Haven't They Grown(68)

‘I’m going to contact her and find out,’ I say. ‘I didn’t take her number, but I know she runs a business from 3, Wyddial Lane. Shouldn’t be hard to find.’

‘Another thing I just thought of,’ Zan says. ‘You know what Tilly said about none of the neighbours ever seeing Flora? What if that was deliberate? Lewis and Flora planned it so that no one saw her because they knew she’d be coming back as Jeanette Cater. They didn’t want the neighbours to say, “Wait, you’re not Jeanette, you’re Flora.”’

A shiver runs through my body. Pretending to be an obsessive stalker, hiding from the world so that you can come back with a different name … What can the Braids be so determined to hide that they’d go to such extremes? The more I know about the lengths they’ve gone to, the more convinced I am that the truth must be unbearable. For who, though? The Braids themselves, or for other people?

‘Did Georgina Braid have Lewis’s eyes like the other four?’ Zannah asks.

‘I don’t know. Don’t think I ever saw her with her eyes open. She was a tiny baby the only time they came round. Resemblances often don’t become obvious till you’re a bit older, anyway.’ Even in the photograph Flora sent with the Christmas card, Georgina had her eyes shut. The image of that tiny cutting lying on my kitchen floor flashes up in my mind. I push it away. ‘Why?’ I ask Zannah.

‘Dunno. I just wondered if she might have been Kevin and Yanina’s baby, not Lewis and Flora’s.’ Zannah laughs at my immediately alert expression. ‘Relax, Mum. That’s not a brilliant new theory. I don’t know why I said it.’

‘You wouldn’t have said it for no reason.’ If Flora was never pregnant with Georgina, then what I was annoyed about never happened: she didn’t fail to tell me that she was pregnant or that she’d had a baby – because she wasn’t, and she didn’t.

Zannah says, ‘Assuming you’re right about the eyes thing … which, okay, I believe you. Then little Thomas and Emily are Lewis and Flora’s, but everyone’s pretending they’re Kevin and Jeanette Cater’s. But there is no Jeanette Cater, not really, and Yanina lives in that house too, and she and Kevin might be together …’

‘And also might not be.’

‘It would be neat, though,’ Zan says. ‘A straight swap. Kevin and Yanina have Georgina and for some reason Flora and Lewis pretend she’s theirs. Then a few years later, Lewis and Flora have Thomas and Emily number two, and Kevin pretends they’re his.’

None of this strikes me as impossible or even unlikely, given all that’s happened and everything I know to be true. It would explain why Flora seemed distant and less interested in spending time with me in 2006, when she – or somebody – was pregnant with Georgina. If she knew she was about to have to tell the world the most outrageous lie and then sustain it, pretending that another woman’s baby was hers, there wouldn’t have been room in her mind or life for anything else. And … she wouldn’t have wanted her parents around her, either. They knew her better than anyone; they’d have been able to tell for sure that she wasn’t herself, that something was horribly wrong.

I was too wrapped up in what I thought was her rejection of me to worry about what might have been going on in her life. It’s unbearable to think that Thomas and Emily Cater might be suffering now because of my failure to realise twelve years ago that not everything was about me.

Flora’s suffering is more complicated. She has to be one of the main liars behind all this, whatever it is, but I’ve twice seen her behave like a victim.

‘That could be what “Chimpy”’s about, if Chimpy’s Georgina,’ Zannah goes on. ‘Lewis and Flora and their kids are all perfect-looking, aren’t they? Kevin and Yanina’s kid might not have been. From what you’ve said about Lewis, I can imagine him giving someone an insulting nickname, and expecting them to find it funny.’

‘Taunting,’ I mutter.

‘What?’ says Zan.

‘You’re right. Lewis liked to taunt people with nicknames, so you might be right about Chimpy. But what if he took it further?’

‘How?’

‘If you call your youngest two children names that your oldest two already have, and make them wear their old clothes and shoes … Couldn’t there be an element of taunting there too?’

‘That’s creepy, Mum.’

It is. And if it’s not true, if it’s miles away from the truth, then maybe I’m the sick one for dreaming it up. Flora would never willingly harm a child, especially not her own.

Lewis is a different matter. I have no idea what he’s capable of, and I can’t help asking myself the question: what if he chose to call his youngest children Thomas and Emily as a deliberate act of cruelty?

Dom’s hovering in the hall when Zannah and I get home. ‘PC Pollard rang,’ he says, trying to sound matter-of-fact. In the short silence that follows, I hear the gloating he’s trying so hard not to indulge in: I told you he would.

I drop my bag on the floor – something I frequently moan at the children for doing. ‘What did he say?’

‘Tell me about school first.’

‘It’s all fine. Sorted.’

‘I was hoping for a bit more detail than that.’ Seeing my glare, Dom says, ‘Pollard went to 16 Wyddial Lane.’