Читать книгу The Hidden Women - Kerry Barrett - Страница 15

It seemed Miranda and I weren’t the only ones to be thinking about Lil. On Monday morning, just before lunch, the office receptionist phoned me to say I had a visitor.

‘This is a nice surprise,’ I said as the lift doors opened and I saw it was my dad. ‘Are you working nearby?’

We were based in Soho, and Dad often worked close by when a film he’d composed the music on was in post-production. It wasn’t unusual for him to pop by and say hello when he was in the area, but he normally phoned first.

Now he gave a vague nod over his shoulder. ‘Nearby,’ he said.

‘I’m a bit busy at the moment but we could go for lunch in about half an hour if you like?’

But Dad shook his head. ‘I wanted to ask you something,’ he said. ‘Could we nip into another room, perhaps?’

Behind his back, I saw Elly studiously bashing away at her keyboard, pretending not to be listening.

‘Of course,’ I said, a flicker of unease in my stomach. ‘Follow me.’

I led him into the meeting room where I’d met Jack Jones the week before, and shut the door.

‘Are you okay? What’s the matter? Is Mum okay?’

Dad smiled. ‘Nothing’s the matter,’ he said. ‘We’re both fine. Fit as fiddles.’

He gave a little skip as though to prove how fit he was even though he was approaching eighty. Mum wasn’t far off seventy.

I raised my eyebrow at him and he pulled out a chair and sat down. I did the same.

‘So what’s up?’

‘I wanted to ask you a favour,’ he said.

‘Go on.’

‘I know you said you weren’t supposed to do your own research, but any chance you could have a quick look into this Lil stuff for me?’

‘Dad, no,’ I said. ‘I can’t.’

‘It’s important.’

I stared at him. ‘Why?’ I said. ‘Why is it important?’

Dad looked at his hands. ‘No actual reason that I can put into words,’ he said. ‘I’d just like to know more about my family. Before it’s too late.’

He took a breath.

‘I never really asked my parents much about the war, and that generation just didn’t talk about it, did they?’

I shook my head. More than once I’d come across the most amazing stories in the course of research that had never been mentioned in the family.

‘I think the war was so awful, more awful than we could ever imagine, and those who lived through it found it hard to talk about,’ I said.

‘My father – your grandfather – was in the RAF.’

‘I know,’ I said. ‘I’ve seen his medals.’

Dad nodded. ‘Never mentioned it, not really,’ he said. ‘Not to us, at least not often. He had some old air force friends I remember him meeting up with, and I imagine they talked about what they’d done.’

‘Their own version of group therapy,’ I pointed out. ‘Must have helped.’

‘I wish I’d asked him more about it,’ Dad said. He looked really sad and I thought suddenly that even though my grandpa had been dead for more than twenty years, he must still miss him.

I reached out and took his hand. ‘He might not have talked, even if you’d asked,’ I said. ‘Did Grandma ever say anything?’

‘Not about Dad in the air force,’ Dad said. ‘But, of course, I remember bits about the war. Not much, because I was very small. But I remember living with Mum, and not really knowing Dad when he came home.’

He paused.

‘And I remember Lil,’ he said.

‘What do you remember?’ I asked, intrigued by this little insight into my own family history.

‘I remember her wearing a uniform,’ Dad said slowly. He tilted his head to the left and looked far away over my shoulder. ‘I remember sitting on her lap and playing with a toy plane and her arm round me felt scratchy, the material I mean. It was a uniform.’

‘How old were you?’

He shrugged.

‘About four, perhaps? I loved that plane.’

‘Was that the one Lil brought you?’

‘I always thought my father gave it to me,’ he said. ‘But now I really think about it, I seem to remember Lil bringing it. It’s such a long time ago.’

‘Uniforms and toy planes sound to me like that was our Lil on my list,’ I said.

Dad nodded. ‘That’s what I thought.’

‘Give me a minute,’ I said.

Leaving him in the meeting room, I dashed back to my desk and found the Jack Jones file – now with all the papers back in the correct order.

‘Everything okay?’ Elly said, super-casually.

‘Dad worked with Jack Jones,’ I said, sort of truthfully. Dad had indeed done some music for the TV show Jack had starred in – though he never met the actors as a rule. ‘On that detective thing. He wanted to check something.’

Elly looked dubious but she didn’t say anything.

I took the folder back to the meeting room and showed Dad the list with Lilian Miles on it.

‘So, she flew planes?’ Dad said in awe. ‘Bloody hell.’

I nodded. ‘Amazing, right?’

‘Could you check her records?’

‘Dad,’ I said, in a warning tone.

‘There must be service records,’ he said, not put off by my frown. ‘Surely they’d help us find out if it’s her? We know her date and place of birth; it shouldn’t be hard to cross-reference.’

‘I can’t, Dad,’ I said. ‘It’s completely verboten to do our own research. I could lose my job.’

I grinned at him.

‘You could do it, or Mum. She knows about research. Though it’s expensive to subscribe to some of the databases.’

Dad shook his head. ‘Oh, Nell, you know what we’re like with computers. We just don’t have the skills,’ he said. ‘I’m not bad on the email business but anything more complicated just flummoxes me. I’m no spring chicken.’

I patted his hand reassuringly. ‘You do brilliantly,’ I lied, knowing he was right. He and Mum struggled to work their television.

‘What about if you did it outside work?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘It just feels so wrong because I found the information at work. It’s not right to use company resources for personal searches. I could get into trouble.’

‘Your boss wouldn’t know, Miranda said,’ Dad pointed out.

I shrugged. ‘I can’t,’ I said again. ‘Why are you so interested?’

‘I told you, I just want to know about my family,’ Dad said. But he didn’t meet my eyes when he said it. What was he hiding?

‘There is something we can do, though,’ I said, watching him carefully.

Dad looked hopeful. ‘What?’

‘We could ask her.’

‘Ask her,’ Dad repeated, just as I’d done when Miranda suggested it.

Before I could continue, there was a knock on the door of the meeting room and Fliss stuck her head round, her long blonde hair swinging.

‘Sorry, Helena,’ she said. ‘I thought I’d booked this room?’

Guiltily, I gathered up the Jack Jones papers I’d been showing Dad and smiled. ‘Just an unplanned meeting,’ I said. ‘We’ll get out of your way.’

I went to hustle Dad out of the room, before Fliss realised I’d been mixing up work and personal stuff, but it was too late. She was looking at Dad curiously.

‘Fliss Hopkins,’ she said, holding out her hand for him to shake.

‘Robert Miles.’

She beamed at him. ‘Helena’s father?’

‘Indeed,’ said Dad giving her a dazzling smile. He was such a charmer.

‘I was just going over some Jack Jones research when Dad popped in to see if I was free for lunch,’ I said.

‘But Helena tells me she is far too busy to join me, so I will bid you farewell,’ Dad said smoothly making me wonder if he’d always been such a good liar.

‘Nice to meet you,’ said Fliss.

She stood back to let us leave the room then entered herself, leaving the door open.

‘Let me think about it,’ I said as I showed Dad to the lift, hoping Fliss hadn’t realised I had been showing Dad my Jack Jones research and that she didn’t decide to have a look at it herself. ‘I can’t search Lil’s records, not without putting my job at risk, but I’ll have a think about what else we can do.’

Dad kissed me goodbye. ‘Thanks, Helena,’ he said. ‘It means a lot to me.’