Dom has a great talent that I lack: the ability not to give a toss about most things. He regularly announces that some project or other has been delayed, and seems amused by his colleagues’ panic over missed deadlines. We’ve had the conversation dozens of times: me saying that if his work bores him, he should do something else, him telling me I don’t understand, and that not caring about his career is his favourite hobby.
He reaches for my hand, squeezes it and says, ‘I also think you’re stressing out about Zannah and Ben more than you realise.’
‘Zan and Ben are fine.’
‘I agree. But they’re teenagers, and more demanding than they used to be, and you let it get to you in a way that I don’t. Is their school good enough, is Zannah too cheeky and rebellious, is it our fault?’
‘No, yes and yes, in that order.’ I sigh.
‘Beth, everything’s fine. You know my life’s great guiding motto.’
‘I don’t, actually.’
‘Let it wash over you.’
I smile. ‘You’ve never told me that before.’
‘That’s because I just made it up.’
‘But you’re right: thatisyour life’s guiding motto.’
‘I wonder if maybe it’s not a coincidence,’ Dom says.
‘What?’
‘This idea of Thomas and Emily Braid, who are teenagers the same age as ours, being suddenly little kids again.’ He looks nervous. As if he knows he’s taken it too far.
‘Wait, are you saying …’ I laugh. ‘You think I have a secret desire for Zannah and Ben to be little again, and it made me hallucinate five-year-old Thomas and three-year-old Emily?’
Dom looks suitably embarrassed. ‘That’s mad, isn’t it?’
‘Totally. Whatever I saw, whatever happened, it’s not that. I think—’ I break off, too proud to say it:I think I’m handling the challenge of parenting two teenagers really well. My kids like me. I like them. How bad can it be?
‘Was Zan … okay?’ I ask. ‘When she left, I mean.’
‘Fine.’
‘She wasn’t worried by … any of it?’
‘Not at all. I think she’s enjoying the mystery. Which I’m a bit closer to solving.’ Dom smiles proudly, tapping his computer screen.
‘You’ve searched online?’
‘Extensively.’
So he hasn’t been working all evening.
‘The good news is, nobody’s dead. They’re still in Delray Beach, Florida.’
‘If you’re waiting for me to say I didn’t see what I saw …’
‘All I’m saying is, they live in America.’
‘That doesn’t mean they’re there right now, today.’
Dom frowns. ‘True,’ he concedes.
‘Maybe they never sold the Hemingford Abbots house. Rich people don’t have to sell a house in order to buy a house. They might divide their time between England and Florida.’
