Dom snorts. “Beth. Come on, get a grip.”

“What? You think that’s implausible? He pretended Flora was in Florida when she was in Cambridgeshire. He told me Georgina’s twelve. She’s not twelve—she’s dead.”

“Is she? If Lewis can lie so easily, maybe Georgina’s alive. Maybe she’s Chimpy, and you heard Flora talking to her on Saturday.”

“Maybe I did.” I’ve been thinking this myself. “All the options we’ve considered, all the ones we can possibly think of, are worrying, aren’t they? Let’s say all five kids are alive, but Lewis and Flora are telling Georgina’s grandparents that she’s dead. Or Georgina’s two younger siblings have the same Christian names as her two older ones, and meanwhile their parents are telling weird lies and enlisting their friends to do the same. Does any of that sound to you like a family in which the kids definitely aren’t at risk from the adults? Because it sure as fuck doesn’t to me. I want to say all this to the police. I think there’s something sinister going on that needs looking into.”

“Unless . . .” I can tell from this halfhearted start that Dom knows the point he’s about to make is a weak one. “My friend Anthony at university had the same first name as all his brothers: John. They were all known by their middle names, but—”

“Great. You can tell Huntingdon police that. I’ll tell them Flora’s two youngest kids are known by the names Thomas and Emily, which is what I heard her call them—the same names her first two were known by.”

“Shouldn’t you also be contacting the police in Delray Beach, Florida, if you think the original Thomas and Emily might also be at risk?”

“Huntingdon police can do that, assuming they agree with me.”

“Christ, Beth.” Dom covers his face with his hands. “Is that what you’re hoping will happen? It won’t. The police aren’t going to lift a finger, however weird it all is. The most they’ll do is send in social services.”

“Fine. That’s good enough for me.”

Liar.

No matter what I tell Dom, nothing will be good enough for me unless and until I have the answers I need.

I say, “Flora’s dad said that she and Lewis probably don’t want anything to do with me now, just like they don’t want Flora’s parents in their lives anymore. If that were true, if that’s all that’s happening here, why wouldn’t Lewis have said so on the phone? He was very direct when he cut off Flora’s parents. Why not say to me, ‘Sorry, Beth, we’ve moved on, you’re pretty much a stranger now, we don’t have to answer any of your questions, good-bye’? Why would it be any harder to say that to me than to Gerard and Rosemary?”

“It wouldn’t. But a more diplomatic brush-off is always easier, and most friends would take the hint. Whereas parents need to be told more firmly. They don’t let their kids go so easily.”

“Maybe. But Flora’s reaction in the car park was hardly diplomatic. There was no ‘Oh, Beth, how lovely to see you after all these years—must dash now but let’s catch up sometime.’ Running away in terror is pretty undiplomatic.”

“True,” Dom concedes.

“And Lewis telling us we must come to Florida, and Kevin Cater inviting us around to his house, answering our questions . . . Showing us that picture of two kids I’d never seen before, lying about Thomas and Emily’s names. He could have given us a polite version of, ‘I’m sorry, I’ve no idea what your wife is on about. Now please leave me alone.’ Do you want to know what I think?”

Dom sighs heavily. “Beth, I do, but . . . this has to end. For us, our being part of it.”

“I know. I know it does. I just . . .” I close my eyes and inhale deeply. Come on, lavender. Work your magic. “This isn’t a criticism, but I don’t understand how you’re not as curious as I am. Don’t you want to understand it, whatever it is?”

“Not at the expense of our lives, no. Also, to an extent, I think I already do understand it. Not the finer details, maybe, but the more general explanation ‘Lewis Braid is a massive weirdo’ works for me. And I really don’t believe anyone’s in danger, Beth. I think Lewis is bizarre enough to have invented some mad reason to call his youngest kids after his oldest kids.”

