One to Six, Buckle to Sticks (Grasshopper Lawns Book 11) Read online

  ‘Chilly. My fault, I said something about not taking William too seriously. I thought I was tactful, but obviously not. Things have been a little cool since, and it doesn’t help that Maggie goes for Buster every time she sees him. We talk, but only on the most superficial level. As we haven’t been able to walk together, and she can’t bring Buster on visits—’

  ‘You do like giving relationship advice, it’s one of your flaws.’ Kirsty said critically and Edge pulled a face at her.

  ‘Well, since you raise the subject, have you heard from Rory lately?’ she asked, slightly nettled, and Kirsty sighed and looked away.

  ‘Never yet came back from the tour. His friend in the band says he took up with one of the backing singers. So yes, you were right. I didn’t say you don’t give good advice. Just that people don’t always want to hear it.’

  ‘If Rory can’t realize you were the best bit of luck that ever came into his life, he certainly doesn’t deserve you.’ Edge said firmly and bit into her banana bread. ‘Wow, this is excellent!’

  ‘I thought so too.’ Kirsty agreed, ‘your baking is really coming on. Was it my comment on Sunday?’

  ‘Oh darling, don’t be silly, I never bake. This, let me tell you, is from the new king of the Lawns, our very own Major Horace. I bought this in honour of your visit because nearly everything else was sold out. I’m having another slice – you too?’

  ~~~

  The afternoon grew rapidly darker as clouds clumped together into a purple-black mass and the walk was brought forward. Edge had got into the habit of walking the dog in the rough-mowed stretch at the top of the property, between the bungalows and the perimeter, as it wasn’t popular with any of the other dog walkers. There was a good long stretch for ball throwing, and Kirsty said nothing when Edge removed the muzzle. Maggie had eyes for nothing but the ball, but there were no other dogs to be seen anyway. Or people. Or even cars, on the nearby road, which overlooked the entire retirement village.

  ‘Like the end of the world.’ Kirsty remarked and threw the ball as far as she could. Maggie galloped off in pursuit and Edge laughed and applauded.

  ‘Oh, she’ll love that! I don’t manage anything like that distance. I know what you mean, I’ve been up here when I’ve had to look back at the bungalow lights to be sure I’m not the only person left alive.’

  ‘This is—drop it. Drop it. Good girl.’ Kirsty threw the ball again, and turned back to her aunt. ‘This is quite a large bit of ground, you think they’d build more bungalows here? Plenty of room.’

  ‘And take away Maggie’s play area? I hope not. Actually Katryn was saying something about offering keen gardeners allotments this spring, but that should still leave plenty of room. One more of your mighty throws should do it, then we’ll pop her into one of the runs and be on our way. The rain has started already, there, did you feel that? I can’t remember such a sodden February, I’m sure I shall dissolve one of these days, like the Wicked Witch of the West.’

  ‘You don’t leave her in the apartment?’

  ‘Sweetie, no. Not after she turned my Zack Black shoes into doggy chews. Anyway, I’m trying to get her used to a run so Clarissa will be able to leave her a bit more often. She’s already reached the point where she doesn’t bark the entire time. Oh, did you bring your handbag with you?’

  Kirsty managed a final mighty heave and Maggie gamely floundered after it. ‘I did, why?’

  ‘Got your purse?’

  ‘Yes, always—no. Damnit! My purse has—why are you laughing?’

  ‘Maggie’s only real accomplishment. She’s a talented dip. She stole it. I was even watching for it but still didn’t catch her in the act! Dinna fash, I can tell you right now it will be safe, just a little gobby, and she will like you so much more now that she’s had a chance to give it a really good sniff.’

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Sunday—visit Clarissa

  ‘I can hardly believe it.’ Clarissa, propped up in the hospital bed and holding the camera carefully in her affected left hand, was flicking back through the digital photos with her right. ‘Look at her! Like a regular dog! Just sniffing at a tree next to another dog sniffing at a tree!’

  The nurse handed Clarissa a glass of water. ‘Time for your pills, I’ll hold the camera. Can I see? Is this your mad dog?’

  ‘She’s famous, I see.’ Edge said drily, and smiled at the nurse. ‘We had a picnic at the Lawns last Monday. Keep flicking back through the pics, they’re on a loop.’

  ‘Oh, but she’s sweet!’ The nurse was surprised. ‘I thought she’d be a hulking monster after all your stories but she’s quite a wee thing. Does she really need the muzzle?’ Both Edge and Clarissa nodded vigorously and she flicked back a bit further. The photos got to the oldest, then looped back to the most recent. ‘Oh, there’s Simon, small world, isn’t it? Poor lad, you can see he’s trying to look cheerful, it can’t be easy for him.’

  ‘Who’s Simon, Mary?’ Clarissa asked at the same time as Edge asked, ‘What can’t be easy?’

  ‘Oh, he was the boyfriend of a friend of mine.’ she told them, ‘not a really close friend, very nice girl but we only really knew each other from our Zumba class. He used to collect her after the class, although lately he’d been spending all his time with his aunt so she was coming for coffee with the rest of us. I suppose that’s the aunt with him in this photo? Anyway, she missed Monday at Zumba, and Thursday night we were told she had died. Such a young, bonny girl, it doesn’t seem fair. So you can’t be surprised that he looks strained. She pure worshipped him. Very sad.’

