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Post date: 20-Sep-2015 13:54:09
A mysterious letter arrived in my office addressed to “Detective Inspector Peter Johns, Thames Valley Police, Oxford” and marked “Personal. FOR HIS EYES ONLY”. It was dated just three days after the phone call from Mrs Harris, but it had taken quite some time to reach me, having been passed around internally for some time before anyone recognised my name.
Sergeant Godwin was there when I opened it and he gave me a bit of a funny look when he saw the photocopied birth certificate that was inside, but he understands when not to ask questions and did not say anything. There was also a sheet of paper with scanned images of two photographs: a black and white one of a baby and a colour one of two women – one who looked to be in her sixties and a younger one – standing side by side. The covering letter was signed “your loving mother” and then in brackets “Mrs Valerie Harris”. The address was Stockport, which was a relief, since it meant that she was, at least, too far off to make it easy for her to pop in for a visit.
As soon as I saw who it was from, I stuffed the letter and its accompanying documents back in the envelope and put it away. My first instinct was to put the whole lot straight through the shredder, but then I decided to take it home to show Bernie first. I also toyed briefly with the idea of contacting Grater Manchester Police and asking them to warn the woman off – to tell her to stop bothering me – but I realised in time that I was overreacting. After all, it was only one letter and one phone call so far.
When Bernie saw the birth certificate, she immediately commented, ‘well, she’s got the date right anyhow.’
‘It’s not just the date,’ I told her. I got out my own birth certificate – the one that I’d been given when I left the home – and showed her that the two were identical. Mrs Harris had a copy of my birth certificate in her possession – not a photocopy of mine, but a second original certificate, like the ones you can buy when you register a baby’s birth.
Bernie was more interested in my place of birth.
‘Hoylake cum West Kirby!’ she exclaimed. ‘I never knew you came from across the water.’
‘What do you mean?’ I asked. ‘What water?’
‘The Mersey, of course. Anywhere on the Wirral is “across the water” from Liverpool. Didn’t you know?’
‘I never even knew that was where Hoylake cum West Kirby was,’ I confessed. ‘The names didn’t mean a thing to me.’
Bernie picked up the photographs. There were handwritten notes underneath each of them which indicated that they depicted “baby Peter, age 2 days” and “me with your sister, Jane”.
‘She doesn’t have your red hair,’ she observed, ‘but I suppose red hair often turns up in families unexpectedly – something to do with recessive genes. The birth certificate is interesting – don’t you think it suggests she may be genuine?’
‘It depends what you mean by that,’ I said. ‘She may well be the Valerie Johns on the certificate, but I don’t see how that gives her the right to go round calling herself my mother. And I certainly don’t see what right she has to persecute me like this!’
‘What does she say she wants from you?’
‘I don’t know – I didn’t read the letter properly,’ I confessed, feeling a bit silly for not wanting to face up to it.
We read it together. Mrs Harris had “known at once” that I was her long-lost son as soon as she saw me, and heard my name, on the television. I was the “very image” of the older man who had fathered a child with her fifty-five years earlier. Her parents had insisted that she put the baby into a home and had refused to allow her to visit him. Now that fate had thrown us together, she was eager to meet me and begged me to write back. She was now a widow, living with her daughter, Jane, in Stockport.
‘It certainly all sounds plausible,’ was Bernie’s verdict. ‘What are you going to do?’
‘I don’t see why I have to do anything!’ I said, probably rather petulantly. The whole business had upset me more than I liked to admit. ‘I just want her to go away and stop bothering me.’
‘You’re not even a bit curious to know what she’s like?’
‘No. she’s just a complete stranger. She means nothing to me. All this “blood is thicker than water” business is a load of nonsense. It’s the people you know – people like my houseparents and the other kids at the home and you and Angie and Hannah and Eddie and Lucy – that count.’
We sat for a while thinking.
‘I can’t decide,’ I said at last. ‘Do you think, if I ignore her, she’ll get bored and stop hassling me? Or would it be better to write back and tell her to get lost?’
‘I suppose the only sure-fire way to get her off your back would be to write back saying that isn’t your birth certificate and you weren’t brought up in a home and you already have some genuine parents thank you very much!’
‘But that would be dishonest.’
‘Yes.’
‘I’m very tempted.’