breath. He’d stand by her, wouldn’t he? He was, like, really upset for her.’

  ‘Any parent would be,’ Suzie said quietly. ‘It’s not a good situation for a fourteen-year-old.’

  ‘Let alone the man responsible, when they find him,’ Nick said. ‘If it was a full-grown man. A boy might get off more lightly.’

  Suzie sighed. ‘So, how do we find a woman called Frances, living in a
village near here, whose surname may be Gamble, but probably isn’t?’

  ‘Do we have to find her?’ Nick asked. ‘I mean, it’s somebody’s else’s job now, isn’t it?’

  ‘I wish I was sure of that. I agree the first thing Reynard Woodman will do is get hold of his sister. If he thinks he knows where Tamara is, he probably won’t bother to tell the police. He wouldn’t need them. But I wish I knew why Tamara wanted to keep her whereabouts secret, even from him.’

  ‘The cat’s out of the bag now,’ Nick said, kicking at a cobble in the pavement. ‘We’ve told him everything and pointed the path to her aunt’s front door. He’ll get there long before we could, even if we did find her address. There’s nothing more we can do.’

  ‘So that’s it, then? We can go home?’ Millie rounded on them, her face suddenly sharp with anxiety. ‘Tamara said I had to keep it a secret. She wanted me to burn her letter when I’d read it. She didn’t even want you to know. And now I’ve as good as told everybody where she is. She’ll kill me.’

  TWENTY-THREE

  Millie kicked her foot against the pub table. ‘It’s not fair,’ she complained. ‘It’s bad enough that she’s pregnant, and some horrible man may have done it. But now that it’s happened, why can’t they let her go ahead and have the baby, like she wants? Why do they have to turn it into a melodrama? It’s not the first time girls like her have had a baby.’

  Suzie ordered a tomato juice and a coke from the bar. She passed the coke to Millie. ‘And they’ve been suffering for it, too, if they couldn’t produce a husband. There are still a handful of old ladies in mental hospitals, who were put there just because they were expecting an illegitimate child.’

  ‘You’re kidding?’

  ‘No, I’m not. And if it wasn’t a mental hospital, it could be a Mother and Baby home where they were forced to work as skivvies, scrubbing floors or doing back-breaking work in the laundry. It was part of the punishment.’

  ‘That’s gross. What happened to the men?’

  ‘You may well ask. Of course, most families hushed these things up. I discovered your great-great-aunt Bertha had a baby in the First World War, but no husband. She handed it over to an aunt and uncle who couldn’t have children, and they passed it off as their own.’

  ‘There are countries today,’ said Nick, coming up to their table with a beer, ‘where the woman is stoned to death, even if the child is the result of rape.’

  Millie sat open-mouthed. Words no longer seemed enough.

  ‘That’s what we’re so worried about,’ Suzie said. ‘The possibility of rape, I mean. We do want to nail the man. There’s more to the way Tamara’s behaving than just being a teenage mum. There has to be a reason why she’s so afraid of her stepfather.’ She reached for her handbag. ‘I ought to ring Tom. Report progress. We haven’t actually found Tamara, but we’ve more or less answered the question of where she is.’

  She selected his name. It was a few moments before he answered. She heard the excitement in his voice in his first questions.

  ‘Mum! Hi. How are you doing? Did you find her?’

  ‘Not exactly. We found Reynard Woodman in this marvellous Georgian house by the river.’ She went on to give him a colourful account of their meeting. ‘. . . I thought there was something in his face that suggested he knew where Tamara could be. And then, afterwards, Millie remembered she has this aunt. Only, we don’t know what she’s called, other than Frances, or where she lives. Anyway, I think Reynard Woodman is on to that, though he didn’t actually say so. He’s probably round at her house by now. So you could say it’s sorted.’

  ‘Hmm. Mum, just a thought. You don’t think he could be the father?’

  ‘Tom! Don’t be ridiculous. He writes children’s stories, for goodness’ sake. He didn’t recognize Millie at first, of course, but when he found out who she was, he couldn’t have been nicer. He hugged her like she was some favourite niece he hadn’t seen for years.’

  ‘And what’s that supposed to mean? The fact that he can put the charm routine on teenage girls hardly rules him out, does it? And if he’s that great a dad, why didn’t Tamara go to him? It looks like she wouldn’t even let her aunt tell him.’

  ‘Well, yes. There are some questions that still need answering. But there could be reasons. She’s obviously upset about the baby and scared of her stepfather. She’s not just toughing it out. It’s sometimes harder to talk about personal things with somebody you’re close to. If her aunt was somebody she trusted, but just that bit removed, it might have been easier for her.’

  ‘Mmm. But you’d still think she’d want her aunt to break the bad news to Daddy, wouldn’t you? Not just put the shutters up, so she’s even afraid to email Millie.’

  ‘Tom, you have an overdramatic mind. I thought we were risking falling into melodrama, by suspecting Leonard Dawson of abuse. But at least he has form. For physical abuse, anyway. There’s nothing about Reynard Woodman that could possibly justify what you’ve just said.’

