reaction and saw that he was trying hard not to appear shocked.
'I don't expect you to say anything. I don't even know what to think myself.'
'Do you remember this girl?'
'No, only their son, Chris. He must be ten years younger than me. We lived in the same part of town but didn't see much of each other.'
'There's an easy way to find out. I can look it up on the internet right now.'
'You think he might be telling the truth?'
'No. I just thought—'
'Go on. Do it.'
'Really, I didn't mean to—'
'Do it.'
Steve stood up from the sofa and fetched a laptop from a battered canvas briefcase.
'Don't you want to know what happened tonight - before you get all wrapped up in your computer?' Jenny asked.
'Of course.' He set the laptop aside as it booted up.
'I know you and Ross and my ex-husband and God knows who else think I'm mad, but I don't hallucinate. I don't see things. Imagine them, yes, but not actually see them.'
'What was it?'
'On the front path. There were chalk marks. Pink and yellow chalk. Hopscotch squares like we used to mark out as kids. Someone had drawn them today. And you know when you see something and it takes you back? I was standing in the street outside my house when I was a child. I could see the little buckled shoes on my feet, the white socks, everything.'
Steve looked puzzled. 'You think someone's trying to tell you something?'
'The girl you saw outside my house . . . what if it was her? The man could have been my uncle . . .'
'Right. You're telling me I've been seeing ghosts?'
'My grandmother used to. She'd hear a knock at the window when anyone in the family was about to die. We used to joke about it, but she was never wrong.'
'She sounds quite a character.'
He picked up the laptop and brought up a selection of websites that would trace your family history for a fee. Five pounds bought him access to the government register of births, deaths and marriages. Jenny gave him the details of her aunt and uncle. He typed in their names and hit the key that would bring up details of their offspring.
'What is it?' Jenny said.
He was staring intently at the screen. 'It looks as if they did have two children.'
He angled the laptop so she could read with him. The first entry read: Katherine Anne Chilcott. Date of birth: 16 June 1967. The second recorded Christopher's birth in 1976.
For the second time that evening the world spun around her.
'Do you want me to click on her name?' Steve said.
Jenny nodded and looked away.
'Died 19 October 1972.'
Jenny lay curled up in bed in one of Steve's T-shirts with Alfie lying on the floor next to her while Steve drove back to her house to fetch her handbag, some clothes and sleeping pills. It was no longer anxiety she felt, but the leadenness that closely follows the shock of bereavement; and the dread of having to face a dark and buried past she had almost convinced herself was a fiction. Exhaustion dragged her from consciousness and she sank into a dreamless sleep.
She woke, disorientated, to the touch of Steve's hand on her shoulder. Blinking against the sharp sunlight beating through the undraped skylight, she tried to remember where she was.
'It's all right. It's still early. You can go back to sleep,' Steve said.
The previous night's events came back at her in a rush. She groaned and pulled the sheet over her head.
'Hey. You're OK. I got your bag. And there was nothing on the path. I walked up and down it ten times with a torch. Not a mark. You imagined it.'
'I didn't imagine a birth certificate.'
'No. I paid to download a copy, and one of the death certificate too.'
Jenny threw back the sheet and swung out of bed. 'Show me.'
He retrieved a piece of paper from the floor. It was a printout of a scanned copy of a death certificate issued by the North Somerset District Registry. Beneath the section containing her uncle and aunt's names, the informant was cited as C. R. Benedict, North Somerset District Coroner. In the box titled 'cause of death' was the single typewritten word, 'accident'.
'Her death was accidental,' Steve said. 'You can forget what your father said.'
'That could mean anything. I just returned an open verdict in a case where the man clearly killed himself.'
Steve said, 'We know the coroner dealt with it. There must be files