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Chapter 17
‘You knew her – didn’t you?’ Lili had sat down on one of the two old leather sofas in the living room. Connie was sitting opposite her, a glass coffee table between them.
‘You knew my mother.’ Lili’s tone was accusatory. She waited for Connie to deny it. If what Connie said was true, and she wasn’t Connie’s daughter, then that was the only other explanation. As Ray had pointed out, why else would Connie have paid her school fees? Why choose Lili out of all the children she had been involved with over the years? What made Lili so special?
Lili repeated the question.
Connie sat there, looking at her hands.
‘You lied to me.’ Lili leaned forward in her seat and stared at her. ‘I trusted you all these years. How could you!’
Connie sighed. ‘It’s true. I knew your mother. Not very well. We met on Corfu. She was estranged from her relatives. She said she’d discovered something, a family secret that her mum had kept from her. I don’t know what it was, but she talked of returning to England.’ Connie couldn’t look her in the eye. ‘I met both your parents on Corfu.’
Lili swallowed.Why didn’t you tell me years ago?she wanted to shout. Instead, she asked, ‘What were their names?’
Connie was already shaking her head before Lili had finished her question. ‘I don’t know. We were just kids. We were all teenagers and youngsters in our early twenties, travelling, sleeping under the stars. I guess we were trying to capture some of our parents’ – the boomer generation’s – free hippy spirits and delaying joining the actual world of work and responsibilities.’
Connie stared off into the distance for a moment before fixing her gaze on Lili. ‘I’d just qualified as a social worker. It felt like that was my last summer of freedom before I started my career. That holiday, on the beach in Corfu …’ Connie paused. ‘You have to understand, people came and went, and a lot of us, your parents included, didn’t go by their proper names. We adopted hippy, far-out names like Moon, and River, and Sky…’
‘Sky? My surname is Skye. Is there a link?’
‘Sky was your mother’s chosen first name. I doubt it was her real name,’ she added.
‘So, it was you who gave me that surname?’
‘No, it was you.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘When they asked your name at the police station in Corfu, you said Lili Skye.’
Lili narrowed her eyes. ‘You knew that wasn’t correct. I must have been asking for my mother. Ray said it was too convenient, too coincidental that you found me. He believed we were connected somehow.’
Connie had a question. ‘Who is Ray?’
‘A retired police officer.’
Connie’s face went as white as a sheet.
Lili noticed. There was something Connie wasn’t telling her. ‘In all these years, why didn’t you tell me you knew her, or at the very least that you’d met her? Is that why you paid my fees, out of guilt?’
Connie looked up. ‘You know about that?’
‘Yes. I visited the school, and they told me there are no scholarships at the age of eight.’
Connie sighed. ‘That is true.’ She shifted in her seat. ‘Look, we discussed adopting you, but it just wasn’t possible. I’d put myself in an impossible situation. I was your social worker.’
Lili recalled that it was Connie, not her husband, who would not consider adopting her.
‘We agreed to do something for you, for your future, and that was to get you out of the care system. I knew the scholarships to private boarding schools for children from underprivileged backgrounds didn’t start until children were twelve years old, but I approached the head with an idea. He said that if you sat an exam at eight, and showed promise, then we had an arrangement; the money the council would have paid for looked-after care, topped up with a private donation from ourselves, would support your place at the school for three years. Then you moved on to a scholarship.’
‘So, I did get the scholarship at twelve?’
‘It wasn’t easy getting the council to agree to such an unusual request, but then you, Lili, were always an unusual case.’
Lili stared at her. ‘But the current head looked into my records and said I had an anonymous benefactor.’
‘Ah, well, you see the council, social services and myself couldn’t publicise that we singled out one child to go to private boarding school at the age of eight. Once you moved on to the scholarship, things were more straightforward. I expect the current headteacher looked at the basis on which you started at the school and assumed it had continued throughout your time there. If she’d checked up on when you left the prep, she would have realised you’d crossed to the assisted place scheme.’
