Page 105 of Lessons in Life

Janice shook her head. ‘I hadn’t thought of that. I’ve no idea. Anyway, Eloise got pregnant…’

‘To one of her father’s Pakistani mill workers?’ I exhaled. ‘Blimey, I bet that went down well?’

‘Eloise came straight down to tell me. She was distraught. Mainly because Junayd’s family, thinking he was spending too much time with – how shall we say? Not one ofthem? – were intent on sending him back to Mirpur. An arranged marriage to get him out of the way…’

‘But, honestly, Janice, I don’t see where you’re going with all this?’

‘Just listen, Robyn,’ Jo encouraged, her eyes wide with excitement.

‘Eloise didn’t know what to do. My mum and I didn’t know how to help. Getting pregnant when you weren’t married, in the late 1960s, was bad enough, but when the father is a… you know… and one of the mill workers to boot…?’ Janice pulled an imaginary knife across her throat. ‘Out of the blue, Junayd was sent back to Mirpur to get married; the plan was to bring his new wife back here to Yorkshire, I suppose. That’s what happened in those days.’

‘Still does, to some extent,’ Jo added, sagely.

‘Eloise was utterly distraught and ended up telling her granny she was pregnant. What was her granny called…? Maude, I think. Or was that her mother? No, her mother was Muriel. Muriel Hudson, that’s it.She’dbeen having an affair with the local MP but that’s neither here nor there. Anyway, Eloise thought her granny was the one person she could trust when my mum and me didn’t know what to do to help.’

‘And?’

‘Well,’ Janice went on, ‘obviously her granny wasn’t to be trusted. Together, Muriel and Maude Hudson cooked up some story, saying Eloise was going to work as an au pair in Canada. Maude’s sister, apparently the black sheep of the family, had settled in Quebec, falling in love and living in the wilds with some lumberjack just after the First World War. You know what it’s like, the one member of the family who’s always been persona non grata! No one talks about?’

I nodded.

‘Quebec was the least… shall we say socially accepting… of all the Canadian states in the 1960s?’ Jo had her history teacher head on. ‘You know how awful it was for young, pregnant and unmarried girls in Ireland at the time?’

‘Not so good here, either.’ Janice frowned.

‘Well, just as bad in Canada, if not worse.’

‘Maude and Eloise stayed with this sister of Maude’s until she had the baby…’ Janice interrupted. ‘Eloise wrote to tell me what was happening. She was beside herself about Junayd.’

‘I was up until late last night, Robyn.’ Jo got the conversation back to herself. ‘Researching what it was like for an unmarried mother in Canada. They were often bound to a hospital bed, over-medicated and told to forget their “illegitimate” child, or to pretend the baby had never been born at all. I didn’t realise, but societal norms and religious organisations played a profoundly controlling role in the lives of Canadians right up to the seventies. I was looking at statistics last night and, apparently, 600,000 babies – over half a million, can you imagine? – were born to unmarried mothers, and most of these girls were coerced into surrendering their babies to married couples wanting to adopt…’

‘Right, I’m going to stop you right there.’ I actually put up my hand. ‘Mum wasn’t born in Canada. She was born in Surrey. Her adoptive parents moved up to Yorkshire when Mum was nine, but there’s absolutely no connection apart from that. She and my father – Jayden – happened to break down in Beddingfield on their way back to Leeds when Mum was in her early twenties. Mum loved the village and decided it was where she wanted to have her baby – my sister Jess…’

‘But your mum’s birth date is exactly the same as the one Eloise has engraved on her bracelet. You said so, Robyn.’ Both Jo and Janice were looking crestfallen, obviously disappointed that I’d burst their bubble. ‘And—’ Jo gave it one last shot ‘—your mum’s dual heritage. It would fit perfectly.’

‘Well, it would, but there must have been many babies born in Quebec on that particular date.’

‘Well, I’m still looking,’ Jo said. ‘I’m doing it for Eloise now. I want to know what happened toherbaby.’

‘Do you even know if she had a daughter, Janice?’

Janice looked slightly embarrassed. ‘When she wrote to me – you know after she came back from Canada – she just said she’d had the baby and it had been immediately taken away for adoption. She married Christopher Howard fairly soon after that and we lost touch. In her last letter to me, she said her husband had no idea why she’d been away in Canada; assumed she’d been visiting her great-aunt as well as working as an au pair in Montreal. When I was up at Hudson House, last week, she told me she’d had a son called Adam, but she was very confused and her being quite deaf doesn’t help. I’m not convinced she really knew who I was.’ Janice gave a little laugh. ‘Aw, I’m sorry, love, I think our Jo and I’ve got a bit carried away with all this.’

‘That’s the big problem with ancestry,’ Jo said, equally embarrassed. ‘You go down one track, convincing yourself it’s the right one, because you want it to be?—’

She broke off as my phone rang.

‘Sorry, Jess… I’ll be back at the cottage in fifteen… Just need to bring Boris back and then we can get off.’

I turned to the other two. ‘Thank you so much, for all your help. Sorry, it turned out to be a bit of a wild goose trail.’

Jo was cheerful once more. ‘Oh, don’t worry. I’ll keep on, but now I’m going to concentrate on tracking down Eloise’s baby in Canada. This ancestry lark is more bloody addictive than heroin…’ She laughed. ‘See you at school next week.’

34

‘Fabian doesn’t mind you not spending Saturday with him?’ Mum asked once I’d decanted Boris back to the cottage and was strapping myself into the back seat of Jess’s van.

‘He’s got a load of stuff to do.’ I turned to Sorrel. ‘Joel’s stuff.’

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