‘What?’ Her voice is no more than a whisper.

‘Connie Littleton’s daughter?’ His mood changes; his voice is desperate now. He shoots out a hand and grabs her wrist. ‘If you are, you must tell me where she is.’

‘What?’

‘Where’s Connie? Tell me. I need to know what happened to her. Why didn’t she come home?’

30

Marina

January 1992

The truth pours from Marina and Harry listens, looking from her face, to his hands, to the pavement outside the window.

She tells him her real first name and about being abandoned at 24 Harrington Gardens. She tells him she has been through phases of searching for answers, but that she has always given up. She tells him it’s only now she has lived inside the house that she has found the courage to keep trying.

At the end of her speech, he stays silent, brow furrowed. Then he says, ‘But you’re so much like her.’ His voice is incredulous.

‘What did she look like?’

‘She was beautiful,’ he says. ‘She had thick dark hair which hung about her face – like yours.’

Marina feels dizzy. It’s the second time someone has talked about her hair. She grips the table again, steadying herself. Has she found her mother at last?

‘But . . . she wasn’t pregnant,’ Harry continues. ‘You are so much like her, but you can’t possibly be her daughter. Maybe you have her blood. Maybe that’s it – maybe you’re related; perhaps by a cousin or something.’

‘Did she have a cousin?’

He scratches his head. ‘No. No, she didn’t.’ He speaks more slowly, carefully. ‘But she wasn’t pregnant when I saw her a few days before she went away.’

‘Before she went to Paris to join Johnny?’

Harry sighs and Marina detects the ghost of an emotion: envy. Harry, Victor and Johnny. All of them in love with this Connie.

A silence falls between the two of them and, for want of normality, Marina reaches for her coffee and takes a sip. It’s cold but she finishes it and replaces the cup on its saucer. The cafe has quietened around them. The waitress has switched on more lamps.

‘What kind of person was she?’ Marina asks.

Now Harry smiles. ‘She was clever and kind. She read books and poetry. She dreamed of buying a typewriter. A black and silver Remington. When the shop closed down, I bought it, only I never had a chance to give it to her because by that time she had gone.’

‘But,’ says Marina slowly, ‘if Connie left only days before I was found, isn’t that a coincidence?’