Haven't They Grown(16)

Dom appears behind me, showered and dressed. ‘All sorted on the Ben and Zan front. Shall we go?’ He squints at the screen. ‘What are you doing? Is that Emily Braid’s timeline?’

‘It’s her Twitter.’

‘Same thing.’

There’s no point drawing his attention to the missing mother and sister in her blurb. I know what he’d say; I’ve just said it to myself.

And I’m not convinced. Irrational though it may be, I’m increasingly certain that something must be wrong in the Braid family.

I turn to face Dominic. ‘Please answer the question I’m about to ask you honestly, without trying to please me.’

‘Okay.’

‘Do you remember Georgina Braid? When I mentioned her yesterday, you’d forgotten all about her.’

‘There’s not much to remember. She was a tiny sprog the only time I met her.’

‘But you remember her? You remember them all coming round, and Georgina being there – a baby? Flora carried her in and rocked her in her car seat, in our lounge.’

‘I don’t remember the car seat or the rocking, but, yeah, I remember the baby.’

Good. That means I didn’t imagine Georgina Braid and I don’t need to go and look at the photograph I cut up all those years ago. The thought of holding the pieces in my hands makes me feel slightly nauseous.

‘Ready?’ Dom says, his voice full of confidence. He’s eager to get going, sure we’ll be back from Hemingford Abbots before lunchtime, having sorted out this mess once and for all.

I don’t see how he can be right, but I hope he is.



Wyddial Lane hasn’t changed. But then, why would it?

We’re in Dom’s car, not mine, parked across the road from Newnham House. Yesterday’s heat has disappeared and it’s cool and damp, the sky as grey as wet slate.

‘Right.’ Dom claps his hands together. ‘Are we doing this, or what?’

There’s something I’ve been trying not to say for a while now. I decided I wasn’t going to ask him. I still think I shouldn’t, but I know I’ll blurt it out eventually, so I might as well get it over with. ‘Do you really not remember why it ended?’

‘Why what ended?’

‘Our friendship with the Braids.’

‘Did Lewis decide we weren’t bling enough, once he’d inherited all that money?’

‘Why would you think that?’

‘Beth, I’ve no idea. I don’t think that. You’re right, I don’t know why we stopped seeing them. I might have known once, but I’ve forgotten.’ He says all this in a God-help-us tone, as if it’s petty to care why a long friendship suddenly ended.

‘Money had nothing to do with it,’ I tell him. ‘It was because of Georgina.’

Chimpy. It’s the kind of nickname you might give your youngest child … but then why did talking to Georgina, if it was her, make Flora cry? Is the answer to that question something to do with Georgina being nowhere in evidence on Lewis’s Instagram? Is she, for some reason, a source of misery to both her parents?

‘Who’s Georgina?’ Dom chuckles. ‘Just kidding.’

‘For God’s sake, Dom.’

‘Beth, lighten up. And also … focus. We’re here to investigate number 16, not to analyse the breakdown of our friendship with the Braids or discuss the miscarriage.’

‘The miscarriage?’ Not a word I was expecting to hear today. ‘You mean my miscarriage?’

‘Yeah. Should I not have mentioned it? You said the friendship ended because of Georgina. I thought you were implying that Flora having a third child just after you lost a baby … I guess I was wrong.’

‘I was nine weeks pregnant. I didn’t think of it as losing a baby. Do you really think I’d allow my closest friendship to end for such a stupid reason – my jealousy because Flora had successfully had a third child when I’d failed? Am I that pathetic?’

‘No, I … I’m sorry, I didn’t mean—’

‘I wasn’t jealous. Not at all.’

‘I believe you. But then what did you mean—’ He breaks off. ‘Look, shall we do what we came here to do? When Captain Cook arrived at Botany Bay after sailing all the way from England, did he disembark and explore the terrain or did he sit in his boat, chatting about his friends’ babies?’

I couldn’t know less about Captain Cook if I tried, but I play along. ‘The first, I’m guessing. Who’s going to do the talking, assuming someone’s home?’

Will he ask me later, or forget about it, content never to know in what way Georgina Braid caused the end of my friendship with Flora?

‘What if the door opens and Lewis is standing there?’ I ask.

‘That won’t happen, because Lewis lives in Delray Beach, Florida, but if it does – if he still owns this house too, and he happens to be in it today – I’ll say, “Hi, Lewis. Long time no see. Would you mind showing me your secret stash of tiny cloned children?”’

Soon Dom and I are both laughing uncontrollably. It’s probably nerves. We’re about to do something a lot of people would never dream of doing.

Once we’ve pulled ourselves together, we get out of the car and walk briskly across Wyddial Lane towards the large wooden gates of number 16. Dom presses one of the illuminated buttons on the intercom. We stand and wait.