Chapter 10

Tuesday 7th May 1985

Next morning, back at work, I took a pad and a pen. Time to think. What did I need to know? I needed to verify that Helen and I had the same mother, or father, or both. It triggered the realisation that I knew precious little about my own birth mother and father, though I seemed to know she was a single mother.

I extracted my birth certificate, of which I had taken little notice in the past. The first look confirmed what I suspected: it was a short certificate and so told me nothing about my birth mother, only giving me my name, the place my birth was registered: Shrewsbury, the date of my birth, the sixth of May 1960, and a reference number to the full entry in the Registers.

I resolved to get a full certificate which would give me my parents’ names, father’s occupation, address where I was born, home address, mother’s maiden name and who registered the birth.

The obvious source of further information until I got the certificate, was Mum. That would be my first port of call.

I worked through lunch and left a hour early to visit her.

As I drove to Mum’s place, it struck me that neither Helen nor myself had ever talked about our birth parents after that first meal together. It seemed we agreed that they were irrelevant and of no interest. Well, how wrong we were!

“So at last you want to know about your birth mother,” Mum said. “Why?”

“This business of being Helen’s brother. It occurred to me that I should check the details for myself.”

“Well, Davey,” she said sorrowfully, “your file went back to Manchester Social when you turned eighteen, and to be honest, the last time I looked at it I think you were seven. You’ve got your birth certificate. You could probably apply to Manchester to see your file as an adult. I do know a little.”

“Anything would help.”

“I seem to remember her Christian name was Ruby, and she had you very young, fifteen or sixteen possibly. There was trouble with her boyfriend I think, and you were taken into care as a baby.

“She got you back when she got rid of the boyfriend, and I think that’s when she moved to Manchester. She had to be supervised because of her age and since you were at risk. She got another boyfriend but he was no better than the other one. He was violent, so you were taken into care again...”

She paused in thought. Then, “I think she died.”

“Drugs?” I asked.

“No I don’t think so. I think she was beaten up by her boyfriend and didn’t survive. It made the papers, he was sentenced to life, minimum twenty-five years. There was talk that he only just missed being hung for it.

“You could try the Manchester Evening News: it’ll be in their archives. You came to me in ‘65 aged four, and you’d been fostered somewhere else in the meantime. Try going backwards from March or April 1965. Big job.”

“I’ll do that, Mum, and I’ll get a full birth certificate. That’ll give my mother’s name and the address where I was born, probably her address as well if she registered the birth.”

“Davey, you could look up the death indexes for her death once you know her full name for sure. The death certificate will say how she died and where, if indeed it’s true she was murdered.”

I was surprised that I felt nauseous and distressed, nay, angry at her life being cut short, but with a lead to follow, I felt better as I left to return home. I had something to do, something positive to go on. Perhaps she hadn’t been killed at all. Perhaps I could find her.

On Wednesday I asked Tessa, one of the secretaries, to order me a full birth certificate from Shrewsbury Register Office, giving her my short certificate so she could provide my date of birth and the reference to the entry in the records. I gave her my cheque for £6.50, that being the fee.

I enclosed a self-addressed envelope with a first class stamp, and it was sent off that afternoon by first class post. I calculated it would arrive the next day, take a day or two to be processed. There must have been a rash of births or people enquiring about certificates, for the certificate did not arrive until Monday of the following week.

The letter was waiting for me in my pigeon-hole when I returned from work on Monday evening. I had to confess to some excitement. What would I find?

Something unexpected in column one! I was born in a house on Castle Foregate, not the Royal Salop, as Maurice’s investigators had said.

My name was David, well, I knew that!

The column for father’s name was blank; my mother’s name was indeed Ruby Evans and the word ‘waitress’ had been added instead of her maiden name.

I may have been born in Shrewsbury, but in a bed sitter, Ruby’s home address on Castle Foregate. She had registered the birth.

I was now hooked on finding out more about Ruby Evans and whether she was murdered, and if so, when? If she was murdered before November 1963, she could not be Helen’s mother, and we could not be brother and sister!

I managed to get into the Record Office after work and searched for Ruby’s death in the Death Indexes. It took a while, but in the end there was only one Ruby Evans between 1965 and 1961. The entry showed the death occurred in Chorlton, Manchester in the March Quarter 1964.

On Wednesday lunch time I went to the Register Office in Manchester and obtained her death certificate. She died on the 14th January 1964 of a fractured skull, and multiple injuries the details of which were crammed into the small space.

I had the afternoon for trust administration at River House, so I cheated and went to the Record Office to search the fiches for the Manchester Evening News account.

The article was an account of the coroner’s inquest on the death of Ruby Evans. There were descriptions of the post-mortem examination, and accounts from the police about how she was found badly beaten, and the subsequent arrest of a Lee Bradshaw, her boyfriend who had pleaded guilty to the fatal attack.

