Page 5 of Don't Believe A Word

Sadie took a breath and clutched her hands together as she said, ‘They told me that my father, their brother, and my mother, were killed in a car crash when I was two years old, and that’s when they became my legal guardians.’

‘And are they? Your legal guardians?’

‘I haven’t found any documents to support it, but I guess it’s academic now, considering my age.’

Conceding the point, Cristy said, ‘But you know that they never had a brother?’

‘Not that I can find any record of.’

‘Do you have a birth certificate?’

Sadie swallowed as she nodded. ‘It says I was born on the fourteenth of May 1998 and that my father’s name was Martin Winters.’

She will be two years old on May 14th.

‘What about your mother?’ Cristy asked.

‘She is down as Vanessa Winters, née Jameson. I’ve tried, but I can’t find any trace of them – at least not as a couple with a daughter who’d be my age.’

‘And when you discovered your aunts didn’t have a brother, what did you do?’

‘Nothing – then. I didn’t know how to bring it up without it seeming as though I was being mistrustful, and spying on them.’

‘But you must have asked about your parents before that, while you were growing up?’

‘Yes, of course, and they’d tell me lovely stories of how much they’d adored me and how proud they’d be of me if they could see how well I was doing. They even had photographs of me as a baby, and of them, but I’m not sure now how real any of it was.’

Cristy sat with that for a moment until Anna said, ‘We’re actually pretty certain her aunts stole her. You’ll understand what we mean when you see what else Sadie found in Lottie’s desk.’

Cristy looked at Sadie, a prompt for her to explain.

‘It was during the pandemic that I first started to go through Lottie’s things,’ Sadie began. ‘There’s so much, honestly, I knew it was going to take forever, and Mia kept telling me it could wait … I realized she didn’t want to help in any way, and I didn’t mind, I understood it would be a lot more painful for her than it might be for me.’

‘But she was OK with you doing it?’ Cristy prompted.

Sadie nodded. ‘I guess so. I mean, she never tried to stop me, so I just got on with it. Not every day, you understand, not even every week, but then, quite recently, I opened one of the hundreds of box files prepared to find more bank statements, or postcards of places Lottie had been, brochures, various knick-knacks, she kept everything … But in this particular box there were two large brown envelopes. The first turned out to contain photographs that I recognized right away. They were the ones I mentioned just now that used to be dotted around the house when I was growing up. Me – or a child who was supposed to be me – as a baby either with my “parents”, or alone. A couple of my “parents” on their wedding day, my christening, that sort of thing. What I never noticed when I was younger, but I did when I studied them moreclosely recently, was that there are no early photos of me with my aunts, or of them with my parents.’

‘Have you asked your aunt Mia about that?’

‘Not yet. I guess I’ll have to at some point, but the last time I brought up the subject of my parents … Actually, it was before Lottie died, and I’m afraid it didn’t go well. I’d eventually plucked up the courage to ask about their brother and Mia got angry, saying I should leave things alone and stop bothering them with memories they’d rather not revisit. Lottie was pretty angry too. She asked if I was unhappy, and if so I didn’t have a right to be. She said, “Haven’t we given you everything?” and they had, of course, I could never deny that.’

Thinking how spiteful that sounded, Cristy said, ‘You mentioned two envelopes just now.’

Sadie nodded. ‘The other one contained the pages you’ve just read. You can see they’re a printout, but I can’t search Lottie’s computers to see if there’s more because, after Lottie died, Mia had them returned to factory settings and shipped off to various schools in Africa. She said it’s what Lottie would have wanted.’

‘Didn’t she make back-ups of Lottie’s files?’ Cristy asked.

‘I don’t think so, or not that I’ve found so far. They could be in Mia’s office, of course, but I don’t have any reason to go poking around in there.’

‘And what about these pages? Have you shown them to your aunt?’

‘Not yet. I wanted to find out first if I’m just being fanciful or paranoid …’

‘We want to know what you think,’ Anna said for her.

Regarding them both, Cristy said carefully, ‘You understand, Sadie, I’m sure, that if this does turn out to be fact rather than fiction your aunt could be in a lot of trouble.’

Sadie looked horribly pained. ‘I do, but honestly, if you knew what it was like to have no idea who you really are, to have no real sense of belonging … I’m sorry if that sounds selfish, but I don’t know if I can carry on not knowing any more. And as for my aunt, I promise you, it won’t be anything she can’t handle. She’ll just throw money at it, the way she does with everything.’