many of those kinds of companies in Cambridge as there are now.’
‘Dad, how often have you bought a house from someone you used to work with? Never, right?’
‘Zannah, mock all you like, but in real life there are plenty of coincidences. Did Mum tell you what happened when we went to Hemingford Abbots this morning?’
‘Yup. And the Twitter and Instagram stuff from last night – which is also just too messed up. If I ever have three kids, there’s no way I’ll put photos of only two of them on my Instagram. I think something freaky’s going on.’
‘So do I. I’m sure of it.’ I have the confidence to say this out loud, now that my brave daughter has said it first.
‘I’ve no idea what, though. I can tell you what Murad and Ben think, if you like?’
‘You’ve told them? Zan!’
‘Was I not supposed to? You didn’t say it was a secret. Why shouldn’t they know? Ben’s your son and Murad’s your future son-in-law.’ As an afterthought, she mutters, ‘Unless he bails on me, which he’d better not.’
It seems my daughter is unofficially engaged. I wonder if she’s ever going to tell us more formally.
‘When did you tell him? You haven’t seen him since I told you.’
Zan rolls her eyes. ‘I communicated with him using my electronic device, Mother. Relax. He’s not going to tell anyone.’
Dom says, ‘Shouldn’t you be revising? Your GCSEs start in a month.’
I wait for Zannah to blow up, but instead she says with a knowing weariness, ‘Ugh, Dad. Yeah, I should be doing a lot of things,’ as if he couldn’t possibly imagine the full horror of everything in her life that’s getting neglected at the moment.
She’s right – he can’t. I can, though. I never see her do any homework. Whenever I walk into her bedroom, I find it full of old plastic water and Diet Coke bottles, bowls of congealing cereal, used make-up pads covered in patches of beige foundation, false painted nails, torn pairs of tights. It takes me at least an hour to sort out the mess each time and make the room look nice again.
When I was a child, I didn’t need to tidy my room. Not once. It never got messy. Tidiness was a house rule, one of the most important to my retired Navy officer father. I would never have dreamed of leaving a discarded pair of tights on the floor overnight; I’d been trained to believe it wasn’t a possibility.
Dom and I have left it too late to introduce a strict tidiness policy with Zannah and Ben, and I’m not sure I’d want to. I look at their lives and feel instinctively that they’re much harder than mine was at their age. They both complain about stress in a way that I never did. Their friends are more troubled and difficult; their school is full of self-harmers, drug-takers and kids with a whole range of conditions I hadn’t heard of until I was at least thirty. I’m pretty sure Zan and Ben aren’t being taught properly, even in the lessons that aren’t sabotaged by out-of-control behaviour from the most chaotic students.
I didn’t love school as a teenager, but I didn’t hate it either – not the way Zannah and Ben hate Bankside Park. And I don’t remember resenting my teachers anywhere near as much as I resent theirs for the way they gleefully dish out detentions to anyone who doesn’t hand in their homework on time, while at the same marking and returning only a tiny fraction of the work their pupils submit. Neither Zannah nor Ben has ever had a piece of English homework returned with a mark or a comment from a teacher on it – not once since they started secondary school. I’ve talked to the head about it several times. He makes soothing noises, but nothing ever changes.
‘What do Murad and Ben think?’ I ask Zan.
‘About the Caters and the Braids?’
This throws me a little. The Caters and the Braids. As if they’re a kind of foursome.
‘About what I saw. Or what I think I saw.’
‘They both think Jeanette Cater is Flora Braid – same person, new name.’
‘Why would she change her name?’ Dom asks.
‘Dad, I’m not psychic. But it’d explain Mum being sure she saw Flora, and the old woman saying she heard the voice of Jeanette.’
‘Hold on. No.’ Dom paces up and down the room. ‘That particular neighbour hasn’t lived on Wyddial Lane for very long, but others must have been