Dying to Meet You by Patricia Scott Page A

flat when she came back here to live. Sent some beautiful flowers for her funeral and paid for everything. He seemed very upset. His brother never came. We were glad of that. Hugh hasn’t fully recovered from the shock of her death yet. He was so very fond of his sister.’
    ‘ Her cancer was terminal I understand.’
    ‘Yes , but there was another reason for her to do what she did,’ she hesitated. ‘She’d had a child. A son when she was quite young, just eighteen when she was at the drama school. She had him adopted but he’d managed to trace her as they can these days. He contacted her shortly before she died.’
    ‘Good lord!’ Mel exclaimed. ‘That must have been a shock for her. And very traumatic.’
    ‘Oh it was. He just turned up on her doorstep. She’d refused to speak to him on the phone. He wanted to ask her so many questions. Her reasons for putting him up for adoption. His father’s name and so on... He was not Erik’s child. The father was another young drama student.’
    ‘Was she prepared to tell him anything?’
    ‘No, she wasn’t. She wasn’t prepared for any of this. Meeting her son was particularly upsetting for Geraldine. At the best of times she wasn’t strong and she was in a terrible state when I came over in answer to her phone call. She had just got rid of him. And she couldn’t cope...’
    ‘Did your husband know about the baby?’
    Angela Temple shook her head slowly and blinked back her tears. ‘He didn’t and neither did I. Not till then. She’d kept it a secret from him. From everyone. Her parents especially. She never told me till this happened. And to make things worse her son came to visit her on her birthday and unfortunately Erik had forgotten it. For the first time ever. He normally sent her a birthday card, a cheque and orchids.
    ‘ She sent her son away when he came to see her, said he was mistaken and that she’d never had a baby. But she confessed afterwards to me that she’d lied to him and felt terrible about it.
    ‘He never left his name or address for us to get in touch with him. I felt really bad about it. He must have wanted to see her badly.’
    ‘She spoke about it to you then. Did she tell you his name or anything more?’
    ‘No. It disturbed her , I know that much.’
    ‘I think you’re right perhaps that it affected her state of mind critically. He never came back again to try to see her then?’
    ‘No - I’m sure it was as upsetting for him, if not more. She never told me what he said or where he’d been living till then. She didn’t want to hear it. She got paralytic drunk and hardly made any sense to me at all. She still didn’t want her brother to know but I had to tell Hugh of course and he went round to see her. But she was no longer making sense.’
    ‘None of this was mentioned at the inquest.’
    She shook her head. ‘No, it wasn’t. We didn’t want to make things any worse and as she had terminal cancer the coroner accepted that the illness could have made her do this dreadful thing.’
    Mel nodded. ‘Understandable. So why are you telling me this now?’
    ‘Because I feel that we should try to find Geraldine’s son. I think Geraldine would want that to try to make up for what she did to him. We must tell him what Geraldine didn’t tell him. How she really did regret it afterwards.’
    ‘So what does your husband think about all this? This could make her son feel even worse instead of better.’
    ‘I haven’t told Hugh yet. He’s very upset still. He wishes we could have done more for her after the accident. She was such a lovely girl. If only she’d never met Erik Kaufman she might have been still been working in the theatre now. And received some acclaim for it.’
    ‘Well, I wish you luck anyway with your search.’
    It wasn’t till later that Mel thinking through again what Angela Temple had told her mulled over the fact that Geraldine Temple was born in July and could possibly be a Cancer s tar sign too. Had