Perfectly Ordinary People(74)

‘You never even liked the poor—’ Mum said, but her phrase was interrupted by a killer glare from Dad.

‘The funeral was a few weeks ago, I think. And I’m not sure of the exact date when it happened. But it was planned, apparently. She told pretty much everyone. She even had a sort of leaving “do”.’

‘That’s why she kept calling then,’ Mum said. ‘Jaysus. You told me that you’d called her back. You said it was nothing.’

Dad shot her another glare. ‘That’s hardly important now, woman, is it?’ he said.

‘Oh, woman, is it?’ Mum said. ‘Someone’s feeling defensive.’

‘You’ve gone a bit green, Dad,’ I told him. ‘Are you OK?’

‘No,’ Dad said, leaping from his armchair. ‘No, I need to get some air.’

‘Shall I come . . . ? Dad!’ I said. But the front door had already slammed behind him.

‘Leave him,’ Mum said. ‘There’s no good going after him when he’s like that.’

‘You think?’ I asked, twisting my head to watch through the lounge window as my father strode away.

‘Just sit yourself down and tell me what you know,’ Mum said. ‘Old Ethel, gone to meet her maker, eh? I can hardly believe it myself.’



January slipped into February in a blur of dreary property visits. Our search was not going well.

Though neither Dan nor I had expected to stumble upon our dream property on day one, we hadn’t been prepared for quite such a depressing experience.

I won’t bore you with all the details, but highlights were a downstairs flat that shook so much when the trains passed it felt like an earthquake was happening, and a flat above a kebab shop that reeked of dodgy meat. Best of all was a place off Edgware Road that could only be accessed by walking through a greengrocer’s. And I do mean through a greengrocer’s. ‘It makes it very safe for madam if she’s home all day alone,’ the estate agent told us as we were leaving. ‘There’s an eighteen-hour-a-day presence, after all.’

‘It would certainly make the evening shop easier,’ Dan said, trailing his fingers across a butternut squash as I followed him out the door.

The flat-hunting business was miserable and exhausting, but above all time-consuming. When combined with the fact that I had a full-time job, I hardly thought about the cassettes at all. In fact, the only times they really crossed my mind were when I saw Dad and felt guilty about not having told him, or when I noticed how ashamed poor Freida looked about the fact that she still hadn’t started the translation.

Then, one morning, late February, my computer got stuck. I was trying to download my morning emails over a brand-new ‘high-speed’ 56k modem, but every time it finished its interminable series of bings and bongs and whistles, the computer just sat there saying, ‘Downloading’.

I phoned Dan, who said I might have a big email blocking things. ‘Property propositions maybe?’ he suggested. But I had another idea.

I phoned Freida immediately, and she confirmed that my theory was correct: she’d emailed me the transcripts of the first two cassettes.

‘It took me one whole hour to send it,’ she said, ‘so you’re just going to have to be patient.’

I set the whole thing going again and went off to take a shower and do my hair, and by the time I got back to the lounge they were there, sitting in my inbox.

If I’m honest, I started to read with what I suppose you’d call casual interest. A part of me was reading what was on the page, while the other half, the professional half, was thinking about the style, spotting typos and analysing the quality of the translation.

However, as I started to get into the story – the beginning of the war, their fear of invasion, the annexation of Alsace – I began to worry about the fates of Pierre and Genevieve and Johann.

As I read, a strange feeling rose up in the pit of my stomach, and I even paused at one point to wonder if I’d eaten something dubious. But it wasn’t until Ethel left Mulhouse for London that the feeling became tangible, that the thought crystallised and became a conscious one. Because if Ethel was Aunty Ethel, how could Genevieve be anyone other than Grandma Genny? Then again, the name Schmitt meant nothing to me, nor, to anyone’s knowledge, had Genny been gay. So none of it made any sense.

I’d intended to visit my parents for Sunday lunch that day, but I phoned to cancel because not only was I unable to tear myself from the transcript but, until I understood what we were dealing with here, I didn’t feel I could face them.

So I made myself a sandwich and moved my clunky ThinkPad to the couch so I could continue to read in comfort. Buggles wasn’t thrilled that the computer had stolen his favourite spot on my knees, but he eventually – after much headbutting and walking on keys – settled for the arm of the sofa. His only condition was that I had to caress him constantly.

When I read about Genevieve’s escape to La Vielle-Loye I thought instantly of Grandpa Chris’s wolf story. A search on Altavista revealed it was a tiny village in France that seemed to be of no real note for anything. So how could that specific place name cropping up in one of our most-told family tales be just a coincidence?

But then Menashe became Ansgar – not Guillaume, as I’d been beginning to suspect – and Genevieve Schmitt became Genevieve Poulain – which was neither Lecomte nor Solomas – and my premonitory feeling morphed to one of utter confusion.