‘Help yourself to anything you want – tea, coffee. Vodka,’ she had told Imelda with a wink. But she had seemed depleted somehow. Not simply tired but almost melancholy, as though she were resigned to some painful yet inevitable disappointment. Billie resolved to be more careful tomorrow. However eager she was to find out as much as she could about how she came into this world, she was, for now, a guest in Imelda’s home. Imelda had chosen to help her, and the last thing Billie wanted was for her to live to regret that choice.

Chapter 25

Chapter 25

Now

The Hermitage was a quaint, half-timbered bungalow at the bottom of a quiet cul-de-sac. When Henry had heard that Billie was going to be staying in Brighton, he had immediately invited her to visit him at home. She had only seen him very briefly at St Pancras since her first meeting with Imelda and he was as eager to catch up on her news as she was to share it with him. He had extended his invitation to Imelda, but Billie had been relieved when she had declined. Imelda had already admitted that Henry’s name didn’t sound familiar to her, and Billie wanted a chance to speak with him alone.

Henry opened the door almost as soon as she rang the bell. He was dressed more casually than usual, and minus his customary bow tie, in jeans, an open-necked white shirt and a charcoal grey soft woollen sweater with patches on the elbows. He kissed her on both cheeks and ushered her into a small hallway where he took her coat and hat.

‘I’ll put the kettle on and then I’ll give you the grand tour.’

The sitting room was small and cosy with a log burner and a squishy sofa upon which was heaped a mismatched miscellany of cushions covered in richly patterned fabrics. The burgundy walls were hung with a seemingly random and wildly eclectic anthology of paintings. Portraits and landscapes jostled for attention with still lives, nudes and abstract works, many of their frames abutting one another so that little of the painted walls could be seen. In stark contrast the adjacent room, which was flooded with light that reflected off its bare, barely blue washed walls, contained only four objects. In the bay of the large window was a battered leather armchair. Centre stage stood a gleaming baby grand piano, accompanied by an Edwardian mahogany piano stool. On top of the piano was a single large photograph in a plain silver frame. It was taken on a beach somewhere sunny – the sea was almost turquoise and the sand white. In the foreground, a younger Henry, tanned, toned and bare-chested, stood smiling with his arm around an olive-skinned man, perhaps ten years his senior, who was wearing mirrored sunglasses and a short-sleeved pink flamingo print shirt. Henry picked up the photograph and handed it to Billie.