Her friends, who had the benefit of a view, were also distracted.
‘Who’s he?’ Annie, tall, dark-haired and currently single, had zeroed in and was now looking across at him with blatant invitation.
‘Oh, that’s Adam Conway. He’s a friend of Paul’s,’ her married friend, Jenna, said carelessly.
Annie’s eyes had widened. ‘You know him? Quick – introduce me to him.’
‘He might already have a girlfriend,’ Emily pointed out. She was used to Annie’s predatory antics.
‘No, he’s single,’ Jenna confirmed. She sighed. ‘He is gorgeous. If I wasn’t married to Paul, I’d definitely be interested.’
At that point, Adam had joined their circle and grinned across at Jenna. ‘Hey Jenna,’ he said. ‘How are you doing?’
Jenna took the opportunity to introduce him to each of her friends and Emily felt herself melting when he looked into her eyes. She could feel the heat from her body flushing her cheeks as she mumbled a self-consciously offhand greeting. Meanwhile Annie attached herself to his arm and began to steer him away.
‘Let’s head to the bar and I’ll buy you a drink,’ she was saying.
‘Oh great. Thanks.’ He allowed himself to be dragged off but made a point of turning to say, ‘See you later.’ Emily was sure he was looking at her when he said it and the thought gave her a warm glow as she watched him being politely attentive to Annie at the bar. In all her twenty-four years, she'd never experienced such a strong attraction to a man and it left her feeling a little disorientated and confused. Her coping mechanism was to turn herself into the life and soul of the party, circulating the room, chatting enthusiastically with all the women she knew, flirting light-heartedly with the men and making a point of ignoring Adam. The effort was beginning to wear her out when he suddenly reappeared at her shoulder.
‘Hey, Emily, isn’t it?’ he said.
‘Oh, hello … Adam.’ Her heart was hammering, her mouth felt dry and she found herself smiling a bit too brightly.
‘Do you fancy going to find somewhere a bit quieter for a drink? I’ve been wanting to talk to you all evening.’
It felt like one of those really important moments when the pattern of her life was about to change. Desperately, she searched her brain for a cool, witty response but instead found herself nodding dumbly. Then she remembered Annie.
‘Hold on a sec. I need to tell Annie where I’m going. We came to the party together.’
She approached Annie with some trepidation, unwilling to cause her any upset, but she hadn't needed to worry. Annie had a philosophical attitude towards her love life and she shrugged when Emily expressed concerns that she was treading on her friend’s toes.
‘Don’t be daft,’ Annie had said. ‘I knew he wasn’t interested in me because all he did when we were talking was to quiz me about you. Go for it, girl.’
Emily returned to where she had left Adam standing, feeling slightly sick with anticipation. He took hold of her hand, led her from the room and they had been together ever since. As well as being a great friend and wonderful lover, Adam provided her with the stability which had been missing from her life for the past four years.
After her parents’ death, she had not been able to face going back to university and instead, with the support of her two aunts, had concentrated her energies in finding her real mother but to no avail. Having contacted the adoption agency, she had met with a counsellor who had been able to obtain a record of her birth- a promising start. She remembered how excited she had been at the time, how hopeful of instant success. Her birth certificate revealed that she had been born in Dulwich hospital on May 7th, 1987. Her mother was listed as Grace Smith, unemployed, of Heygate, London. Her father was named as John Smith, musician. There had been no other information about her parents and she had been unable to find any record of their marriage. The surname Smith, she quickly discovered, was very unhelpful and every search she initiated had hundreds of hits. She had tried trawling through them and listing any possibilities but, after hundreds of futile phone calls, she had given it up as a hopeless task.
With her aunts, she had made a trip to London in November 2006 and visited the Heygate estate where her parents had lived. She found lots of homes already empty pending redevelopment and residents anxious about their future but no one knew anything about John and Grace Smith. The only thing she did find out was that the address she had for them had been occupied by squatters during the mid-eighties. Emily recalled her crushing disappointment that she had arrived at yet another dead end.
In early 2007, Emily decided to give up on her efforts to find her real parents. She resolved to sell her adoptive parents’ house, which had been left to her in their will, and make a fresh start. Her aunts, tearful at parting from her, had moved back to their own home in Sudbury. After sending off a number of job applications, she secured a job working as a clerk for an insurance company in Ipswich and rented a flat. The work was dull and she did not stay there long.
Instead she got a job as an office junior for a large firm of solicitors in the town. That was where she had met Annie. The two had quickly become close friends and, when Annie split up from her boyfriend and asked Emily to share her flat with her, she'd jumped at the offer. Annie was very outgoing and had a large circle of friends who soon became Emily’s friends and the two of them enjoyed a busy, social life together – until two and a
