The Forgetting(79)
‘I’m sorry. She said there were things she needed to tell me and I thought it might help me understand—’
‘What things?’ He was shouting now, his face puce with rage.
‘I don’t know, I—’
‘What did she tell you?’
Thoughts tripped and floundered in Livvy’s head. ‘Nothing, really. She denied that anything bad had ever happened when you were a child—’
‘And you stayed to listen to that? You swallowed those lies?’ He pressed his foot down harder on the accelerator.
‘No, I was with her for less than fifteen minutes—’
‘You shouldn’t have been with her at all.’ He shouted at her, face tinged with sweat as he swerved into the inside lane, horns beeping furiously behind them.
Livvy’s heart thundered in her chest, and she twisted her wedding ring around her finger. ‘Slow down, Dominic, you’re scaring me.’
He ignored her, turning the steering wheel right and then left, weaving in and out of the traffic.
‘Please, let’s pull over. We can talk about it. You shouldn’t drive when you’re this angry.’
There was a splinter of silence, like a hesitation between heartbeats.
‘Don’t ever fucking tell me what to do.’ Dominic’s voice was flat, carefully enunciated, and Livvy was aware of holding her breath in her chest.
Time seemed to take on a different dimension, to accelerate and slow down in the same moment.
She watched as the skin across Dominic’s forehead corrugated into a rigid frown, his jaw clenched, his grip tightening on the steering wheel. She watched as he turned to her, eyes spitting with rage, hissing in her direction. ‘Don’t you ever go behind my back again.’ Her head turned just in time to see their car hurtling towards the back of a moving lorry, a shout erupting from her throat. She twisted her wedding ring around her finger, watched it slide over her knuckles and fall to the floor as the car jerked forwards. Her eyes flickered towards Dominic just in time to see the lock of his jaw, the intransigence in his eyes, the twisted fury at the corners of his lips. And just as it flashed through her mind that this was it, that they might both be killed, that Leo would be orphaned, she heard Dominic curse, felt her body lurch to the left as he pulled down hard on the steering wheel, watched in horror as the unrelenting speed of the car took them over the kerb, across the pavement, towards a high, red-bricked wall.
And then everything went black.
ANNA
LONDON
‘But that’s me. The woman in that photograph is me.’
My eyes dart up to Zahira and then back to the screen, unable to compute what I am seeing. The neurons in my brain are firing in all the wrong directions, unable to connect.
I look at the photograph again, at the name in the middle of the profile, confirm that my eyes are not deceiving me.
It is the Facebook page of Livvy Nicholson. And yet the profile photograph on the account is of me: me with long hair.
I turn back to Zahira, see my own confusion reflected back at me. ‘I don’t understand. Why has this woman got a photo of me on her profile?’
Zahira brings her chair closer to mine so that we can share the screen. ‘I don’t know. It doesn’t make any sense.’
She scrolls down the profile page – through articles from the World Wildlife Fund and the National Trust – and then her fingers stop and my eyes blur momentarily, unready to absorb what they’re seeing.
It is a repost from someone else’s account, a woman called Bea Nicholson. It is a photograph of me, standing in a park, a bridge in the distance behind me. Next to me, with her arm around my shoulders, stands an athletic woman wearing shorts and a t-shirt, dark hair cropped close to her head, her strong features both resolute and kind. Beneath the photo there is a caption and a date.
Happy Birthday to my little sis and best friend. I love you!
The photo is dated seven months ago.
My heart thuds. I hear Stephen’s voice in my head, patiently answering all my questions, telling me I am an only child, that I have no extended family.
My hand takes over from Zahira’s on the trackpad, scrolls through the profile – more articles about the Woodland Trust, the Bristol Balloon Fiesta, an international climate change summit – and then there is another photograph, and I am aware of my throat tightening as I scan one face and then the next, devour the caption beneath.
It is a photograph of four people in front of a Christmas tree. I am standing in the middle, flanked by a man and a woman much older than me. Clicking on the photo to enlarge it, I see it immediately: the resemblance between my face and the woman on my right. It is there in the cornflower-blue eyes, the wide-open smile, the gentle point of the chin.
And in the centre of the photo, cradled in my arms, face out towards the camera, is a tiny baby wearing a blue sleepsuit.
My head swims as I read the caption beneath.
Three generations of the Nicholson family: me, my little boy, and my (very proud!) parents.
The photo was posted nine months ago.
My stomach lurches and my head feels light, as though I have inhaled helium.
I stare at the photo and I know, without any need for confirmation, that these are my parents, that this is my son. I do not remember them and yet I know it is true.
This is the family Stephen told me were dead.