Campden Grove and waited. The Halloween decorations were gone from the window and there were painted cutouts of children’s hands—at least four different sizes—hanging in their place. That was nice. It was nice that a family lived here now. That ugly memories from the past were being written over by new ones. She could hear noises inside, someone was definitely home, but no one had come to the door so she knocked again. She turned around on the tiled landing and looked across the street to number 7, trying to picture her mother as a young woman, climbing those stairs, a lady’s maid.
The door opened and the pretty woman Laurel had seen the last time she came was standing there, a baby slung over one shoulder. ‘Oh my God,’ she said, blinking her wide blue eyes. ‘It’s—you.’
Laurel was used to being recognised but there was some-thing different in the way this woman said it. She smiled and the woman blushed, wiping her hand on her blue jeans and then holding it out to Laurel. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said. ‘Where are my manners? I’m Karen, and this is Humphrey—’ she patted the child’s padded bottom and a mop of blond curls shifted slightly on her shoulder, one sky-blue eye regarding Laurel shyly—‘and of course I know who you are. It’s such a huge honour to meet you, Ms Nicolson.’
‘Laurel, please.’
‘Laurel.’ Karen bit down gently on her bottom lip, a nervous pleased gesture, and then she shook her head in a disbelieving way. ‘Julian mentioned seeing you, but I thought … sometimes he …’ She smiled. ‘Never mind—you’re here. My husband is going to be beside himself when he meets you.’
You’re Daddy’s lady. Laurel had an unshakeable sense that there was more going on than she knew.
‘You know, he didn’t even tell me you were coming.’
Laurel didn’t mention that she hadn’t called ahead; she still didn’t know how she’d explain why she’d come; she smiled in-stead.
‘Come in, please. I’ll just call Marty down from the attic.’
Laurel followed Karen into the cluttered entrance hall, around the lunar-module pram, through a sea of balls and kites and mismatched tiny shoes, and into a warm bright sitting room. There were white bookcases from floor to ceiling, books lying every which way, children’s paintings on the wall beside family photographs of happy smiling people. Laurel almost tripped over a small body on the floor; it was the boy she’d seen last time, lying on his back with his knees bent. He had one arm in the air above him animating a Lego plane, and was making low engine noises, lost completely in the reality of his plane’s flight. ‘Julian,’ his mother said, ‘Ju-ju—run upstairs, little love, and tell Daddy we have a visitor.’
The boy looked up then, blinking back to reality; he saw Laurel and the light of recognition appeared in his eyes. Without a word, without so much as a faltering pause in the engine noise he was making, he set his plane on a new course, scrambled to his knees, and followed it up the carpeted stairs.
Karen insisted on putting the kettle on to boil, and so Laurel sat on a comfortable sofa with felt pen marks on its red and white gingham cover and smiled at the baby, who was sitting now on a floor rug, kicking a rattle with his fat little foot. A hurried creaking came from the stairs and a tall man, hand-some in a dishevelled sort of way with his long- ish brown hair and black-rimmed glasses, appeared in the sitting-room door-way. His pilot son followed him into the room. The man held out a large hand and grinned when he saw Laurel, shaking his head in a wondrous sort of way, as if she might just be an apparition materialised in his home. ‘My goodness,’ he said, as their palms touched and she proved herself to be flesh and blood. ‘I thought Julian might have been pulling my leg, but here you are.’
‘Here I am.’
‘I’m Martin,’ he said, ‘Call me Marty. And you’ll have to for-give my incredulity, only—I teach theatre studies at Queen Mary College, you see, and I wrote my doctoral thesis on you.’
‘You did?’ You’re Daddy’s lady. Well, that explained it. ‘Contemporary Interpretations of Shakespeare’s Tragedies. It was a lot less dry than it sounds.’
‘I imagine it was.’
‘And now—here you are.’ He smiled and then frowned slightly and then smiled again. He laughed, a lovely sound. ‘Sorry. This is just such an extraordinary coincidence.’