2. 9 An unforeseen development
About eighteen months after Valerie first attempted to contact me – and more than a year after our meeting – things suddenly took an unexpected turn. Bernie received a call from the Porters’ Lodge at her college saying that a Mrs Jane Carrington was anxious to see her. Her first instinct was to ask the porter to send her away, but there was something about the way the porter spoke that made her think that she had better go over and speak to Jane herself.
To cut a long story short, Jane told Bernie that her mother had been diagnosed with cancer and was only expected to live for a matter of a few months at most. She was distraught at the idea that she might die without ever having even seen what her grandchildren looked like and had begged Jane to find Peter and to persuade him to come to see her again and to bring his children.
Bernie knew that nothing in the world would ever persuade me to involve Hannah or Eddie, and she was very reluctant even to suggest to me that I might go to see Valerie. She urged Jane to go back to her mother and tell her to forget all about me, but Jane had come on a mission and wasn’t prepared to go away empty-handed. So Bernie promised that she would speak to me and that one or other of us would ring Jane to tell her what we had decided. Well, of course, under the circumstances, I could hardly continue to refuse to see her, could I? So, very much against my better judgement, we agreed to go up to Stockport and see Valerie in her home; and I promised to bring photographs of “the grandchildren”.