The Key To Her Heart

It took the coldest winter in a century for me to find out who my Dad was.

I grew up in London, the only child of a single parent, my Mum. I asked about Dad from time to time, as kids will, and Mum would only say Dad had died. She never told me more and refused to discuss him. As far as I knew, we had no other relatives, either. There were always friends, and I remember lots of laughter and good company, but no family.

Work had taken me away from London, so I wasn't around when Mum died. I was 44 then and had not lived with Mum for more than 20 years, but we were still close, and I still saw her every week. It turned out she had had a stroke and was gone really quickly.

It was only after her death when someone who described themselves as her asset manager contacted me to ask me to go and see him. It was news to me that Mum even had an asset manager – other than her little house in a north London suburb, I didn't know she had any other assets that needed looking after. I made an appointment and duly went.

As I soon learned, we did have a family, although Mum had been an only child like me, and her parents had predeceased her. But they had left her a whole farm in Suffolk, and all of that was now mine. The asset management team had been managing this and a share portfolio on her behalf. I was now a millionaire, it seemed.

I visited and viewed my inheritance. The locals were polite but reserved – which was fair enough; they really didn't know this random Londoner who had arrived amongst them. I learnt a bit more about my history.

A woman in her late 60's who had been a friend of my Mum many years before told me that my Mum getting pregnant when not married had risked embarrassing her family. These were different times in the 1950s, and unmarried mothers were a source of shame. When Mum's pregnancy had got to five months, and it was becoming impossible to hide, her family had sent her 100 miles away to London. The plan was to give birth, put the baby up for adoption and then return to the village.

What happened was that Mum did the first part – gave birth to me – but refused to do the second part – having me adopted. There was a big standoff, and my grandparents did the whole 'never darken our doorstep' thing, threatening Mum that they would cut her off without a penny unless she toed the line. I guess they backed the wrong horse because Mum just told them to keep the money and stayed in London with me. For a year or more, my grandparents didn't contact her, hoping she would 'come to her senses' (as they saw it), but in the end, they gave in – however, she told them to get lost – she refused to have any further contact with them and never went back to the house. When they died, and she inherited the farm, she arranged for asset managers to look after my ultimate inheritance, but she refused to take a penny of the money for herself.

So, 20 years after Mum's death, I now live on the farm. I moved here when I retired, and I love the peace in the country. I feel a little closer to family here even though there is nothing personal to my Mum or grandparents left in the house – the only photos I have are the ones I brought with me.

I inherited a key from Mum, too, with no idea which locks it fitted. When I was first at the farm, I spent some time looking for a matching keyhole but found nothing.

But this winter, when climate change brought the coldest snap since records began in the 1890s, I made a discovery.

There's a pond on the farm – it's maybe half an acre in size. In the middle of it is a folly, a tower with a room on top. It's a dovecot really, but with a room below the level the doves occupy. The building is made of stone and is smooth. Locals tell me that there used to be a ladder that you could tie your boat to and them climb to get the doorway, but it was destroyed in a fire decades ago. No one can have been in the room since that time because there is simply no way to get there. Later, it dawned on me that it might have been Mum who set the ladder ablaze, not wanting anyone to visit that room.

When I realised that the pond had frozen entirely – to a depth of a couple of feet, at least – I also realised that this might be my chance to get to the tower room. It was the only room on the farm I had not been able to visit, so it was my last chance to look for a trace of Mum. I thought she was perhaps the sort of young woman who would have enjoyed a tower room in the middle of a small lake.

I walked out onto the ice carrying a step ladder; however, the legs started to sink into the ice as soon as I put my weight on it. I went back to the house and brought a couple of planks out onto the ice, then positioned the planks under the feet of the ladder, which distributed the weight better.

Climbing the ladder, I reached the door and opened it. Inside, the room was dusty, and one side had suffered where it looked like a bit of rain had got in, but on the whole, it was in good shape. There was a day bed with a handmade quilt on it and a desk with a chair. On the desk, I noticed an old fashioned ink pen and a bottle of ink – dried up long since – and what looked to be a five-year diary, with a lock. I could not open the book, but I put it in my pocket to take back to the house.

Other than a few ornaments and some long-ago dried up flowers, there was little else of interest in the room, although there was a handkerchief with my mother's initials embroidered on the corner.

A little disappointed, I left the room and climbed back down to the ice, returning my stepladder and planks to the place I had got them. I did still have the book, though.

I had to root through the draws in my bedroom until I found the key I had inherited from Mum. It fitted!

Excited but with trepidation, I flicked from the back of the book to the last entry, which was in Mum's handwriting, and said, "Jonno (Bob's friend) rang me last night. Bob's plane disappeared on a routine exercise, but they were over the English Channel. He is reported more than 24 hours late returning. Jonno said he would keep me informed, but he said he was very concerned. I will not write another entry in this diary until Bob is found."

I read the story of a romance backwards, starting with the end – where Bob sadly went missing – and ending at the beginning when Mum met Bob in a nearby town. Bob was Captain Robert Wendover, USAF, and stationed at one of the nearby USAF bases. A friendship had become a romance, and Bob had proposed, but they did not want to tell anyone until Bob had had a chance to tell his ageing mother. Sadly, he never got that opportunity. The diary told a beautiful story of love between two people, including their romance becoming physical just over nine months before I was born. It was only a month after this that Bob died, and he can never have known of my existence. My life seemed to have started in that little tower room, in the middle of the pond. I was created here on this farm. This was the missing part of my story.

Bob could not have guessed at the Google tool I had available to me 60-odd years later, but it took me only minutes searching to find out more. The USAF aircraft was lost, presumed ditched in the channel, and no survivors were ever located. A memorial service was held and attended by Bob's widowed mother and three younger brothers, so there was a chance at least that I had uncles, maybe cousins.

I had a photo of Bob – my Dad – taken from Mum's diary, and I better understood my life and place in the world. Sad though the story was, I felt more relaxed than perhaps I ever had before. As I got ready for bed, I said a quiet goodnight to my parents and grandparents and wished them all a peaceful night. Tomorrow, I would contact the United States and see if I could find some living relatives, too.

My life, in some ways, began on that cold winters day.