At last ‘A life’
By Julie D Cole
Chapter 34 - More truth comes out.

‘But mum that means we have a cousin.’ ‘What happened to him? What happened to Aunt Judith’s boyfriend?’

‘Mmm well Chrissy it’s a difficult story for me to tell since at that time the whole situation was so difficult for all of the family and the death of Judith was a terrible shock to all of us. It was so tragic.’

I looked back into the book at the photo of Aunt Judith that I liked and said to mum that she was the most beautiful woman so it wasn’t a surprise that she fell in love and perhaps she was unlucky to be pregnant.

‘Well Chrissy I want to tell you something that I’ve never had the courage to tell you before.’

Just then a car pulled up in the driveway and it was Julie come to collect us with Sally.
‘OK I’ll have to tell you later when we are alone but first I’d wanted to talk to Gran since she never came to terms with what happened and I hope that we can sort things out once and for all.’

I wasn’t sure what she was talking about so I looked again into the memory book to try to understand more about our family. I found some loose photos in an envelope. There was a photo of Aunt Judith with a good looking man and both of them wore caps and gowns. Then a few more photos of both of them on vacation somewhere with mum and somebody else who had been cut off the photograph.

Mum looked so nice and both her and Aunt Judith looked so happy together. I wanted to keep it since we had next to no photos of mum in her youth in our albums and none of her with dad.

Julie knocked and let herself in followed by Sally who had gathered more belongings from her flat without bumping into Jessica, much to her relief. Julie was disappointed since she’d hoped to have chance to say something despite my instructions.

I whispered to Julie that she’d arrived at the wrong time and that I’d found out some news. She couldn’t keep her voice quiet and blurted out ‘What do you mean, What news?’
Mum interjected quickly and said ‘Chrissy has been looking at the memory book and found out that Aunt Judith was pregnant when she was killed and that the baby was saved.’

‘What do you mean mum?’

I explained the sad poem and that mum had told me that aunt Judith died on the operating table but she was 6 months pregnant and they saved the baby.
‘She had a little boy and mum just told me that the father took him and was never seen again.’

‘No that’s not true Chrissy, I didn’t quite say that dear. I never said that he was never seen again.’

‘Well what did you mean then?’ I said that the father took him.’
Julie said ‘Where did he take him and where is he then?’

Mum looked us and said ‘Let’s sit down’. Sally excused herself to make some tea.

‘Well it’s very complicated since at that time I was engaged to be married and Aunt Judith was in love with someone who she’d met at University. He was married and he already had two young children so Gran was very angry that Judith was ruining her life.

When Gran found out that Judith was pregnant she was even more incensed and she told her that she’d shamed the family. Judith said she was going to leave home and we expected she’d move to Nottingham close to this man. He was a University lecturer.
.
Julie reacted first ‘but surely he would have looked after Aunt Judith and her baby. What happened?’

Mum said that this man didn’t leave his wife and the baby was brought up very well by a substitute mother and has never known anything about his real mother.

Julie turned to me and said ‘We have to find him. He is our cousin and we have no other cousins since dad had no brothers or sisters. We pressed mum and eventually she said that as far as she recalled his name was Darren Harper and he had lived in Nottingham at that time but they’d never kept contact. I felt something was not ringing true. Mum said that he was about 10years older than Aunt Judith but on the photos they looked similar ages.
I asked mum if she minded helping us to locate him and she just said ‘Please be patient a little longer and not to disturb the situation until Gran was settled back home when we could all talk together.

Sally came in with the tea and I was pleased that she had taken so long to be discreet. We finished the tea and I asked mum if we could look in Aunt Judith’s room together to look at the photos but she said she preferred if we waited to ask Gran. It was frustrating since there was so much we wanted to understand about her and our family.

Why had Gran been so secretive and why didn’t mum tell us about her sister before these last few days.

Finally I insisted to borrow the photo I liked so extracted it carefully so that we could scan it and then return it later. Mum accepted.

Then we decided we should make a move so Mum finished tidying around and gathered some belongings for Gran and whilst she did this Sally and I washed the dishes. I filled in some details for Sally since she was clearly dying to ask. In the meantime Julie rang Gary and arranged for us all to meet for a snack together and Julie agreed to drop Mum back at the hospital.

When we arrived home Julie went straight to her computer to scan the photo and she was back downstairs in no time at all with a photo comparison between Aunt Judith and I. ‘
This is why you like the photo so much, you must have felt you were looking in a mirror.’
I just acknowledged it but was pleased that these comparisons were being made since I thought she was beautiful.

Judith and Gary went off to try to research about Nottingham University and ‘Professor Harper’. She was confident that she’d track him down and find our new cousin.

By the time mum arrived home we were all scrutinizing information that Julie had printed and she had found that he was now living in Cheshire and was married with three children, two boys and a girl. The youngest and eldest were boys, Henry and William and the daughter was Kathryn. His wife was teacher and they had moved several time in the last 25 years before settling in Cheshire. We couldn’t find an address but Julie found that he’d been lecturing in Manchester recently and also in Birmingham and London.

I asked mum how Gran was doing since we’d been too engrossed to ask and the news was encouraging. Gran had been sitting up and chatting and was wanting to watch the news on TV. She’d asked about me and wondered if Julie and I would visit tomorrow. We both agreed.
Julie showed mum the photo scan and then how she’d combined it with a photo of me onto the one page. Mum was amazed and even though Julie used a photo of me as Chris my features were obviously the same as those of Aunt Judith and we could easily have been mistaken for sisters.

Mum mumbled something under her breath and then excused herself to use the bathroom and change.

Sally sat with me and said that this was a strange sequence of events starting with my dressing as Chrissy then the problems with Jessica that had thrown us together ,then the credit card problems and finally Grans sudden stroke. She said she thought that there was somebody looking down on me and manipulating the situation.

She was glad we’d not gone to Birmingham and whilst she didn’t wish harm to Gran she was glad all this had happened for my sake as it was bringing some family skeletons out of the cupboard.

I decided we’d had such a stressful day that we should go out to eat and I found a nice pub that we could visit that was about 5 miles away that had availability so I quickly arranged for a taxi to take 6 of us so that we could all relax and have a drink if we wished.

Mum had been quiet and I thought this was more to do with our findings than concern over her mum.
When we arrived at the Three Hares pub it was busy so we were escorted to our table without chance to relax in the bar.

As we finished a plate of antipasti that we all shared I asked mum if she’d ever regretted losing contact with Judith’s son and why there had never been any attempt to keep in contact or tell Julie and I about him.

She said that life sometimes became very complicated but that she’d thought many times about talking to Julie and I and particularly to me especially after father had left us.

‘Mum will you tell us more and let’s not wait any longer please.’.

To be continued………