‘It wasn’t like that,’ Rufus said.
‘I left her …’ Isobel looked at her hands. She looked up. ‘I left you, Bridie, on the doorstep of the theatre. In a moment of madness. I’d hastily written a note, and pinned it to your little coat, sayinglook after her, and signed my name, explaining that I didn’t have anybody else to look after you, and I was desperate. I just needed a few days to pull myself together, before I … I confronted you, Reggie, and Rufus, with the truth. I hadn’t disappeared, exactly – well, I did to give birth. I knew yourtroupe were still starring in the show there and would take her in, Rufus.’
Rufus. said, ‘What note?’
Bridie looked from Rufus to Isobel.
Everyone fell silent.
Isobel said, ‘So that explains why you never came looking for me. You didn’t know she was mine.’
Rufus shook his head. ‘It was the last night. After what Claire had been through, still in London coping with our loss, the last thing I was going to do was attend the wrap party, so I quietly left. When I stepped outside, I heard a faint cry, and there she was, in a moses basket. I thought she was a foundling. I should have taken her straight to the police to contact social services. I was on my way, carrying her in the little basket along the promenade, and then …’ He paused for a moment. ‘I thought, goodness knows where this baby will end up once she’s handed in to social services, and how long she’ll wait in foster care for a family. And I had a loving family waiting for a baby to come home.’
Everyone sat there in silence.
Rufus continued, ‘It wasn’t until … until a few years later, when I realised the likeness was unmistakable. At the time, I just thought this miracle foundling had appeared out of nowhere, and … and when I thought of my wife, up in London, pining for her lost baby …’
‘So,’ Kate said, ‘You thought this baby could just replace our dead sister?’
‘No, not at all. It was never like that – was it, Claire?’
‘Not at all. You can’t just replace a child, but I had so much love in my heart to give, and here was a baby that I could love and cherish.’ Claire’s brow furrowed. ‘But I never believed you, Rufus, about her being a foundling.’
‘What are you talking about?’ Rufus asked, his brow furrowed.
‘I always thought there had to be more to it than that, Rufus. You weren’t the only one who noticed that the older she got, the more Bridie resembled Isobel Raine. But I kept my mouth shut because I didn’t want there to be any chance someone would come along and take her. She was my baby now, and nobody was going to take another baby away from me,’ Claire said vehemently. ‘So, we returned from London, two happy parents with my newborn daughter, as far as everyone was concerned, apart from the two other people who knew the truth – Rufus and …’ she turned to Bridie, ‘your grandad.’
Bridie sat there in silence, taking it all in.
Rufus looked at his wife. ‘But I never—’
‘And there you have it,’ said Claire. ‘They’d had an affair. But the moment I set eyes on you, Bridie, I fell in love with you. You were my daughter, and nothing was going to change that, or is going to change that – not now, not ever. Do you understand?’
Bridie nodded. And now she understood that her dad and grandadhadfallen out over her – the baby he had brought back to her grandad’s flat, where Claire was staying, recovering from the still-birth. He would have known their plan to return home with the foundling and not tell anyone the truth.
Bridie cast her eyes over to Isobel. ‘Didn’t you ever wonder what had happened to me?’
‘I knew what had happened to you.’
Kate said, ‘How?’
‘When I returned a few days later, I realised something – I’d not known at the time that I’d left you on the doorstep on the last night of the performance. I knew the show had finished for the evening, and all the theatregoers had gone home, so it would only be the performers left in the theatre. However, I didn’t realise it was the wrap party.’
Reggie said, ‘It wasn’t a party for me without you there. I just sat in my dressing room with a bottle of wine, drowning my sorrows.’
‘Sorry,’ Isobel said in a small voice. She continued her story, ‘So, when I returned to see the cast, and collect my baby, there wasn’t a soul there. The theatre had been locked up and … well, abandoned. I asked a passerby, who clearly didn’t recognise me from the original cast, about the play. That’s when I discovered I’d left my baby on the last night of the performance. Even so, I still expected cast members to be there, rehearsing another play. But then I discovered there wouldn’t be any more shows. The theatre was closing for good. The theatre troupe were disbanding and going their separate ways. The passerby, clearly a local, blamed it on what had happened a few months earlier, the day I walked out on the show. Of course he didn’t know it was me. But he told me that the police had been called in over the disappearance of the lead actress, and although there were rumours that all had not been well with the cast, there was no foul play involved. The show went on without her … me, but apparently the locals believed that it wasn’t the same anymore, and they weren’t surprised that the theatre group had disbanded afterwards.’
Reggie said, ‘We’d had the biggest row just before opening night of the play you ended up walking out of, all because I was getting frustrated over your lack of coordination, forgetting your lines – all that. So, when you walked off the stage during one of the performances, and disappeared, I always blamed myself.’
Rufus said, ‘You didn’t tell me that.’
Isobel looked at Reggie. ‘When I returned to find the theatre closed up, and our theatre troupe no more, I heard you had gone to Southeast Asia – but nobody knew where.’
‘Thailand,’ said Reggie. ‘I didn’t know what to do with myself, so I just headed somewhere, far away, where I could live cheap,and … and try and forget you. Eventually, I yearned for home, so some years later, I returned and leased a shop in Cobblers Yard with a little flat above, and that has been my life.’
There was a pause, until Reggie asked, ‘So, how did you find your baby?’
‘That day I returned to discover the theatre shut up, and you all gone, I didn’t know where the other cast members were either. But there was one person out of the cast whom I knew exactly where to find.’
