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She walked over and put her fingers around his collar, prizing him away from the cupboard. ‘Come on, you – we’re going on a trip.’ She grabbed his lead and the packet of chocolate biscuits for Fergus.
Thea locked her flat door and walked out of the house. She looked at Winston and said, ‘Is there room for one more?’
Edward frowned at the dog.
As they all piled in the campervan, Fergus promised his mother he did not need the loo before they set off again. They’d stopped at a service station just down the road, where they’d filled up the van with petrol.
Edward said, ‘I can’t wait to see Henry again.’
Thea was just taking a seat in the back of the van next to Fergus, with Jack and Beth in the front seats, when she overheard Jack say to Beth in a hushed whisper, ‘It’s little wonder that Callum didn’t want to tell her about his mum.’
Beth turned in her seat and caught Thea staring at her. ‘Oh, dear. You overheard that, didn’t you?’
Thea eyed her. ‘What exactly didn’t he want to tell me about his mum?’
Beth sighed. ‘I imagined that Mabel wrote about that in her letters.’
Thea had meant to collect them when she’d gone back inside, but had been distracted by Winston.
‘I forgot their letters.’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ said Jack. ‘We can fill you in on what we know on the way. We’ve got plenty of time.’
‘Will this even get us there?’ Beth asked, looking around the old campervan.
‘Well, it got Callum down to Aldeburgh from Scotland, and we arrived here, so let’s hope so.’
Thea sat back in her seat as Jack pulled the van into the Monday morning traffic. He took a fleeting glance over his shoulder at Thea. ‘Mabel told us about Callum and his mother. We’ve been seeing Mabel most days when she returns Dickens.’
‘She returns Dickens – what do you mean?’
‘Callum left the campervan with us, along with his cat – well, Henry’s cat. Every day, Dickens disappeared from the farm. Turns out he must have been spending his days making his way back to the bookshop in Aldeburgh; it’s not too far, but for an elderly cat, it must have been quite a trek across the fields. Each afternoon, when the charity shop closed, Mabel brought Dickens back to the farm. I couldn’t understand how such an elderly cat could manage to walk that far every day, until I figured out that most days, the clever moggy hitched a ride, hiding in the van which I borrowed to deliver flowers to Lili in Cobblers Yard. He must have escaped each time when I wasn’t looking, and hid until I left.’
It was pulling at Thea’s heartstrings – the thought of the little cat sitting outside the bookshop each day, waiting in vain.
‘You know, Callum grew up with Henry, thinking he was his father. He didn’t go into too much detail, I’m afraid, concerning the visit to see his mother when he returned to Scotland after he’d discovered that Henry was not his biological father.’
Thea remembered Mabel and Callum taking DNA tests.
Beth looked at Jack, and added, ‘When you met Callum, Henry had sent him back to Suffolk with the campervan and a photo of the two of you as children. We guess it was the last photo Henry had of you girls before he … disappeared.’
‘So, you’re saying Callum thought he was my brother?’
‘He realised you were Henry’s daughter, and assumed that you were his second family, and that he’d been living between two families.’
‘Had he?’ Thea swallowed. That would make her father a bigamist. She couldn’t believe what she was hearing. It can’t be true.
‘It’s a little more complicated than that.’
‘How so?’ Thea hoped there was some other explanation.
Edward piped up, ‘But Henry loved their mum to bits. It’s just not possible he had another wife. Honestly, Henry didn’t have it in him. He doesn’t have a crooked bone in his body.’
Jack exchanged a glance with Beth. ‘Mabel told me that when Callum returned to Scotland, he had it out with his mum because he found out from the DNA test that Henry wasn’t his father, and you weren’t his sister after all. You see, that was the problem. He thought you were his sister, and he didn’t know how to tell you about Henry.’
‘That’s why he wanted me to come to Scotland, to see my dad.’
‘That’s right. Apparently, when he confronted his mum, she told him who his real father was.’
