Cath Staincliffe - Looking for Trouble

I spoke again. ‘The place where they found her, it’s not far from where Martin was staying. I think she went there. I don’t know if that’s why she was killed, or whether that was some awful coincidence. And I still don’t know why she wanted to find Martin, how she knew him, why she pretended that he was her son.’

‘He was.’

I only just caught the words. ‘But he can’t be. I’ve met his real mother and…’

‘Janice was his real mother. She gave him up for adoption when he was born. He was her son.’

‘I even offered to raise the child myself, but Janice wasn’t having it. Social worker didn’t like the idea either…’ She stopped, caught by a memory, then just as suddenly resumed her story. ‘I never knew whether she made the right choice. All I could do was stand by her. It wasn’t easy for her, but it was the child she was thinking of. She said it wouldn’t be fair on the baby if she got ill again. And she couldn’t bear the thought of growing close and then losing the child.’

‘But surely with treatment, with support…’ I protested.

‘I don’t know.’ She ran her hands through the thick white hair. ‘Janice had plenty of treatment. Never seemed to make much difference. She was in hospital again within the year. That was her third time. Who can say whether it would have been the same if she’d kept him? I really don’t know. She was hurt, over the adoption.’ She sighed. ‘There’s no easy way to lose a child.’ Her mouth pulled and I remembered her own loss. She rummaged in her pocket and drew out a large white hanky. Wiped her eyes and blew her nose.

‘I still keep forgetting,’ she said, smiling gently, ‘that she’s gone. You’d think it would have sunk in by now.’

‘When did she first trace Martin?’

‘Way back. He was five. She’d thought about it a lot. Reckoned it’d be easier to trace him once he was registered at school. She used a private investigator then. Didn’t let on to me till it was all done.’

‘Did she think you’d disapprove?’

She nodded. ‘Raking up the past. I thought it’d hurt her even more. She’d given up all claim on him. That’s what adoption is. Was then, anyway. He had a new family, a new name. Anyway, this bloke knew what he was doing; followed up birth certificates and this and that and came back to Janice with two possibilities. He’d got photos. One of them was Martin.’

‘How could you be sure?’

‘He was the spitting image of Janice at that age. To a ‘t’. She was over the moon. She went and watched him going to school one day. It was then that she told me about it.’

‘And after that?’ I asked.

‘She was happy enough to know where he was. Now and then, she’d drop by the school or pass by his house. Few times a year. She never said much about it – just that she’d seen Martin. I used to worry that it’d stir things up, you know, open up old wounds, but she coped alright. In the end, I suppose I thought it was harmless enough. Then, this last couple of years she starts worrying about when he leaves home; how she’ll know where he is, which college will he go to? Janice was always bright, you see; she’d have gone a long way if it hadn’t have been for her troubles. More brains than the rest of us put together.’ She grinned and I saw again the smile of Janice in the paper, the smile of Martin with his fish. ‘Anyway,’ she paused for a moment as if searching for the best way to tell me something awkward, ‘she began to talk about making contact. Martin was nearly sixteen, she reckoned he’d a right to know.’ She sighed with exasperation. ‘We argued about it. I thought it was wrong. He might not even know he was adopted. When she gave him up, she gave up all those rights.’ She cut the air with her hands to emphasise the point. ‘1 couldn’t get her to see sense, but she never mentioned it again. I hoped she’d given up on the idea.’

‘She didn’t tell you about coming to me?’

‘No.’ She leant across and retrieved her glasses, wove the chain between her fingers as she talked. ‘She told me Martin had left home. She rang up in a right state. She’d not seen him at school, so she’d gone to the house and watched there. In the end, she rang the house; pretended to be some careers advisor or some such thing. Mrs Hobbs tells her Martin’s in hospital, that he’s had a breakdown. Well, you can imagine what that did to Janice.’

‘Oh, God.’

‘I persuaded her to come and stay here for a couple of nights. She was worrying herself sick. Which hospital was he in, had he been sectioned? She wouldn’t let up. In the end, we rang all the hospitals. No trace of him. We didn’t know what on earth was going on.’

‘When was this?’

‘Towards the end of May. Knowing he wasn’t in hospital calmed her down. We began to think there’d been some strange mix-up. Anyway, I let her go home. Next thing I know, she’s on the phone, terribly agitated, talking about Martin being,’ she struggled with the word, pulling the spectacle chain taut across her palm, ‘well, being abused, you know, by his father.’

She leant forward, clasping the glasses in her lap, looking at them as she spoke. ‘I thought she’d flipped. That she was getting it all mixed up…losing touch. If I’d only realised…’ I kept quiet, sensing there was more to come, ‘it was bad enough her hearing that Martin had got ill, but then that…’ Her breathing came fast and shallow. ‘To find out…just the same…the same.’

The penny dropped. Janice Brookes had been a victim of abuse too. Mrs Williams still bent forward, her face obscured by the cap of white hair falling over it.

I had to break the silence; acknowledge what I’d heard.

‘Was it her father?’ I asked. My voice sounded thin and reedy.

She nodded her head. ‘Bastard.’ She whispered the curse, but there was anguish in her quiet delivery of the words. ‘She was only a kid. I had no idea.’ She looked up at me now, hiding nothing of the pain in her brown eyes and the tremors that shook her lips. ‘I’ve never forgiven myself. How could I not know, in my own house? When you can’t even protect your own…’ Her Scouse accent was more pronounced now. ‘I threw him out sharp enough once I found out, but it was too late, too late for Janice. That’s what made her ill. I’m sure of it.’

In the silence that followed, I heard the sing-song of a siren approaching the hospital and the shrieks and calls of children playing in some nearby school.

And I thought of Janice, whose childhood had been stolen; of Martin. I felt the pain of the white-haired woman opposite me and thought of my own daughter, of the passion that bound me to her. I could never bear for her to suffer in the ways that Janice had. How could any mother bear it? My throat ached and tears started in my own eyes.

‘I don’t know about you,’ Mrs Williams said huskily, tears coursing down her cheeks, her nose reddening, ‘but I’m ready for another cuppa.’

‘Yes,’ I smiled, ‘that’d be great.’

I’d managed to regain my composure by the time she returned. I concentrated on filling in the factual gaps in Janice’s story. Janice hadn’t been in touch again after the Saturday. Mrs Williams knew of no reason for her daughter, who lived in Bolton, to be in South Manchester. Janice had been working part-time in a sandwich bar. She gave me the address. She’d been friendly with staff there and also with her next door neighbour. No other friends her mother knew about. She hadn’t been involved with anyone romantically.

The police hadn’t been back in touch with Mrs Williams since their initial interview. At that time, she’d had no reason to connect Martin with her daughter’s sudden death. Natalie had never known about her half-sister’s child. She’d only been nine when Martin was born.