  ~~~

  Despite a really savage wind driving sharp spicules of rain under her umbrella, Edge found herself smiling as she parked her car and walked briskly along to Vivian’s apartment. Here we go again? Tripping over clues that the police need? Normally she’d have gone straight to her apartment to phone Kirsty but the coolness between herself and Vivian would surely be banished by chewing over this little nugget, she couldn’t resist the temptation to stop there first.

  Vivian opened her door looking as flustered as Edge could ever remember seeing her.

  ‘Edge! This isn’t really a good—actually, no, come in for a moment, will you?’ She led the way through to the main room, where an exotically attractive coffee-skinned woman was sitting in front of the fire holding a cup of tea. She rose as Edge came in, saying something in a soft lightly-accented drawl about needing to leave anyway, look at the time—Edge looked at her with interest and an automatic smile as Vivian shut the door behind them.

  ‘Edge, I’d like you to meet—‘ Vivian stopped short, then with the tiniest possible shrug went on, ‘well, I guess I’d like you to meet Vivian Oliver. Strictly speaking, Vivian Fotheringham.’ An odd expression flickered across the other woman’s face, too quick to read, as Edge’s jaw dropped and Vivian said defensively, ‘Edge is my best friend, and anyway she knew my—your—parents.’

  ~~~

  ‘The most bizarre experience of my life, Edge’ Vivian absent-mindedly poured herself another cup of stone-cold tea after the visitor had left. ‘She knocked at my door and introduced herself as Dallas Winter. She said she knew my parents so naturally I invited her in. Then when she told me—!’

  ‘Told you what, though?’ Edge was agog and Vivian visibly pulled herself together and sipped the tea, then put it down with a grimace.

  ‘Sorry, I have to get some more tea first. Or a stiff drink. The shock! Long story short—we were exchanged as babies.’ She went into the kitchen, Edge hard on her heels and protesting.

  ‘Vivian, that’s ridiculous. You’re fair-skinned. Even if you’d both been yellow with jaundice, the stupidest person on earth surely couldn’t have mistaken a pale baby for a dark one!’

  Vivian made fresh tea with the careful concentration of one so racked by emotion she could barely operate, then looked miserably into Edge’s face. ‘It was deliberate. Dallas found out by accident eighteen years ago. Her mother needed a kidney after some awful car a
ccident and Dallas found her blood type didn’t match at all. They weren’t even related. Her mother, and I’m going to carry on saying her mother, because otherwise I will get even more confused, died almost immediately, so there was no chance to even ask her, but her father denied point-blank that she was adopted. He said there must have been a mistake at the hospital. Dallas said it was totally traumatic, because it knocked an absolute bus through their relationship.’

  Vivian stared into her cup, her knuckles white with the force of her grip. ‘To be honest, it had apparently never been great anyway—she has some kind of nervous twitch, did you notice it while she was here? She seems to be able to suppress it for short periods of time. I haven’t a clue what it is, and she didn’t say, but it’s quite unnerving. Anyway, she implied that her father had always found it... a problem. Certainly he got very het up about being fobbed off with the ‘wrong’ daughter—he sounds charming. She hired a detective and got as far as getting a list of all the babies born on the same day in the same place, then gave up. Then two years ago her aunt, her mother’s sister, died and left her a bit of money and all her mother’s letters. And there it was, in one of the letters. She brought the letter to show me, because it explains why as well.’

  ‘She doesn’t look old enough to be our age?’ Edge said dubiously and Vivian half-laughed.

  ‘Thank you! Actually I thought the same but she’s had her face done, you know. And she wears quite heavy makeup. That twitch makes it hard to stare at her but once I got used to it, close-up you can see the lines. Believe me, I was struggling to find a reason not to believe her.’

  Edge could well understand that. She herself remembered Mrs Fotheringham as a tall elegant woman with a cool manner, which warmed only with family and close friends. The thought of such a woman knowingly exchanging babies with a woman she met that day in a hospital was unthinkable and she shook her head involuntarily.

  ‘Should we be checking this? Where were you born, anyway? I couldn’t identify her accent—she sounded both American and slightly French?’

  ‘Heavens, Edge, I don’t know where I was born! Somewhere in Europe. Dallas was raised as Creole, her mother was from Louisiana, I asked about the accent myself. I know I wasn’t born in the States. The first place I remember living was France, then my father got his first actual embassy and we moved to North Africa. It’ll be in my baby book, I’ve got that stuck in a box somewhere. Or it might be in the letter, I read it so fast. Do you remember, when my sister was cross with me she’d call me the cuckoo, because I’m the only redhead in the family? And my mother would get cross with her—’

  Edge could see Vivian was close to tears, and patted her shoulder awkwardly instead of answering. After a moment she asked tentatively, ‘do you want to go on talking about this now, or take a break for a while?’

  ‘To be honest I was going to give you the letter; Dallas left it with me. I really do feel very odd. Could I come by yours later, when you’ve read the letter and I feel more myself? Or wait, you’ve got that horrible dog. Why don’t we dump the dogs in the runs at the house and have a drink inside? Seven o’clock?’

