Nia:
Julie was astonished to learn Daddy had had two younger sisters, and she too had been tearful to learn what he’d been through. He may have been my father, but he was her Dada too. She’d leaned on him since she was a little girl, he’d put his career on the line when he’d lied to the hospital to make sure she and Mark stayed together when they were children after her crazy mother attacked her, he’d made her darkest days hopeful, and he was the only man in the world aside from Mark and Jamie she completely trusted.
He was her Dada, and the thought of him hurting hurt her too. Of course she wanted to help me find out where his fractured family had gone; he was Dada Morrison, her children’s beloved grandpa, there was no way she wasn’t going all-out to help!
Ever the logical one, her first thought was how we were going to go about this; we had names, we had dates of birth, we had locations, what we didn’t have was anything else; how did we get more? The internet? That seemed like a good idea, and useful, but not definitive enough. Family and genealogy websites? Definitely a good place to look. Should we engage professional help , one of those genealogists they used on those family-tracing TV shows?
That actually seemed like a good idea, Julie decided she’d look into it, and find out what the fees were, although that wouldn’t be a problem; Jamie and my business gave us a very good living indeed, we could afford it, and our dad was worth it.
Julie put together everything we had so far, and decided we needed to follow what we knew, and try and determine where Barbara and this Robert or Brian Davis had gone, where they were now, if they’d had any children, and how many. Ditto Rosa’s daughter; we knew she’d been taken in by her married half-sister, we knew she’d only been a baby at the time, so she probably wasn’t even aware we existed.
With her it was the same question: where was she, was she still alive, she’d be little older than Jamie, so was she married, and did she have kids too? We didn’t know what name she’d grown up using; was it even ‘Young’, because as far as she’d have known, her big sister was her mother, what was her half-sister’s name, and where was she, and was Cherie still with her? It looked difficult, but hopefully not impossible to unravel.
Questions upon questions, but mummy had been definite: use what we knew, and who we knew, get some kind of roadmap drawn up, and follow where it pointed; it was how we’d found Bethany, maybe it would help us find Barbara and Cherie.
The first thing Julie decided to do was get her cousin Darryl involved. Darryl had access to resources we didn’t; he’d used those to track down Julie and Mark, so maybe he could somehow use them to find Barbara, or her family, and Cherie, too.
Darryl was one of the good guys, everyone liked him, and his gorgeous wife Lena was the light of his life, and a pretty damn special person in her own right. She loved Julie and Mark, and, because we were part of Julie’s family, she saw us as family too; she was as at-home in mummy’s house as she was at Julie’s, and my kids, Julie’s kids, and her kids were attached to each other like the close-knit family group they were, even if they were on the other side of the country.
If we could count on anyone to pull out all the stops, it would be Darryl and Lena.
*
Darryl & Lena:
Coming home after a long day in the operating theatre is always a blessing; the kids relax me, and Lena’s calm, sweet presence takes me back down several notches every time. Three small kids and a household to run, and yet when I walk in there’s a warm hug, a hot drink, and an even hotter kiss, just the thing to perk me up after being on my feet in the operating theatre all day long; what else could a man reasonably want?
As always, David and Mo-Mo jumped all over me as soon as I walked in the door and showed me what they’d done in school. Little Marnie laughed and giggled at me from her playpen, leaving me no option but to swing her high so we could rub noses and I could kiss her and make her shriek with laughter when I gave her belly a big raspberry.
Lena eventually took her from me so I could shuck my jacket, kick off my shoes, and collapse in my armchair so the kids could once again clamber all over me. Being a surgeon was what I loved, but being a father was what I lived for, and time with my children was my most precious currency, so I hoarded it as much as I could.
After a reasonable time nuzzling my children Lena shooed the kids off my lap, then flopped down in their place, with her arms around my neck.
“Hello, big Doctor-Man, have fun today?” she grinned. I couldn’t resist squeezing her bottom, making her giggle even as I kissed her. Seven years married and three children down the line, and Lena still looked like my younger sister Allie’s big sister, not her aunt.
(A little explanation is due at this point, I feel: Lena is my birth-mother Lizzie’s half sister, born after Lizzie left home in her teens; Lizzie gave birth to me, but her boyfriend, my biological father Robert, a Royal Marine, was killed in-service before I was born, and Lizzie took off right after my birth, so Lena and Lizzie’s father, my grandfather had I but known it, had brought up Lena and I as brother and slightly younger sister. Lena was, technically speaking, my aunt, not my sister at all, but things happened, and now she’s my wife, and she and the children are my world.)
