When I was a child, I didn’t need to tidy my room. Not once. It never got messy. Tidiness was a house rule, one of the most important to my retired navy officer father. I would never have dreamed of leaving a discarded pair of tights on the floor overnight; I’d been trained to believe it wasn’t a possibility.

Dom and I have left it too late to introduce a strict tidiness policy with Zannah and Ben, and I’m not sure I’d want to. I look at their lives and feel instinctively that they’re much harder than mine was at their age. They both complain about stress in a way that I never did. Their friends are more troubled and difficult; their school is full of self-harmers, drug takers and kids with a whole range of conditions I hadn’t heard of until I was at least thirty. I’m pretty sure Zan and Ben aren’t being taught properly, even in the lessons that aren’t sabotaged by out-of-control behavior from the most chaotic students.

I didn’t love school as a teenager, but I didn’t hate it either—not the way Zannah and Ben hate Bankside Park. And I don’t remember resenting my teachers anywhere near as much as I resent theirs for the way they gleefully dish out detentions to anyone who doesn’t hand in their homework on time, while at the same time marking and returning only a tiny fraction of the work their pupils submit. Neither Zannah nor Ben has ever had a piece of English homework returned with a mark or a comment from a teacher on it—not once since they started secondary school. I’ve talked to the head about it several times. He makes soothing noises, but nothing ever changes.

“What do Murad and Ben think?” I ask Zan.

“About the Caters and the Braids?”

This throws me a little. The Caters and the Braids. As if they’re a kind of foursome.

“About what I saw. Or what I think I saw.”

“They both think Jeanette Cater is Flora Braid—same person, new name.”

“Why would she change her name?” Dom asks.

“Dad, I’m not psychic. But it’d explain Mum being sure she saw Flora, and the old woman saying she heard the voice of Jeanette.”

“Hold on. No.” Dom paces up and down the room. “That particular neighbor hasn’t lived on Wyddial Lane for very long, but others must have been there longer. They’d have noticed if Flora Braid suddenly changed her name to Jeanette Cater.”

“Maybe they did notice,” I say. “We don’t know that they didn’t.”

“Murad thinks it’s too much of a coincidence for both the Caters and the Braids to have kids called Thomas and Emily.” Zannah picks up the remote control, turns on the TV and immediately mutes it. She and Ben always do this; I’ve no idea why.

“Right,” says Dom. “So, he thinks they’re the same two kids, then? Do they belong to the Caters or the Braids? If the latter, how does he explain their failure to get taller or older, despite the passing of twelve years? And the fact that they’re also teenagers living in Florida?”

“He can’t explain any of that, and neither can you,” Zannah fires back triumphantly.

“I think I might be able to. We know a lot more than we did yesterday. Jeanette Cater is the same physical type as Flora Braid, with the same hair color and style.” Dom looks at me. “The car you saw her get out of is Jeanette Cater’s car, according to her neighbor. And you saw her outside a house that you believed, at the time, belonged to Flora. So . . . here’s my best guess: the Caters have two young children. They might be called Thomas and Emily—”

“No,” Zan talks over him. “Another huge coincidence? No way.”

“I agree, it’s unlikely. So maybe one of them’s called Thomas and the other’s called something else.” He’s making it up as he goes along. “Superficially, they look like Thomas and Emily Braid did when they were little . . .”

“So did I imagine hearing Flora’s voice, then?” I ask him. “Did I imagine recognizing her face, and hearing her, clearly, call them Thomas and Emily? You saw and heard what happened when I asked Marilyn Oxley about the Caters’ children. How do you explain that?”

“What happened?” Zannah asks.

“Her whole demeanor changed. She went from restrained and suspicious to . . . full-on contempt, threatening me with the police.”

“She probably thought you were a pair of pedos,” says Zannah. “Lurking outside the house, asking weird questions about little kids.”

“Why would she think that? The natural thing for her to think at that point is that I’m having trouble accepting that I got it so wrong. I’ve already asked her if Jeanette has dark wavy hair and a silver Range Rover—two of the things I saw, two identifying details. The logical next thing for me to ask about is the only other thing I saw: the two children.”

