drawer in that safe.’
‘Yes, there is, Cait. That solid block of metal you described, well, that’s the drawer. You push the front and it springs out.’
She exclaimed, ‘Oh! In that case, I could still find some photographs or information about my ancestors. And, more importantly, information that could lead you to your daughter. Hopefully my mother did keep the adoption paperwork!’ She jumped up from her chair. ‘Come on,’ she urged them both. ‘Let’s go and find out. There’s a taxi office on the main road. Hopefully they’ll have a car available and we can be looking in that safe in half an hour. Then tomorrow, all being well, you’ll be on the way to being reunited with your daughter.’
CHAPTER THIRTY
Glen and Jan were anxiously waiting while Cait searched the safe drawer.
She had gone through the procedures of getting both the key to the cupboard and the safe key itself from where her mother had hidden them, and then opened them both. From where she was kneeling on the floor she took a moment to flash a look over at Glen and Jan as if to say, well, here goes, then pushed her hand against the front of what she had thought to be a solid metal base. A metal drawer shot out to reveal its contents.
Glen and Jan meanwhile had been holding their breath, praying that the drawer contained what they had come for. From their position neither of them could see anything. Unable to contain herself, Jan blurted out, ‘Does it hold anything, Cait, or is it empty after all?’ Her mind was screaming, Please, please, say there is something. No more than Glen’s was, though.
Cait put them out of their agony by nodding and telling them, ‘Yes, there is a pile of papers here. Let’s just hope that amongst them is something to do with Lucy.’ She put her hand into the drawer and lifted out a sheaf of papers and began to search through them. On top of the pile was a thick document, the official lettering on the front page informing Cait it was the one Glen had signed, mistakenly believing it to be a power of attorney. Cait replaced that in the safe drawer. She then found the deeds to the house in the names of Samuel and Nerys Thomas, and put them back in the drawer too. The document below that concerned the car. Now there were only three pieces of paper left. She scanned the top one and her face screwed up in utter bewilderment.
‘Oh!’ she exclaimed.
Both Glen and Jan urgently asked, ‘What have you found, Cait?’
She shook her head. ‘But it doesn’t make sense . . . It’s a death certificate.’
Jan clasped her hand to her mouth in shock.
Glen froze as a vice-like pain squeezed his heart. He uttered, ‘My daughter is dead? Oh, no, please don’t let that be . . .’
Cait shook her head. ‘No, Glen, she isn’t.’
They both gasped in relief to hear this. ‘So who is the death certificate for then, Cait?’
She looked across at them both in utter confusion. ‘Me,’ she told them.
They looked back at her in surprise. It wasn’t possible for her to be holding a death certificate in her own name when she was still very much alive!
Before any of them could fathom how this state of affairs had come about there was the sound of the bedroom door opening and, to their horror, they saw Nerys walk in.
At the shock of seeing her, Cait let out a gasp of fright.
In the process of taking off her stylish coat to hang it in the wardrobe, Nerys swung round to see Cait down on her haunches by the open cupboard, the door of the safe wide open too.
Throwing her coat on to the bed, Nerys furiously exclaimed, ‘What are you doing in here? You’re not even supposed to be living here any more and you know this room is forbidden to you without my permission.’ She then noticed the sheets of paper Cait was holding and her look of anger turned to one of panic. She demanded, ‘Give me those. Now! NOW!’ she screamed frenziedly as she started to head towards the cowering girl. Then she froze in her tracks when a male voice told her in commanding tones, ‘Leave her be, Nerys. She’s helping me.’
She swung round in surprise to see two strangers standing across the other side of the room. ‘And just who the hell are you?’ she demanded. ‘And what is