Allie, Lizzie’s daughter from her subsequent marriage , and an almost a perfect double for Lena at that age, and quite unfeasibly hot in her own right, was currently studying medicine at Kings College, London and fending off attention left, right, and centre. I like to think I was her hero and inspiration, and I won’t lie, I do preen and congratulate myself a little over it, until Lena quashes that by telling me Allie’s quite a bit smarter than me, and she didn’t need me to recommend her, but you keep thinking that, babe…
Sometimes I wondered about my wife…
Allie’s younger brother, Marcus, Lizzie’s son, my baby brother, was eleven years old, currently in secondary school, and still hazed-out and went into raptures whenever his beautiful young aunt Lena walked into the room, so no change there. Watching him beaming proudly and basking in her reflected glory when she picked him up from school for Lizzie while all his friends gawped at the beautiful lady in the car made her day, but they were right to gawp, she’s a beauty, a genuine stone Fox.
That particular evening, after all the kids-stuff, I was looking forward to a little time with my lovely wife. Lena seemed to feel the same way, as she was in no hurry to get off my lap, and I was in no hurry to relinquish her, so we sat in warm silence, she with her head on my chest, listening to my heart, and me with my arms around her, breathing in the fresh scent of her hair.
I could have sat like that all evening; Lena is everything I need, and all I ever wanted, and holding her close is the best reward I could ever give myself, but I could tell she had something on her mind, so, after a certain amount of squeezing her and patting and fondling her lovely, pneumatic little bottom and listening to her giggle, I braced her.
“OK sweetheart, what’s up? I know you want to say something, problem?”
Lena toyed with my shirt-buttons, before sliding her hand inside my shirt and rubbing her warm little hand over my stomach.
“No, not a problem, but a request; it’s kind of a family thing.”
She looked up at me so I quirked an eyebrow in query, and she carried on.
“I got a call today, from Julie, and Nia, we chatted about some stuff, but the reason they called is they need some help. Don’t worry, nothing’s wrong!” she assured me as I shifted so I could look directly at her.
“Julie and Nia both asked if you could ask Georgie to find out something; it’s probably a long-shot, but I said I’d ask you anyway.”
“Go on,” I said, “What could the girls possibly want from Georgie… wait a minute; are you asking what I think you’re asking? Because I don’t know, privacy and safeguarding rules and policies are not easy to get around, especially medical records now that they’ve tightened-up on records-snooping, not even for someone as senior as Georgie; she’d probably have to show cause, because she’d be sticking her neck out an awful long way. If she got caught and struck-off over it she’d never get another position of trust… ”
Lena dimpled at me, that irresistible, sweet, sexy grin of hers that made my tummy flutter and my resolve melt like butter under a blowtorch.
“Dar, it’s for family, please, just try. They’re trying to find out where dad Morrison’s sisters went, if they had kids, where those kids are. Georgie helped you once, she put you onto Julie and Mark, perhaps she can find out if they had some kind of medical records and where they are, that would help a lot.” She scratched my chin gently, cajolingly.
“Please ask her, Nia’s mum and dad have always been so good to us and never ask for anything except time with the babies, they’re Julie’s family so they’re our family too, please, I’d really like to try and help Jules and Nia, please baby?”
Lena knows I can’t refuse her anything, which is why she never asks for anything, so the fact she was flat-out asking me to please help at least three times told me how much this meant to her. How could I possibly refuse her?
“I’ll call Georgie in the morning,” I grinned, “maybe I can talk her round; who knows, I might even chuck you in to sweeten the pot, you know she fancies you like mad…”
Lena thumped my chest, even while grinning naughtily at me.
“Darryl Morgan, I am so shocked… although, she is kind of hot… ”
That got her an extended tickling session, the kids, always up for fun, jumped in, and the three of us tickled her mercilessly, reducing her to a helpless, quivering mass, laughing so hard tears were running down her face. When she’d finally gotten her breath back, I pulled her close to me.
“I’ll call Georgie in the morning, and if you like, I can drop your number on her… ”
Lena thumped my chest again and grinned that cheeky grin she only seemed to keep in reserve for me.
“Don’t tempt me, Blondie, but then… she IS a ten, who knows, I might even like it… ”
That got her a pinch on her cute little bottom, and a long and tender kiss, while David and Mo-Mo made loud ‘eeuuww!’ and kissy-kissy noises, and giggled uncontrollably.
Kids, what to do with ’em, can’t sell ’em, can’t give ’em away, and can’t leave ’em bound and duct-taped in the cellar…
Still, once they’d been fed and put to bed and were fast asleep, I had plans for my hot little wifey, and Lena was giving me that naughty little smile that told me she knew exactly what I was up to, and was completely on-board with it.