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‘Then why didn’t she come home? Do you think Dad stopped her?’
‘No,’ she said swiftly. ‘I know he wouldn’t do that.’
‘You don’t really know.’
‘Yes, I do. He’d never do anything to hurt you. Mark, you must believe me.’
‘But he wouldn’t bring her home when she died.’
‘That’s different. When she was alive—’
She paused. She had no right to repeat to Mark what Justin had told her. After a moment she realised that she had no need to say any more. The child had fallen asleep against her shoulder.
Gently she laid him down on the bed and drew the covers up. Then she kissed his cheek before slipping quietly out of the room and closing the door.
It was dark in the corridor, but the sliver of moonlight from the window was just enough to show her Justin standing there, leaning against the wall, his head back, motionless.
‘Waiting at the window every week,’ he whispered.
‘Justin—’
‘Standing there for hours because today would be different—today she’d really come.’
Of course he’d heard his son’s words, and his heart had understood. If only he could talk directly to Mark like this. She could see the tears on his cheeks. He didn’t try to brush them away. Perhaps he didn’t know about them.
She reached out and held him, enfolding him in the same gesture she had used to comfort his son, and at once she felt his arms go around her, clinging on to her as if he were seeking refuge.
‘But she never came—’ he murmured.
‘Justin!’ She took hold of him, giving him a little shake.
He looked at her despairingly. ‘I was sure she’d come, but she never did.’
‘You?’ she echoed, wondering if she’d heard him clearly.
‘She promised,’ he said huskily. ‘I knew she wouldn’t break her promise—but I never saw her again.’
Only then did she understand that Justin wasn’t empathising with his son’s loss. He was talking about a loss of his own.
It was as though a pit had opened beneath her, and from its depths came an aching misery that left her shattered. It clawed at her, howling of endless despair, grief too great to endure. The man in her arms was shuddering with that grief and she held him more tightly, helplessly trying to comfort something she did not understand.
They mustn’t stay here, she thought. Mark might hear them and come out. Gently she urged him across the landing to her own room. He could barely walk.
Inside, she closed the door without switching on the light. He almost fell on to the bed, taking her with him, for his hands were holding on to her like grim death.
Once before he’d held her in an unbreakable grip, but this was different. Instead of arrogance, she felt only his need and desperation and everything in her went forward to meet it, embrace and console it.
‘It’s all right,’ she murmured, just as she had done with the child. ‘I’m here. Hold on to me.’
He kept his eyes fixed on her. He was still trembling like a man caught in a nightmare from which there was no escape.
‘Justin, what’s the matter? It’s not just about Mark’s mother, is it?’
‘No,’ he said hoarsely.
‘Tell me about it.’
‘I can’t—so many things—there’s no help for it now.’
‘There’s help for everything, if you’ve got someone who really wants to help you,’ she said. ‘But how can I, if I don’t understand?’
‘How can you understand, when I don’t understand it myself?’ he whispered. ‘I want to ask why—I’ve always wanted that—but there’s nobody to ask.’
She couldn’t bear his agony. Without thinking about it, she leaned down and laid her lips tenderly over his.
‘It’s going to be all right,’ she whispered. ‘I’m going to make it all right.’
She had no idea what she meant, or what she could do to help him. But the details didn’t matter. What mattered was easing his pain in any way she could. So she kissed him again and again until she felt him begin to relax in her arms.
It was unlike the other kiss in every way but one, and that was the slow burning inside her. But whereas that first excitement had been entwined with anger, this one was a part of pity and sorrow. She wanted him to find oblivion in her, lose himself in her completely, if that could give him a respite from suffering.
So she offered herself to him without reservation, waiting for the moment when his own desire rose and he reached out, taking over the kiss, turning her so that he was above her on the bed.
He checked himself for a moment, as though the earlier memory had come back to him. Seeing his doubt, she began to unbutton his shirt while her smile told him enough to ease the dread in his face. Then he was opening her pyjama top and laying his face against her warm skin.
