Part 14 (1/2)

I knew what was happening. I was to be hidden away, s.h.i.+elded from the man who officially was already dead. They didn't even let me attend

Mother's funeral ' ”Who's they?” Thomas asked.

”A man named Peter Whiteside was in charge,” she said.

”I liked him, actually. Tall, thin, very handsome. A sensitive, educated man, most unlike the crude working-cla.s.s men I'd been exposed to all my life.” She paused.

”Peter Whiteside was the only man who understood what it must have been like for me ”This Whiteside ” Thomas began, 'is-?”

”Long since retired from Government service” she said quickly.

Thomas nodded.

”You sound like you were close to him' ' ”For a brief part of my life”

she said.

”He was the only man I could trust.” She allowed her eyes to stare into his for a moment, as if trying to read them.

”May I continue?”

”Please.”

”Peter Whiteside said he'd take care of me,” she said.

”Said he'd put me in a new home. A good safe home. He did. He sent me to live in Vevey, Switzerland, with an older British couple, a man and his wife. George McAdam was his name. I adopted the surname immediately, of course” ”Ordinary British subjects?” Thomas asked.

”No one in my life is ever ordinary,” she intoned.

”McAdam had recently been 'retired' from Government service due to a 'caring I always suspected that the truth was being withheld. Ye jury.

ars later I put together the correct story. It was 1955. McAdam had been a British operative in the Middle East. Suez. He'd been shot in the lower back by an Arab. He'd never walk properly again. So he'd been 'retired ”And they became your surrogate parents?”

”So to speak. Actually, I was happy there. While it lasted it was the happiest part of my life. I was in a private school which overlooked the Lake of Geneva and the French Alps. I had good clothes, a nice home, and friends. Girl friends and boyfriends. I learned to speak French and German.”

”Sounds idyllic' said Thomas.

”My father found me she said.

”Ten years. But he found me It was 1964, summer. Her school year ended; she had finished gymnase. In July she took a job working in a boat basin in Lutry, on the Swiss side of the Lake. On the job she met a young man named Roberto Gicarelli. He was dark-haired and handsome, and said he was the son of a manufacturer in the Italian Swiss canton of Ticino. He seemed to have money.

She saw him each evening. He was a.s.sertive, athletic, older than she, and, after a week, began asking her to sleep with him. At first she declined. Gradually, she changed her mind. Having known him for about a month, she spoke to him one evening when she was leaving work.

”My family is away,” she said.

”The flat is empty.”

They returned to her home and, inevitably, after sipping wine and listening to jazz during the evening, went into her bedroom.

Without speaking they began to undress. She was excited. She liked Roberto-his firm body, the wide muscular shoulders. The antic.i.p.ation of a strong young man in her own bed aroused her.