CHAPTER THIRTY
I dropped Maisie off at the school breakfast club and drove straight over to Bogg House.
It was still early, a quarter to eight, and Mac and the guys hadn’t arrived yet. I walked past the new kitchen units that were stacked against the wall, ready to be installed, and went straight upstairs to the nursery.
What I saw confirmed my suspicions. I’d seen exactly the same image of a bee the day I’d gone with Zak and Rhona to the gallery to see Kenzie’s pottery. I’d looked at a lot of art on the walls. The bee must have appeared in one of the paintings I’d seen that day.
The girl called Serena, who I chatted to, was skilled at painting flowers. Could I have seen the bee in one of her floral canvases?
I looked at the gallery online. It opened at nine-thirty. I’d open up at the café, make sure Katja was fine on her own for a while, then I’d drive over to the gallery once it was open.
It might be nothing. It could just be my imagination working overtime again. But if there was a connection, I had to check it out...
*****
I practically fell in with the doors when the gallery opened.
Ignoring the scent of freshly-baked cakes wafting down from the café, I walked around the walls on the ground floor, looking at the paintings.
A few of the artists were there, setting up their stalls for the day, although I couldn’t see Serena. But when I walked over to take a closer look at her paintings, I saw it almost immediately, and my heart gave a little kick of excitement.
The watercolour on canvas depicted a golden beehive beneath the hanging branches of a tree in autumn. And there they were. Three depictions of a bee in total, flying around the hive, and each one with that distinctive smiley face and pink wings!
But what did it mean?
I retired to the café and bought myself a coffee and a toasted teacake with butter (my most common craving these days), and I sat down to think.
Could Serena be Rhona’s daughter?
But that didn’t make any sense. Rhona hadn’t actually seen her daughter since she was taken from her a month after she was born. So how could Serena possibly know about the bees Rhona had painted in anticipation of her daughter’s arrival?
Maybe it was just pure coincidence? Perhaps it was nothing more than two artists painting a bee in a similar style?
Feeling rather sheepish at my eagerness to solve a mystery that probably wasn’t even there, I finished my breakfast and went out to the car. I was reading far too much into Rhona’s murals. She’d painted some lovely scenes on the walls of that room but it was unlikely the images had any great underlying meaning. They’d made the room beautiful for her soon-to-be-born baby. That was all...
Someone was driving into the car park as I left and the driver waved as they went past. At first, I thought it must be Kenzie. But when I looked in my rear-view mirror, I realised it was Serena getting out of the car. She was carrying a portmanteau that presumably contained more paintings.
I braked, hesitating.
Was it worth speaking to her?
I glanced at my watch. It wouldn’t be getting busy back at the café for another hour yet. I had the time...
*****
Serena smiled as I walked over to where she was hanging one of her paintings. ‘I thought it was you! Are you back to buy one of my wonderful paintings?’ She grinned. ‘Only joking, by the way. No pressure.’
I laughed. ‘I love them, actually. Especially the daffodils. They’re my favourite flower.’
She smiled modestly. ‘I love painting spring flowers best of all.’
I glanced at her watercolours nearby – the countryside scenes. And the painting I was most interested in. The one with the beehive. It would sound really odd if I asked where she’d got the inspiration for the bee. How on earth was I going to broach the subject?
Unless . . .
‘These are great,’ I began. ‘I bet your mum and dad are really proud of you?’
She smiled. ‘They are. My dad, bless him, is convinced I’m going to be the next April Gornik!’
I looked at her questioningly and she grinned. ‘Famous landscape painter?’
‘So do you get your artistic flair from him? Or your mum?’
She laughed. ‘Crikey, no. Dad’s a doctor and Mum can’t draw for toffee.’
‘So your talent’s nothing to do with inherited genes, then?’
‘Actually, I was adopted.’
My heart lurched at this. ‘You were?’
She smiled fondly. ‘I’m so lucky. After a tricky start in life, I now have the best parents a girl could wish for.’
‘That’s amazing.’ I was trying to stay calm, while my heart raced with excitement.
Could she be Rhona’s daughter?
‘So... you probably got your talent from your birth parents, then?’
She nodded. ‘Well, I only know about my birth mother. She was a single mum when I was born. But yes, she’s a talented artist.’
‘Really?’
‘I’ve got some of her art on my phone.’ She fished out her mobile and showed me some lovely landscapes. ‘That’s her there.’ A photo of a woman who was the spitting image of Serena, except older, appeared on her screen, and my heart sank. ‘I met her for the first time a few years ago and she’s brilliant. We get on so well.’
