a break.’ Rose stopped and shuddered; her wild and woolly hair shook with her. She was wearing denim overalls with a novelty brooch on the bib that looked like a fried egg. ‘It isn’t natural; it isn’t normal. You know I don’t like change—it makes me worry.’ Laurel couldn’t help laughing. ‘There’s nothing to worry about, Rosie. I’m simply popping up to Euston to look at a book.’
‘A book?’
‘Some research I’m doing.’
‘Ha!’ Rose started walking again. ‘Research! I knew you weren’t really taking a break from work. Oh, Lol, what a relief,’ she said, fanning her tear-stained face with her hand. ‘I have to say I feel so much better.’ Laurel couldn’t help but smile. ‘Well then,’ she said, ‘I’m glad to have been of service.’
It had been Gerry’s idea to start the search for Vivien at the British Library. A late-night Google session had led them only to Welsh rugby sites and other dead-ends in curious far-flung undulations of the Web, but the library, Gerry insisted, wouldn’t disappoint. ‘Three million new items every year, Lol,’ he’d said, as he filled in the registration details, ‘that’s six miles of shelf space; they’re bound to have something’. He’d grown excited when he described the online service—‘They’ll mail copies of whatever you find directly to your house’—but Laurel had decided (perversely, said Gerry, with a smile) that it was easier simply to make the trip in person. Perversity, be damned—Laurel had played in detective series before, she knew some-times there was nothing for it but to pound the pavement in a search for clues. What if the information she found led to more? Far better to be in situ than to have to make another electronic order and wait; far better to be doing than waiting.
They reached Dorothy’s door and Rose pushed it open. Their mother was asleep on her bed, seemingly thinner and weaker than she had been even the morning before, and it struck Laurel like a brick that her decline was becoming more rapid. The sisters sat together for a time, watching as Dorothy’s chest gently rose, gently fell, and then Rose took a dusting cloth from her handbag and started wiping around the display of framed photographs. ‘I suppose we ought to pack these up,’ she said softly. ‘Ready to take home.’
Laurel nodded.
‘They’re so important to her, her photos. They always have been, haven’t they?’
Laurel nodded again, but she didn’t answer. Mention of photos had got her thinking about the one of Dorothy and Vivien together in wartime London. It had been dated April 1941, only a month before their mother started work at Grandma Nicolson’s boarding house and Vivien Jenkins was killed in an air raid. Where had the photograph been taken? she wondered. And by whom? Was the photographer someone the girls had known—Henry Jenkins, perhaps? Or Ma’s boyfriend, Jimmy? Laurel sighed. So much of the puzzle seemed out of reach.
The door opened then and sounds of the outside world drifted through in the wake of their mother’s nurse—people laughing, buzzers sounding, phones ringing. Laurel watched as the nurse moved about the room efficiently, checking Dorothy’s pulse, her temperature, marking things down on that chart at the end of the bed. She offered Laurel and Rose a kind smile when she had finished and told them she’d hold onto their mother’s lunch in case she woke later and was hungry. Laurel thanked her and she left, closing the door behind her again and casting the room back into a still silent terminus in which to wait. Wait for what though? No wonder Dorothy wanted to go home.
‘Rose?’ said Laurel suddenly, watching as her sister straightened the clean photo frames.
‘Mm?’
‘When she asked you to get that book for her, the one with the photograph inside, was it strange to see inside her trunk?’ More to the point, was there anything else in there that might help solve Laurel’s mystery? She wondered whether there was any way to ask without tipping Rose off to her search.
‘Not really. I didn’t think much about it, to be honest. I went as quickly as I could for fear she’d follow me up the stairs if she thought I was taking too long. Thankfully she was sensible and stayed in bed where I’d put her—’ Rose gasped.
‘What? What is it?’
Rose exhaled with relief, brushing her hair from her fore-head. ‘No, it’s all right,’ she said, shaking her hand. ‘I just couldn’t for the life of me remember what I’d done with the