And they would be correct.'
She shuddered, laid her head on his chest once more. 'I would rather die than become a breeding mare for that fat pig.'
'Then when I leave, I will take you with me,' he said plainly and with absolute certainty.
They lay there with only the sounds of the secluded wood and their thoughts. She thought of her sisters and brothers. How much she loved them and how much they would miss her when she was gone. How much she would miss them. The thought broke her heart.
Yet she knew there and she knew then that she would follow Horton to the ends of the earth.
Nigel hurried past the fountains and pond in front of The National Archives, bag banging against his hip as he moved. Outside the main door he could see Heather and Foster waiting, the latter pacing back and forth, clouds of breath billowing from his nostrils in the late autumn chill, like an impatient bull. Heather saw him approaching, nudged Foster and pointed. He immediately placed both hands on his hips in a familiar pose that, despite its inherent irascibility, caused Nigel to smile. Injury had not withered him.
'Sorry I'm late,' Nigel gasped.
'Well, you're here now,' Foster said.
'How are you, by the way?' Nigel asked. The last time he'd seen him was in a wheelchair at Karl Hogg's funeral.
'I'd be a lot better if people stopped asking me how I am,' he replied. Then he smiled and gave Nigel a wink.
'It's called small talk, sir,' Heather interjected.
'Yeah. Small talk, big waste of time,' Foster said, smile vanishing. 'Come on, let's get inside and I'll tell you what's what.'
On first impressions, Nigel thought, Foster didn't seem transformed by his ordeal. He followed them to a table in the canteen.
'I need to be somewhere else in ten minutes . . . actually, make that five now,' Foster said, looking at his watch once more. He was due to interview Trevor Vickers. 'I'll get straight to the point. I know you've delved a bit into Katie Drake's background. We'd like you to delve a bit more.'
'What do you mean by 'a bit more'?'
'Into her maternal line.'
Nigel furrowed his brow. A few months ago, Foster had had nothing but disdain for genealogy, now he was talking about researching the 'maternal line'.
'Can I ask why?'
'Let's just say there's a chance, an outside chance, that the person who killed her and abducted her daughter is some sort of distant relation. So if possible, we need to know anyone who might be alive today who shared a common maternal ancestor.'
Heather spoke. 'We found a hair at the crime scene.
There are any number of explanations for how it might have ended up on the victim's clothing. But one is that the killer left it -- and, even if it wasn't, then the person who it belongs to is someone we'd like to speak to. Our problem is that we can't get a full DN A profile from it. All we could get out of it was some mitochondrial DNA . . .'
'Which proved they shared a common maternal ancestor.
Fascinating,' Nigel said.
'You know about DNA?'
'I'm no scientist,' Nigel explained, 'to say the very least.
However, you can't be a genealogist these days and not be aware of the use of DNA.'
You've lost me,' Foster said. 'How the hell does DNA have anything to do with genealogy?'
'Well, there you're entering into a major debate. There are some who think it should have nothing to do with traditional genealogy, that we should all trace our ancestry the old-fashioned way, by following the paper trail. I have some sympathy for that view. But then there are those, an increasing number, who think DNA testing has a massive part to play, that it's the future of genealogy.'
Foster didn't seem interested in pursuing the debate.
'How long will the research take?'
'If you want the entire maternal line, then it might take longer than usual, simply because unlike the paternal line you're dealing with a number of name changes, given that most of the women will have married. But pretty quickly if you give me the support you did last time and get the General Register Office to pull the certificates I find and read out the information over the phone.'
'No problem,' Foster said. 'Heather will help you. She's used to giving you a hand.'
Nigel felt his stomach turn. 'Great,' he said, squeezing out a smile. Her smile was as forced as his. He guessed it wasn't her idea.
Foster left. They watched him go.
'He's lost weight,' Nigel said, seeking to fill any awkward silence. Here he was, alone with Heather again. Someone up there was taunting him.
'Six months sipping soup and red wine through a straw while his jaw healed,' she replied. 'He could market it as a miracle diet.'
'He seems OK, though.'
'He's back at work. I spoke to him a few times and he feigned enjoyment at doing nothing, but he fooled nobody.
It's quite sad. Other than his job, he has nothing.'
Nigel wracked his brain for something that defined his existence other than work. His quest failed.
Back upstairs the centre was filling up slowly, just as Nigel liked it. 'Is it still as busy as ever down here?' Heather asked as they walked.
'Oh, yes. It's a riot,' Nigel replied, earning a laugh, the throaty traffic-stopping one he loved. He'd do all he could to hear it regularly. He'd forgotten how much he enjoyed just being with her. Recently he'd been telling himself to live more in the moment, not easy for one who spent his life working in the past. Here was a chance to try his new approach.
'One day I'll explain,' she'd told him. Nigel wanted to postpone that moment. Any hope he still clinged to that she'd realized what a mistake she'd made might be snuffed out.
He aimed to trace Katie Drake's ancestry back as far as possible, before coming forward through the maternal line to identify as many living cousins as possible. With the help of the hotline to the GRO, the work was easy and without obstacle until 1891. In that year Horton and Sarah Rowley married four months before the birth of their daughter, Emma; he aged twenty-one, she just eighteen.
His occupation was given as carpenter. Neither gave the name of their fathers.
Nigel discovered the couple had two more children, Isaac and Elizabeth. In 1909, Horton -- a Christian name Nigel had rarely encountered before -- died in an accident, run over by an omnibus. Isaac was killed in the First World War. In 1913 Sarah died of pneumonia and pleurisy. Yet he could find no evidence of the couple's births among the indexes or on census returns for 1871 and 1881. He located them on the 1891 and 1901 censuses. On both occasions under 'Where Born' were the letters 'NK'. He showed the results to Heather.
'What does that mean?'
'Not known.'
'I suppose that means their parents were itinerant.'
'Hmm,' Nigel said, pulling at his bottom lip in thought.
Something wasn't right. He could sense it. Of course, he'd come across similar entries in the past. But rarely when both husband and wife were unaware of their birthplace.
'You're not convinced?' Heather asked.
'Well, there are many explanations. There's every chance they really didn't know where they were born. It's just odd for that to apply to both of them. And it gets even odder when you factor in their marriage certificate -- no names for either of their fathers. Of course, they could both be illegitimate; they are adopted, taken in by others, and they don't know their original place of birth.'
'You can't say they had nothing in common.'
