Lauren looks at the pristine hallway, with its pale blue carpet and ornate dado rail, and fast forwards in her head to what it might look like in ten minutes time, once her little horrors have inflicted their worst, with their sticky fingers and dusty shoes. ‘This is really very kind of you,’ she says, as if it will offset the apology she’ll have to make on the way out.
‘You don’t look like reporters,’ says the woman.
‘Reporters?’ exclaims Lauren. ‘Why would we be reporters?’
‘They come by here from time to time, every few years, trying to dig it all up again.’
The woman was right, the house was lovely and cool, but now there’s a ferocious heat coursing through Lauren. Dig all what up again?
‘I’m Jess, and this is Lauren, my . . .’ There’s a split-second pause that only Lauren would notice. ‘Sister,’ she goes on, before smiling to herself.
‘I’m Carol,’ says the woman. ‘Would you like a cup of tea?’
Lauren wants to say no, but Jess has already said, ‘That would be lovely, thank you.’
They follow Carol down the long hallway, into the kitchen at the very back of the house. Lauren imagines that when the blue and orange cupboards were put in, they were the height of fashion, but although it still looks shiny and new, she can’t see this particular trend coming around again anytime soon.
‘So, the Woods?’ asks Jess.
‘Oh, it was a terrible business,’ says Carol as she fills a cream kettle with a woodland scene depicted on the side. ‘They were a young couple, Frank and Julia were their names, and they lived next door but one.’
‘With a baby?’ asks Jess.
Carol nods. ‘I didn’t know them to speak to – I tend to keep myself to myself, even more so since I lost my Roy a few years back.’
Lauren smiles sympathetically, but wishes she’d get to the point.
‘So, anyways, they’d have these almighty rows – that we could hear from here – and every few weeks the police would show up, have a word with him, and things would quieten down for a bit. We’d not heard a peep out of them for a good few months before it happened.’
Jess looks to Lauren. ‘Before what happened?’ she asks impatiently.
Carol folds a cloth around the handle of the kettle and carefully pours the hot water into a floral teapot. Lauren can’t help but smile as she puts what looks like a hand-knitted cosy over the top. The last time she’d seen anything like that was at her grandmother’s house when she was a little girl. Carol goes into the cupboard and brings out an unopened biscuit selection box, tearing at the cellophane around it.
‘Who would like a chocolate biccy?’ she says to the children, who are just beginning to reach their boredom threshold. Noah’s arm shoots up, whilst Emmy just waddles towards Carol with outstretched hands.
‘Oh, please don’t open those on our account,’ says Lauren, her relief at their attention being captured at odds with knowing the mess chocolate fingers can create.
‘Don’t be silly,’ says Carol. ‘This is exactly what they’re for. They’ll only sit in the cupboard for another year.’
Lauren smiles, wondering when Carol last had a visitor. The very least she can do is accept her courtesy with grace.
‘So, about what happened,’ says Jess, pulling Carol back to the matter in hand.
‘Ah yes,’ says Carol. ‘So one Thursday night, I think it was, there was this almighty commotion. We could hear shouting and screaming, and I said to Roy that we should call the police, but he told me not to get involved. Anyways, the very next morning, the place gets sealed off and poor Julia . . .’
Lauren looks at her wide-eyed, silently pleading with her not to say what she thinks she’s about to say.
‘She was . . . she was dead?’ croaks Jess.
Carol nods. ‘And he did a runner, never to be seen again.’
Lauren’s heart sinks.
‘So, he got away with it?’ asks Jess. ‘But what about their baby? What happened to it? Did he take it with him?’
Carol shrugs her shoulders. ‘I don’t know about the baby. There were all sorts of stories at the time, but I don’t know that any of them were true.’
Lauren can see all the connotations flickering behind Jess’s eyes as her brain tries to process how she might fit into all of this.
They drink their teas quickly, making distracted small talk with the lonely old lady, before stepping back out into the heat of the afternoon.
‘Well, that was a shock,’ whispers Lauren, as they put the children back in the buggy on the garden path. ‘I think we might have bitten off more than we can chew there.’
‘But what if there’s something in it?’ says Jess, making Lauren’s head bang more than it is already. ‘What if that baby was me?’
‘But you weren’t their child,’ says Lauren, holding the gate open for Jess and the buggy. ‘We know that already, because you’re genetically my half sister.’
Jess nods, deep in thought. ‘But what if I’m Julia’s child? What if I’m the result of an affair she had with your dad? What if she’s who you saw your dad with?’
Lauren blanches, because despite thinking she knows what she saw, the reality of hearing it out loud still hurts.
‘What if her husband found out?’ Jess goes on. ‘What if he found out I wasn’t his and killed her?’
‘That’s a lot of what ifs,’ says Lauren. ‘And besides, the only reason we’re drawn to here is the vague memory that I might have seen him with a woman over twenty years ago.’
‘But it might have been Julia and me that you saw him with,’ insists Jess.
‘It wouldn’t make sense for you to be this woman’s child,’ says Lauren, trying to stay patient. ‘If you were, you’d have disappeared with her husband when he went on the run.’
‘He wouldn’t have taken me, if he knew I wasn’t his,’ says Jess, playing devil’s advocate.
‘If that was the
