Chapter Two

Tom frowned. He noticed that she hadn’t answered his question. On the one hand, his mother was getting desperate. On the other hand, there was something about Louise’s evasiveness that made him uneasy… and why did the name ‘Stevie’ ring a bell? He fired off another email to Lou asking for more details.

Tom stared at the email. ‘Shit.’

He remembered her alright and, more to the point, he remembered Marshall. The last thing he wanted was to come back into contact with Marshall or any of his family.

Tom scowled at the screen. Louise had already been in touch with his mother. All he could do was hope that Stevie would be too expensive or do something to put his mother off. The headache that he’d been ignoring all afternoon surged up with a vengeance.

No. It was too risky. He pulled out a couple of painkillers and swallowed them with his tepid coffee. There was nothing for it. He would have to go down to Oxford and handle it himself.

It was the sort of dream where she knew she was asleep, but she couldn’t wake herself up. Stevie walked into the hall of the house she had grown up in. Looking down, she could see her pale legs appearing from under the grey school skirt. The house was exactly as she remembered. The nice portrait photo of her and Marsh had pride of place in the hall. A photo taken outside Marsh’s student house was tucked next to the frame. There were shoes collected under the coat rack. Post on the bottom step.

The photo was taken the last time they’d all been together. They’d gone to see Marsh at uni and were standing outside his student house. Less than a year later, her parents were dead.

Stevie looked up at the stairs, a feeling of dread starting to rise in her chest. She didn’t want to go up, but her feet moved of their own accord. Her heart beat faster. Her hands felt clammy. She tried to stop, but her feet kept going.

As she got near the top, her sense of panic increased until she was breathing in shallow gasps. ‘It’s a dream,’ she said, and tried to pinch herself. Her feet took her onward. Onward. Into her parents’ bedroom. Onward. To the foot of their bed. And there they were. Lying peacefully side-by-side in their best clothes. Each with a lily held in white-gloved hands.

Tears slid down Stevie’s face and she knew she was crying for real. They were her parents, but not her parents. The thing that animated them, that made them more than just their bodies, was gone. She tried to study their faces and found them curiously formless. She knew they had eyes, noses, mouths in the right places, but she couldn’t remember the detail of any of them. Each year, it became harder and harder to recall. Rarely, when she was least expecting it, something would trigger a memory so strong that it would knock her off her feet – a waft of aftershave, the clink of a wedding ring against a china cup, the smell of lapsang souchong – and then, just as quickly, they’d be gone.

Slowly, she backed away from the figures on the bed, half wishing, half dreading that they would sit up. Once she reached the door, she was able to run. She turned and fled to Marsh’s room. Marsh. The only one she had left. He was lying on his back, white gloved fingers interlaced on his chest. Stevie reached forward, her hands shaking. Fingers outstretched, she reached towards his cheek. His skin was drained of colour. She stared at his chest, there was no sign of him breathing. Her fingertips were millimetres away from his face. Trembling, she leaned closer.

She woke up with her arms held out in front of her. Her face was hot and wet from crying. To be awake was a relief, but the realisation that her parents really were dead was always savage. She curled up into a ball and reached, as she always did, for her phone. It was turned off. Stevie frowned. She never turned her phone off. As she turned it back on and let the glow light up the hollow she’d made under the duvet, she remembered. She was avoiding Marsh’s phone calls. As the phone came to life, she saw that there was another missed call from him.

Her hands were still shaking as she dialled in his number. Her memory was faster than the address book. Her thumb hovered over the dial button and she thought of him, in bed with his warm pregnant wife. He wouldn’t drag himself out of bed to come and comfort her now.

She stared at the phone, debating. Finally, she hit cancel. She was alone now. All alone. She would have to learn to live with it. She threw the phone to the bottom of the bed, curled up tighter and started to cry all over again.

The next morning, Stevie woke up with a headache. She took two paracetamol and finally looked at her messages. There were four voicemail messages and three texts from Marsh, all of which she deleted without opening. There was also a message from Dr Evelyn Blackwood, suggesting she came up on Saturday to meet her.

Stevie stared thoughtfully at the message. Louise had made it clear that there wasn’t much money involved in the venture. However, it was a break. And a break was just what she needed, in every sense of the word. Oxford would be quite fun to explore. It would almost be a holiday.

Louise had also mentioned that Dr Blackwood’s son was a certain Tom Blackwood who had lived in the same shared house as Lou, Jim and Marsh. Stevie cringed. She’d had a terrible crush on Tom when she was thirteen. But that was a long time ago … and she would be working for his mum, not him. She probably wouldn’t even see him.

She drew her shoulders back and sat up straighter. If she was to be all alone in the world, she might as well make a go of looking after herself. After all, she’d looked after her stressed out brother while he was doing his qualifying exams and managed to take her own GCSEs at the same time. If she could look after two of them, surely she could manage on her own. This project of Dr Blackwood’s could give her just the opportunity she needed. It also meant that she’d be spending a lot of time away from London, which made it even less likely that Marsh would catch her. That would show him.

Feeling defiant, she walked over to her pin-board and took down the picture of her family outside Marsh’s student house. She looked like a child in it. She replaced it, face down. Still, that didn’t seem to be enough of a gesture. Searching her room, she saw a postcard of Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones.

‘You’ll do,’ she said and pinned him up so that he covered the back of the photo. ‘Now then,’ she said to the postcard. ‘You are about to see the transformation of poor needy little Stevie into Stevie the strong woman.’ She threw her arms out and lifted her chin. ‘Ta daa.’