Chapters (37)
‘Right,’ Ali said, thinking. Dan waited. She looked at him. ‘I don’t even know if it’s him,’ she said; then, to the receptionist, ‘I don’t suppose you have a photo of him I could look at? Or can you tell me his date of birth?’
‘No, love, I don’t, and I can’t,’ she said. One of the phones was ringing again, and it was evident she needed to get on. ‘You can leave a note if you want, to say you called?’
And this seemed a decent idea. A note saying are you my Peter Connor, in which case, I’m your Alison. If it wasn’t him, no harm done. If it was, he’d have some warning, time to prepare – or to flee, because that might happen too. But, yes, it would be sensible to give him this breathing space so he wouldn’t be floored by the sight of her, unannounced, in his place of work. She took a notepad and pen from her bag, and wrote:
Dear Peter, forgive the intrusion out of the blue, but my name is Alison Connor and I left Attercliffe in 1979, and now I’m back, looking for my brother, whom I hope – and believe – might be you. I’ll be back here, at A & E, by eight o’clock tomorrow morning, when you finish your night shift.
‘We could come back this evening, for eight?’ Dan said, but she shook her head.
‘I’m dead beat, and that’s the start of his shift, better to catch him the other end.’
If it was him.
And it might be him.
Let it be him.
She added ‘Alison x’ to her note, then folded it and wrote ‘For Peter Connor’ on the blank side. ‘Thank you,’ she said, to the woman, who placed a finger on the note and slid it towards herself without really looking at Ali, just glancing up and vaguely nodding. She was in conversation again now on the telephone, and Ali saw her note go on to a moderate pile of paperwork, where soon it would doubtless be joined by more. The chance of that slip of paper making it to Peter Connor tonight seemed even slimmer than the chance of him being the Peter Connor, her brother, the Peter she knew now that she longed for him to be.