her observation skills when she sees one of the brilliant-white net curtains twitch. Bingo!
Almost before Jess even navigates the bell pull, an older woman, who reminds Lauren of her late grandma, opens the door and looks at her inquisitively. The sound of the doorbell is still chiming around the house.
‘Hello dear,’ she says.
‘I’m really sorry to bother you . . .’ says Jess. ‘It’s just that I’m looking for someone who may have lived here around twenty years ago.’
‘Well that would be me,’ says the woman, with a half laugh. ‘How can I help you?’
Jess turns to look at Lauren hopefully, but a sudden apprehension weighs Lauren down. How could she ever have thought this would be a good idea?
‘I haven’t got much information to go on, but I’m trying to track down a family that may have lived along this street.’
The woman looks at her expectantly.
‘A couple and their daughter. He was . . . he was . . .’
‘Tall,’ says Lauren from the kerb. ‘With blonde hair and pale blue eyes.’ As she pictures her father, she unexpectedly feels a pull at the back of her throat.
‘You’re not referring to the Woods family, are you?’ asks the woman, her features darkening.
‘I . . . I don’t know,’ says Jess. ‘Maybe.’
‘Perhaps you should come in,’ says the woman, opening the door wider and stepping aside.
Jess looks wide-eyed at Lauren, who shakes her head. ‘I’ll wait with the children out here.’
‘It’s too hot to stand out there,’ says the woman. ‘The tree keeps this place lovely and cool – please, come in.’
Lauren looks at the pristine hallway, with its pale blue carpet and ornate dado rail, and fast forwards in her head to what it might look like in ten minutes time, once her little horrors have inflicted their worst, with their sticky fingers and dusty shoes. ‘This is really very kind of you,’ she says, as if it will offset the apology she’ll have to make on the way out.
‘You don’t look like reporters,’ says the woman.
‘Reporters?’ exclaims Lauren. ‘Why would we be reporters?’
‘They come by here from time to time, every few years, trying to dig it all up again.’
The woman was right, the house was lovely and cool, but now there’s a ferocious heat coursing through Lauren. Dig all what up again?
‘I’m Jess, and this is Lauren, my . . .’ There’s a split-second pause that only Lauren would notice. ‘Sister,’ she goes on, before smiling to herself.
‘I’m Carol,’ says the woman. ‘Would you like a cup of tea?’
Lauren wants to say no, but Jess has already said, ‘That would be lovely, thank you.’
They follow Carol down the long hallway, into the kitchen at the very back of the house. Lauren imagines that when the blue and orange cupboards were put in, they were the height of fashion, but although it still looks shiny and new, she can’t see this particular trend coming around again anytime soon.
‘So, the Woods?’ asks Jess.
‘Oh, it was a terrible business,’ says Carol as she fills a cream kettle with a woodland scene depicted on the side. ‘They were a young couple, Frank and Julia were their names, and they lived next door but one.’
‘With a baby?’ asks Jess.
Carol nods. ‘I didn’t know them to speak to – I tend to keep myself to myself, even more so since I lost my Roy a few years back.’
Lauren smiles sympathetically, but wishes she’d get to the point.
‘So, anyways, they’d have these almighty rows – that we could hear from here – and every few weeks the police would show up, have a word with him, and things would quieten down for a bit. We’d not heard a peep out of them for a good few months before it happened.’
Jess looks to Lauren. ‘Before what happened?’ she asks impatiently.
Carol folds a cloth around the handle of the kettle and carefully pours the hot water into a floral teapot. Lauren can’t help but smile as she puts what looks like a hand-knitted cosy over the top. The last time she’d seen anything like that was at her grandmother’s house when she was a little girl. Carol goes into the cupboard and brings out an unopened biscuit selection box, tearing at the cellophane around it.
‘Who would like a chocolate biccy?’ she says to the children, who are just beginning to reach their boredom threshold. Noah’s arm shoots up, whilst Emmy just waddles towards Carol with outstretched hands.
‘Oh, please don’t open those on our account,’ says Lauren,