We followed Marjorie up the stairs to her office. Whilst she wasn’t exactly honking for breath at the top, she did look like she didn’t get much exercise. She certainly looked as though she had never picked up a golf club in her life. At least, not to play golf.
She sat behind a large desk and indicated that we take the seats in front of it.
‘I must admit,’ she said, ‘to being taken aback when you said you were from a bank. You don’t look like what I would expect people from a bank to look like.’
I was about to tell her that she didn’t look like what I thought a golf club secretary should look like, but Neil got to her first.
‘In sensitive cases, such as this, they prefer us to dress more informally. When you’re going to someone’s house, and you potentially have sad news to impart, it’s felt that suits and ties are too austere. Too businesslike. We try to put people at their ease.’
Marjorie nodded, as though she was the one that had instigated this rule for the bank. I just sat back and basked in Neil’s glory. He was masterful.
‘In fact,’ he said, ‘if you have a picture of Richard Lapton, that would enable us to verify if he is the one we seek. That way, if he’s not the right man, we wouldn’t need any address details at all. We don’t want to pry unnecessarily.’
Marjorie sat back in her seat. I could tell she was impressed too.
‘You know, Mr Marsden, I think his photograph is in our members directory. We produce one every year. It has all members contact details, and for the past couple of years has included photographs. Not every member supplies us with one, but I have a feeling that Richard did this year.’
Neil looked at me and gave me his best professional smile.
‘Well that would be terrific, Mrs Powell,’ he said. ‘Just what we need.’
I could only imagine how different this would be going right now if we had gone with my plan instead of Neil’s. With me leading the conversation and taking charge of the operation, we would have been sunk even before being invited upstairs to Marjorie’s office. I knew it would be inappropriate to punch Neil’s leg.
It worried me that he was so good at spinning this web of deceit. It seemed to come as naturally to him as breathing. And he seemed to be enjoying it. There was no doubt in my mind that he was utterly wasted at the bank. When all this was over he should maybe get a job at MI5.
Marjorie flicked through a glossy A5 magazine. It took less than five seconds for her to find Richard Lapton.
‘I thought so,’ she said. ‘Here’s Richard.’
She held the magazine open and put it facing us on the table. Where Neil had been the one in charge up until now, I leaned forward with such vigour that I knocked against Marjorie’s desk, making everything on it vibrate.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I couldn’t see back there.’
Back there made it sound like I had been on the golf course itself, rather than just a foot away.
Under cover of the desk, Neil put his hand gently on my knee, just long enough to calm me down and to let me know that he was my strength if I needed it.
‘What do you think?’ he said, pulling the magazine closer to us.
The photograph was black and white. A head shot. Richard Lapton had thinning grey hair, but he wasn’t bald. He looked tanned and happy. Wisps of hair had been lifted by the wind, the picture had obviously been taken out on the golf course. It looked as though too much sun over the years had evaporated much of the moisture from his skin, leaving wrinkles and lines carved into his features. I immediately looked at his teeth. They looked pretty good for someone of his age. I thought the photograph made him look arrogant.
‘Look at those eyes,’ Neil said.
It was so obviously a reflection of Rose’s eyes that I had to look away for fear of giving the game away.
‘Oh,’ I said.
Neil looked up at Marjorie Powell. Her face expectant.
‘I think this is our man,’ he said. ‘Could we take this?’
Marjorie nodded. I thought her eyes looked damp.
I found my voice.
‘Is he a dentist?’ I said.
Marjorie smiled.
‘He used to be. He’s retired now of course. He lives in St Germans.’
I struggled to contain the whirlwind that was buffeting inside me. I felt my body trembling. Neil noticed it too. He picked up the magazine and stood up.
‘Marjorie, thank you so much for your help. On behalf of the bank I would like to thank you very much.’
He held out his hand and she shook it.
‘I take it you don’t want me to speak to Richard at the moment,’ she said.
‘We really need to speak to him first,’ Neil said. ‘It is quite a delicate matter.’
Marjorie nodded.
‘I understand,’ she said.
She walked us down to the main entrance and watched us climb into the car. Neil slammed the car door shut and spoke under his breath.
‘Nearly there,’ he said. ‘Nearly there.’
It was becoming harder for me to keep control. Neil put the magazine on my lap, reversed the car out of the space and drove slowly past the main entrance. He waved and smiled at Marjorie as we drove past. She smiled and waved back.
Fifty yards down the long entrance drive, I couldn’t hold it in any longer. I thrust my head in my hands and wept. Huge sobs jerked my body. I knew Neil would be checking the rear view mirror to make sure Marjorie was out of sight. I assumed she was as Neil rested his hand at the base of my neck and caressed it.
‘Oh, Neil,’ I spluttered more than spoke, ‘that was him, wasn’t it? That was my dad.’
‘Did you see Rose’s eyes?’ he said. ‘I almost fell off my chair.’
Neil found a lay-by and pulled the car over. I cried for at least ten minutes. Neil’s shirt was damp from my tears, so was the directory Marjorie had given us. I had never expected such emotion to well up inside me. The only reason I had wanted to find my birth parents, I thought, was to find out about any medical issues, mental health problems. To me, my Mum and Dad were my real parents and always would be. In fact, when I had thought about my birth parents I had thought of them as strangers. Not even friends. So my emotional outburst had been a shock. It made me wonder if perhaps I hadn’t been entirely honest or clear with myself about how I felt.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘I don’t know where that came from. I hadn’t expected to feel anything like that at all.’