“But you said she also assumed, based on nothing, that Dad was a wife beater. So she’s not logical. ‘Yes, great point, Zannah,’ said nobody.”

I stand up and walk over to the window. Our house’s location is about as un-private as you can get: the village green—no walls or gates to protect us from prying eyes. There are always people out there walking dogs, parents pushing kids on the swings, people strolling past on their way to the village’s only pub, The Olde Jug.

“Beth, Zan’s right. There’s no reason to think Marilyn Oxley’s capable of rational behavior and there’s some evidence that she isn’t. All that faffing around with her front door, as if she wasn’t sure whether to open it or not. And why the hell is she staring out of the window every second of every day? If she’s normal, I’m King Harold of Wessex.”

“It wasn’t me asking about Jeanette Cater’s children that made her turn like that.”

Dom and Zannah exchange a look.

“Mum, you just said it was.”

“Not at first. When I first asked her if Jeanette had kids of around five and three, she was already heading back toward her house, having decided the conversation was over. She heard my question and kept walking. It was when I said their names that she got angry and turned on me. I shouted after her, ‘Thomas and Emily.’ It was hearing those two names that made her flip out.”

“So what do you think that means?” says Dom.

“Wait. Does it mean . . .” Zannah narrows her eyes. “This is insane, obviously, but . . . might it mean that the two little Cater kids are called Thomas and Emily?”

Thank goodness someone understands the way my mind works. I’m grateful for any scrap of evidence that proves I’m not losing the plot.

“You’re going to have to fill me in,” says Dom. “Why, how, could it mean that?”

“Think about it,” I say. “Marilyn Oxley moved to Wyddial Lane after the Braids left, so there’s no reason to think she knows any of their names. Let’s assume the Cater children are called Thomas and Emily—the two names I heard the dark-haired woman say. When I ask if those are their names, what’s Marilyn Oxley likely to think?”

“You mean . . . she’d think you’ve just presented yourself as someone who knows nothing about the Caters, you don’t even know their last name, yet you seem to know the names of their children?”

“Precisely. When she heard me say those names, she must have thought everything I’d told her was a lie. If I’ve been lying, and I’m suddenly revealing an interest in Thomas and Emily Cater that I’ve kept hidden until so late in the conversation . . . That’s the only way I can make sense of her police threat.”

“But that only works if the Cater kids are called Thomas and Emily, which we agreed would be too much of a crazy coincidence.” Zannah groans. “Mum, this is doing my head in. I need answers. Can’t you go back there and—”

“Get arrested? No.” Dom is keen to rule this out as an option.

I’d willingly spend a night in a cell if it would get me the answers I want.

“How about contacting the Braids in Florida?” Zannah suggests. “If they used to work with Kevin Cater, and he bought their house, there’s a chance they’ve kept in touch with him. If he’s got kids with the same names as their oldest two, they might know.”

“That’s not a bad idea,” I say. The Caters might be on Flora’s Christmas card list—the same one we were removed from after the photograph incident. “But . . . I’d have to explain how I came to know about the Caters in the first place.”

“The Caters cannot have kids with the same names as the Braids and live in the same house, and look the same,” Zannah says. “That just can’t happen. It’s like something out of a horror film. I mean . . . one name the same, maybe, but two?”

“Zannah’s right, Dom. We need to make contact with Lewis in Florida.”

“I wouldn’t say we need to, but—”

“Dad!”

One of my husband’s best qualities is that he knows when he’s lost an argument.

“All right. If I have a spare minute tomorrow, I’ll—”

“I’ll do it,” I say. “And not tomorrow. Now. Right now.”

6

An hour later, thanks to my son, I have an Instagram account. He’s put it on my phone, too—a little pink and orange camera icon—so that I can correspond with Lewis Braid more easily.

If he replies.

I’d have preferred to contact Flora directly, but I’ve searched the whole house and can’t find the old address book where I wrote down her number. I probably threw it away years ago.