Father Unknown

  Father Unknown

  Lesley Pearse

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  Published by the Penguin Group

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  First published 2002

  29

  Copyright © Lesley Pearse, 2002

  All rights reserved

  The moral right of the author has been asserted

  Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

  ISBN-13: 978-0-141-92460-1

  To my sister Selina with my love and deepest respect.

  We may have been flung together as children and had

  to accept what we couldn’t change. But you became

  a true sister of the heart, and that’s what counts. I

  wish you all the happiness you deserve.

  Chapter One

  Chiswick, London, 1990

  ‘Come here and hold my hand, darling. I hate to sound melodramatic, but I think I’m on the way out.’

  Daisy was just leaving the bedroom as she had thought her mother was sound asleep. Hearing these words, she wheeled round in shock and dismay.

  Lorna Buchan had cancer. She had fought it bravely for over two years with radiotherapy, a mastectomy and countless alternative treatments, always believing she would get better. But two months ago she had been told by her specialist that the cancer had spread throughout her body. She had resigned herself to this and refused any further hospital treatment, because she wanted to spend her last weeks at home with her husband and children.

  Daisy was beside her mother’s bed in a trice. ‘I’ll call the doctor,’ she said, her heart pounding with fear.

  Lorna smiled up weakly at her daughter. ‘No, darling, there’s no point. I’m not in any pain and I feel really calm. Just sit with me.’

  Daisy was appalled – she couldn’t just sit there and watch her mother die without doing something. Yet to argue with her now seemed awful too. So with her free hand she gently stroked her mother’s head, while she considered what she should do.

  Lorna had lost her lovely honey-blonde hair after the radiotherapy, and the new growth was white and as soft as a baby’s. Her face was gaunt because she had lost so much weight and even her blue eyes had faded to a pale duck-egg colour.

  It wasn’t fair, Daisy thought, that her mother should be singled out for this. She was only fifty and she’d been such a striking, robust woman, always fashionably dressed, known to everyone for her vivacious and warm personality. She was the sort of indomitable woman who could tirelessly supervise a school fête, then at the end of a day which would have exhausted anyone else, invite all the helpers home for an impromptu party. She would still be dancing and laughing as her guests finally left. Yet miraculously by breakfast the following day the whole house would be tidied and cleaned as if nothing had gone on there.

  ‘I must call Daddy,’ Daisy said after a few moments’ thought.

  ‘Certainly not,’ Lorna said surprisingly firmly. ‘He has an important meeting this afternoon and I don’t want him rushing home through the traffic in a panic.’

  ‘But I must do something. Let me call the college and get the twins home.’

  ‘No, not them either, they’ll be home soon anyway.’

  Daisy had given up her job a month before when her mother became too ill to be left at home alone. This was not an act of martyrdom – Daisy loathed her job, just as she had loathed practically every one she’d ever had, and there had been dozens. Housekeeping and caring for her mother was something she liked and was good at, and she used to think that she could handle any situation or emergency. Yet she knew she couldn’t handle this one alone.

  ‘I’ve got to phone the doctor at least,’ she said resolutely.

  Lorna turned her head away in a stubborn attempt to try to dissuade her. Daisy picked up the phone by the bed regardless and quickly phoned the surgery to tell them she needed a doctor immediately.

  ‘That wasn’t necessary, I only need you here,’ Lorna said weakly, as Daisy put the phone down.’ Besides, there’s something I want to talk to you about.’

  ‘I will get a real career,’ Daisy said quickly, assuming that this was what was on her mother’s mind. She was twenty-five and she knew her parents despaired because she was feckless and lacking in ambition. ‘I thought I might join the police force.’

  Lorna smiled. ‘You’d be hopeless at that, you don’t like taking orders and you’re so soft you’d be bringing all the villains home for tea.’

  ‘So is it Joel, then?’ Daisy asked.

  Joel was her policeman boyfriend of a year’s standing, the longest she’d ever gone out with any man. Her parents approved of him, and she thought perhaps her mother was going to urge her to marry him.

  ‘No, not Joel either, you are perfectly well able to make your own mind up about him. I wanted to talk about your real mother.’

  Daisy looked at her mother in horror, ‘I don’t want to talk about her now,’ she said.

  ‘Well, I do,’ Lorna said. ‘What’s more, I want you to find her when I’ve gone. I think it will help you.’

  Her words made tears well up in Daisy’s eyes. ‘Nothing and nobody will ever replace you,’ she said passionately. ‘You are my real mother. I don’t want anyone else.’

  She had known she was adopted since she was a tiny child. Lorna and John had told her that she was extra special because they had chosen her, while ordinary parents got no choice at all. Even when she was five and the twins were born – a miracle because Lorna had been told she was sterile – nothing changed. Daisy never felt her parents loved them more, in fact she imagined they’d got Tom and Lucy just to please her. Not once in her twenty-five years had Daisy shown any interest in her birth mother. She knew she was a Buchan, whoever she was born to.