‘It’s bound to be highly charged,’ he said. ‘He is your birth father after all.’
I opened the directory to his picture. I was sure I could see even more in it this time. Mostly Rose.
‘That’s your mouth,’ Neil said.
‘It’s not,’ I said.
‘It so is.’
There was a mirror on the back of the sun visor. I adjusted it so I could see my mouth.
‘It is a bit, I suppose.’
‘And you’ve got his hair.’
Now the punch to the leg was appropriate.
‘You were amazing in there,’ I said. ‘You’re an expert liar.’
‘An expert actor,’ he said. ‘I was playing a part. So were you. We did brilliantly. It couldn’t have gone any better. Unless he had been there playing golf and she had dragged him in to see us.’
‘This isn’t the same address that was on the original adoption stuff,’ I said. ‘They must have moved.’
My use of the word “they” brought an instant silence to the car. It was the elephant in the room.
‘I was going to ask,’ Neil said. ‘When we were in there. Is there a Mrs Lapton? But I wasn’t sure how you would react, depending on her answer. We could always go back if you like, or ring her?’
‘No,’ I said. ‘Let’s just see, shall we. The fact that I couldn’t find anything about her on the Internet, and the fact that it looks like she was the one who was ill, I’m not really holding out much hope anyway. But you never know.’
A calm came over me as Neil
drove us through country lanes to the address printed in the golf-club directory. Glimpses of water were infrequent, partly because the hedgerows were so high, but also because we weren’t really sure which direction the sea was in. I opened my window and breathed in. The smells of childhood flooded into the car. Fresh grass, clean earth, primrose and dandelion, cow-parsley and nettles. Livestock on the fields. And a hint of the sea.
I leaned back into my chair and closed my eyes. I saw Dad, with his fishing rod, Mum with her packet of biscuits. Summers spent climbing trees and going on imaginary adventures with my cuddlies along the carpet in the living room. Dad tried to teach me how to tie a fly, but since neither of us fished with a fly it turned into a chaos of giggles and laughter. Dad’s face went so red from laughing I was scared he might keel over. But we’re made of solid stuff, me and Dad. He didn’t keel over. And I never learnt to tie a fly.
I hadn’t done much better in the kitchen, with Mum. Flour dusting the air and my face. Sugar and butter beaten together, bits flying out of the bowl and onto the floor, and eggs poured, only a little bit at a time, but often way too much, to make fairy cakes. Mum always let me scrape the remainder out of the mixing bowl. Usually with a spoon, but sometimes with my fingers. And I was always the first one to try a cake when they came out of the oven. Even if I had made them for Dad’s birthday, I would still try one before they cooled down.
‘You should let them cool first,’ Mum said.
‘I do,’ I said. ‘They’re cool enough for me.’
Walks in the woods, all three of us. Down by the water. Swimming in the lake.
I wanted to go back. I ached inside to go back to it all. I loved what I had now — Neil and the kids. But if only I could go back, just for a little while. There was something so different about childhood. Something wonderful and magical that just went from me as I got older. Why couldn’t I hold onto it? Why had I allowed the world to take it from me? Suddenly I hated the world, real life. Hated the way it took our childhood away from us. I hated that we had to become something other than children, that we had to give up our childness — that was the price we had to pay for becoming an adult.
And once we’d paid the price, there wasn’t ever any going back. Not really. We could act in childish ways, we could revisit childhood places. But we never got back the childhood itself.
My heart hurt. I squeezed my eyes tighter shut.
‘Chris?’
I opened my eyes. Then squinted in the bright afternoon light.
‘Chris?’
I put my hand to my mouth. He didn’t need to say anything else. We were coming to a village. Not too big. It was the one we were looking for. St Germans. I opened my eyes wide now. Forgetting the bright light outside.
‘Slow down,’ I said.
‘I am,’ Neil said. ‘I’m only doing twenty.’
‘Slower,’ I said. ‘We want Pine Avenue.’
‘I know, Chris. I’m looking out for it.’
I was going to say “well look harder” but managed to stop myself. I felt a tightness in my chest, like my stomach had expanded up into my lungs. I tried to roll my shoulders but my movements were too jerky to entertain rolling. My jerky eyes picked out Pine Avenue just as Neil raised his hand to point to it. He stopped the car at the side of the road.
‘What do you want me to do?’ he said.
I was astonished at how calm he sounded. I felt like I was sinking into an icy ocean with no life jacket, at night, and it had just started to rain. “Drowning” was too small a word to cover what I was going through at that moment.
A car drove past us and turned into Pine Avenue. I sunk down in my seat.
‘Drive past,’ I said. ‘Just drive past the end of the road.’
Neil moved the car slowly forward. I peered up through the window as we inched past the end of the road. We were looking for house number 33. I must have looked at the wrong side of the street, because all the numbers I saw were even.
‘Fuck it,’ I said. ‘Fuck it, let’s just drive down there, Neil. The house will be on your side.’
Neil turned the car and headed back towards Pine Avenue.
‘Are you sure?’ he said.
‘Damn right,’ I said. ‘Let’s do it.’
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