‘That’s wonderful.’ I felt genuinely pleased for Serena. I knew from programmes on TV that it didn’t always work out when you went looking for your birth parents. ‘Right, I’d better let you get on. But I’ll be back soon for one of your paintings. I’ll bring my husband Zak to help me choose which one.’
‘Great! Well, lovely to talk to you again.’
I was about to walk away when – feeling bad that I hadn’t been honest with her – I smiled ruefully and admitted, ‘You’ll never believe this, but I actually came here to look at a bee in one of your paintings.’
‘A bee ?’
I shrugged, feeling a bit embarrassed. ‘I’d convinced myself that my friend had painted exactly the same bee and there had to be a connection between you. She gave up her baby at birth, you see, but I think she’d love to find her daughter again.’
Serena looked taken aback at this, not surprisingly.
‘I know. Mad or what?’ I pointed at the painting. ‘I guess a bee is a bee. It was just the pink wings that threw me off.’
‘Pink wings?’ She frowned. ‘Oh, that’s not my painting.’
‘It isn’t?’
‘No. My friend Polly painted that. She paints that cute bee in every one of her pictures –even if it’s just the tiniest bee next to her signature in the corner.’ She moved along the wall, showing me what she meant. Sure enough, when you looked closely enough, the smiley bee featured in all of them!
My heart was beating fast. ‘I saw Polly last time we were here, didn’t I?’
‘You did.’ Sabrina’s face was suddenly lit with excitement. ‘Oh, my God. I wonder...?’
‘What?’
She paused, her hand pressed over her heart, her eyes glassy as if she was struggling to hold back the tears. ‘Well... it’s just that Polly and I have been best friends ever since our first day at school. We bonded straightaway when we knew we were both adopted, and no one else in the class was.’
I stared at her. ‘Polly was also adopted?’
Sabrina nodded. ‘She was given a different name by her birth mother but her adoptive parents decided to call her Polly. Oh, my goodness. Imagine if she was the one you’re looking for! Polly’s never tried to find her mum. She’s always thought that her biological mum just didn’t want to be found. But I keep telling her she won’t know that unless she tries to find her.’
I stared at Serena, my mind whirling. ‘It could be nothing, of course.’
She nodded eagerly. ‘But it might be something. Do you want me to talk to Polly? Ask her about the bee?’
‘That might be a good idea.’
‘I mean, she might not want to have anything to do with your friend. It’s obviously entirely up to her if she wants to see her. What’s her name?’
‘Rhona.’
She frowned. ‘And you don’t know the name she gave her daughter at birth?’
I shook my head. Then I remembered something... something I could easily check back at Bogg House.
‘I wouldn’t ask if this wasn’t important. But... do you think Polly would mind you telling me the name she was given at birth?’
‘No. No, definitely not. Polly’s always very open with people about the circumstances of her birth. Her biological mother called her Eliza Beatrice.’
*****
Eliza Beatrice.
Something rang a bell in my head and when I checked Polly’s lovely painting of the boats in the harbour, I realised I was right. She’d named one of the boats ‘Eliza’ and another ‘Beatrice’. There were clues everywhere if you looked hard enough!
Rhona’s mum was called Elizabeth, and it was very possible that Rhona would have named her baby after her mum. I thought about calling Rhona to ask her, but I knew she’d probably cut me off if I dared to mention her daughter again.
I had a theory that Rhona desperately wanted to find her but was too scared of being rejected to start searching. She’d said she’d drawn a line under the whole harrowing experience and wanted to move on, but maybe she was only protecting herself from further hurt.
How amazing would it be if Rhona could move into a new chapter of her life with her daughter by her side?
But she couldn’t know about what I’d uncovered. Not yet. I couldn’t risk building up Rhona’s hopes that her daughter might have been found, if those hopes were going to turn out to be in vain.
I left Serena and drove straight over to Bogg House. I said a quick hello to Mac and Danny, who were working on the kitchen. Then, grabbing a pen and a paper receipt that was lying on a bench, I ran upstairs to the nursery.
I’d been staring at the baby bricks on the wall below the windowsill, never thinking that they might contain a clue. Each brick bore a different letter and my heart was beating really fast as I quickly counted them.
Thirteen.
I penned a note of each individual letter on the back of the receipt, then I looked at them in a line, unscrambling them in my mind.
My heart skipped a beat.
On the baby bricks, which were all colours of the rainbow, Rhona had carefully painted the letters that were contained in the names she’d chosen for her daughter.
Eliza Beatrice.