*

Wyddial Lane hasn’t changed. But then, why would it?

We’re in Dom’s car, not mine, parked across the road from Newnham House. Yesterday’s heat has disappeared and it’s cool and damp, the sky as gray as wet slate.

“Right.” Dom claps his hands together. “Are we doing this, or what?”

There’s something I’ve been trying not to say for a while now. I decided I wasn’t going to ask him. I still think I shouldn’t, but I know I’ll blurt it out eventually, so I might as well get it over with. “Do you really not remember why it ended?”

“Why what ended?”

“Our friendship with the Braids.”

“Did Lewis decide we weren’t bling enough, once he’d inherited all that money?”

“Why would you think that?”

“Beth, I’ve no idea. I don’t think that. You’re right, I don’t know why we stopped seeing them. I might have known once, but I’ve forgotten.” He says all this in a God-help-us tone, as if it’s petty to care why a long friendship suddenly ended.

“Money had nothing to do with it,” I tell him. “It was because of Georgina.”

Chimpy. It’s the kind of nickname you might give your youngest child . . . but then why did talking to Georgina, if it was her, make Flora cry? Is the answer to that question something to do with Georgina being nowhere in evidence on Lewis’s Instagram? Is she, for some reason, a source of misery to both her parents?

“Who’s Georgina?” Dom chuckles. “Just kidding.”

“For God’s sake, Dom.”

“Beth, lighten up. And also . . . focus. We’re here to investigate number 16, not to analyze the breakdown of our friendship with the Braids or discuss the miscarriage.”

“The miscarriage?” Not a word I was expecting to hear today. “You mean my miscarriage?”

“Yeah. Should I not have mentioned it? You said the friendship ended because of Georgina. I thought you were implying that Flora having a third child just after you lost a baby . . . I guess I was wrong.”

“I was nine weeks pregnant. I didn’t think of it as losing a baby. Do you really think I’d allow my closest friendship to end for such a stupid reason—my jealousy because Flora had successfully had a third child when I’d failed? Am I that pathetic?”

“No, I . . . I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—”

“I wasn’t jealous. Not at all.”

“I believe you. But then what did you mean—” He breaks off. “Look, shall we do what we came here to do? When Captain Cook arrived at Botany Bay after sailing all the way from England, did he disembark and explore the terrain or did he sit in his boat, chatting about his friends’ babies?”

I couldn’t know less about Captain Cook if I tried, but I play along. “The first, I’m guessing. Who’s going to do the talking, assuming someone’s home?”

Will he ask me later, or forget about it, content never to know in what way Georgina Braid caused the end of my friendship with Flora?

“What if the door opens and Lewis is standing there?” I ask.

“That won’t happen, because Lewis lives in Delray Beach, Florida, but if it does—if he still owns this house too, and he happens to be in it today—I’ll say, ‘Hi, Lewis. Long time no see. Would you mind showing me your secret stash of tiny cloned children?’”

Soon Dom and I are both laughing uncontrollably. It’s probably nerves. We’re about to do something a lot of people would never dream of doing.

Once we’ve pulled ourselves together, we get out of the car and walk briskly across Wyddial Lane toward the large wooden gates of number 16. Dom presses one of the illuminated buttons on the intercom. We stand and wait.

Nothing.

“Fuck,” I say. “They’re out.”

“Then we wait,” says Dom.

“How long?” Please say, “All day.”

“Half an hour?”

It’s not long enough. I want to wait until these gates open, however long it takes.

“Maybe an hour,” Dom concedes. “Not longer, surely? They might have set off on a family holiday last night and not be due back for a week. Why don’t we go for a walk and come back in a bit? It’s better than just standing here.”

“No. If we go anywhere, we might miss them. What about the neighbors? We could try them. The people at numbers 14 and 18 will know the name of the family at number 16. I bet everyone knows everyone on this street. It’s a private road, so the council don’t deal with it—and yet look how well maintained it is.”

“Tarmac smoother than a baby’s ass,” Dom agrees.

“That means the neighbors will have regular meetings, and a residents’ committee, coffee mornings . . . It’s that kind of street.”

