‘Genuinely, your outfit is not going to matter.’ I handed her a tissue from the box by her bed. ‘I understand that first impressions count, but I promise that it won’t make a difference here. Neither will what you say, or how you act.’
‘When you first saw me, what did you think?’ she asked, trying to sound blasé about it.
‘I thought, That girl has very fine taste in books. I think I’d better buy the house next-door-but-one so we can be friends.’
‘Oh, shut up!’ Joan gave me a frustrated shove, but when she appeared downstairs ten minutes later in her shorts and T-shirt, the worried look had been replaced by a gleam of excitement.
When I opened the front door, it took me a couple of blinks to process that it was Sam rather than a stray premiership footballer or Hollywood actor. The dark navy suit and white shirt unbuttoned at the tanned neck altered not only his appearance, but his whole posture and manner.
‘I told you,’ he said, grinning at the look on my face before affecting a serious, yet compassionate expression as he gazed (or dare I say smouldered?) into my eyes. ‘Hello, I do apologise for interrupting your day, but I’m Samuel Parker, solicitor with Parker and Sons. I was hoping to speak with Olivia Tennyson?’
Yes please!
The corner of his mouth creased up in a hint of a smile, and I had to turn away before my knees buckled beneath me.
‘Joan, Sam’s here. Are you ready?’
She burst out of the living room. ‘I was ready hours ago!’
‘You look lovely,’ Sam said, causing her to stop dead in her tracks.
‘You look weird,’ she replied, face screwing up. ‘But I appreciate the effort. I need to get my stuff – five seconds!’
‘No rush,’ I called up the stairs after her.
‘You look lovely too, by the way,’ Sam said quietly from behind me.
I ducked my head, hoping he couldn’t see my flushed cheeks in the shadow of the hallway. ‘I was going for trustworthy,’ I said, picking a non-existent piece of fluff off my olive shirt-dress.
‘I’d trust you with my life.’ His mouth smiled but when I glanced up his eyes conveyed a look that was far from flippant. For a long moment, the air between us crackled like the promise of a summer storm.
‘Come on, what are you doing standing here ogling each other?’ Joan yelled, backpack in one hand, jumper flying from the other as she shot past us and out the front door.
Good question. This was Joan’s day. She needed an adult who was paying full attention to the task in hand, not swooning into a pile of mush because a friend had paid her a compliment. I grabbed my bag and followed her out the door.
After a short detour to drop Nesbit off with Yasmin, we headed for the M1. Sam was driving his pick-up truck for the simple reason that he refused to squeeze into my tiny Fiat. Spread out in the passenger seat, his stereo playing the sort of feel-good classics I would have predicted to find on Sam’s playlist, the air conditioning set to cool, calm and collected, I wasn’t complaining.
It was nearly three hours later, thanks to Joan’s nervous toilet stops, that we pulled off the M53 into Chester. Sam turned the music off, tension rising through the silence as we collectively held our breaths while Sam followed the satnav along an A road and into a small housing estate made up of well-proportioned 1950s semis with well-tended gardens and an air of middle-class respectability.
‘That one,’ Sam said, once we’d turned in to a cul-de-sac. He nodded at a house up ahead. We crept to a stop about three houses away, and he turned off the engine.
We sat there for a long moment, staring at the white frontage, the curtains in the windows and neat lawn as if it could reveal all we needed to know about the people residing within.
‘It looks nice,’ Joan said, with a tiny tremble.
‘It does,’ Sam agreed. ‘No old mattress in the garden, or barbed wire to keep out trespassers. So far, so good.’
After falling back into another prolonged silence, I realised that Sam was waiting for me to act. The problem was, after endless hours thinking about this moment, now we were here I wasn’t sure what to do.
‘Two cars in the drive, so there’s a good chance someone is home,’ I said, my voice about an octave higher than usual.
‘Yep,’ Sam replied, nodding encouragingly.
‘I suppose there’s nothing more to do then, except go and check it out. Unless… we could just sit here and observe things for a while first, if you think that’s best? Or maybe knock on a neighbour’s door, ask whether number ten are known for being violent psychopaths.’
‘Oh my days! Will one of you just ring the doorbell before I’m forced to break my promise and go myself!’ Joan cried, and hearing the strain in her voice was enough to get me out of the car.
Sam caught up with me as I reached the driveway, placing a hand of reassurance on the small of my back as we walked the remaining few steps.
‘I know we said we’d scope it out, peek in the windows and whatever but I just need to get this over with,’ I whispered.
Sam nodded his agreement, before pressing the brass doorbell, one hand smoothing back his hair, another giving mine a quick squeeze of encouragement.
‘Hang on!’ My heart sank as Joan popped into the space where Sam’s hand had been. ‘I couldn’t wait. I’m sorry, I know I promised but it wasn’t my fault, my legs got up out of the car all by themselves.’
Before I could tell her off or take her back down the driveway out of sight, the door swung open. I instinctively grabbed Joan’s hand, bringing her closer into my side.
A woman stood there. Dyed ash-blonde hair. Greenish-grey eyes that I knew instantly. A face whose creases curved in arcs of sorrow, not laughter. She wore a Breton jersey with cropped, navy trousers. The butterfly dangling on a pendant around her neck caused hope to surge in my chest.
‘Carole Armitage-Brown?’ Sam asked.
‘Yes?’ she replied, forehead creasing in suspicion. We probably looked like members of a religious cult.
Joan sucked in a huge gasp of air, causing the frown to deepen.
Sam introduced himself, then got straight to it. ‘I’m here as an advocate for Diamanté Butterfly Brown. Or Joan, as she prefers to be called.’ He placed a hand on her shoulder. ‘I know this is going to be a huge shock, but we believe that Joan is your granddaughter. Leanne’s daughter.’
Every molecule in Carole Armitage-Brown’s body froze. She stood there, like a statue of solid misery, before eventually giving a sharp shake of her head and swinging the door shut as if we’d been a mere figment of her imagination, or the ghost of a forgotten nightmare.
Joan turned to me, her eyes pleading with me to do something. In that moment, as her thin fingers curled into mine, I suddenly realised what it was to be a parent, the weight of responsibility slamming into me.
I took a deep breath, trying to wriggle past anything sounding remotely like ‘I told you so’, to find some word of genuine comfort, when the door was flung open again.