“Well, they haven’t actually found many remains as yet. But the historian who did the research has found the death certificates of the seven hundred and ninety-six children who died in the home between 1920 and 1961. She didn’t find any graves anywhere to match that number. I mean, think about it. Where else would those children be buried? Their mothers had moved on. Their grandparents would hardly bury them in the family plot, would they? Grandchildren or not, they were considered bastards and outcasts. There is no record of them in any local cemeteries either.”
She shook her head. “Unbelievable. Almost eight hundred bodies.”
“The Irish government are talking about doing some kind of commission. Maybe they’ll excavate. Who knows?”
She looked over at the table opposite where a mother was feeding her toddler in a highchair.
“Those nuns and priests must have truly believed those babies were lesser human beings because they were born out of wedlock. Babies like me and Alexia.”
I nodded. “The Church and the State, which really amounted to the same thing, wanted to present this image of pure Catholic Ireland to the rest of the world. Fallen women had no place in that world and had to be hidden away and punished. You know how they referred to the women? ‘First offenders’ if they got pregnant once and ‘recurring offenders’ if it happened again. In the eyes of the State and the Church they were criminals who needed to be locked up. Though, of course, it was the families themselves who put them in the homes.”
“Unbelievable.”
“And Tuam probably isn’t the only Mother and Baby Home with a mass grave. It looks like there are others all over Ireland.”
She winced then leant forward and lowered her voice. “So what are the chances . . . that Tess’s baby is buried there?”
“Most of the deaths occurred in the thirties and forties when there was a lot of poverty. It’s far more likely Tess’s baby was adopted, probably illegally.”
“Why illegally?”
“In a word – money. Legal adoption was introduced in Ireland in 1952 but thousands of illegal adoptions involving wealthy Americans took place before and after. Families who had failed vetting in the US or wanted a child and didn’t want to hang around, simply went to Ireland. The whole process was a well-oiled adoption machine. Interested couples gave sizeable donations to Catholic charities elsewhere. The Church covered their tracks and made sure the donations couldn’t be traced back to the Mother and Baby Homes.”
“So a form of trafficking, then.”
“Exactly. Jane Russell, the Hollywood actress, did it. It caused a huge media storm in the UK at the time.”
She glanced down at her watch. “Sorry, hon, this is so fascinating, but I really have to get back to work. So what next? What’s your plan of action?
“I’ve contacted the Irish family agency to try and get hold of any birth or adoption certificates and I’ve written to the historian to see if Tess’s baby is on the list of children buried in the mass grave. But I haven’t heard anything back.” My face broke into a grin. “Then yesterday I had a breakthrough.”
Her eyes widened. “Go on.”
“Remember the girl in the letter called Kathleen Slevin who smuggled Dad and Tess’s letters.” I clasped my hands together. “Well, I’ve only gone and found her.”
“You haven’t.”
“I bloody well have. It was amazingly easy. In the letter Dad mentioned she was from Bohola, a small village not far from his home place. Slevin isn’t a very common surname in Mayo so I looked in the Irish Yellow Pages and found a couple of entries in Bohola. The very first one I rang was Kathleen’s nephew. He gave me the number of Margaret, Kathleen’s daughter. I rang her and explained why I wanted to talk to her mother. She was lovely and Kathleen was actually in the house with her at the time.”
“No way!”
“So Margaret went and spoke to Kathleen then she rang me back ten minutes later. Margaret said Kathleen wasn’t great on the phone so she wouldn’t put her on but that Kathleen remembered Tess well from her days in the home. She said she’d be happy to meet up the next time I was in Mayo.”
Karen grinned. “You’ve already booked a flight, haven’t you?”
I nodded. “Next week. I’m going to stay with Julia. Kathleen’s in her eighties now so she might not remember much but I’ll give it a go.”
She clutched her fists to her chest and cocked her head to one side. “Oh Carmel, I’m so very excited for you.” Her phone rang again. “For God’s sake!” She took it from her pocket, frowned down at the screen again but this time she didn’t answer it.
“You sure everything’s OK?” I asked.
She cleared her throat. “It’s the buyer of the house again.”
I drew my head back. “Buyer? So you’ve sold the house? Oh my God, that’s fantastic news! You’ve been wanting to move for forever. You said in your text that you had news and I’ve been going on and on about myself all this time. I’m so sorry. So have you found somewhere else?”
She caught my eye briefly then looked away. “Kind of. I’m moving to Rome with Alexia.”
Chapter 14
I met Karen for the first time when we were eleven years old. She stood, sullen-faced, in the classroom doorway in Oakwood High. Mrs Burns gestured sternly at her to take the empty desk next to mine. I’d clocked her in the playground on her first day, one of the few mixed-race girls in year seven, the only girl taller than me. She’d recently moved down from Scotland and joined the school mid-term. Two weeks in, she’d been moved out of her class into mine after almost being expelled.
Slowly, she made her way down the rows of desks, head held high, eyes focussed on the back wall. Two fat bunches of golden curls tied with red ribbons stuck
