‘I’ve said, I don’t know.’ Guilt blazed in her cheeks.
‘For god’s sake, Livvy, tell me the truth. Do me the courtesy of that, at least. Is this the first time she’s phoned you?’
Livvy felt as though she were standing on the edge of a precipice, blindfolded, with no idea how far the drop would be. ‘No.’
‘She’s been in touch before? When?’
The car suddenly felt icy cold, as if Dominic had turned the air con down to its lowest setting. ‘A few weeks ago. She texted, and then she phoned the house—’
‘A few weeks ago? My mother contacted you weeks ago and you’re only telling me about it now? What the fuck, Livvy?’
‘I didn’t want to upset you. You already had so much to deal with, with your dad’s death and all the issues around the funeral. I didn’t think she’d turn up again . . .’
For a split second, Dominic said nothing, and Livvy silently prayed that he hadn’t witnessed her slip.
‘Turn up again? What do you mean?’
Possible deceptions scrambled for prominence in Livvy’s head, but none made any sense. Her thoughts were muddled and she couldn’t think of a decent way out. ‘She came to the house again, about a month ago.’
‘What did she want?’
Panic scuttled across Livvy’s skin. ‘She wanted to give you your dad’s watch, she said he wanted you to have it—’
‘And what did you say? Did you invite her in? Have a cosy cup of tea and a chat?’
‘Of course not—’
‘So what happened?’
Livvy remembered Imogen stepping into the house uninvited, creeping up behind her, transfixed by Leo. She couldn’t tell Dominic that part of the story, not when he was already so angry. ‘Nothing. I told her you wouldn’t want it and she left.’
‘And that’s it?’
Livvy nodded.
‘And she hasn’t contacted you again until today?’
Livvy hesitated a fraction too long.
‘For fuck’s sake, just tell me. It’s written all over your face that there’s more.’ His hands gripped the steering wheel, knuckles the colour of chalk.
‘I went to meet her. The day before yesterday. I wish I hadn’t but—’
‘You went to meet my mother?’ Dominic’s voice hardened. ‘In spite of everything I’ve told you, you still chose to go and meet her? To listen to whatever lies she had to tell?’
Livvy shook her head. ‘It wasn’t like that. I thought that if I met her, just once, she might stop turning up at the house.’
Dominic banged a fist down hard on the steering wheel. ‘This has got nothing to do with you. How dare you go behind my back.’
‘I’m sorry. She said there were things she needed to tell me and I thought it might help me understand—’
‘What things?’ He was shouting now, his face puce with rage.
‘I don’t know, I—’
‘What did she tell you?’
Thoughts tripped and floundered in Livvy’s head. ‘Nothing, really. She denied that anything bad had ever happened when you were a child—’
‘And you stayed to listen to that? You swallowed those lies?’ He pressed his foot down harder on the accelerator.
‘No, I was with her for less than fifteen minutes—’
‘You shouldn’t have been with her at all.’ He shouted at her, face tinged with sweat as he swerved into the inside lane, horns beeping furiously behind them.
Livvy’s heart thundered in her chest, and she twisted her wedding ring around her finger. ‘Slow down, Dominic, you’re scaring me.’
He ignored her, turning the steering wheel right and then left, weaving in and out of the traffic.
‘Please, let’s pull over. We can talk about it. You shouldn’t drive when you’re this angry.’
There was a splinter of silence, like a hesitation between heartbeats.
‘Don’t ever fucking tell me what to do.’ Dominic’s voice was flat, carefully enunciated, and Livvy was aware of holding her breath in her chest.
Time seemed to take on a different dimension, to accelerate and slow down in the same moment.
She watched as the skin across Dominic’s forehead corrugated into a rigid frown, his jaw clenched, his grip tightening on the steering wheel. She watched as he turned to her, eyes spitting with rage, hissing in her direction. ‘Don’t you ever go behind my back again.’ Her head turned just in time to see their car hurtling towards the back of a moving lorry, a shout erupting from her throat. She twisted her wedding ring around her finger, watched it slide over her knuckles and fall to the floor as the car jerked forwards. Her eyes flickered towards Dominic just in time to see the lock of his jaw, the intransigence in his eyes, the twisted fury at the corners of his lips. And just as it flashed through her mind that this was it, that they might both be killed, that Leo would be orphaned, she heard Dominic curse, felt her body lurch to the left as he pulled down hard on the steering wheel, watched in horror as the unrelenting speed of the car took them over the kerb, across the pavement, towards a high, red-bricked wall.
And then everything went black.
ANNA
LONDON
‘But that’s me. The woman in that photograph is me.’
My eyes dart up to Zahira and then back to the screen, unable to compute what I am seeing. The neurons in my brain are firing in all the wrong directions, unable to connect.
I look at the photograph again, at the name in the middle of the profile, confirm that my eyes are not deceiving me.
It is the Facebook page of Livvy Nicholson. And yet the profile photograph on the account is of me: me with long hair.
I turn back to Zahira, see my own confusion reflected back at me. ‘I don’t understand. Why has this woman got a photo of me on her profile?’
Zahira brings her chair closer to mine so that we can share the screen. ‘I don’t know. It doesn’t make any sense.’
She scrolls down the profile page – through articles from the World Wildlife Fund and the National Trust – and then her fingers stop and my eyes blur momentarily, unready to absorb what they’re seeing.
It is a repost from someone else’s account, a woman called Bea Nicholson. It is a photograph of me, standing in a park, a bridge in the distance behind me. Next to me, with her arm around my shoulders, stands an athletic woman wearing shorts and a t-shirt, dark hair cropped close to her head, her strong features both resolute and kind. Beneath the photo there is a caption and a date.
Happy Birthday to my little sis and best friend. I love you!
The photo is dated seven months ago.
My heart thuds. I hear Stephen’s voice in my head, patiently answering all my questions, telling me I am an only child, that I have no extended family.
My hand takes over from Zahira’s on the trackpad, scrolls through the profile – more articles about the Woodland Trust, the Bristol Balloon Fiesta, an international climate change summit – and then there is another photograph, and I am aware of my throat tightening as I scan one face and then the next, devour the caption beneath.
It is a photograph of four people in front of a Christmas tree. I am standing in the middle, flanked by a man and a woman much older than me. Clicking on the photo to enlarge it, I see it immediately: the resemblance between my face and the woman on my right. It is there in the cornflower-blue eyes, the wide-open smile, the gentle point of the chin.