Maddie didn’t argue with Gertie about who should drive them home to
Pendurran. Instead, she settled back into the passenger seat and allowed
everything she’d just learned to filter through to her senses. All these new
and novel thoughts needed to marinate in the soup of her brain.
It wasn’t easy to put emotions aside. To be logical and rational. But she
would need to, because getting angry with the midwife who had tricked her
would be useless. The woman was dead.
When they got home to the farmhouse, everything seemed fine. No fire
engulfing the place. No flood. No escaping hens, or goats pulling washing
from the line. All things she’d conjured up in her head when she thought
about leaving the others in charge. Instead, there was an air of tranquillity
over the house and a note pinned to the door: ODD JOB MAN ROUND
THE BACK FIXING WINDOWS, it said.
She headed for the back of the farmhouse and the odd job man who had
arrived out of nowhere. She hadn’t booked a handyman. She couldn’t afford
to pay one. Most of the stuff that went wrong at the centre was either given
a bodged fix by Maddie herself, or some kind, willing person from the
village would barter their services in exchange for eggs.
Gertie, panting, as if this next breath might be her last, finally caught
up. ‘Nobody here, Madds.’
‘No, but look at the window frame. That’s a new piece of wood in there,
and look at that.’ Maddie touched the putty around the glass. ‘It’s still wet.’
‘Yeah, but how…?’
‘The disappearing handyman,’ said Maddie. ‘I don’t know who’s paying
him. But it’s not me.’
‘Well then,’ said Gertie, ‘we need to find him. Maybe he’s checking the
place out, ready to come back and turn it over.’
Maddie laughed. ‘You see anything here worth stealing?’
‘I don’t know. One man’s meat and all that. Maybe he’s interested in the
chickens.’
‘A chicken rustler? You think he’s a chicken rustler?’
‘Or the pigs,’ added Gertie, darkly.
‘A pig rustler, now?’ Maddie laughed again.
She found him in the barn. He’d lifted the lid off a metal dustbin, was
peering inside. He turned when he heard her come in, a guilty look on his
face, but she watched it turn into a smile. Saw him drop his head, unsure of
where to go from there.
‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘I was curious.’
‘Food for the livestock,’ said Maddie. ‘The metal keeps the mice and
rats out.’
‘I see,’ he said.
She thought of this strange, mundane conversation and what she really
wanted to say. Important things. Like asking forgiveness for when she’d
sent him away. Saying sorry for the years she’d missed of his life, years
when he’d been alone. And for not believing him.
‘You fixed the window,’ she said. ‘Thank you.’
‘I came to see you. And when I saw the window…’
‘You fixed it,’ she said. ‘It was kind of you.’
‘So, you don’t mind? It’s okay?’ he asked.
Maddie smiled. ‘It is very okay, Charlie. And maybe you’d like to stay
to dinner? We could talk.’
‘I should like that very much,’ he said.
‘Yes,’ said Maddie. ‘I would too. I’d like you to come and eat with us,
like a family.’
‘You would?’ He looked pleased; except he clasped his hands tightly
together in front of him. A nervous habit, Maddie was to discover.
Something he did when he was unsure. ‘But one thing…’
‘Yes?’
‘Can I ask you to use my name? I told you Charlie, before…’
‘I don’t understand,’ said Maddie. ‘Your name’s not Charlie?’
‘That’s the name on my certificate,’ he said.
‘Birth certificate?’
‘Yes. I thought maybe you named me this when you made the register
so I tried not to upset you, told you I’m Charlie. You understand?’
‘Not really,’ said Maddie. ‘There’s not too much of this I understand.
Why don’t you tell me?’
‘Charlie is the name written down, but now I call myself by the name
my father told me he wanted for his son,’ he explained.
Maddie’s breath caught in her throat. ‘Your name… your name is
Gunter?’
‘Yes.’ He smiled. Seemed happy that she understood. ‘Mein name ist
Gunter Fischer-Brady.’
‘Gunter Fischer-Brady,’ repeated Maddie. ‘Well, Gunter Fischer-Brady,
I am truly very happy to meet you.’ She offered her hand and the young
man shook it rigidly. And then he did something quite extraordinary, but so
wonderful that it felt to Maddie as if the universe had tilted slightly on its
axis.
Self-consciously, Gunter Brady hugged his mother. It was something he
had hoped to be able to do one day, since he realised he had been
abandoned. During all his years in the orphanage in Bristol, it was a
moment he had secretly imagined.
Although they had told him he was an orphan, Gunter had never truly
believed it. He desperately longed for parents. And in his heart, he knew
that somewhere out there was a mother and a father, and at the age of only
fourteen he had set out to find them.
