The Gown(53)

And then, at last, Morley Road. Nan’s road. The house on the end was 183, and after that came 185, the numbers steadily climbing. Heather walked until the road ended, two blocks later, but there was no number 109. She retraced her steps and even checked the map again. But that was it: she’d walked along every inch of Morley Road. And she was right about the address, for it was the one Nan had written on the back of those photographs her mom had unearthed.

She looked around, trying to make sense of things, but Morley Road ended where she stood. Ahead was a group of low-rise apartment buildings and a scrubby stretch of open land. Nothing else.

Maybe she should email her mom, just to make sure the address really was correct, and if she had taken a wrong turn at some point it would be easy enough to try again. For all she knew there was another Morley Road in Barking, or even another entire town called Barking somewhere else in England. But it was early in Toronto, and she didn’t much feel like standing around, and she was pretty sure, besides, that she hadn’t made a mistake with the address. She might as well head back to the station.

Turning onto Ripple Road, she noticed there was a supermarket on the corner. A neighborhood-sized place. The sort of store that had regular customers and cashiers who knew the customers’ names. And she found herself crossing the street and walking inside and making a beeline for the woman at the help desk. Or, rather, Customer Courtesy Centre. What was the harm in asking?

“Good morning,” Heather said to the woman at the desk.

“Good morning. Lovely day, isn’t it?”

“It sure is. I’m sorry to bother you, but I wonder if you can help me find an address. One hundred and nine Morley Road. I went there just now but the house numbers start at a hundred and eighty-three. I wonder if I’m doing something wrong.” Heather showed her the map on her phone.

“That’s Morley Road all right, and as far as I know there’s only the one stretch of it. But then, I live over Dagenham way. Let me think . . . ooh. I’ll ask Shirley. She grew up right around the corner.” She turned away, to the intercom on the wall, and her words echoed throughout the store. “Shirley to Customer Courtesy. Shirley to Customer Courtesy, please.” And then, over her shoulder, “She won’t be a moment. Just has to come over from the fish counter.”

An older woman came bustling up a minute later, her white coat pristine, a hairnet pulled low over her brow. She had a nice face, round and rather red, and the short walk had left her a bit out of breath.

“Here I am,” she puffed. “I came as fast as I could.”

“You are a love. I was thinking you might be able to help this young lady. She’s come looking for an address on Morley Road, only she can’t find it.”

“Whereabouts on Morley Road?”

“It’s number one hundred and nine,” Heather said. “My grandmother used to live there. I’m visiting from Canada and I thought I’d try to find the house.” She held out her phone so Shirley might look at the map she’d saved.

“Oh, right. There’s your problem. See the T-junction there, where Morley ends? It used to continue on another few hundred yards. They knocked down a whole whack of houses back in the fifties, I think, or maybe it was the sixties, and they put up a new council estate. And now they’re saying a block of tower flats is going up, too.”

Heather’s heart sank into her shoes. “So you think my nan’s house was over there?”

“Sorry to say it, but I think it probably was. Are you all right?”

Heather nodded, blinking back tears. “Yes. Sorry for taking up your time.”

“Not at all. Well, I’d best be back to the counter. Lovely to meet you.”

Heather thanked the women and wandered out of the supermarket. There was nothing left of Nan in Barking, and those fantasies she’d had, of walking up to a neighbor’s house and ringing the bell and meeting someone who had known her grandmother, were just that. Fantasies. Nan’s house had vanished into dust before Heather had even been born.

She got on the next train heading back into London, hauled out her pocket-sized Rough Guide to London, a bon voyage gift from Suni and Michelle, and considered where to go next. She’d planned to stop by Bruton Street, where the Hartnell premises had once been, but some online digging before she’d left had told her that only the fa?ade with his name was left; the actual business had closed in the 1970s. And she wasn’t sure if she could face going there, knocking on the door of whatever business now occupied the building, and being turned away.

That left the Victoria and Albert Museum and Miriam Dassin’s Vél d’Hiv embroideries. Fortunately the train she was on went all the way to south Kensington, and then it was just a short walk down the road to the museum, a gigantic pile of brick that looked more like the Kremlin than a treasure house of art and design.

She’d only taken a few steps inside when her attention was caught by the spectacular glass sculpture, or perhaps it was a chandelier, that was suspended from the middle of the domed rotunda. She joined the end of the nearest queue, her gaze still fixed on the mass of glowing green and yellow tendrils, and shuffled forward unthinkingly as the line advanced.

“Hello! Hello there!”

She’d reached the front. “Whoops. Was too busy looking up,” she admitted to the woman at the desk. Zahra, according to her name tag.