An urgent banging on the window felt like someone had just tightened the vice clamped to his brow. He shot up and looked out. It was Barbara, looking concerned and holding up the yellow folder. ‘You forgot this! Are you okay?’
Morton wound down the window and took the file. ‘Sorry—I…’ He had no more excuses. ‘Thank you—just got a headache, is all.’ He started the car and pulled away, exhaling with gratitude when the house disappeared from his rear-view mirror. He had really messed things up in there.
It took just seconds for his mind to drag him back to the main source of his distraction: the letters. Three days ago, he had received a phone call from Madge, his father’s fiancée. His deceased father’s fiancée. She had been clearing out the house and had discovered a pack of three letters—all of them unopened. They were addressed to Margaret Farrier—Morton’s biological mother and had been stamped in America. On the reverse of each letter was his biological father’s name, Harley ‘Jack’ Jacklin. That any communication between his parents existed was intriguing enough, but when Madge had told him the date that they were stamped, it sent Morton’s intrigue off the scale. 1976. Two years after his birth. ‘Surely you mean 1974?’ Morton had asked.
‘Nope, clear as anything: 1976,’ she had maintained, before adding, ‘Shall I burn them? Only, they’re private, are they not? And I can hardly post them down to Margaret in Cornwall now, can I?’
‘No, you will bloody well not burn them!’ Morton had ranted down the phone. ‘They’re family documents—my family documents. Don’t touch them!’
‘Okay,’ she had answered feebly. He knew that his response had been far too harsh, but the idea that on a whim this woman would toss such valuable items on the fire had left him feeling quite sick. Then, yesterday, as promised, she had hand-delivered them and they now lay, still unopened, on his study desk. He was desperate, absolutely desperate to open them and devour every word of the contents, yet somehow, he just couldn’t. Madge had asked him what he was going to do with them, revealing her horror that he might actually open them.
And so, the letters continued to taunt him. They plagued the entirety of the journey to Barbara’s house this morning, the same questions looping over and over in his mind. Why would his biological father suddenly have started writing to his biological mother two years after he had last seen her? Had his Aunty Margaret lied to him when she had said that she had heard nothing more from him since their tryst in January 1974 that had left her pregnant at the age of sixteen? Obviously if they were unopened, his Aunty Margaret had never received them. They had been intercepted. By whom? Her father? Why? What did they say? And why had he chosen to keep them rather than destroy them? And did Morton really have a right to look at them? Really?
He opened the front door of his house on Mermaid Street in Rye, East Sussex, set his bag down and headed into the kitchen. Judging by the low thud of some dreadful dance music coming from the television, his fiancée, Juliette was in the lounge. He swallowed down some migraine tablets with a glass of water, but now needed something stronger—either alcohol or caffeine.
‘Coffee or wine?’ Morton shouted, selecting a bottle of red from the rack.
A curious gasp rose from the lounge.
‘Put down the bottle and nobody will get hurt,’ a voice proclaimed at the kitchen door.
Morton looked up with a grin. It was Juliette’s best friend. ‘Hi, Lucy.’
‘What are you doing here?’ she demanded.
Morton was perplexed. He turned around and, with mock incredulity, checked that he had entered the correct house. He had. To his knowledge, there was no reason for him not to be there. ‘I live here.’
‘But you’re not supposed to be here—not now!’
And then broken fragments of conversation pierced through his migraine and into his mind, like vague shapeless clouds. He was banned from coming home until a certain time. When? Why? He couldn’t remember. Something to do with Juliette’s friends coming over.
‘Dresses!’ Lucy announced, sensing his obvious bewilderment.
‘Oh.’ The pieces of conversation miraculously fused. Juliette and her bridesmaids were having last-minute adjustments to their dresses before the wedding in three weeks’ time—making some kind of a girly afternoon of it. And he wasn’t supposed to be here. ‘Am I allowed to go up to my study?’ he asked with a grimace.
Lucy didn’t look happy. ‘No. Out. Now.’
Morton huffed, put down the bottle of wine, collected his bag and scampered back outside. He heard Lucy lock the door behind him. Great. Banished from his own house.
Somewhat aimlessly, he headed up Mermaid Street, the option of wine or coffee still undecided. As he approached the Mermaid Inn, the balance of scales began to tip favourably towards the former. But then he thought of the research that he was holding—now would be a good time to start work. A preoccupied mind, migraine, wine and a new genealogical case were not the best of combinations. The scales tipped back again and the coffee won.
He entered Edith’s House on the High Street and was greeted with a pleasant smile from the familiar young waitress. ‘Table for one? Large latte?’
He nodded, slightly stunned. When had he suddenly become a regular? He followed her to a table—his usual, he realised with horror. Juliette was right, he did drink far too much coffee. Maybe next time he
