Warily, she steps forward and peers more closely at the house. Along with the set of doorbells – five, she counts, for five flats, there’s a separate bell for the basement – she takes in the original details: the lion-head door knocker with its gaping mouth; the metal bell pull that hangs like a noose; the guillotine blade of the boot scraper.

She considers the people who have lifted the knocker, jangled the bell or scraped their shoes: tenants and visitors. She imagines the figure of a lonely woman, creeping like a spectre up the steps, pushing open the door and leaving her baby inside.

Who would do that?

A weight forms inside her chest. It’s an old question and yet Marina’s body bows beneath the hurt because she knows she was the baby and the woman was her mother.

2

Connie

April 1964

It can’t be true, thought Connie, breathing deeply as she hurried along the pavement of Harrington Gardens. She had missed another period and this morning she had been sick. Deep, retching spasms before she’d even eaten.

She knew it was a sign because Mrs Kolinski had been sick when she was pregnant. Not that she’d had her baby. She’d lost it, just as she’d lost her husband three weeks before that. Some people, said Connie’s father, had the luck of the Devil and some had no luck at all.

Despite the warmth of the morning, Connie shivered. Having no luck didn’t come close to what might happen next. To have a baby at seventeen. Her father would be devastated, worrying about how they’d manage to look after it, and fretting about money. His eyes would reproach her. What about your mother? What would she have said?

Yet, to have a baby, a miniature version of him . . . Would it be so bad? She paused in her stride, thinking about Johnny. His blue eyes, his dark hair.

She quickened her pace, knowing her father would be waiting in the bookshop with a list of jobs. The shop opened at nine, but he arrived early. Sometimes he left the flat before she was even awake.

A line of sweat trickled down her neck. She lifted her dark hair and twisted it into a ponytail, securing it with the band she found in the pocket of her dress. Her favourite dress, short and bright yellow with black polka dots. She smoothed the front, checking to see if it was visible yet, but her stomach was as flat as ever. That was something. Maybe she was wrong and had miscalculated her dates. Perhaps the way she felt now was because her period was due. The blood would come and the cramps would start. She would be annoyed by the inconvenience and laugh at herself for being dramatic.