She remembers the silence and the waiting and how she traced a pattern in the dust with her toes. She remembers a baby crying from all the way at the bottom of the house in the hall and then a voice exclaiming. She remembers recognising the lady who said words like candy and sidewalk and who gave her special chocolate bars that had come all the way from America. She remembers hearing Kenneth’s voice and how it made her shudder and feel afraid because she was thinking that maybe he was like those boys who had wanted to hurt her mother, or maybe he was like the nasty husband of the small woman – the woman who had just gone into Connie’s flat and still hadn’t come out.

Little Eva has a rule. Her mother comes first. Besides, Connie has told her not to tell. She puts her finger firmly on her lips to remind herself, then slips into her own flat and shuts the door.

36

Marina

February 1992

Marina crosses Trafalgar Square. People are scurrying, dodging the pigeons. The midday light sparkles on the fountains. A child tosses a coin and makes a wish. A tourist climbs onto the plinth and has her photo taken with a lion. The scene is less dour than a Lowry painting, less glamorous than a Renoir. It is ordinary and safe.

She climbs the steps of the National Gallery and heads for the restaurant. It strikes her that until she moved into Harrington Gardens, she had spent little time in London beyond a few school visits or trips with Ruth and David.

And yet, London is her home. It was where her mother lived and where she was born.

Her mother. Connie Littleton.

She has said these words many times since Kenneth and Dorothy made their confessions and Eva remembered what she saw.

She has visited the place, marked by that simple cross, where they buried her mother in the churchyard, close to the wall. Kenneth and Dorothy had carried her body out in the dead of night. How hard they must have worked to clean up the blood so Harry didn’t notice when he came. Marina tries not to think about that. Instead she clings to Dorothy’s description. The blanket they had wrapped her in, the prayers they had said, the flowers Dorothy laid on the grave month after month. Year after year.