  ~~~

  Edge rang Kirsty about the nurse’s identification as soon as she had collected and fed Maggie, who had obviously been on high alert for hours and was almost too tired to eat.

  ‘Iain was right again.’ Kirsty’s voice warmed over the phone. ‘I get you involved and ta-dah, you bring us the missing boyfriend. After, may I point out, trying to fix me up with him. Slimy scunner. He may not have done it—well, we know he can’t have done it—but to stay shtum when he knew exactly who she was? My gast, as you like to say, is flabbered.’

  ‘It was a bit of luck though, wasn’t it? Am I too old to apply for a job?’

  She rang off, smiling, shed her blouse and jersey in exchange for a soft cashmere cowled top, re-pinned her hair, put on the kettle, and turned her full attention to the letter.

  The blue writing on blue paper was faded by time and blotched by tears shed many years earlier. The writer had, she said, been so desperately lonely in a strange country, a strange language, and with her husband working so hard to set up the company’s new offices. She’d had the briefest affair with a redheaded man, to cheer herself up, and nine months later given birth to a redheaded baby girl. It would have meant the end of everything but by a miracle she had been sharing a ward with a Scottish woman, the wife of a British diplomat, who was nearly hysterical at the thought of having to present him with the dusky-skinned proof of her own infidelity.

  Both husbands were abroad for the births, both were due to arrive in the next two days, eager to see their children. It was the diplomat’s wife who suggested the exchange and the writer—and at this point the letter was nearly illegibly splotched—hadn’t seen her own child since. Little Dallas, she said, was lovely, so pretty and as bright as a button. It had been the right decision, but she wished, oh she wished, that the two mothers had stayed in contact. If she could only be sure her real daughter was well, and happy. The birthdays were always the hardest times. The letter ended with the writer begging her sister to keep her secret, she couldn’t carry the burden alone any longer.

  Edge read it through twice, tears pricking her own eyes at the splotched bits. Back then, nearly sixty years ago, rainbow families were the exception. Each father would not only have to accept being cuckolded, but being branded as a cuckold by everyone who met them. She could understand the fear, she could even understand the exchange, but she simply could not put Mrs Fotheringham into the equation.