I searched the column. Not enough. I needed an account of the actual event, and continued to search. Eventually I came across a front page headline, Missing Woman’s Body Found.

It gave details of the place and that her badly beaten body was found in a two-up, two-down terraced house in Hulme. I knew the area, it was in the centre of major slum clearance at that time in the city. The demolition clearly hadn’t reached that street yet. The houses were filthy, without electricity, proper plumbing or a bathroom, with an outside toilet in a brick shed.

However, the part that caught my attention was that a young boy was found hiding and crying in the house, who turned out to be her son. It had to be me. My name was not mentioned. More to the point, there was no mention of a baby. Helen would have been about eight weeks old. If I was in the house aged three, and not in a care home, wouldn’t Helen be there as well?

Further, if Ruby were found in Manchester with me, and she was also Helen’s mother, how did Helen come to be born in Shrewsbury? Mum had said Ruby was living in Manchester, not just visiting.

I was beginning to suspect Ruby could not be my mother and Helen’s as well, in which case... ? I began to feel excited.

Then I remembered what Maurice Metcalfe had said. David Evans and Helen had the same mother. Now the mother would be Evans if she was married, but the Birth Indexes showed the mother’s maiden name as well as her married one. I had obtained my long birth certificate using my short version, so I had not checked what the indexes showed.

I found my entry in the birth indexes, and Ruby’s maiden name was of course – Evans! So I moved to search the December Quarter 1963. Helen’s given name would not have been Helen: that was given her by her adopting parents. I was looking for a girl Evans, with a mother whose maiden name was also Evans.

There were an awful lot of Evanses! I only had to look at girls, and though there was the odd boy whose mother had the maiden name Evans, there were no girls with an unmarried mother, name of Evans.

What did that mean? Hope began to surge! I asked one of the staff.

His replies did not help!

“The first possibility is that the birth was not registered,” he said.

“I’m pretty sure it was.”

“Well, it could be a misspelling, you could check alternative spellings of the name of the girl or the mother, or perhaps the girl has two or three forenames, have you checked those?”

“Yes, but not alternative spellings.”

“With a name like Evans, I can’t think there’d be many – try Eva, or Evens, or Evanes perhaps Bevans.”

I did but no luck. But Maurice had said: the investigators had found David and Helen with the same mother. Since there was no girl with mother’s maiden name of Evans, It seemed that Ruby could not be Helen’s mother.

It was looking more and more likely that Helen and I were not related at all! Then it came to me. There must be another David Evans in 1960 and a girl surname Evans with the same mother’s maiden name as that of David Evans. I went back to the indexes. My heart was beating fast.

It actually proved easy. I wrote out all the David Evanses, and there were plenty, added the mothers’ maiden names. Then the same with the girl Evanses in December quarter 1963, looking for a match and there it was.

David J Evans, some fifteen entries below mine, born and registered in Shrewsbury, mother’s maiden name: Drinkwater.

Kylie A Evans born in Shrewsbury, and with the mother’s maiden name – Drinkwater.

I took the details and left the record office, it was five o’clock! I had been there all afternoon.

On Thursday I sent for their birth certificates. And received a birthday card. Ten days late. I opened it and took it into the kitchen. Most of the crew were there.

“Hey!” I shouted. “I just got a birthday card, better late than never eh?”

“Who from?” Imogen asked over her shoulder as she stirred something delicious on her stove.

“You’ll never guess!” I said with a grin.

“Helen!” shouted Kim.

“I was wrong,” I said. “You did guess.”

“What does it say?” asked Christian.

“Not a lot. ‘Happy Birthday David, love Helen.’ That’s all.”

“That’s weird!” said Harry. “As if nothing has happened. That girl is strange!”

I had one more task to do, to check on my mother’s movements. I phoned Manchester Social Services and after a long series of transfers got archives and asked about my file.

I was told to present myself at the offices with identification, which I did on Friday lunch hour. A bad move. I had to wait an hour until the staff returned from lunch. Another half hour saw me at a table with my file.

It seemed that Ruby Evans came to the notice of the Manchester office in December 1962, and they registered her address with her new boyfriend in Hulme in March 1963 where she remained until her untimely death in 1964. There was no possible way she could have given birth to Helen in Shrewsbury.

Both certificates arrived on the same day, Wednesday. It had taken just a week to obtain them. I took them to my room and opened them with a certain amount of trepidation.

Both children were born at St Mary’s Street, Shrewsbury, which turned out to be the Royal Salop Hospital. The interesting thing was that David John Evans was born on the 16th of May which was written as Sixtnth May. I wondered if this had been mistaken for Sixth May.

In full lawyer mode, I thought grimly that there was a reason why registrars were required to write everything out in full. Whoever G Hoskins was, he or she should have been sacked for abbreviating the date.

The parents, David and Kathleen Evans, were married and their address was different for each birth, though both in Shrewsbury itself. The father was a labourer on David’s certificate, and unemployed on Kylie’s.

