found that my voice was unnaturally high, as if I wanted to make an appeal to his pity. I didn’t know what kind of daughter he’d want—but I was prepared to try and be that person. “Hello, Bill. You don’t know me, but I’m Rachel. I’m Catherine’s daughter.”
My heart was thudding in my chest as I walked up to the gate and rang the bell, waiting for the gate to slide back, or perhaps the crackle of voices to come over the intercom. But nothing happened.
I tried again, holding the buzzer long and hard, and eventually the front door opened and a small woman in an overall, holding a duster, came out across the shingled drive.
“Hello?” She was in her forties or fifties, and her voice was heavily accented—Polish, I thought, or perhaps Russian. Eastern Europe. “I can help you?”
“Oh . . . hello.” My pulse rate had sped up, until I thought I might possibly faint from nerves. “Hello. I’m looking for Mr.—” I swallowed. “Mr. Elincourt. Bill Elincourt. Is he here?”
“He is not here.”
“Oh, well, will he be back later?”
“He gone. New family now.”
“Wh-what do you mean?”
“He and his wife moved last year. Different country. Scotland. New family is here now. Mr. and Mrs. Cartwright.”
Oh. Fuck.
It was like a punch to the gut.
“Do you . . . do you have an address?” I asked, my voice faltering, and she shook her head. There was pity in her eyes.
“Sorry, I do not have, I am just cleaning.”
“You—” I swallowed hard. “You mentioned a wife. Mrs. Elincourt. Can I ask—what’s her name?”
I don’t know why that was suddenly important to me. Only that I knew the trail had gone cold, and any scraps of information seemed better than nothing. The cleaner looked at me sadly. Who did she think I was? A spurned girlfriend? A former employee? Or maybe she had guessed the truth.
“She called Sandra,” she said at last, very quietly. “I must go now.” And then she turned and made her way back into the house.
I turned too and began the long walk back to Highgate, saving the bus fare. There was a hole in my shoe, and as I started up the hill, it began to rain, and I knew I had lost my chance.
* * *
After that I didn’t try looking again in earnest for a few years. And then, one day, when I was idly typing Bill Elincourt into Google, there it was. The advert. With a house in Scotland. And a wife called Sandra.
And a family.
And suddenly, I couldn’t not.
It was like the universe had set this up for me—to give me a chance.
I didn’t want him to be my dad, not now, not after all these years. I just wanted to . . . well, just to see, I suppose. But obviously, I couldn’t travel up to Scotland under my own name without telling him who I was, and setting up a whole weight of expectation and potential rejection. Even with nearly thirty years of water under the bridge, it was unlikely that Bill would have forgotten the name of his firstborn daughter, and Gerhardt was unusual enough as a surname for him to do a double take, and register it as that of the mother of his child.
But I didn’t need to go under my own name. In fact, I had a better name, a better identity, just ready and waiting for me. One that would get me through the front door without any strings attached, at which point I could do whatever I wanted. And so I picked up the papers that Rowan had left so temptingly lying around in her bedroom—the papers that were, almost, going to waste. The papers so very, very close to my own that really, it didn’t seem like much of a deception at all.
And I applied.
I didn’t expect to get the job. I didn’t even want it. I just wanted to meet the man who had abandoned me all those years before. But when I saw Heatherbrae, I knew, Mr. Wrexham. I knew that one visit was never going to be enough for me. I wanted to be a part of all this, to sleep in the softness of those feather beds, to sink into the velvet sofas, to bask under the rainwater showers—to be a part of this family, in short.
And I wanted, very, very badly, to meet Bill.
And when he didn’t appear at the interview, I could see only one way to make