‘Dad!’ Zannah yells. ‘Come and look at Mum. There’s something wrong with her.’
The easiest thing would be to say I feel ill. No one would question it. It’s hot. I’m not good with heat. It’s a joke in our house. Ben and I have pale, Celtic complexions, and constitutions that function better in cooler weather. Dom and Zannah are dark, with olive skin, and love stretching out in the sun for hours at a time.
‘Dad, get in here, seriously.’
By the time Dom arrives, I’ve convinced myself that the most sensible thing is to pretend to be fine in the hope that I soon will be. Maybe by dinner time I’ll have convinced myself that I didn’t see five-year-old Thomas and three-year-old Emily, that the heat made me hallucinate.
‘You okay?’ Dominic asks me.
‘She’s obviously not okay.’
‘Zan, can you give me and Dad a minute?’
‘What? Why? You’re not getting divorced, are you? If you are, can I hit all the people I’ve been not hitting till now? Callie’s parents are splitting up, and she’s started punching and pushing me – in a jokey way, but, I mean … I have bruises! Actually, I’m so done with that girl.’
‘We’re not splitting up,’ I tell her.
‘Beth, what’s wrong?’ Dom asks. ‘Should I be worried?’
From the hall, Ben calls out, ‘Can you all stop causing drama?’
‘Yeah, when we’re dead,’ says Zan. ‘Life is drama, little bruth.’
‘Zannah, please,’ says Dom. ‘Upstairs.’
‘Mum, why can’t I stay?’
‘Suzannah. We very rarely ask you to—’
‘Uh-oh. Dad’s full-naming me. It must be serious. All right, I’m going.’ Zan flounces out of the room, slamming the door behind her.
I still approve of my advice to myself to say nothing and try to pretend it didn’t happen, but I know I can’t follow it. The words are swelling inside me, preparing to burst out.
‘I went to Hemingford Abbots while Ben was playing football.’
Dom frowns. ‘Where’s that?’
‘Near St Ives, where football was.’ I take a deep breath. This isn’t the difficult part of the conversation. This bit should be easy. ‘It’s where the Braids moved when they left Cambridge.’
‘Oh, right. Yeah, I remember – before they moved to Florida.’
‘What? Who moved to Florida?’
‘The Braids did.’
The door opens and Zannah reappears. ‘You’re never going to get anywhere at this rate. You need me to interpret.’ She performs some invented-on-the-spot sign language.
‘Were you listening outside the door?’ asks Dom.
‘Course I was.’ She rolls her eyes. ‘Who wouldn’t?’
‘The Braids didn’t move to Florida,’ I say.
‘They did. Something Beach.’
‘What makes you think that?’
He looks puzzled. ‘I don’t know. I just … oh, I know. It might have been LinkedIn. I’m barely on it, but I think I got a message inviting me to follow Lewis, or befriend him, or whatever it is people do on LinkedIn. I had a look at his profile and he was CEO of some company in Florida.’
‘They might have been in Florida at some point but they aren’t any more,’ I tell him. ‘While I was parked outside their house in Hemingford Abbots, a car drove in through the gates. Flora got out.’
‘I don’t know who these people are, but maybe they’ve split up,’ says Zannah. ‘He’s in Florida, she’s here.’
‘Zan, please, can you let me talk to Dad alone?’ If she hears what happened, she’ll either be worried about me or scathingly sarcastic; I want to avoid both.
She looks disappointed, but, for once, doesn’t argue. We listen as she stomps back up the two flights of stairs to her bedroom.
‘I suppose they might have moved back,’ says Dominic.
‘To the same house? It’s the same address they gave us when they left Cambridge twelve years ago: 16 Wyddial Lane.’
‘They could have rented it out while they went to Florida temporarily. Either way, I’m not sure why it matters. To us, I mean.’
‘The children haven’t aged,’ I blurt out, aware how ridiculous it sounds.
‘What?’
‘Thomas and Emily. They should be seventeen and fifteen. Right?’
‘Sounds about right, yeah.’
‘I saw them, Dom. Flora opened the back door of the car and said, “Thomas! Emily! Out you get!” in a stupid sing-song baby voice, and I thought “Who talks to teenagers like that?”, and then the children got out of the car and they weren’t teenagers. They were little children.’
Dom looks confused. Then he laughs, but tentatively – as if someone might stop him at any moment.
‘Beth, that’s impossible.’
‘Yeah. It is, isn’t it? I didn’t see Georgina …’
‘Who?’
‘Their youngest.’
His eyes widen. ‘Shit – you know, I’d totally forgotten they had a third.’
This doesn’t surprise me. Lewis and Dom were never as close as Flora and I were. Dom probably hasn’t thought about the Braids much since we last saw them.
He smiles. ‘Remember the two-thousand-pound changing room, in Corfu? That’s something I’ll never forget.’
‘I can’t believe you didn’t tell me they’d moved to Florida.’
‘Why would I? I deleted the message and forgot about it. We hadn’t seen them for years.’
‘Since Thomas was five and Emily was three.’ I can’t help shivering as I say it, despite the heat. ‘Which they can’t still be.’
‘No, they can’t.’
‘But, Dom, they are. I saw them. I heard Flora call them by their names, I saw their faces. Emily was wearing her “Petit Mouton” T-shirt. You won’t remember it, but … Thomas’s clothes were the same too. It was them – today, but exactly as they were twelve years ago. And other things were wrong, too.’
‘Like what?’
I’m grateful that he hasn’t laughed in my face, and even more grateful when he sits down next to me and says, ‘Tell me from the beginning, the whole story.’
It’s several hours later, and I haven’t woken up yet, so I guess it wasn’t a dream.
Dom, Zannah and I are sitting at our kitchen table. They’re eating Italian food from our favourite local restaurant, Pirelli’s. I’m trying to persuade myself to take a mouthful of the spinach and ricotta cannelloni Dom bought for me. I haven’t felt hungry since this morning. Ben is staying overnight at his friend Aaron’s house, and is the only member of the family who doesn’t yet know what I saw, or what I cannot have seen, depending on your point of view. Zannah knows nearly everything, mainly from sneaking silently downstairs and listening at the lounge door.
After wolfing down a prawn and red pepper pizza, she pushes her plate aside, reaches for her notebook and pen and pulls them towards her. ‘Okay,’ she says. ‘Let’s list all the possibilities.’