  ‘You might think that way now, Dizzie,’ Lorna used the family nickname lovingly, ‘but I know from experience that a death in the family can bring up so many unexpected emotions and questions. I believe finding her would help you through all that.’

  Daisy didn’t know what to say. Lorna wasn’t one to make a suggestion like this without having thought long and hard about it. Since she knew she was dying she had organized everything, from her funeral service to filling the freezer with ready-cooked meals. There was nothing morbid about any of her arrangements, she’d been this way all her life, always thinking ahead, making life easier and more comfortable for her fa
mily. Yet Daisy couldn’t imagine why her mother thought that finding a woman who had given her child away so many years ago would help her grief.

  She stared out at the view of the back garden and there, as everywhere in the house, was more evidence of Lorna’s planning and patience. It was beautiful, the herbaceous border just coming into its full glory, a bank of blue, pink and mauve plants. Honeysuckle had all but covered the roof of the old Wendy house where Daisy and the twins had spent many happy hours as children. Yet Lorna hadn’t led it slide into decay or removed it once there were no children to use it. Each spring she planted flowers in its window-boxes and cleaned it out. Daisy knew that if she were to go in there now, she’d find the little pots and pans, the chairs and table all still arranged carefully.

  Of course Lorna had hoped that one day there would be grandchildren playing in it, and Daisy’s eyes filled with tears as she was reminded that her mother wouldn’t be there to play her part in weddings and babies’ birth and upbringing.

  ‘I’ll look for her if you really want me to,’ Daisy said, keeping her face turned to the window so her mother wouldn’t see her tears. ‘But whatever she’s like, she’ll never take your place.’

  ‘Come and lie down with me,’ Lorna said.

  Daisy remembered that her mother had always been able to sense tears or unhappiness even from a distance, and so she did what she was told and snuggled up beside her.

  Her parents’ bed had always been a special place. She and the twins had used it like a trampoline, pretended it was a boat, a desert island and a hospital. They had opened their stockings here on Christmas mornings, been tucked in here when they were ill, climbed in during the night when they had bad dreams, and as a teenager Daisy had often lain beside her mother and confided all her fears and dreams. But it was the more recent memories that Daisy thought of now as she put her arm around her mother: Sunday mornings when Dad had gone out with Fred, their West Highland terrier, or evenings when he was down in his study working. Then she’d come in here and end up baring her soul, about Joel, her anxiety that she’d never find a job she really liked, and her friends.

  Most of Daisy’s friends said they couldn’t tell their mother anything important. Yet she had only to lie here, her mother tucked under the covers beside her, and she could talk about things that were unimaginable outside this room.

  ‘I used to bring you into bed with me here when you were a baby,’ Lorna said, turning her head on the pillow to face Daisy. ‘I used to lie and marvel at how perfect you were, and how lucky I was to be given you. You may be a grown women of twenty-five now, but I still think that way.’

  She caught hold of one of Daisy’s corkscrew curls and wound it round her finger. ‘You were bald at first, and I always expected your hair to be fair and straight when it finally grew. I never expected a curly red-head.’ She laughed softly, and her hand moved to caress Daisy’s cheek. ‘You are so beautiful, Dizzie, funny, generous and big-hearted too. I’m so very proud of you. That’s why I want you to find your real mother, so she can share my joy and see for herself that I took good care of you.’

  As always, Lorna had struck right at the heart of the matter, giving Daisy a reason to do so that she would never have thought of. But she still couldn’t promise, she knew that no other woman would ever measure up to Lorna as a mother.

  ‘Do you remember when I had chicken-pox?’ she asked, changing the subject because it was just too heavy for her.

  ‘Mmm,’ Lorna replied as if she was sleepy.

  ‘I painted on some of the spots with felt tips,’ Daisy admitted. ‘Did you know?’

  ‘Of course I did,’ Lorna replied, her voice hardly more than a whisper. ‘Daddy and I laughed about it. We thought you might grow up to be an actress. You always liked to make things more dramatic than they really were.’

  ‘I love you, Mum,’ Daisy whispered.

  Lorna murmured something about making absolutely certain of her feelings towards Joel before committing herself to marrying him, and then appeared to be dropping off to sleep.

  Daisy lay there beside her for several minutes, but as she wriggled towards the edge of the bed to get up and phone her father, Lorna opened her eyes again. ‘Say goodbye to Daddy and the twins for me, tell them I love them,’ she said in a faint, croaky voice.

  Daisy was instantly alarmed by the weakness in her mother’s voice. ‘They’ll be home soon,’ she said. ‘You can tell them yourself.’

  There was no response to her words, not a fluttering of Lorna’s eyelids, nor any movement around her lips.