“Why did Flora run away from me?” I stand up, grab a towel and wrap it around me. I was planning to wash my hair, but the plan had a built-in loophole: that I knew I wouldn’t bother in the end. I hate washing my hair. It’s the annoying chore that looms in the shadows at the end of every nice long bath, potentially ruining it.

“I don’t know why Flora ran away.” Dom sighs.

“To avoid talking to me, clearly. But why? She must have been scared I’d ask something or scared to tell me something, scared I’d find out whatever the secret is. Maybe she thought I’d found out already, maybe Marilyn Oxley told her I’d been asking about the Caters and Thomas and Emily. If the secret is something eccentric but harmless, her fear makes no sense.”

“Maybe she was scared of you. Just you. Nothing to do with her secret.”

My heart twists. He can’t know.

“Why would she be?”

“I don’t know. You tell me.”

I turn away. I wish I could be indignant, but I can’t. I’ve wondered the same thing myself. Though if Flora’s scared of me because of what I did twelve years ago, that would be an absurd overreaction. She can’t imagine that I’d . . .

“Beth, I’m sorry.” Dom’s voice cuts into my thoughts. “That was below the belt. There’s nothing scary about you.”

We all have things we’d rather people didn’t find out about us. I don’t want to, though. Not anymore. “I need to show you something,” I say.

*

Dominic and I sit on opposite sides of our bed. Between us, lying on the duvet, is a cream envelope that I’ve dug out of an old handbag. The handwriting on the envelope is Flora’s.

I couldn’t bring myself to throw it away. Not at the time, and not at any point since. “Don’t tell Zannah and Ben,” I say. “I’m not proud of this and I’d rather they didn’t know.”

Dom nods.

I pick up the envelope and shake its contents out onto the bed: a Christmas card with a picture of Santa Claus and his reindeers flying over a snowy mountain. And a photograph of the Braids, with a slit that’s been cut into it and a hole in the middle, where a small part’s been excised . . . and then, lying a few inches apart from the other two items, the cutting from the picture, the person whose absence has made the hole: a tiny baby wrapped in a pink and white blanket, eyes closed. Georgina Braid.

I pick up the card and show Dom what’s written inside it: “To Dom, Beth, Zannah and Ben, Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! Lots of love from Lewis, Flora, Thomas, Emily and Georgina.” Followed by three kisses, as per Braid family card-writing tradition. A perfectly ordinary message.

Georgina was two months old in the photograph. The last time the Braids came to visit us was February 2007, when Georgina was four months old, and two months before she died.

If she died.

Flora and I both knew that our friendship was over in February 2007, but we were pretending otherwise, to ourselves and to each other. Dominic had no idea. I don’t know what Lewis knew or didn’t know. I made a special fuss of baby Georgina, aware that not long ago I’d deliberately taken a pair of scissors and cut her out of a happy family photograph.

“Not my proudest moment,” I say to Dom.

“You? Oh. I thought you were going to say that this was how it arrived—with Georgina cut out.”

“No. I did it.”

“Why?”

I remember as if it happened earlier today, though it was twelve years ago: once removed from the photograph, Georgina landed on the kitchen floor. Seeing her lying there, so tiny and separated from her family, I felt immediately ashamed. What the hell was I doing? What if cutting a child out of a family photo was like sticking pins in a wax model of someone you hated? I would always be someone who had done that to a baby. I could never undo it, which made me feel weirdly doomed—as if, with one vicious, unjustifiable act, I had sealed my fate.

That was my immediate reaction. Overreaction. A few minutes later I realized that all I’d done was cut up a photo, and what did it matter, really? Impulse control had never been my strong point and I knew I’d behaved pathetically, but it was hardly likely to harm Georgina Braid in real life.

Still, I couldn’t bring myself to throw the Braids in the bin, after what I’d done already. I put the card and the pieces of the photograph back in the envelope, which I stuffed into the side pocket of my handbag. I told myself everything was fine, that no one would ever find out I’d done something so petty and spiteful.