Kylie’s birthday was the same as Helen’s, 23rd November 1963. I recalled what Maurice Metcalfe had told me: both children were born in the same hospital. Kylie was born in Royal Salop, but I was born on Castle Foregate. Both children had the same mother, Kylie’s was Kathleen Evans nee Drinkwater, mine was Ruby Evans, nee – Evans. My mother was living in Manchester at the time Kylie was born in Shrewsbury.

Then it hit me. Helen’s card the previous week was sent for the sixteenth! We had celebrated my birthday together the previous year, but on the sixth, but she’d obviously forgotten the date, and used the David J birthday!

Case proved. Helen and I were not siblings. I went downstairs. Again most of the folk were there, Harry was out, and Nuala was going to be late arriving.

We ate and washed up, then I asked them to stay.

“You’ve all been so good to me over the past months, I think you should be the first to hear this.

“At my birthday party Harry asked if I’d checked the evidence about Helen, and I had to say I hadn’t. It hadn’t occurred to me. So over the past few weeks I’ve been checking. I’ve found all sorts of things. I’ve found out about my birth mother.

“My foster mother had a recollection that Ruby Evans, my mother, was murdered, so I looked for her death certificate in the indexes and found she died at the beginning of 1964 in Manchester. I looked through the back numbers of the Evening News and sure enough found she was beaten to death by her boyfriend of the time.”

There were gasps round the table. I couldn’t resist carrying on.

“It seems I was hiding in the house with her body when the police arrived. I was three years old, and told the police who had done it. D’you know, I have no memory of any of that?

“Helen was born in November 1963, but there was no mention in the paper of a baby, and I’m sure there would have been had a baby also have been there. However, Ruby was living in Manchester, and Helen was born in Shrewsbury. If Ruby was not Helen’s mother, we are not brother and sister after all.”

Everyone began to talk at once. I held up a hand.

“I remembered Maurice Metcalfe saying that Helen and I were born in the same hospital. I got my full birth certificate and found I was born in a bedsitter on Castle Foregate, not the hospital. He said she was born in the hospital. That’s not all.

“The indexes show the mother’s maiden name. I thought that if I’m not the brother David Evans, there must another David Evans and he will have the same mother as Helen had, though you have to remember that she was not registered as Helen. I had to look for them, and I found them.

“David J Evans was born in Shrewsbury at Royal Salop Hospital. Kylie A Evans was born in the same hospital. Both had a mother Kathleen Evans nee Drinkwater. Kylie’s birthday is the same as Helen’s.

“David J was born 10 days after me. 16th May. Ring any bells?”

Imogen saw it. “Helen’s card arrived on the 16th!”

“Exactly.”

“So they mixed you up with another David and destroyed...” said Christian.

“That’s the size of it. We are definitely not brother and sister.”

“What will you do?” asked Kim.

“I need to think about that. I’m not going to make any impulsive decisions. I may contact her parents – see if they know where she is. The card was posted in Liverpool.”

“She needs to know, David,” said Imogen. “She’s under a dreadful misconception.”

“After what she did, and how I feel now, I don’t know if I want her back. It’s getting on for a year now, she’ll have moved on.”

“You don’t know that,” said Ibrahim

“Perhaps her parents will know,” said Nuala.

The next evening, I called Helen’s parents and received a strong rebuff and a piece of information which rocked me on my heels.

“David what’s this about? Will you to leave the whole matter alone, for God’s sake!”

“Maurice I have some new information–”

“Not interested, and neither will she be. You saw the evidence by a reputable company–”

“Who got it wrong.”

“Nonsense. There’s no way you’re going to ruin her life with spurious information. Get it through your head, she’s gone. If you must know she’s engaged to be married to a very nice man in her legal practice. So I’m telling you to do her and yourself a favour and back off.”

Click. Dial tone.

It took a moment for the full import to punch me in the gut. Helen was getting married – to someone else. My second thought was she didn’t hang about. Less than a year. My third thought was that I couldn’t blame her. My fourth, leave her alone. She’s gone.

After those thoughts I stopped thinking and started feeling, and all the feelings were bad ones.

I was still standing by the phone when Harry came by.

“Good God!” he blasphemed. “What’s happened? Someone died? Accident?”

“I’ve just been told by Maurice Metcalfe that his adopted daughter is engaged to be married, and that the best thing for me to do is to keep my nose out.”

“Oh, Dave, mate!” Then, “Would he just say that to keep you away? I mean, she’s not told you has she? She sent you a birthday card, so she’s not angry with you. I mean, she never actually ended your engagement did she?”

“Technically she did, she left the ring behind. I don’t think Maurice is evil. The impending wedding is probably happening, and she certainly wants to avoid me from the looks of things. If she’s moved on perhaps it’s about time I did the same.”

“That’s my boy!” he said with a grin. “Whenever you’re ready! See if you can actually bed the filly this time!”