Free A Going Concern by Catherine Aird Page B

mother?’
    â€˜Indeed there was,’ Phoebe Plantin said warmly, ‘except that they never use the term real mother nowadays. You have to call her the birth mother instead …’
    â€˜But what about the new law?’ Amelia wished she’d paid more attention in her civics class at school – law seemed a very remote subject when viewed from the perspective of the sixth form. ‘What was that about, then?’
    â€˜The Children’s Act of 1975 is the one you mean, but,’ Phoebe shook her head – ‘it isn’t going to help you find Octavia Garamond’s daughter, I’m afraid.’
    Amelia turned away from the stove. ‘Why not?’
    â€˜Because while the Act gave children who had been adopted the right to find out about their birth mothers when they reached the age of eighteen,’ said her stepmother, ‘it didn’t give their birth mothers any right to find out what had become of their natural children who had been adopted …’
    â€˜But …’
    â€˜What you might call sauce for the goslings but not for the goose.’
    â€˜Or gander?’
    â€˜Or gander,’ said Phoebe Plantin, tapping the birth certificate. ‘When Erica Hester Goudy Harquil-Grasset was adopted, which is presumably what happened to her since her birth mother couldn’t trace her later …’
    â€˜If she tried,’ said Amelia. ‘We don’t even know that.’
    â€˜She would have been given a new birth certificate.’
    â€˜I can see that,’ said Amelia, ‘but …’
    â€˜The Registrar General keeps a confidential record of adoptions and the connection between the old and the new names to which only the child has access,’ said Dr Plantin, adding authoritatively: ‘and then only after he or she has reached the age of eighteen and has been professionally counselled.’
    â€˜Not the real – sorry – birth mother?’
    â€˜Not the birth mother,’ said Dr Plantin.
    â€˜But there’s nothing, surely, to stop her trying to find out, is there?’ asked Amelia, stirring the while. ‘It’s a free country …’
    â€˜Nothing.’ Phoebe Plantin pushed the birth certificate to one side and took up her table napkin. ‘But there are only two things that she can do which are really helpful.’
    â€˜Which are?’
    â€˜One is to deposit her name and address with the Registrar saying that she is willing for it to be given to her child should he or she ever try to seek to find out its mother’s identity, and indicating that she wishes to make contact with the child so that if the child wishes it can go straight ahead.’
    â€˜And the other?’ asked Amelia.
    â€˜Advertise. You’ve probably seen advertisements asking for an adopted child born on such and such a date to write to someone who may be its mother,’ said Dr Plantin. ‘It’s open to abuse on both sides of course, but you might have to do something like that.’
    â€˜Or,’ said Amelia, ‘follow up every female child born on December 15th, 1940.’
    â€˜Difficult,’ said Phoebe Plantin placidly. ‘Even Herod had his problems in that direction for all that he was King.’
    â€˜King Herod?’
    â€˜He tried, didn’t he? And if that’s soup on the stove, it’s burning.’
    â€˜Ah, Sloan …’ Superintendent Leeyes could usually be found sitting in his office very much as a spider saves her strength and keeps watch on her web. The only real difference was that while the spider has to wait for her victim to get entangled in her net, the superintendent sent for his.
    â€˜Sir?’
    â€˜There you are, at last …’ The superintendent had long ago raised the wrong-footing of his subordinates to a fine art. ‘This Garamond business … you’re making progress, I hope?’
    â€˜We’ve established that