I turn, realising Daniel is talking to me. Everyone stares at him. It occurs to me he has barely spoken all evening.
‘Who’s that?’ Serena says.
I wish I hadn’t told Daniel about Rachel now, in the beginning, before I got to know her better. I wish I hadn’t gone on quite so much about her drinking, her smoking, her phone case, her clothes, her loud voice. Now we are here, it feels important to me to make it clear that I was fine at the antenatal course, on my own – that I coped perfectly well, without them all, and made a nice, normal friend.
‘He’s being silly,’ I tell Serena, feeling my face redden. ‘It’s just someone I met at the NCT class.’
‘Oh, is that the girl you mentioned? Rachel? What’s she like?’
Daniel snorts. I stare at him.
‘What, Daniel?’
‘I didn’t say anything!’
‘You haven’t even met her.’
Daniel touches his glasses, as if adjusting them so he can see me properly. ‘Hang on,’ he says. ‘I’m only going by what you told me. I thought you said she was a bit full-on?’
‘I didn’t say that,’ I say shortly, though it’s entirely possible I did. ‘I didn’t say that at all, Daniel. I like her.’ I turn to Serena. ‘Daniel is just annoyed because the other day, she came over and –’
‘Turned all our sofas upside down,’ Daniel finishes. Rory laughs. Serena shoots me a quizzical look.
I pause, grasping for an explanation that Serena would understand, that would make Rachel sound like her sort of person.
‘We were making space for … yoga,’ I improvise.
It was the first time I’d invited Rachel back to the house.
‘This is us,’ I’d said.
‘What – all of it?’
She’d let out a low whistle as she’d shrugged her denim jacket off, walking around with her head tilted back, gawping at the chandeliers. ‘Bloody hell, it’s amazing.’ I couldn’t help enjoying it, just a little. I led her into the kitchen, started to fill the kettle.
‘Have you ever checked to see if there’s any gold under the floorboards?’
I turned the tap off, thinking I’d misheard over the sound of the water. ‘Have I what, sorry?’
‘Checked for gold, under the floorboards. Loads have got it, the houses this side of the park.’
I set the kettle back. I couldn’t tell if she was pulling my leg. I’ve been told I’m terribly gullible about things like this.
‘You really haven’t heard this story?’
I shook my head.
She hopped onto a stool, gestured up to the ceiling rose, squinting. ‘Back when these houses were built, it was all these wealthy merchants living in them.’ She spun a pointed finger around at the windows. ‘People were always travelling back and forth over the park with gold, jewels, money, cloth, all that sort of stuff.’
She paused, then. Narrowed her eyes a little.
‘But on the other side of the park, Blackheath – that’s where the robbers were. The road to Woolwich was safe – it had these big high walls – no highwaymen. But sometimes you couldn’t avoid Blackheath. And the robbers were merciless.’
She glanced out of the window, as if making sure none of them were watching us from the rose bushes.
‘There’s all these stories about it – how they’d tear the jewels from the throats of women, take an axe to a carriage if they thought there were gold coins inside. They’d slash at the harnesses, so they could steal your horses and ride away. No one could hear you there. If you screamed.’
I tried to laugh, to show Rachel that I wasn’t taking it seriously, but I found I wanted to hear the rest, even if I didn’t believe her.
‘What the royal household didn’t know,’ she went on, spooning sugar into her tea, ‘was that the wealthy merchants of Greenwich were in league with the robbers on Blackheath. That’s why they got away with it all. The merchants protected them – and in return, they always took a share of the gold. Of course, they’d be hanged if the king found out, so they hid it in these houses. Usually, under the floorboards. Honestly! I read all about it somewhere.’ She stared at me. ‘I seriously can’t believe you haven’t heard about it. So many people round here have found stuff in their houses – jewellery, antiques, all sorts of stuff. A fortune, sometimes.’
I thought for a moment. Did it ring a bell somewhere? Mummy saying something once, about some people down the road, finding a hoard of old coins?