“I know some of our neighbors’ names, but I wouldn’t give them out to a pair of strangers who turned up unannounced and said, ‘Please tell me who lives next door.’ I’d say something bland like, ‘I’m afraid I couldn’t possibly divulge . . .’ or words to that effect. Which is what numbers 14 and 18 will say if we ask them.”

“It’s worth a try. We’ve come all this way. I’m not going home with nothing.”

“Beth, we might have to.”

I shake my head.

“All right, if you want to do it, let’s do it,” Dom says wearily. “I suppose the worst they can say is no. Or they might not be home.”

I don’t care. I’m waiting here on Wyddial Lane until I find someone who can answer my questions. I don’t care if I’m being obsessive. Something inexplicable has happened, and I want to know why. Dom would be exactly the same if it had happened to him, if he knew he’d seen something he couldn’t possibly have seen.

“I’m going to tell the truth,” I say.

“To?”

“Any neighbors I talk to. Everyone. Until we got here, I was thinking I’d invent some story, but it’s better to be upfront. Don’t say anything, okay? Let me do the talking.”

I head for number 14 and press the buzzer on the intercom next to the wrought-iron gates. Immediately, there’s movement.

“Dom, look.”

“At what?”

I point through the gates’ metal bars. “The front door’s opening.”

5

“No, it isn’t,” says Dom.

“It is. Just very slowly. Wait. Now it’s stopped. It opened a tiny bit. Look, now it’s moving again.”

The door edges farther open but I can’t see anybody, and no one comes out of the house.

Number 14 is a completely different kind of house from number 16: mock-Tudor, black and white lines all over it in a diamonds-within-squares pattern that would make my eyes ache if I looked at it for too long. There’s a round pond in the middle of a turning circle in front of the house, with a squat little water fountain at the center of it.

“The door looks closed to me,” Dom says.

“It’s opening. I think someone’s spying on us from inside.”

As I say this, the front door of 14 Wyddial Lane closes with a click.

“Did you hear that?” I say. “Whoever’s in there decided they didn’t want to talk to us.”

Dom nods. “You were right. Come on, let’s try number 18.”

“Wait. Look.” Number 14’s door is opening again. Slowly, it moves until it’s all the way open. A woman emerges from the house: midsixties, short gray hair, large pearl earrings, beige trousers with sharp creases ironed into them. A white blouse with a fussy, flouncy bit at the top that looks like an attached scarf. Pinned to this is a coral-pink and white cameo brooch.

She approaches slowly, as if hoping to work out who Dominic and I are before she reaches us. Eventually she arrives at the gate, which she doesn’t open.

“Is everything all right?” she asks me sharply.

This throws me. “Yes, thanks.”

“I heard an argument. Raised voices.”

It was hardly an argument, but I’m not going to quibble. “Yes, that was us, but we’re fine, thank you. I wanted to—”

“If this gentleman’s bothering you, I can summon help.” Keeping her eyes on me, she nods at Dominic.

“Everything’s fine, honestly. He’s my husband.”

“That, I’m afraid, is no guarantee of anything,” the woman says sternly.

I’m not sure how to reply. “There’s no problem, really.”

“What can I do for you, then, if you don’t need help?”

“My name’s Beth Leeson,” I tell her. “This is going to sound a bit weird. I was here yesterday, and—”

“I know you were.”

“You do?”

“Yes. You parked your car over there, as you have today, except it was a different car. You had a boy with you. Then you drove away, and returned a short while later without the boy.”

I smile at her. “You’re very observant.”

“One needs to be.”

“That was my son, Ben. I dropped him off at his football match and then I came back.”

“What business do you have on Wyddial Lane?”

“None, probably. That’s what I’m hoping you can help me with. I had some friends who lived next door, at number 16, a few years ago. Lewis and Flora Braid.”

“Before my time. When did they leave? I’ve only been here three years.”

“I’m not exactly sure. But . . . I’m assuming you know the names of the people who live in the house now?”

Her eyes narrow. “I do, yes.”

“Are their names Lewis and Flora Braid?”