While the others watched, open-mouthed, Oliver sank heavily into a chair. He still held the laptop in his hands. At last he sighed and said, ‘Enough now, Rose. Enough.’ The two of them stared at each other for a long moment before finally Oliver turned back to Tom. ‘This woman is Hannah Jennings,’ he said quietly. ‘She’s my daughter.’

24

The Lake District, 2017

When I think of my old life, the one I left behind, it’s our village in Cambridgeshire I picture, the house we lived in for sixteen years – Doug, Hannah, Toby and I. I sometimes wonder if our old neighbours ever think of us; if they remember the family that used to live between them in that quiet row of cottages below St Dunstan’s Hill. But of course they do: how could they not? After all, for a while Hannah Jennings was a household name, the Jennings family front-page news. How, after so much horror, could anyone possibly forget who she was, and what she did?

In my late twenties, when Doug and I still lived in Suffolk, I worked as a nurse on the paediatric ward at the General, where Rose Lawson was completing her specialist training in paediatric surgery. She must have been around thirty then, but she was already very highly regarded in the hospital, and it was clear that all the senior consultants thought she had a bright future ahead of her. It must take a special sort of person to be a surgeon, I’ve always thought, all those years and years of training, all that ambition and talent and single-mindedness you must need.

On the ward she always remembered our names, would often stop to ask after our families, and chat to us about hers. She’d been married a few years I think to her husband Oliver, and they had a beautiful baby girl named Emily. I remember once, one Saturday morning, bumping into them at the large Sainsbury’s in town. Doug and I were there together doing the weekly shop when I spotted them. Oliver was a tall, very good-looking man, and they looked so happy, so close, laughing about something together, and I was struck by what an attractive, perfect-looking family they made. When Rose spotted us and came over we smiled and introduced our husbands. I knew Oliver was a university professor and a published author and I was a little in awe of him, both Doug and I were, but in fact he was nice, really – you could see he was quite sweet, a bit shy even, despite all his success.