There’s so much filed away in here: bank statements, utility bills, stocks and shares, letters about the mortgage on this place, warranties for household appliances. My fingers walk their way toward the back of each drawer. House deeds, tax returns and correspondence from HMRC, life-insurance documents, envelopes full of receipts, his birth certificate and passport, his medical degree certificate and all the rest of his academic qualifications in hard-backed brown envelopes.

A little voice tells me to slow down, to be as methodical as I can. Neither Ross nor Catherine will be back for hours. I have to keep calm and remember to breathe. I’m pregnant. I need to think of the baby and not get too stressed.

I’m on to the third drawer now. This one seems to be full of documents relating to his parents: power-of-attorney forms and bits and pieces from his father’s nursing home in Aberdeen; his mother’s birth, marriage, and death certificates. Maybe this is where I’ll also find…

Yes. Here it is. At last. A file labeled “Aunt Jessie.”

I take a few long, deep breaths and steel myself for what I might find. The only noises in the house are the ticking of the clock in the living room and the faint burble of the radio in the kitchen. I lift out the wodge of papers in the file and take them over to the swivel chair, sit down with them on my lap, trying desperately to hold myself together, to tell myself that all will be well, that my life isn’t falling apart. That his aunt Jessica’s house was in Sittingbourne, just as Ross told me.

Except it wasn’t. I know that now. I know it beyond a shadow of a doubt. Because here in my hand is a property description from an estate agent in Chelmsford. The address screams at me from the page: 22 Riley Road. The house next door to the Dawsons. I can even see half of Alice’s front door.

Ross’s aunt lived at 22 Riley Road. She knew the Dawsons, used to chat to Alice’s mum over the garden fence. Catherine and Ross have known each other since before Alice and I were even born. A sob erupts out of me. A rasping, primal sound I’ve never heard before. He’s been acting all this time, playing me for a fool, manipulating me. Catherine, too. But why? What do they want with me after all this time?

45

THEN: AFTER

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 10, 2007