He stayed like that for so long that she wondered if this was all he wanted, but then she felt his hands move on her with increasing urgency and she knew that they both wanted the same thing. And they wanted it now.
They made love quickly, as if trying to discover something they badly needed to know. And when they’d found the answer they made love again, but slowly this time, relishing the newly discovered treasure.
Afterwards there was peace, clinging to each other for safety in this new world, while the moonlight limned their nakedness.
She kissed him. ‘Can you talk about it now?’ she whispered.
‘I’m not sure. I’ve never tried before.’
‘Maybe that’s the trouble. Talk to me, Justin, for both our sakes.’
‘I don’t know where to begin.’
‘Start with your mother.’
‘Which one?’
The answer startled her. She rose up on one elbow and looked down on him. After a moment he started to speak, hesitantly.
‘For the first seven years of my life, I was like any other child. I had a home, two parents who loved me, or seemed to. Then the woman I thought of as my mother became pregnant.
‘Almost overnight she lost interest in me. I found out why almost by chance. I overheard her talking to her sister, saying, ‘It’ll be wonderful to have a child of my own’. That was how I learned that she wasn’t really my mother.’
‘Dear God!’ Evie said softly. ‘Did you tell her what you’d heard?’
‘No, I kept it to myself for months, pretending it wasn’t true. But the pretence wore thin, especially when the baby was born, a boy.
‘I was jealous. I started to have tantrums. So they called social services and said that I was “out of control” and I must go into care. After that I couldn’t pretend any longer. I’d been adopted as second best, because they thought they couldn’t have children. Now they didn’t need me.’
She stared at him, too shocked to speak.
‘I don’t remember much about that day,’ he said. ‘I know I screamed at my parents not to send me away. I begged and pleaded but it was no use. They didn’t want me.’
‘Wait, stop,’ she begged, covering her eyes as though, by this means, she could blot out the terrible story. ‘I can’t take this in. Surely they must have had some love for you?’
‘You don’t understand. I was a substitute. If they’d never had one of their own I suppose they’d have made do with me, but now I was surplus to requirements. It took me years to see that, of course. All I knew at the time was that it was my own fault for being wicked.’
‘How could anyone be so cruel as to put that burden on a child?’ she burst out furiously. ‘It’s unspeakable. I suppose that’s what they wanted to believe so that they didn’t have to feel guilty about what they were really doing.’
‘Yes, I worked that out in the end, too. But at the time I believed what I was told.’
‘Where did they take you?’
‘To what is laughingly known as a “home”, which means an institution. At first I thought my mother would come and visit me. I used to stand at the window, watching the entrance. I knew she’d come. But weeks went by and there was no sign of them. Even then I didn’t face it, not until one of the other boys jeered, “You’re wasting yer time. Yer Mum dumped yer”.
‘Of course, then I knew, because in my heart I’d always known. The only way I could cope was to fight him. He was bigger than me, but I won because I hated him, not only because of what he’d said, but because his mother was taking him home the next day.
‘The home wasn’t a bad place. They meant well and they did their best. There was no affection because the staff turnover was so high, but I couldn’t have dealt with that anyway. I’d learned enough not to want to get close to people, so I don’t know what I’d have done if anyone had tried to get close to me. Something violent, probably.’
She shook her head in instinctive denial. At one time she might have mistaken him for a violent man, but now she sensed differently.
‘I left when I was sixteen,’ he resumed, ‘and on the last day—’
He stopped, and a shudder went through him.
‘What happened?’ she asked softly.
He didn’t answer at first. Then he said, ‘Give me a minute.’
He rose and walked to the window. She stared at his broad back, wondering how she could ever have thought his size and strength alarming. All she could see now was that he was racked with misery. She went to stand beside him, turning him towards her, and had to fight back tears at what she saw.
He was actually shaking. Something was devastating him, and for a moment she thought he would be unable to speak of it.
At last he said, ‘When I left they had to tell me the whole truth about myself. That was when I learned that my birth mother had given me away almost as soon as I was born.’
Evie stared at him, slowly shaking her head in speechless horror.
His laugh was harsh and bitter.
