Stone Cold Red Hot - [39]

Sheila was washing up in the kitchen; she shares it with us and has a flat in the attic with her own bathroom and sitting room.

“You look tired,” she said.

That made me yawn. “I didn’t get in till nearly three, my car got nicked last night.”

“Oh, no, where?”

I told her all about it as I made myself some tea and crumpets. “And now,” I yawned, “I’m absolutely shattered.”

“Early night?”

“Yes.” I didn’t want to play gooseberry to the loving couple and I nearly said so to Sheila but it wasn’t the right moment, really. If I was going to raise it we needed time for a good talk. I wanted to know if she found Ray had changed and what she thought about Tom and Ray leaving us or Laura moving in. “What about you? Course going well?”

“I love it,” she laughed at herself. “I’ve definitely got the bug. I’m hoping that they’ll let me do a PHD after this.”

“Good for you.” She was in the second year of a degree course in geology, after the break up of a twenty-year marriage.

I slathered my crumpets with butter and Marmite and took them up with my drink.I read for a while but found it hard to concentrate. I checked on the kids before I went to bed. All was well. I had a bunch of late sweet-peas by my bed. I lay there and breathed in their perfume and tried not to think about work; about secrets and lies and snapshots of a girl with stars painted on her cheeks. I tried for ages. And then I slept.

The nearest car rental place was in Didsbury. I rang and checked that they could help me, then, armed with my driving license, credit cards and proof of identity, I walked down there and got sorted out with a nice white Datsun. It had a stereo sound system which would help to relieve the tedium of the M62.

It was raining steadily as I drove out over Barton Bridge and got stuck in the queues for the massive Trafford Centre. The place had a wonderful dome but the prospect of miles of mall and hundreds of shops and shoppers was my idea of hell not heaven. If I ever had a few grand to spend it might be fun but even then I’d prefer wandering round real streets with sky above and proper city air and pigeons.

I reached the M62, peeling off from the traffic going west and began to climb the Pennine hills. Some are so steep there are crawler lanes for the heavy goods vehicles that have to slow down, but there were still plenty of manic trucks on the road that October day, slewing past me in a welter of spray and muck or travelling stubbornly in pairs, a lane each, vying to overtake. I was relieved to see the Huddersfield exit and content myself with getting lost in the one-way network.

The records of births, deaths and marriages were housed in the Local History Library. Once I’d found the right section I dutifully deposited my bag in one of the lockers. Pens were forbidden, presumably in case someone got carried away and scrawled “found Grandma!” or “this must be Harry’s wife” on precious archives. I purchased a pencil and found a free microfiche viewer.

The place was quietly busy, to my left an elderly man was surrounded by papers and books which he referred to in between peering at his screen. To my right a young couple were working together and talking in whispers. The microfiches were kept in folders, each year divided into quarters. I went to the birth records folders and pulled out the one for 1977. I settled in front of the viewer, got my notebook and pencil ready and began to trawl through the entries.

Jennifer had been pregnant in the summer of 1976, maybe only a few weeks but possibly two or three months, so I checked from the following spring through to autumn. There were three Pickerings; my heart leapt each time I saw the name – had I found Roger’s niece or nephew? But when I examined the details each entry gave a different maiden name for the mother – these were women who had married a Pickering. I needed a Pickering whose maiden name was Pickering. No joy. If Jennifer had given birth there was no record of it.

Had she married? I repeated my search in the marriage records. Nothing. Steeling myself, I moved on to look at the Deaths. Beginning in 1976 I searched every year for Jennifer. There were two Jennifer Pickerings, but each was too old at seventyseven and eightythree to be the one I wanted. I finished the latest folders and sat back rolling my shoulders from the strain of peering at all the data. I needed a break from sitting scrolling through the lists so I retrieved my bag and went to get a coffee.

As I sipped it and munched on a flapjack I wondered whether there was anything else I could usefully do. There was no sign of Jennifer’s death or of her baby’s birth. Even if she had decided on adoption the original birth records would be here. Perhaps she had miscarried or gone for an abortion. She felt like a chimera. I’d seen her photograph, talked to her friends, met her family but she kept slipping through my fingers. Like she never existed.

It was instinct that made me return to the birth records again. I certainly had no clue what I was expecting to find. And the rational part of me thought I was just prevaricating because I didn’t want to admit defeat and go home.