None of the search results relate to the woman who used to own my house, or her grandson.
The discovery that they had died on the same day, more than two decades ago, starts to feel less and less relevant the longer I spend searching for more information. Surely if itmeantsomething, if it was significant, it would have made some kind of ripple on the world?
As I scroll pages of unhelpful results, I envisage possible scenarios—each one more outlandish than the last. A fire, flood, or family allergy that struck them both down within hours? A car accident? A plane crash? An intruder in the night, a burglary turned violent? Or even… a murder-suicide?No. As Maxine said, that would have conferred a level of notoriety that didn’t seem to be in evidence.
I sign up to the General Register Office portal and pay to have copies of both death certificates sent to me but it will be at least four days before they’re posted out—it will still be quicker if I can find local news coverage of what transpired on that December day, twenty-three years ago. I email the city’s central library to ask how I might access local news archives for December 2001 and January 2002, and it takes me by surprise when a helpful response from a member of staff drops into my inbox barely twenty minutes later.
I find myself smiling as I read the message. There was a lot to love about a local librarian with so much deep knowledge,so keen to help. I reply with thanks and book in to look at the microfiche in the next available slot on Monday morning.
I take the Ziploc bag into the spare room I’ve started to use as a study, locking it into a bottom drawer beneath a pile of mortgage paperwork.
The little mobile phone, I notice, is almost out of battery so I plug it back in to charge on the desk. Comparing the original photo on its tiny screen to the enhanced version that Charlie sent on WhatsApp, the difference is even more stark. In some ways it’s almost like looking at two different pictures.
Studying the image again reminds me of something else I need to check.
I head upstairs and bump into Jess on the landing, dressed in her decorating clothes. It feels like we’ve barely seen each other all day and I give her a peck on the cheek, then pull her in for a hug.
“Dinner won’t be long,” she says. As if reading my mind, she adds: “So you best not lock yourself in your man cave again.”
“It’s not a man cave, it’s—”
“I’m only teasing,” she says. “Although I did hear about you interrogating Helena on the subject the other day.”
“I wasn’tinterrogatingher.”
“You were a bit, according to what I heard.”
“I just wondered if she knew anything about it, that’s all. She was being evasive.”
“She was probably trying to be polite. Not everyone is as obsessed as you are, love.”
I shrug. “I just want to know the truth. Don’t like mysteries, especially in my own house.”
“As long as it doesn’t end up with you getting hurt,” she says. “Like it did with MVI.”
“Ouch,” I say, wincing at the memory. “That was a bit of a low blow.”
She lays an apologetic palm flat on my chest. “But you know what I mean, love.”
MVI Limited had been several jobs ago, almost a decade ago, a company that had systematically inflated client invoices to cover coding work they didn’t need and that was never carried out. A tribunal had eventually ruled in my favor but that was long after I’d been fired for asking the wrong questions—and the injustice still stung, all these years later.
“That was nothing like this,” I say. “And theywerebeing overcharged.”
“And it was the first time I realized you had a tendency to get obsessed with things.”
She’s right, of course. And maybe I’d allowed myself to focus on the house because it was easier than thinking about my work situation.
“I just want our kids to be safe, for all of us to be safe.”
“I know.” She kisses my cheek, easing herself out of the embrace and turning toward the stairs. “Let’s talk things through with Dom later.”
Coco is curled into a sleepy circle at the top of the second-floor staircase, her tail wagging lethargically as I give her head a quick scratch on the way past. In the small bedroom where this had all started I open the wood-paneled door and then push it shut, doing it twice, admiring the flawless workmanship againeven though I’ve been in and out of here a dozen times already this week. The attention to detail that must have gone into hand-crafting this door means it’s still hard to make out, even though I know exactly where it is.
Inside the dusty hidden room, I click on the light and start opening drawers in the dresser in search of the wallet. There were initials on it but I couldn’t remember if they were PF—perhaps Peter Flack?—or something different. If theywerePF then that was another link to another premature death from the same year that Adrian Parish had disappeared. The same year he had died, I correct myself. There didn’t seem any real possibility that Maxine’s husband was still alive. Not after all this time.
But when I find the wallet in a drawer and open it up again, I see my memory has played a trick on me. The faded silver initials are there but they don’t match: not a P, but a D. The initials are DF, not PF.
So it hadn’t belonged to Peter Flack. Perhaps a relative?
