Free Hiding the Past by Nathan Dylan Goodwin Page A

look around the church and
made his way out into the stark heat, where he was convinced that the
temperature had risen by at least five degrees.  Morton slowly walked back
to his car, allowing his mind to mull over the case.  As he fired up the
car, Morton took one last look at the quiet, unassuming village.  It
looked so normal, so harmless.  But that indefinable gut reaction, upon
which he so heavily relied, told him that for James Coldrick, this village
hadn’t always been as normal and harmless as it now seemed.
     
    Morton was lying prone on the bed, telling
Juliette about his day whilst she transformed herself from Police Community
Support Officer 8084 to Miss Juliette Meade, social butterfly.  He was
happy with either incarnation but, as she stood straightening her hair in a curvaceous,
low-cut black dress, subtle make-up and killer heels, he was forced to admit
that she looked more stunningly beautiful than the drab black, monochromatic
uniform of the police force would ever allow.  He’d not bothered getting
dressed up for the occasion and was content in jeans and t-shirt.  Sending
your adopted brother off to his death hardly seemed an occasion that required
one's best clothes.
    ‘It’s certainly
an intriguing one, isn’t it,’ Juliette said in response to his discoveries with
the Coldrick Case .
    ‘That’s an
understatement.’
      ‘Doesn’t it
make you wonder about your own family?’
    Morton’s
insides tightly recoiled at the prospect of having a conversation about his own
veiled past, a subject which he categorically avoided at the best of times. 
He sauntered over to the bedroom window and caught her reflection.  Her
eyes were narrowed and one hand rested defiantly on her hip.  She wasn’t
about to let this one go.  
    ‘It must make
you wonder, though,’ she persisted.  ‘Your real parents could be walking
past our house right now for all we know.’  Morton glanced out of the
window at the passersby.  He felt sure that he would recognise someone in
whom he had once lived.  ‘I mean, doesn’t it strike you as odd that you
know more about Norman Lamont’s family or any of the other celebrities on Celebri-Trees, than you do your own family?’
    ‘Hadn’t thought
about it and don’t care,’ he said, quickly regretting the virulence of his
response.  Of course he’d thought about it; the question of his parentage
was like a plastic bottle forever bobbing on the open seas, occasionally far
enough away so as not to warrant attention but always having the possibility of
being washed back to the forefront of his mind.  And, yes, it was absurd that he knew more of the former Tory Chancellor of the Exchequer’s
family history than he did of his own because of his employment two years ago
as resident genealogist for a television company .  It just wasn’t
as simple as that.
    ‘Why don’t you
just go for the counselling, then see how you feel?  You don’t even have
to find out who they are if you don’t want to.’  
    ‘I don’t see
why I should,’ Morton answered indignantly.  It was the seemingly random
quirk of law that anyone born before 12 November 1975 must seek counselling
before discovering their birth parents that most irked Morton.  
    Counselling. 
It all sounded so American and unnecessary.
    Juliette
sighed, checked herself in the full-length mirror and waltzed from the bedroom,
the transformation complete, leaving Morton with an unpleasant burning
inside.  Just how he needed to feel moments before seeing his father and
brother again.
     
    Morton and Juliette arrived at his
father’s smart 1930s semi in Hastings; the same respectable house and
neighbourhood in which Morton had spent his first eighteen years of life, apart
from those first few memory-less hours as a new-born baby in the arms of his
real mother (presuming, of course, that she had even held him at birth). 
Seeing the house again filled his heart with the familiar yet uncomfortable
fusion of