‘I’m sorry I can’t help more. I do hope you find who it is,’ said Nora, seeing them to the door. As they did, Alison jumped at a sudden noise. A baby. It sounded like a baby crying.

‘Oh, sorry.’ Nora smiled, her face softening. ‘Excuse me, I have to get her.’

The cold air hit Alison as they stepped outside, like a bucket of freezing water being chucked at her.

‘Didn’t look the type to have a baby,’ Tom remarked. ‘Isn’t she too old, like?’

‘You can have them at fifty these days,’ Alison scolded. ‘Come on. Let’s go back to the station, we’re not getting anywhere here.’

Eleanor

Eleanor

DECEMBER

We always think of names as fixed, immutable. I remember that man in The Crucible, shouting about his name being all he has, going to his death for it. But it’s not true. We can all wear many names throughout our lives. For a woman, it’s easy – just get married, subsume your old self, then start using a nickname, and before you know it you’re a different person entirely.

I’d been called by different labels in my life. My mother named me Eleanor, a stark cool name, like the woman she wanted me to be. When I escaped – when I lost her – I became Elle, a light-hearted fun name. For concerts, I was Elena Vetriano, a made-up name I’d taken from an Italian street, fitting for the dark-haired beauty I’d become, pretending I was from somewhere more exotic than the English countryside. Artists, writers, they get away with having aliases, whereas for other people it’s seen as shifty. My husband called me Elle too. Elle-belle. These days, I called myself Nora Halscombe. My mother’s surname. Not the one I was born with, but yet another incarnation of me. I was still figuring out who Nora was, what she was capable of. How far she would go.

When I first found that lip balm in the remnants from my husband’s car, followed by the double whammy of learning that not only had he spent all my money over the years, he was also not a doctor, indeed had never been a doctor, I felt hot and cold all over. I was shaking. For a long time I couldn’t figure out what emotion I was feeling – rage? Shock? Jealousy?