  ‘No? What about this bit in the slinky black dress you described so well? And she’s not even the one he left Tamara’s mum for. Seems like he’s got form for sex kittens.’

  ‘But his daughter? That’s an outrageous suggestion.’

  ‘You wouldn’t have fallen for his charm just a teeny bit yourself, Mum?’

  Suzie was aware of Nick and Millie following her side of the conversation, wide-eyed.

  ‘Think of it,’ Tom said. ‘World-famous author. Adored by millions of children. Gets his under-age daughter pregnant. That’s a criminal offence twice over. Can you imagine the publicity? Bang goes a brilliant career.’

  She scrabbled for straws. ‘She’s a minor. They wouldn’t allow her name to be published. And anyway, he’d be Kevin Gamble in court. Who’d know he was Reynard Woodman?’

  ‘Ever heard of the Internet, Mum? You can’t keep that sort of thing quiet nowadays. You can slam an injunction on newspapers, but the twitterati would have a field day.’

  ‘I think you’re being ridiculous.’

  ‘I really wish you’d let me come along. If I’d been there, I bet I could have sussed him out better than you women could. What does Dad say? No, forget that. I guess he’d just think what he’d do as a father. And it wouldn’t be that. But if you ask me, Tamara has a very good reason to be scared that he might find out.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Get real, Mum. He can’t let her have this baby, can he? If she won’t have an abortion, then he’s got to make sure that something stops the baby being born. Work it out. Sorry, got to run. Smells like my pasta’s burning. I’ll check back.’

  ‘He thinks what?’ Millie flashed outrage.

  ‘Well, let’s face it. We’re all clutching at straws. Tom’s feeling left out, so he just wants to throw in an idea we haven’t thought of. One-upmanship.’

  ‘He’s just plain silly,’ Millie growled.

  Nick had his back to them, looking across the courtyard garden of the pub. ‘We ought not to close our minds to it, though. It may be a long shot, but it wouldn’t be unique. Something has to explain why Tamara’s behaving in such an extreme way.’

  ‘Are you blaming it on Tamara now?’ Millie protested. ‘Of course she’s running away from that Dawson man. He beat her.’

  ‘Yes.’ He turned back to her with a sigh and sat down. ‘That’s certainly the most obvious explanation.’

  Suzie defended Millie. ‘Accusing Reynard Woodman of sexually abusing her is as daft as . . . well, suggesting it was Alan Taylor at Springbrook Church.’ She caught the speculative look in Nick’s eye. ‘Oh, no! What’s wrong with you now? I wasn’t in a million years meaning Alan was a suspect.’

  ‘He’s a hit with the kids, apparently. But you were the one who brought his name up, not me.’

  She thought of the way those bright brown eyes smiled and then could suddenly deepen with sympathy when the darker things of life crossed his path. As they often did.

  ‘You’re pro
bably right,’ Nick said. ‘All the same, Millie has a point. Tamara did ask her for absolute secrecy. We’ve been so keen to find her and check she’s OK that we’ve been a tad freer with information than we should have been.’

  ‘He’s her father,’ Suzie exclaimed. ‘If her mother can’t protect her, he should.’

  ‘It’s bit late for second thoughts, anyway. As you said, he’s probably on his way there by now.’ He sat, twirling a beer mat absently. Then he got up and went to the bar. ‘Do you have a telephone directory?’

  ‘Sure. Just a minute.’ The publican crossed the corridor to his office and returned with the book.

  ‘Thanks.’

  Suzie watched with growing disbelief as Nick thumbed through the pages.

  ‘Gamble. There’s just three of them. Not our friend Kevin, alias Reynard Woodman. He’s ex-directory, of course. And none of these begins with an F. She’s married, then, or has been. You’re sure she lives nearby?’ he asked Millie.

  Her reply was surly. ‘How would I know? I wasn’t exactly here, was I? But Tamara talked about her coming over and taking her shopping once. So I just assumed she didn’t live a hundred miles away.’

  ‘Good thinking.’ He strolled back to the bar. ‘Excuse me. Last time we were here, we met Kevin Gamble’s sister, Frances. We promised next time we were in the area, we’d look her up. But we can’t remember her surname. You wouldn’t happen to know it, would you?’

  The landlord put his head round the door to the kitchen. ‘Mandy? Bloke here wants to know the name of Kevin Gamble’s sister. Can you remember? Didn’t she book a table here back in the spring, to celebrate some anniversary?’

  ‘I can’t recall it, though,’ came his wife’s voice. ‘Something Irish, was it? O’Sullivan? My hands are all over flour at the moment, but it’ll be in the book.’

  The obliging publican reached for a leather-bound folder on the shelf behind him. He leafed back through it. Then he swivelled the book for Nick to read. ‘Would that be the one? March twenty-fourth. O’Malley? Table for eight?’