and two kids got out, and … they were my friend and her two oldest children. They were the Braids. I … I recognised them.’
The woman shakes her head. ‘I’m afraid your story doesn’t add up, Mrs …’
‘Beth Leeson. You can call me Beth.’
‘My name is Marilyn Oxley.’ She says this as if she thinks it should make a difference to what happens next. ‘If you knew your friends had moved away, why on earth would you come and park outside their former home? Hmm?’
‘I didn’t know at that point.’
‘The silver Range Rover you saw is Jeanette Cater’s car.’
I swallow hard.
‘What’s more, I heard a voice that I recognised as the voice of Mrs Cater. As you can imagine, I know her voice rather well, from living next door to her. Now, if you’re telling me that your friend Mrs Braid got out of the car with her two children, why on earth didn’t you rush over and say hello? You didn’t do that, did you? You waited and you watched, while Mrs Cater got out of her car and spoke to somebody on the telephone. I saw you, from my bedroom window.’
‘You were watching me?’
‘I was. It’s not common for cars to appear on our street and for nobody to get out of them. We residents of Wyddial Lane take our home security seriously. I decided your behaviour was suspicious, so, yes, I watched you until you left.’
‘It’s not at all suspicious once you know why,’ I tell her. ‘If I could maybe …’ Stop it. You can’t invite yourself into her house. ‘If we can talk properly, I’ll tell you the whole story. Flora Braid and I were once best friends, but we’re not any more.’
‘I think I’ve heard enough,’ says Marilyn Oxley. ‘You’d better be on your way. I’ve told you who lives next door, against my better judgement. Let’s leave it at that, shall we?’
‘Please, just one more thing. You’ve been so helpful. If you could tell me … is Jeanette Cater around five foot six, with wavy, dark brown, shoulder-length hair?’
A long, tense pause follows. Then, ‘Yes, that is an accurate description of Mrs Cater. Goodbye, Mrs Leeson.’
‘Does she have two children, about five and three?’
She must have heard me, but she keeps walking in the opposite direction.
‘Thomas and Emily?’ I call after her.
She stops. Turns to face me. Her expression makes me gasp. She didn’t look this angry or disgusted a moment ago.
‘Never come back to Wyddial Lane again,’ she says. ‘If I see you here, I shall call the police.’
She walks briskly back to her house.
‘Wait …’ I whisper.
The front door of number 14 slams shut.
‘I’ll be the judge of this.’ Zannah flops down on the sofa next to me. She’s wearing pyjamas again – different ones: white, dotted with pink and green watermelons. Her hair is wet, her face pink and glowing. She smells as if she’s spent the last few hours marinading herself in some sort of rose and lemon mixture.
‘The judge of what?’ says Dom.
‘Your and Mum’s stupid argument.’
‘Not an argument,’ I say. ‘A discussion.’
It’s one that’s been in progress ever since I typed the names Kevin and Jeanette Cater into Google’s search box several hours ago. LinkedIn soon offered me a Kevin Cater who worked for a company called CEMA Technologies in Cambridge between 1997 and 2008. In 2008, Kevin left CEMA and went to work for a different company, also in Cambridge, that went bankrupt two years later. We could find nothing online about what he did after that.
Both Lewis and Flora Braid used to work for CEMA Technologies. Dom has been trying to persuade me that this is pure coincidence.
There were a few Jeanette Caters in our search results, but none who could conceivably be the woman living at Newnham House. A search for the name ‘Cater’ along with the Wyddial Lane address yielded nothing.
‘I agree with Mum,’ Zannah says. If she’s able to take a side, she must have been eavesdropping. Again. ‘It’s too big a coincidence. It’s another link between the new owners of the house and the old: first Mum sees the Braids outside the Caters’ house when they’re supposed to have moved to Florida, then it turns out Lewis and Flora and this Kevin guy all worked together. That’s weird. Like, significant weird.’
‘They didn’t necessarily work together,’ says Dom. ‘They worked for the same company.’
‘At the same time,’ I mutter.
‘All three of them were Cambridge-based science-and-tech types – in 1997 there weren’t as