‘If you’re worried about the little one,’ he said, pre-empting her protest, ‘I know a really good woman who would look after her.’
Sarah frowned. A stranger looking after her baby all day? She wasn’t sure about that … but perhaps …
‘Tell you what,’ said Peter, ‘think about it. I don’t need an answer straight away.’
Sarah watched him as he went back to the counter to buy mugs of tea for them both, an ice cream for the girls and to pay for their meal. He was such a kind man. A lump formed in her throat. Oh Henry … why? Why?
*
‘We’ll have to put in place a few ground rules about this.’
Malcolm Mitchell had gathered his wife and daughter in the sitting room of his comfortable home near the Thomas A Becket public house, about two miles from the centre of Worthing. He was anxious to regain control of a tricky situation. His good name was at stake. As a member of Worthing Borough Council, his reputation had to be squeaky clean, and as a Freemason even more so. They had let Annie sleep late as usual and now that breakfast was over and the maid was in the kitchen, where she could no longer eavesdrop on the conversation, he was anxious to decide on their next move. ‘Your mother will arrange a place for your confinement and for the adoption society to take the baby as soon as it’s born. You must stay indoors until the trial comes up. We don’t want the neighbours or the gutter press making your predicament into a public spectacle. I think if you keep a low profile, there’s no reason why you can’t pick up the threads of your life again once the birth is over.’
Neither woman spoke. Annie sat on the edge of the sofa staring at her hands, while her mother sat in the armchair gazing somewhere into the middle distance. Her father stood by the fireplace.
‘Of course,’ said her father, slipping his thumbs either side of his waistcoat and thrusting out his generous stomach, ‘if you had listened to me in the first place, you wouldn’t have found yourself in this situation.’
Annie’s face flamed. He just couldn’t resist, could he? He had to keep reminding her that it was her own headstrong actions that had brought all this to pass.
‘You seem to forget,’ Annie mumbled, ‘that I didn’t know he was already married.’
‘That’s as maybe,’ said her father, ‘but I knew he was a thief and I’m going to make damn sure he pays for his crimes.’
Annie’s head jerked up. ‘You knew? But you never said anything!’
‘I was trying to protect you,’ said Malcolm. Already the atmosphere between them was heating up. ‘He and I had words when that brooch went missing. Of course he denied it, but I knew it was him.’
So it was the brooch that had brought them to the police station, not his own daughter’s desperate need. She’d been too miserable to ask why they were there. DS Hacker had said the brooch was stolen, but Annie didn’t think for one minute that it had come from her father’s shop. ‘You should have said something in the first place,’ she said.
‘And would you have listened?’ he challenged. ‘No. You were too besotted with him to take any notice of anything I said. Well, from now on, my girl, things will have to change around here. If you are going to live under my roof,’ he was wagging his finger now, ‘I want you to promise that you will do as I say.’
Annie remained silent. Looking at his pompous face and wagging finger, it occurred to her that her father could be insufferable at times.
‘I’m only doing this for your own good,’ Malcolm Mitchell insisted. ‘If you do as I say, when this has all blown over, and people have forgotten what happened, you’ll probably be able to find a decent young man who will forgive your past and take you as a wife.’
Annie could feel her heartbeat quickening again. ‘None of this was my fault!’ she cried. ‘And I wouldn’t have run off with him if you’d given him a chance, Father.’
‘Oh, I think you already knew something about his character,’ her father spluttered. ‘That’s why you didn’t invite your mother and me to the wedding.’
‘You hated him from the word go,’ she cried. ‘And I did invite you. You chose not to come.’
‘I never hated him,’ Malcolm insisted. ‘But I knew he was no good.’
Annie said nothing.
‘If the chairman of the Borough Council gets to hear of all this …’
‘You don’t give a damn about me, do you?’ Annie cried.
Judith’s hand flew to her mouth. ‘Annie,’ she gasped. ‘Language …’
But her daughter wasn’t listening. ‘All you can think about is how this looks to your snobby friends.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Malcolm snapped.
‘You never had time for Henry,’ Annie blundered on. ‘All those snide remarks.’
‘And which one of us turned out to be right?’ her father demanded. ‘Eh? Which one?’
‘Malcolm, dear,’ Judith Mitchell interjected, ‘I don’t think this is helping.’
‘Oh, here we go,’ her husband bellowed. ‘Somehow I thought you’d be sticking up for her before long.’
‘I’m going to my room,’ said Annie, getting to her feet.
‘Sit down!’ her father spat, but Annie ignored him. Calmly walking from the room, she closed the door. She could still hear him shouting, ‘Annie? Annie, come back here this minute …’ as she closed her bedroom door and lay on the bed. It was still a couple more weeks until the court hearing, but she’d made up her mind she wasn’t going to get into any more arguments with her father until it was over. She’d give the baby up like they said. Not because her father wanted it but because it wasn’t fair to bring a child into a world where its grandparents were warring with its mother and its father was in jail. To have it adopted was by far the best thing. That way the baby could have a mother and father who loved and wanted it.
‘It’s the best I can do for you,’ she told him, as she ran her hand wearily over her bump. But when the baby moved in response to her touch, she knew she could never do it.
The courtroom in Lewes was on the High Street. When Annie first saw it, she thought it an imposing building. It dated from Victorian times and was made of Portland stone with a portico of four pillars which covered the steps leading to the three doors at the top. Above the steps, a single Victorian lamp lit the way. Lewes had had its share of famous trials and most notably had gained notoriety as the place where Patrick Mahon was tried for the murder of Emily Kaye in the infamous Crumbles murder case, a case which had been handled by none other than the famous forensic pathologist, Sir Bernard Spilsbury. Annie only knew all this because there had been a lot in the paper about him when Spilsbury had died at the end of 1947.
With the castle itself as a backdrop, Annie wished she was here as a tourist rather than a wronged woman. Flanked by her parents, she was hustled through the doors and into a waiting area where she sat down. Her father prowled the corridors, jangling the coins in his pocket, and her mother, a bag of nerves, kept going to the toilet. Their drive to Lewes had been uneventful, and although she knew it really worried her mother, Annie had little to say. She found her silence acted as a defence mechanism because talking only encouraged her father’s constant ranting about Henry and how he knew all along that he was a bad lot who