Motherlove (10 page)

‘Well, we won't let her overdo things here, don't worry. She can relax and get better. Mandy knows how to manage her.' He took the kit bag from Kelly as she was hoisting it on her shoulder. ‘How are you doing, Kelly?'

‘Oh, I'm managing fine. You know me.'

‘Yes, I do.' He swung his arm, loaded with the suitcase, round her and gave her a squeeze. ‘My sunshine soul. Always riding high on every wave. Trouble is though, Kelly, you're such a competent little manager it's easy to take you for granted. This couldn't have been easy for you. But you got her here.' He looked at the Astra. ‘Just.'

‘Don't think it's going to get through the MOT this time. It conked out on us once around Chippenham, but I got it going again.'

‘Sure.' Roger ushered her towards the house. ‘Kelly copes with everything.'

Gracious living at the Padstows'… Style with Feng Shui; designer porcelain with wholegrains; handcrafted woodwork with state-of-the-art electronics. Roz approved of the aromatherapy candles and Kelly loved the books and neither appreciated the market value of the Persian rugs or the bronze Buddha. They ate in the vast kitchen with its oak and granite, its Aga and Le Creuset casseroles, its immaculate quarry tiles and atmospheric under-lighting.

‘I expect you are both still vegetarian,' said Mandy, busy with goat's cheese and rocket. ‘We eat veggie quite often, don't we, Roger, even if we're not very strict about it anymore.'

Kelly, who had peeked inside a fridge the size of Belgium and seen a beef joint, two small partridges and a plate of Parma ham and chorizo, had already deduced that the Padstows had moved on from tofu and pulses, but if they were willing to pose as vegetarians again for Roz, that was very nice of them.

Afterwards, while Mandy fussed over Roz, settling her into her new quarters, Roger said, ‘Come and see the Dexters.'

Cows, not neighbours. Kelly obliged. They walked together through the summer twilight, chatting as if their paths had never diverged. Roger was still, after all, Roger. He might wear a quilted gilet but he still had a ponytail. He talked of Dexters and White Parks and Maris Widgeon wheat, and Kelly talked of lambing and dyer's madder and St John's wort.

‘So what are you going to do, Kelly?' Roger straddled a five bar gate as they looked out across the rolling landscape. ‘How are you going to cope with Roz?'

‘I'll do fine. She's much better than she was, you know. Not really an invalid. Just needs to take care.'

‘Are you going to keep your smallholding on?'

‘Of course!' The thought of leaving it had never occurred to her.

‘It's a lot for you to cope with, if you're dealing with Roz as well.'

‘I can cope.' She looked at Roger, trying to assess his reasoning. ‘Why's it worrying you?'

‘Because we worry about you. Both of you. We care hugely about Roz, you know we do, but we care just as much about you.'

‘Yes.' Kelly laughed, swinging up onto the gate to sit beside him. ‘I know you do. Thanks. I know how much you've done for us.'

‘I wouldn't say that we did that much.'

His demurral was fake, so she brushed it aside. ‘You know you did. Mum's always been, always will be, well, a bit flaky. She was just a kid, wasn't she, when she joined you. Without you, I don't know where she'd have finished up.'

He smiled, remembering. ‘She was always fragile. I like to think we helped. We watched her blossom. But then she opted to leave with Luke and we thought that was it. We'd lost her. It was never going to work.'

‘Happy families,' explained Kelly. ‘I think that was it. She always had this fuzzy goal of something “normal” and she thought marrying Luke would be as normal as it could get.'

‘We thought, to be honest, she was one of those women just doomed to fall for the wrong sort of man. I don't want to bad-mouth Luke, but we all knew he'd never be able to give her the sort of support she needed, and she was never going to be the sort of woman who'd stand up to him.'

‘She did though, in the end.'

‘Yes! Yes, she did. Well done her.'

‘You see, your influence won through in the end, because she realised we could make it on our own.'

‘You think it was down to us?' Roger laughed, with a hint of wistfulness. ‘We all knew the Luke business wouldn't last and I thought she'd come back to us. Instead, she found her own feet. And you know, Kelly, that was down to you. She had you to care for, you to focus on, and even though you were a kid, you were there for her. Our little Kelly. Even now, I don't think she'd cope on her own. She's always going to be half in this world and half out.'

‘In a very nice way.'

‘Oh, a very nice way. Blind to all the nastiness of life. Does she still believe all your surplus lambs are living wild and free on the Preselis?'

Kelly laughed. ‘She still believes Gwynfor takes them off our hands because he wants to give them a happy home. Well, he really did want to keep the first one. Rambo. Very productive, apparently. I haven't told her that the others go to market with the rest of his sheep, and she doesn't choose to ask.'

‘That's Roz. I'm sure she could work it out if she chose but her motto has always been, “See what you want to see.” Always in charmed denial over anything uncomfortable.'

‘It doesn't hurt.'

‘Except it's why she's in the state she's in now, isn't it…'

‘Yes, I know.' Kelly picked at splinters of wood. ‘Wouldn't dream of going to a doctor, but she must have known things were wrong. She's been dosing herself up with herbal stuff for years. But you know what she's like. It's a bit like the rates. If she refuses to acknowledge something, maybe it will go away.'

Roger ruffled her hair. ‘Of course. You know exactly how she operates. Because you're the one who sorts it all out for her. But it's going to be a lot more than keeping an eye on the rate demands from now on, Kelly.'

‘I know.'

‘That's what's really worrying us. I know you can cope. No one can cope like Kelly. But what's happening to your own life? Are you going to spend it all as your mother's nurse and minder? Nothing for yourself?'

‘I have plenty for myself. Everything I want. I'm very efficient; I can multi-task.'

‘What about college?'

‘I've been to college.'

‘I mean university, getting a proper degree.'

