Once inside,his jovial mood promptly dissipated. The lobby was guarded by MissLatimer, a fubsy pit-bull of a woman who delighted in throwing out amateurs whohad ‘popped in on the off-chance’ without the requisite raft ofidentification. In all the years that Morton had been visiting thearchives, she had never once smiled or passed a single pleasantry. Shewas all rules and regulations. Fill in that form. No pensallowed. You can’t take your laptop bag into the archives. Hesometimes wondered if she had a condition that meant she couldn’t actuallyphysically smile.
‘Good morning,’Morton said brightly.
Miss Latimerscowled. ‘Kindly fill in that form, so we know why you’re here.’
‘Of course,Miss Latimer,’ he said, smiling, as he signed the declaration of adherence tothe rules that he had never actually read.
‘Does that say Moron?’she asked flatly.
Very amusing ofthe ancient spinster, he was forced to admit. ‘Morton,’ he corrected,pushing all of his prohibited items into a locker. He made his wayupstairs to the search room, where the conspiracy to marginalise the publiccontinued with the air conditioning being set permanently to freezing. All in the name of archive preservation, Miss Latimer had told him when he hadcomplained on a previous visit.
He handed hisreader’s ticket to Max Fairbrother, the softly spoken, bald-as-a-mushroomstalwart, who had been the senior archivist there for more than thirtyyears. He passed a moment of small talk with Max before setting down hislaptop on one of the large tables in the centre of the room. He headedover to the burgeoning shelves and selected a thick file pertaining toSedlescombe. The folder housed an index to all archives relating to thevillage. If what he was looking for existed, it would be cataloguedhere. He located St George’s Children’s Home and thumbed through an indexto a range of records - pages of indexes to governors’ meetings, accounts,special fund-raising events, building developments, photographs and newspapercuttings. He reached the admission registers, which were neatly markedwith an official red stamp in the bottom right corner: ‘Closed for 75years.’ This was common practice for such sensitive documents but itdidn’t faze him in the slightest; being on first-name terms with Max usuallymeant that such rules were negotiable. The negotiation being that MissLatimer didn’t find out.
Mortoncarefully examined the index. Something was wrong. Next to theregister for 1944 were three small, typed words which sent a bundle of pinsdown his spinal cord: ‘Missing on Transfer’. He considered thepossibility that it was a coincidence that the records were missing and flickedthrough the rest of the documents: the admission registers for 1944 were theonly files listed as missing.
He hurried tothe front desk and, in hushed tones, briefly informed Max what he was searchingfor.
Max reachedacross the cluttered desk and took the ledger from Morton. He flickedback and forth through several pages, his lower lip curling as hesearched. Morton knew that Max had no idea why the register might bemissing. ‘It doesn’t give a reason,’ he answered finally. ‘Sometimes itwill say that the document wasn’t supplied by the donor. I don’t know,sorry.’
Morton noddedlike a suspicious interrogator. That volume must have been crammed withnames, yet Morton felt sure that the reason it was missing was down to just onename: James Coldrick.
‘Can I order up1943 and 1945?’ Morton asked.
Max scannedaround the office. No sign of Miss Latimer. ‘Sure,’ heanswered. ‘Fill in the slips and bring them back to me.’
Morton returnedto his desk and completed a small pink slip for each document with thereference code, his name and table number. In addition to the admissionsregisters, he also requested a bundle of governors’ meeting minutes and a stafflist that he thought he would take a chance with, plus the baptism records forthe local parish church.
Twenty minuteslater, in accordance with the rules, Max placed only the first three documentson Morton’s desk. ‘Good luck,’ Max said with a smile. ‘I’ve got afeeling you’re going to need it.’
‘Thanks,’ Mortonsaid. He didn’t need luck. He was a forensic genealogist: he was born forthis kind of work.
He divedstraight into the baptism register, thumbing his way carefully to the correctdecade. Baptisms in the 1940s generally gave the name of the child, parents’full names and address, plus the father’s occupation. Sedlescombe's beinga small, rural parish meant that Morton could search from 1930 through to 1950in just a few minutes. No sign of James Coldrick. He extended thesearch into the 1960s, just in case James had chosen an adult baptism when heleft St George's but there was nothing even close.
He closed theledger and opened the 1945 admissions register for St George’s, hoping that theapparently unborn James Coldrick was deposited at the home in the yearfollowing his birth. He flicked through the pages and ran his fingermeticulously down the list of names. Predictably, there was no mention ofJames Coldrick. Had the name appeared there, then it would have toldMorton everything that he needed to know: birth date, parents’ names,occupations and address. Ordinarily, he would have felt largelydisappointed at the setback, but he felt nothing but exhilaration at thislatest twist. Someone had worked hard to remove all traces of JamesColdrick’s birth. He knew at that moment that he wouldn’t find anyreference to James Coldrick in the files but still he painstakingly trawledboth registers, cover to cover, hoping to spot an anomaly.
After several hours of diligent searching,all Morton had discovered was the barbaric nature of the home, at which Linda,the manager of St George’s had hinted. Almost every child had facedritualised corporal punishment for the most minor of misdemeanours. Gplaced in solitary confinement for insolence. R given ten taps of thecane for rudeness. Taps of the cane: there was a euphemism if everMorton read one. Poor kids. Morton thought that it was of littlesurprise that James Coldrick had maintained a veil of silence over hischildhood.
The large tomeof governors’ meetings revealed little more than the passing of
