March the twenty-seventh, in 1983. Heather’s birthday was in October of that year.

No.

If the date was correct, then her mother was already pregnant in this picture. Had been pregnant for maybe six or seven weeks.

No.

Reluctantly, she turned the photo over and looked again at her mother, this girl-child image that she had never seen before. There was no way of telling, with the big coat covering her lap, but then some women didn’t show until fairly late in their pregnancy, especially when it was their first child. And hadn’t her mum and dad got married when she was a toddler? Why had she never questioned that? They had always told her they had known each other since school, that they had started dating when Colleen was nineteen, but that had to have been a lie. An image of her dad floated into her mind, his round, easily flushed face, the strawberry-blonde hair that edged into straight-up ginger near his ears, or when he grew a beard.

I look nothing like him. I never did.

‘No.’

She didn’t realize she’d spoken aloud until she heard Nikki call out from the living room.

‘Hev? Are you ever getting that bottle or what?’

Reluctantly, her eyes were drawn back to the picture of Michael Reave. He was young here, even handsome, his face as yet free of the lines that would be etched there by his time in prison. She couldn’t help noticing his dark hair, the particular shape of his cheekbones, the line of his nose.

‘Hev?’

Nikki’s voice was closer, as though she was standing in the little hall that led to the bedroom.

‘Coming, sorry, just got distracted!’

Heather looked around the room, but nothing else seemed out of place. The window was shut and locked, as she’d left it, and the little dressing table was littered with the usual junk she turfed out of her pockets every night – receipts, loose change, sweet wrappers. Everything was normal, except …

She turned back to the bed, a cold hand walking down her back. The bed was made, the covers pulled up neatly to the pillow, which was itself straight and freshly plumped up. The only time Heather ever made the bed was just before she got into it herself, and then it was really only a case of tucking in the undersheet again, or retrieving a pillow. Whoever had left the photo had also made her bed.

For a horrible, suffocating second she thought she was going to laugh. And then she heard Nikki’s footsteps going back to the kitchen and the compulsion passed. Instead, she slipped the photo into her pocket, snatched up the bottle of wine, and closed the door firmly behind her.

39

Before