‘You’ll hardly believe this, but I was left on the orphanage doorstep like some Victorian foundling. If your mother does that, she can’t be traced, you see. She’s got rid of you completely.
‘That was all they knew. I turned up one evening out of the blue. Apparently a doctor said I was about a week old. They did some research into the babies that had been born recently in that area, but none of them was me.’
‘You mean your birth wasn’t even registered?’
‘Not by my mother. The orphanage registered me, of course.’
‘It’s awful,’ she whispered. ‘All this time, not knowing who you really are.’
‘But I do know who I am,’ he said with bitter irony. ‘I’m the son two mothers didn’t want. What could be clearer than that?’
‘I used to wonder why you were so angry and suspicious all the time,’ she said. ‘Now I wonder how you’ve managed to keep your head together.’
‘I’m not sure I have. For a long time I was crazy. I didn’t behave well, either in the home or after I’d left it. I drank too much, brawled, got into trouble with the police, served some time in jail. That brought me back into contact with my adoptive parents.’
‘They came to help you?’ she asked, longing for some redeeming moment in this dreadful story.
‘No, they sent a lawyer to say they’d get me a good defence on condition that I stopped using their name. They had an unusual name, Strassne, and since I still bore it people were beginning to associate this young low-life with them.’
‘So that was when you became Justin Dane?’ she asked. She would have liked to say something more violent, but was controlling herself with a huge effort.
‘No, I became John Davis. My one-time “parents” insisted on doing it by deed poll, so that it was official and they’d never have to acknowledge me again. Then they paid for a very expensive defence, and John Davis was acquitted. They didn’t even attend the trial.’
‘So what happened to John Davis?’
‘He didn’t survive the day. I changed my name to Leo Holman. Not by deed poll. I just took off and gave my name as Leo wherever I went.’
‘Don’t you need some paperwork to get things like passports and bank accounts?’
‘Yes, and if I’d needed those things it would have been a problem, but I wasn’t living in a world of passports and bank accounts. I worked as a handyman, strictly for cash, got into trouble again, went inside—never long sentences, just a couple of months, but every time I came out I changed my name again. I lost track of how often. What did it matter to me? I no longer had a real identity, so it didn’t matter how often I changed it.
‘The last time I was in prison I met a man who put me straight. His name was Bill. He was a prison visitor, but he’d done time himself so he knew what he was talking about. He saw something in me that could be put back on track, and he set himself to do it.
‘When I came out he was there waiting for me. He gave me a room in his own house, so that he could watch me like a hawk to see that I stayed on the straight and narrow. And he made me go to evening classes. I learned things and I found that I enjoyed having ambitions. Bit by bit I turned into a respectable citizen, the kind of man who needs paperwork.
‘So I changed my name one last time. I was Andrew Lester at that time and I turned into Justin Dane. I did it officially, by deed poll, and I went to work in Bill’s firm.’
‘How did you choose the name?’
‘Bill had a Great Dane I enjoyed fooling with. I forget where Justin came from. In the end he loaned me the money to start my own business. In three years I repaid him. In eight years I bought him out. Don’t misunderstand that. He was delighted. I gave him a good price, enough to retire on. I wouldn’t have done him down. I owed him, and I repaid him.
‘After that I just made money. It was all I knew how to do. I didn’t seem able to make relationships work.’
‘What about your wife? You must have loved her?’
‘I loved her a lot. I even told myself that she loved me, but we married because she was pregnant and I wanted a child badly. But it didn’t work out. In the end she couldn’t stand me. She said so. The only good thing to come out of it was Mark.
‘I thought with him, at least, I could make a success, but I haven’t. I don’t know how. I’m driving him away as I seem to drive everyone away.’
‘But what happened with your mothers—either of them—wasn’t your fault,’ she urged. ‘It couldn’t be.’
‘Maybe not, but it started me on a track I don’t know how to escape.’ He gave a soft mirthless laugh. ‘You’ll hardly believe this, but when people tell me to get lost I feel almost relieved. At least it’s familiar territory.’
