‘About who she really is. Who she was before she pretended to be some rich foreigner’s wife and businesswoman.’
‘I don’t think she’s ever hidden the fact that she came from middle suburbia,’ Jenny pointed out, certain that she’d read an article about it somewhere.
‘She didn’t tell them the whole truth, though. But we don’t care about any of that. All I wanted to do was find out about the baby. The family lost all contact after she took it away.’
‘You just said she leftwithoutthe baby.’
‘She did, for about six months. She only came back for it after Aunty Ruth and Uncle Lionel tracked her down. It was after the accident, when Matt died. My aunty and uncle were getting on and they couldn’t raise a baby and run the pub. So she came back, collected the baby and left again. That was the last anyone heard from her.’
A baby? Susie hada child? But that didn’t make any sense. Nick hadn’t mentioned a niece or nephew, and she was certain that he would have if he’d been aware … Nick said she’d run away from home as a teenager. Had Susie gone off and had a child unbeknown to the rest of her family, then put it up for adoption? The idea had merit. Nick could have a niece or nephew out there somewhere.
‘Do you think you could find out?’ Sharon asked, cutting into her racing thoughts and looking at Jenny solemnly. ‘She’snot going to talk to me about it, but maybe you could find out something? It’d mean the world to us. To know what happened to him.’
‘Him?’ Jenny repeated slowly. ‘She had a little boy?’
‘Yeah.’
Jenny had to stop the million and one questions zooming through her head to concentrate. ‘When was this? How long ago?’
‘Had to be—what? Forty years? No, maybe not that long … thirty-eight? Thirty-nine?’ Sharon asked her husband, scrunching up her face as she obviously tried to calculate the time.
‘Yeah, something like that,’ George confirmed.
The same age as Nick. The ridiculous idea popped into her mind before she quickly shook it away. Surely not …
Jenny suddenly felt light-headed.
Nick’s sister had a secret baby at the same time as Nick’s mother hadhim?
She thought back to the conversations they’d had earlier about his sister. She’d run away before he’d been born. They hadn’t grown up together. His parents had a falling out with her.Stop it!she told herself firmly. It was entirely possible that everything Nick had told her had been true. His parents had just had him late in life.
Somehow she knew deep down that she’d just discovered the shocking truth. Susiewasn’tNick’s sister.
She was his mother.