  ‘Oh no,’ Daisy gasped. In horror she knelt up on the bed, putting her ear to her mother’s heart, but she could hear nothing. She held her wrist but could feel no pulse either. ‘Mummy, no,’ she cried out, looking down at Lorna’s pale blue eyes, which were open and seemed to be focused on something in the far distance.

  Her head told her that her mother was dead, yet she couldn’t believe it could come so suddenly, without some warning or a cry of pain.

  It was so quiet that she could hear bees buzzing and birds singing in the garden. It was the kind of warm, sunny day that Lorna would once have spent gardening, or washing bedding so she could hang it out to dry. She had always been so practical and predictable, her days governed by a strict routine which was only altered by weather conditions. Daisy had sneered at this once; it seemed so mind-blowingly dull. Yet in the last few weeks she’d come to enjoy routine herself, found a sense of achievement in doing mundane but important tasks. She’d come to believe she had finally grown up.

  But she didn’t feel grown-up now. She felt as helpless as a five-year-old, kneeling there on the bed, tears running down her cheeks, not knowing what she had to do.

  The shrill ring of the door-bell reverberated right through the house, and Fred began to bark. Daisy rushed out of the room and down the stairs, willing it to be the doctor. It was, and he took one look at her distraught expression and went straight on up to the bedroom.

  At eight that same evening, Daisy went to her room, taking Fred with her. She shut the door and lay on her bed sobbing. Fred snuggled up beside her, gently licking at her face as if he understood how she felt.

  The last few hours had been so strange and bewildering that Daisy felt as if her whole world had caved in. There was nothing normal to hang on to and the silence was eerie. But worst of all was the way her family were behaving.

  The doctor was still here when Dad arrived home unexpectedly early. He said he was driving to his meeting when he had a feeling something was wrong, so he’d come straight home. Yet even though he had responded to a seemingly irrational impulse, he didn’t react in any way when the doctor told him that his wife had passed away only minutes before. He just stood in the hall looking blankly at him.

  He continued to behave oddly, kind of stiff and distant. He didn’t attempt to go upstairs to see Lorna, but politely asked the doctor whether he would like tea or coffee. Daisy desperately needed comfort, a hug, to be asked about her mother’s final moments and given some reassurance she’d done all the right things, but she got none of those. The twins seemed to be important to Dad, though, for no sooner had he seen the doctor out than he telephoned the college and asked the principal to send them home immediately.

  The death certificate was on the kitchen table. John picked it up, read it, then finally went upstairs to see Lorna. Daisy heard the bedroom door shut with a very final click, and she suddenly felt completely isolated.

  John was still in the bedroom when Lucy and Tom came home. They had their mother’s fair hair and blue eyes in common, but the similarity ended there. Lucy had her mother’s rather stocky build, but her face was set in an almost permanent scowl. Tom was tall and slender like their father and normally had a wide grin.

  They were red-faced and panting from running. ‘Is Mum worse?’ they asked in unison.

  Daisy burst into tears then. ‘She died a little while ago,’ she blurted out. ‘Dad’s up there with her now.’


  Tom immediately came over to Daisy to embrace her. He leaned over till his face was on her shoulder and Daisy could hear him crying softly. But to her astonishment Lucy rounded on her.

  ‘Was Dad here when she died?’ she asked accusingly.

  ‘No,’ Daisy sobbed. ‘Just me. Dad came home while the doctor was here.’

  ‘Why didn’t you get hold of us?’ Lucy demanded, her blue eyes cold and suspicious.

  Daisy was in no mood to give lengthy explanations. ‘It all happened so fast. She told me she thought her time had come, and I asked if she wanted me to phone the college and Dad, but she said I wasn’t to. She didn’t want me to phone the doctor either, but I did anyway. He came just a couple of minutes after she died.’

  ‘You should have phoned us, you had no right to prevent us from being here,’ Lucy snapped, then, bursting into loud hiccuping sobs, she ran upstairs. Tom broke away from Daisy, made a sort of grimace, and quickly followed his twin.

  The three of them remained upstairs for over an hour, and Daisy got the distinct impression she wasn’t wanted there with them. It didn’t make any sense, she had never been treated differently before, never felt she was different in any way, and it hurt to think they didn’t know her grief was every bit as great as theirs.

  She sat in the kitchen with only Fred for company, and she was still there crying on her own when Dad came downstairs much later. He spoke sharply to her, saying there were things which had to be done, one of which was calling an undertaker to take the body away. Daisy was well aware of that, but she thought he could have spared some time first to ask her how she was, and talk through what had happened.

  Not knowing what else to do, Daisy began preparing the evening meal, but Dad just said he didn’t understand how she could think of her stomach at such a time. Yet he and the twins ate the meal later and she was the only one who couldn’t eat anything. After the undertakers had called and taken Lorna away, she was left to clear up the kitchen while they all went into the sitting-room together, and she wasn’t asked to join them.