the conversation at the kitchen table. When I told Zannah that the Braids had a third child in addition to the two I was sure I’d seen that day, Dom said, ‘Did they?’ He didn’t seem to know. If I hadn’t told him, would he have remembered? Did he remember, genuinely, or did he simply take my word for it, assuming that I was bound to know better than him?
No. It’s not possible that I imagined the existence of Georgina Braid. I can prove I didn’t. It’s the easiest thing in the world: all I’d need to do is dig out the pieces of a photograph I cut up many years ago and then kept, in its vandalised form, because it felt like the only way I could make amends for that small act of violence.
I stay where I am.
Of course Georgina Braid was real. I don’t need to prove anything to anyone. I’m not crazy.
4
‘It’s seven in the morning, Beth.’ Dom blinks as I pull open the bedroom curtains. ‘I’ve been awake less than five minutes.’
‘I’m not asking you to do it now.’
‘I need coffee before I do anything.’
‘In the kitchen, all ready. Proper tar-sludge.’ My name for Dom’s preferred style of coffee is a running joke, as is his for mine: beige water.
‘Thanks, but … Beth, I’m not bothering Lewis Braid. If you want to, fine, but I don’t.’
‘I’m not on Twitter, LinkedIn or Instagram, and he’s not on Facebook – or at least, I didn’t find him there if he is. I’m asking you to send him one little message, that’s all.’
‘Saying what? How are you after all these years, and are your children by any chance five and three in Hemingford Abbots as well as being seventeen and fifteen in Florida?’
‘Obviously not that.’
‘Then what?’
‘Just “How are you?” would be a start.’
Dom laughs. ‘I see. So this one message, the only one I needed to send a minute ago, is now “a start”. Start of what? A long back-and-forth?’
‘Hopefully, yes. A chat. At some point you could say “Beth said she was in Hemingford Abbots the other day and saw a woman who looked exactly like Flora”, or something. You could ask after Georgina, say, “Hey, I was looking at your Instagram photos and there are loads of Thomas and Emily but none of Georgina—”’
‘Whoa, hold on … I’m not going to message a guy I haven’t seen for twelve years, and accuse him of discriminatory parenting. Look …’ Dom hauls himself into an upright position. ‘You want a definitive answer, I get that. But you’re never going to get one. There are loads of reasons – non-sinister ones – why Lewis might not put pictures of Flora and Georgina on Instagram.’
‘Such as?’
‘Maybe Georgina’s shy and doesn’t like having her photo taken, or doesn’t like the idea of pictures of her being online. Maybe Flora’s … I don’t know, a school teacher, and doesn’t want pictures of her private life online for her pupils to gawp at. Or it’s a coincidence that means nothing: Flora and Georgina happened to be somewhere else on the days Lewis took those photos.’
‘Flora, a school teacher?’
‘It’s possible, Beth. We haven’t seen them for twelve years.’
‘I saw Flora yesterday,’ I say quietly.
Dom looks at me hard. ‘I need coffee,’ he says.
Five minutes later we’re in the kitchen: Dom leaning against the counter, me sitting at the table waiting for whatever speech he’s about to deliver. I know him so well, and can feel him preparing to say something labelled in his mind as ‘difficult but necessary’.
Finally, he says, ‘You want me to contact Lewis in the hope that it’ll help to make sense of what you saw yesterday. I understand that, but … it won’t work, because there’s no sense to be made of it. Think about it. We’ve seen Thomas and Emily on Lewis’s Instagram, we know they’re teenagers, we know they’re in Delray Beach, Florida. Yes, they might divide their time between America and the UK, they might still own that house … but they can’t still be five and three, can they?’
‘No.’
Dom looks relieved. ‘Right – and that means you can’t have seen what you thought you saw. You might have seen another woman with two different children, but you didn’t see Flora Braid with Thomas and Emily twelve years younger than we know they are.’
‘So we’re going with the “I had a funny turn” theory?’
‘I mean … unless Flora and Lewis have had two more kids and were