  Vivian’s mother was the quintessential diplomat’s wife. She was cool, charming, witty, and well-read. She had more than once ticked off the teenage Vivian and Edge for crossing a line that both girls rebelliously thought was drawn confiningly close. The thought of her enjoying a lusty romp was ridiculous, Edge could more easily imagine it of her own mother. Perhaps not. One’s mothers, and daughters, it is generally accepted, have never had, and will never have, sex. It couldn’t possibly be true.

  The nursing home wasn’t mentioned in the letter. Although Dallas said her detective had checked the information, if she was lying—for whatever bizarre reason—she would naturally lie about that, too. Deep in thought, Edge got up to get a glass of water and stood painfully on one of Maggie’s nylon bones, saying a few very rude words while the dog glanced away, apparently embarrassed by her language. While she was still hopping there was a knock at the door and she hobbled over with a fierce quelling look at Maggie over her shoulder. It didn’t work—Donald, outside the door, started to laugh as the two faces, one high, one low, peered out at him through the two-inch gap.

  ‘Oh, it’s you. Hang on, let me shut Maggie in the bathroom.’ She shut the door in his face, bundled the unwilling dog into the bathroom, and opened it again. ‘Hi, Olga, I didn’t realize you were there too—are you coming in?’

  ‘No, and I’d have told you not to worry penning up the dog if you’d given me the chance.’ Donald lifted his unstrapped hand slightly to show he had Odette on her lead. ‘We’re about to go for a walk and Olga said she’d feel safer if you and yon mad beastie were with us?’

  ‘Safer from you?’ Edge glanced, surprised, at Olga, who was looking very Russian in her fur hat and coat, and who shook her head violently.

  ‘I like to valk every day, but there is an odd man now on the campsite’ she explained in her heavily-accented English. ‘I am not feeling safe to valk alone. But Donald is joking a bit, I am happy just to not be alone.’

  ‘One of the campsite rondavels has been let.’ Donald clarified. ‘You don’t look dressed for a walk, though.’

  ‘Well, I’m not. And I did walk her already. Thanks for the thought, though. By the way, would either of you know where I could get a private detective, if I wanted one?’

  ‘Chap on Brian’s door.’ Donald said laconically. Olga gave him a startled glance and he switched Scottish for English. ‘I mean knock on his door. My neighbour, Brian? He was a sleuth, b
ack in the day. Don’t know if he’s up for all night stake-outs, mind, he’s no Magnum. What did you need to know?’

  ‘Oh, for starters, where someone was born. I’m, er, doing a bit of research. For an article. I wondered if there was a way of finding which nursing home someone was born in.’

  ‘Look up the birth announcement.’ Donald quelled his restless whippet with a glance. ‘If it went in the papers at the time, the grateful parents often thank the staff at the nursing home. If it’s someone born to the sort of parents who’d put it in The Times, for instance, look there? Look, Odette’s getting skittish, if you don’t get any joy on the birth announcements ask Brian, he’s a very nice man.’

  It took a bit of internet digging but Edge had previously signed up on some genealogy websites with useful additional software and, although slow, was persistent. She was finally rewarded with the announcement of Baby Fotheringham’s birth abroad, at a nursing home in Austria; a further search on a different site gave her the phone number.

  She glanced at her watch. It was Saturday and already past eight in the evening in Vienna, but she tried anyway on the off chance there was an administrator on duty round the clock. There was, and even better, the woman stopped her after two sentences and suggested they speak in English, as she could do with the practice.

  ‘Oh, how very tactful and kind of you!’ Edge beamed into the phone. ‘I know my German is shockingly rusty! Now, here’s the thing. I know you probably can’t give me much information—data protection and all that—but I was hoping that if I gave you a name, you could confirm whether that person was born there or not? It’s quite a long time ago, I’m afraid, but the thing is, I think there’s a possible fraud being set up.’

  ‘Ach, identity theft, so much of a problem nowadays. Our records go back to just after the war, is that far enough? What is the name? And the date?’ Edge told her and waited patiently as brisk tapping noises came from the other’s keyboard. After a wait that seemed to stretch to minutes the administrator asked her to confirm the surname.