“I just thought it would be settled and that would be that.”

“No, I’m afraid it’s a bit more complicated than that. I’m sorry you’re disappointed.”

Mrs. Tilbury dabbed at her eyes with a dainty handkerchief.

“Is it the traveling up to London that bothers you? Of course we’ll reimburse your fares.”

Jean would have to grovel to the waspish Muriel in Accounts. She never surrendered a penny of petty cash without a struggle.

“Oh, it’s not that,” Mrs. Tilbury gulped. “I don’t mind the journey.”

“I like coming up to London with you, Mummy,” said Margaret, squeezing her mother’s hand. “I don’t mind missing school.”

“Dr. Bamber said even if the blood tests are a match, it doesn’t prove anything. So what’s the point in doing them?”

“Well, the blood test on its own can’t prove the case for a virgin birth. But a negative result—a mismatch—would certainly disprove it. It’s just the first step.”

“It makes me feel as though you don’t believe me.”

“Whether I believe you or not is not important,” said Jean, who had an uncomfortable feeling that Mrs. Tilbury was having second thoughts about the whole business—was in fact looking for excuses to back out.

“It is to me,” came the reproachful reply.

“I don’t disbelieve you.” This double negative didn’t quite add up to a positive, but it was already further than she had intended to go.

Mrs. Tilbury nodded and seemed to gather herself together. “I’m sorry. You’re quite right. I shall just have to let the doctors do their job. I think it’s hospitals that make me emotional. Please ignore me.”

“It’s quite understandable,” said Jean, and they made their way back toward the Strand, parting company so that mother and daughter could go to Bedford Street to call on Mr. Tilbury, while Jean headed to Charing Cross.

The general mood had quite recovered from this hiccup by the time they said goodbye, but Jean found herself turning over the conversation on the way home, puzzled and unconvinced that she had really got to the bottom of Mrs. Tilbury’s curious impatience.

7

Dear Mrs. Van Lingen,

I hope you don’t mind me contacting you in this roundabout way.

Our mutual acquaintance, Mrs. Halfyard, has kindly offered to forward this letter to you, because I am interested in your recollections of the time you spent in St. Cecilia’s Nursing and Convalescent Home between June and September 1946. I am particularly interested in your memories of a fellow patient, Gretchen Edel, who conceived a child while a patient on the ward during that period—an extraordinary occurrence, you will agree, to have taken place under your noses, as it were.

If you can throw any light on this or recall anything that may be significant, I would be most grateful to hear from you at the above address, or you may telephone me during office hours, reversing the charges.

[Jean blanched as she typed those words, wondering how she would ever justify this expense to Muriel in Accounts.]