‘Why would I need one?'

Roger looked away, over his rolling acres, with a twinge of embarrassment. ‘You can control her diabetes, but her kidneys are never going to improve, are they? At best, you're going to be managing it. At worst, she'll go downhill. Kidneys are tricky things.'

‘I know. I wanted to give her one of mine.'

Roger grimaced. ‘Of course you would, Kelly. Please don't rush into anything. I'm not saying don't do it, but think long and hard about it.'

‘No need. I'm not suitable. They did tests – Mum didn't want it, but I needed to know, and there's no match, blood and tissue, so my kidneys are no use to her.'

‘That's that then.' He was relieved. ‘And I suppose she has no idea where her family is. She used to speak about a brother, but she never had any contact with him while she was with us. Any other relatives?'

Kelly rested her chin on the gate. ‘The thing is, in a purely genetic sense, there might be.'

Roger sensed the hesitation, the way she was looking at nothing in particular, certainly not looking at him. Kelly always looked directly at the person she spoke to. He swung his leg over and jumped down from the gate. ‘How do you mean?'

Kelly chewed her lip, still gazing into the middle distance. ‘Mum's terrified there was a mix-up at the hospital.'

‘With her treatment?'

‘No, in the maternity ward, when I was born. A nurse told her labels had got switched.'

Roger opened his mouth to speak, thought better, shut it, then started again. ‘You mean she thinks you're not her child?'

‘Sort of.'

‘Kelly, I wouldn't worry about it.'

‘I don't!'

‘I mean, I wouldn't give the story much credence if I were you. Seriously. Your mother has always been, well, a bit paranoid. That's exactly the sort of story she would hit on, like a focus for her fear. You were all she had, so she was terrified of losing you.'

‘I do know how she works.'

‘Yes, of course you do. And you must know how improbable it is. Things like that don't really happen. Not without people noticing, not without a huge furore and legal action and heads rolling. God.' He winced. Kelly could tell he was thinking now of his own children. ‘It would be a parent's worst nightmare.'

‘Would it?' She was Kelly again now, looking at him so directly he felt he was in the dock. ‘Would you stop feeling like Tanja's dad if you discovered there'd been a mix-up at her birth?'

‘God, I don't know. No, of course not, but – no, but I'd want to know, I'd need to know what had happened to my real child.' He saw the disappointment in her face and blushed. ‘But of course Tan would still be my child. Hell, it's just not that simple. And listen, Kelly, don't waste your time thinking about it. It's not true. Roz is your mother, and she had half a dozen doctors and nurses in that maternity ward witnessing your birth. So there's not a blood match with your mother. That's bad luck maybe, but it doesn't prove anything.'

‘No,' agreed Kelly. Why say more? Roger was not seeing this the way she saw it. No point in telling him that the blood and tissue tests might have proved nothing, but the other test had.

She thought about it as she lay in bed, in Tanja's room. Tanja was in London. After Cambridge she had got a job in television. Current affairs, nothing to do with animals. She had always liked animals as a little girl and, judging by the horsey theme in her fluffy bedroom, she had continued to like animals in her teens. Or at least she'd liked to hunt them. Not a glimpse left of the little gipsy Kelly had known. Funny things, people. They never seemed to know what they wanted or how to be happy. Kelly had always found knowing what she wanted easy.

Except for this. Was this feeling dissatisfaction? She was determined to know. Determined enough to connive, to search the internet for maternity tests. All in secret. Even the tests Dr Matthews had arranged for the tissue matching had distressed Roz. The thought of a specific maternity test would have killed her. So Kelly had managed by subterfuge – the mouth swabs, the forged signatures.

She didn't feel guilty about it. Kelly wasn't paying for the test in order to reject or accept Roz. Nothing was going to alter their relationship. It was just the thought of that other girl out there. She had to know.

When Kelly had first jumped in with an offer of one of her kidneys, she had experienced a queer flutter of pleasure, the satisfaction of sainthood. She had mocked herself, but what was wrong with feeling good about self-sacrifice? And as she couldn't make that sacrifice, what if there was someone else out there who could? Would they? She would, she was confident of that. If a complete stranger approached her out of the blue and told Kelly that one of her kidneys could save an unknown woman, she was certain she wouldn't hesitate. That glow of virtue. Kelly had a strong sense of morality. Her own, based on her own values. A morality that would have urged her to save someone else if she could, but that didn't stop her tricking her mother over the maternity test.

The result had come on the day they'd heard from Roger and Mandy, inviting Roz to stay with them for a while to recuperate.

Roz was not Kelly's mother.

Kelly had read the report, put it aside and concentrated on persuading her mother to accept the Padstows' invitation, making the arrangements, kicking the Astra into some sort of life, persuading Joe to move in for a few days to take care of the animals. Those were the things that mattered. The maternity test didn't.

But now Roz was here, it was time to think about the test. Somewhere out there was the child that Roz had carried for nine months, the girl whose blood and tissue might match. Kelly had arranged the test in order to know. What to do with the knowledge? She would have a week or two to think about it, while Roz was in Roger and Mandy's care, but she had no idea what steps to take. Somewhere in her imagination lurked a nebulous image of serendipity, an accidental meeting of two young women who recognised each other by magical instinct. But it was never going to happen that way. Any meeting would have to be engineered and Kelly had no idea how to begin.

This house seemed alien in the night, with its trappings of affluent chic. She needed to be back at Carregwen, mulling over the options with the chickens, discussing it with Eleanor and Rigby the goats.

Then in the morning everything changed.

Before breakfast, she carried her kitbag out to the car and found it gone. She returned to the house. ‘Mandy, where's the Astra?'

Mandy, busy with dried fruit, hurried to reassure her. ‘It's all right. Rog will explain. Roger!'