Page 70 of All the Things We Never Knew

Yes, but sadly not for a long time. Unless you count Bertha, my rescue Sealyham Terrier. I love her unconditionally and I hope it’s reciprocated.

Tell us about a moment that changed you.

When I was twenty-one, I received a kidney transplant. It saved my life and I will be forever grateful.

I read the words again, so slowly it was as if I was taking in one letter at a time.

I’d found him. Or Orla had. Or he had been there all along. Somewhere inside that man – inside his body when he played his violin in his garden, lay in the bath or cycled on that trail in Wales – was a piece of Gray. This was the man whose life Gray had saved. The man Gray had loved enough to risk his own life for.

My heart hammering, I turned back to the page with the picture on it and studied it closely, as if I would be able to detect some hint of Gray – Gray’s body, Gray’s DNA, the life force that had been Gray’s – in Joel Chamberlain’s handsome face.

As I stared at the page, I heard my phone vibrate on the coffee table. It was a WhatsApp message from Lulu, sent to the group I’d created that included her mother.

It was so great to see you just now Laurel! Thank you so much for spending so much time with me – hope you got home safely xx

She’d added a string of flower emojis and a smiley face.

I read her message again, puzzled. It was more than two hours since she’d hurriedly departed the coffee shop. And so much time? We’d spent barely thirty minutes together.

Something about her message wasn’t right. Where had she gone when that urgent message summoned her away? And why was she trying to deceive her mother about where she’d been for those lost two hours?

FORTY

ANNA

I found the church hall without difficulty, which was just as well because my train to Wales had been delayed, the connecting bus hadn’t turned up and I was late. Late and stressed about my decision to leave the children alone, despite Lulu’s promise that they would be fine and Orla being next door if they needed anything.

I’d made the decision to come here on a whim. After being knocked back by the school receptionist, I’d managed to locate the former headmaster, Bryn Rhys-Gwynn, on – of all places – LinkedIn.

My late husband was a pupil at St Gwbert’s, I’d typed. Would you be able to share anything you can recall about his time there?

Then I’d thought, No. Far too easy for him to say that wasn’t possible. So I’d deleted that and found myself writing, I wonder if it would be possible to meet you for a chat? instead.

To my surprise, he had replied within half an hour.

I’m at Bethesda Chapel Hall on Saturdays from five o’clock, he’d written. You can find me there.

And now here I was – late, puffing and sweating – at the top of the hill where the unassuming white-painted building stood, recognisable mostly by its proximity to the starkly simple, slate-roofed chapel that stood next to it.

I paused a few metres from the entrance to the hall, recovering my breath and taking a few furtive puffs on my sour-cherry vape. My feet were hurting, and I needed a wee, but those would have to wait – thanks to my late-running train and the irregular bus service, it was almost six o’clock. From within the hall, I could hear men’s voices talking – a hum that rose to a shout of laughter and then dropped back to a hum.

I stepped through the doorway and the room immediately fell silent. I blinked in the dim light, feeling blood rush to my cheeks before realising that the silence had nothing to do with me: there were men there, at least a couple of dozen of them, but all of them were gathered at the far end of the room and had their backs to me.

In the stillness, I could hear the buzzing of a fly and the thump of its body against a window.

Then a voice began singing, so softly at first I could barely hear it.

‘Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord

He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored.’

It’s a choir practice, I realised – a Welsh male-voice choir.

Then the voice was joined by others, swelling in harmony as they sang the chorus:

‘Glory, Glory Hallelujah.’

And I found I could do nothing but stand and listen, the hairs on the back of my neck rising in awe.