‘Do you think you’ll recognize the street if you see it?’ asks Jess, reminding Lauren exactly who she’s doing this for.
‘I don’t know,’ she says honestly.
She can feel Jess throw her a sideways glance as they get to the hotel on the brow of the hill, as if hoping that she’ll immediately declare that it was right on this spot that she saw her father push her in a pram almost a quarter of a century ago.
A bus passes by and Lauren is hit by a sudden flashback to when she was coming home from a geography exam. It had gone terribly, like everything else in her life at that time, and she was sitting on the bus, looking out of the window, wondering where it had all gone wrong. Just as she was thinking that it couldn’t possibly get any worse, she had seen her dad walking down a side street with one arm draped around the shoulder of a woman and the other pushing a pram. The vision was gone in a flash and she had instinctively jumped up out of her seat and hit the bell, pressing it incessantly until the driver called out, ‘Okay love, don’t get your knickers in a twist.’ A flippant comment that would cause him all sorts of trouble in today’s world.
She’d got off at the earliest opportunity and ran back up the hill as fast as she could, not knowing whether she wanted to be proved right or wrong. The image was already fuzzy in her head and she couldn’t be sure if it was the first right turn or the second that she’d seen him. It might even have been the third, but all three were clear by the time she’d got there.
Over the intervening years, her memory had embellished what she’d seen, to give her even more of an excuse to hate the man she’d once loved. She convinced herself she’d seen him kiss the woman and was adamant that he’d scooped the tiny baby up into the air, smiling at it from below. But now, as she stands at the viewpoint from the bus, she wonders whether she ever saw him at all.
‘Was it here?’ asks Jess.
Lauren looks around pensively, forcing herself to concentrate, whilst wondering what it’s going to achieve even if she does recognize something.
‘I don’t think so,’ she says. ‘Let’s go up to the next turning.’
The red slate roofs of the houses in the road before are replaced with black tiles, giving the street a more ominous feel.
‘This is it,’ she exclaims, knowing instantly that her memory hadn’t lied to her.
Jess stops stock still and looks at her. ‘Are you sure?’ she says.
Lauren nods. ‘So now what?’
‘I’m going to knock on a few doors,’ says Jess. ‘See if anyone remembers anything.’
Lauren had had a horrible inkling she was going to say that, and tiny pinpricks of sweat spring to the skin of her palms.
‘Are you coming?’
Lauren nods half-heartedly, though when they reach the gate of the first house, she holds back. ‘I’ll stay here with the children,’ she says. ‘You go.’
Jess smiles tightly before walking down the path and as Lauren watches her, she doesn’t know what she wants her to find.
‘Oh hello,’ says Jess cheerily to the woman who answers the door. ‘I’m sorry to trouble you but I’m looking to speak to someone who lived on this street twenty or so years ago.’
The woman shakes her head and says, ‘I’m sorry,’ before Jess has even finished the sentence.
‘I’m not looking to sell you anything,’ presses Jess, but the door is already closing. This is going to be crueller than Lauren thought, and she berates herself for ever mentioning it to Jess. No good can come of this.
‘Come on, let’s go,’ says Lauren with forced joviality. ‘We can have a walk around town, and I’ll treat you to scones and a cuppa at Betty’s Tea Rooms.’
‘We can’t give up after just one setback,’ says Jess. ‘We need to keep going.’
It’s not what Lauren wants to hear, but she can’t decide whether it’s because she doesn’t want Jess to get hurt or is scared for herself. Either way, there’s a sense of impending doom as Jess presses on.
The next house is shrouded in shadow, guarded by an imposing oak tree on the pavement. Brightly coloured flower boxes line the deep ledges of the ground-floor windows and the front garden is pruned to within an inch of its life. It looks like a home owned by an elderly, but active, house-proud couple. Lauren applauds her observation skills when she sees one of the brilliant-white net curtains twitch. Bingo!
Almost before Jess even navigates the bell pull, an older woman, who reminds Lauren of her late grandma, opens the door and looks at her inquisitively. The sound of the doorbell is still chiming around the house.
‘Hello dear,’ she says.
‘I’m really sorry to bother you . . .’ says Jess. ‘It’s just that I’m looking for someone who may have lived here around twenty years ago.’
‘Well that would be me,’ says the woman, with a half laugh. ‘How can I help you?’
Jess turns to look at Lauren hopefully, but a sudden apprehension weighs Lauren down. How could she ever have thought this would be a good idea?
‘I haven’t got much information to go on, but I’m trying to track down a family that may have lived along this street.’
The woman looks at her expectantly.
‘A couple and their daughter. He was . . . he was . . .’
‘Tall,’ says Lauren from the kerb. ‘With blonde hair and pale blue eyes.’ As she pictures her father, she unexpectedly feels a pull at the back of her throat.
‘You’re not referring to the Woods family, are you?’ asks the woman, her features darkening.
‘I . . . I don’t know,’ says Jess. ‘Maybe.’
‘Perhaps you should come in,’ says the woman, opening the door wider and stepping aside.
Jess looks wide-eyed at Lauren, who shakes her head. ‘I’ll wait with the children out here.’
‘It’s too hot to stand out there,’
