A Deadly Imperfection: Calladine & Bayliss 3 Read Online Free Page A

could hardly talk about that – could I?’
    ‘What other thing?’
    ‘Pandora.’
    ‘Pandora who?’
    ‘Don’t play dumb with me.  I’m talking about the shock in the box – the box I’m keeping for you, the one your mother left you, the one with your past in it.’
    He shut his eyes.  Why now – why did she have to bring this up now?  He’d put it out of his mind.  He hadn’t been ready to deal with what he’d found out then, and he was no nearer now.  He sighed deeply - life used to be so simple.  He used to know exactly who he was, where he’d come from, who his family was.  He used to have a history, know names and faces – now all he had a bloody big gap where his mother should have been.
    ‘I know we’ve not talked these last few weeks, since that day – you know, the day you got shot.  And that’s not because I didn’t want to - I didn’t know where to begin.  But don’t think that I’ve forgotten, because I’ve been dying to ask.  Have you done anything about finding her, your birth mother?’
    Right or not, the truth was he hadn’t.  When his mother had died she’d left him a few hundred quid and the revelation that he was the product of an affair his father had had fifty two years ago with some woman he’d never heard of.  Freda Calladine wasn’t his mother at all, and Calladine hadn’t been able to deal with it.  So it lay shelved in a backwater of his mind labelled explosive .
    ‘No, nothing, I can’t face it.  For one thing I haven’t told anyone else yet, not even Zoe, and certainly not Lydia.’  He watched her expression change – first from incredulity that he could keep something so big to himself then to one of disappointment.
    ‘Why not - I’d have thought your Zoe had a right to know.  She is your daughter – this affects her too,’ she told him sharply.
    ‘She doesn’t get to know anything – not until I decide.  Come on – how do I tell her that her granny was a fake?  That her real granny is some woman that I don’t even know, that I’ve never even met?  What’s she going to think about my dad?  Come to think about it what am I supposed to think about him?  So don’t you go saying anything either.’
    ‘She wasn’t a fake.  Freda Calladine was your mother, she brought you up, and that made her Zoe’s gran.  Despite all the bad feelings you still harbour you’ve got to be curious, surely.’
    ‘Look, for now the box stays with you away from prying eyes, and I don’t want to take things any further – not just yet.’
    ‘But she’s your mother, well your birth mother.  For all you know this Eve Walker might still live locally, you might even know her already!’
    ‘If I drag all that up it’ll have repercussions.  Lydia only stays with me because Fallon’s my cousin.  A cousin on Freda’s side, I might remind you - my pretend mother’s side,’ he emphasised with annoyance.  ‘If she finds out that he’s not – then I doubt she’d be so keen.’
    ‘Is she really that shallow?’
    ‘You did try to warn me – weeks ago, remember?’
    ‘Fallon’s in prison awaiting trial.  It can’t matter to her now what he is to you.’
    ‘That’s where you’re wrong because it does matter.  She’s still after a story and Fallon has agreed to see her, to talk.  So for the time being I’d prefer to keep things as they are.’
    ‘I’d have thought you’d be dead keen to tell the world Fallon’s no kin of yours.  He was one of Manchester’s biggest crime barons.  You should be jumping for joy.’
    ‘Yes, alright, don’t rub it in.  Fact is I like having Lydia around so I don’t want to rock the boat just yet.’
    ‘You’re making a mistake.’
    ‘Well it’s my mistake to make, so leave it.’
    ‘You know – you can be a most irritating man when you choose to be, Tom Calladine.  Anyway – it’s too late.’
    ‘Too late for what?’
    ‘To leave it – I’ve already looked her up.’
    Ruth virtually