Investigate Turkinghorn, Rose and Jabberwocky

Compared to previous weekends, this one is surprisingly quiet. No plans for visitors until Sunday. Which gives you Saturday free, to clean and to relax.

Or investigate.

Ever since you discovered your parents’ marriage certificate, the other documents have been weighing on your mind. They changed their names. Why? The names you knew them by for your entire life are not the names they were given at birth. Why? Why didn’t they ever mention this? Did anyone else know?

You could ask the Petersons. But how would you broach the subject? Even starting the conversation feels wrong.

Your only clue is the name of the solicitor who oversaw both name changes; Turkinghorn, Rose and Jabberwocky. With a name like that it can’t be hard to find some information about them. You power up the laptop and do a Google search.

Surprisingly little.

Probably because the firm collapsed nearly 20 years ago after the murder of the senior partner Mr Rose, drowned out by a deluge of countersuits. Eventually the other two partners were disbarred for aiding kidnapping. Kidnapping? What?

Apparently, Turkinghorn, Rose and Jabberwocky specialised in providing the legal framework to help bust cults. They represented ex-cult members in court suing for wrongful imprisonment, sexual coercion, and other deplorable cult like activities. They were famous for it. If you wanted a friend or family member removed from a cult, you went to them. But eventually it all caught up with them. They tried to pull the wrong person out of the wrong cult, and that person escaped before deprogramming worked and sued them for kidnapping. They collapsed.

Does that mean your parents were in a cult?

No, that makes no sense. Your parents were the most boring parents you knew. All they did was work and watch TV. They had no interests. They had no history. They were boring.

You stare at the screen trying to make sense of it all, and none of it works. None of it matches what you know about your parents.

There’s more mentions of Turkinghorn, Rose and Jabberwocky, all dealing with cults. All dealing with getting people out of cults. All tangential. They were mainly active in the 90s which means their internet footage is small. All news articles, archived after the fact.

You do find a name and an email address, so old it’s still using Hotmail. For a moment you dither about sending a response. In the end you do. A quick email where you mention your parents’ original name. Even after you’ve written it, you fingers dither over sending. In the end it’s a spur of the moment decision to press send.

Then you close your computer down before your head explodes with possibilities.