Page 73 of All the Things We Never Knew

Another morning, and another Graham child turned up at my door last night. I shouldn’t joke about it – not even here, in these pages that only I will read – because really it is not a laughing matter. They might both be here now, safely asleep, but Anna will have some difficult questions to ask her daughter – and herself.

When she messaged me yesterday to ask if I would be home, because she needed to go urgently and unexpectedly to Wales, I offered to have them both here, or to go and stay at number eight for the night. But Anna told me that Lulu had promised to be on her best behaviour and begged to be allowed to prove herself responsible by looking after her brother after she got home from meeting Laurel for a burger.

How strange that Gray’s daughter and Gray’s lover should be meeting up, I thought, but I didn’t say that to Anna.

But Lulu did not keep her promise. It wasn’t late when I received Anna’s call – the first of her calls – telling me that Lulu wasn’t where she was supposed to be, and wasn’t answering her phone. Shortly after that, Barney knocked on my door, all awkward and embarrassed in his tracksuit bottoms and hoodie, and told me that Lulu had gone out, leaving him alone, and not returned. His mother’s train home had been cancelled and Anna, having eventually got hold of him, had ordered him to come round and wait at my house.

He didn’t say so, but I could tell her instructions had come as a relief to him. I assured him that I had been about to go and knock on his door and invite him over myself, because I too could do with some company. I invited him in and gave him cocoa and biscuits, because being a boy on the cusp of his teens he is hungry even in an emergency. We found a Spotify playlist of Martha Argerich’s piano solos, and settled down to wait. I tried calling Lulu myself, and also received no answer. I thought about calling the police, even though I was certain that wherever Lulu was, she was there of her own volition.

Fortunately, I did not have to do that, because just as Barney was reaching again for the biscuit tin, I heard the same sound I had heard several weeks before – the car screeching into the square, pulling up outside number five, then noisily and unnecessarily revving its engine again.

That’ll be her, I said, as Barney’s face dissolved into relief.

I hurried to the front door and opened it just as Lulu was stepping out of the car.

You don’t have to make so much noise, she was protesting, half annoyed and half laughing.

In the beam of the car’s interior light, I could see a young man’s face at the wheel, half shadowed by a baseball cap. A young man – but a man significantly older than Lulu. When I was her age, it wasn’t uncommon for girls to have older boyfriends – it was seen almost as a badge of honour. But things have changed now, and rightly so. Now, we have different words to describe this kind of relationship. I was appalled, and I know Anna will be too.

See you later, I heard Lulu say, and I could tell that the casualness in her words was forced.

Then she turned and saw me, and her face fell. We both waited for the car to screech out of the square, the fumes of its exhaust hanging in the still night air, then she came over to me, shame-faced, and said she was sorry.

I told her that her mother was stuck overnight in Wales, and she had better come in and stay overnight in one of my spare rooms, and she humbly agreed, then greeted her brother, attempting a casual, nothing-to-see-here tone.

That’s not cool, what you did, he said.

What? Lulu demanded. Nothing happened.

But something has and, as Barney said, it’s not cool. I could tell they didn’t want to be around each other, so not long after that I sent them to bed in separate rooms, before texting Anna to assure her that Lulu was here and safe. How she will deal with this when she gets back later today remains to be seen.

FORTY-TWO

ANNA

I squirmed uncomfortably in the narrow economy-class train seat. The only available spot had been by the window at a table, the other three seats at which were occupied by a harassed-looking woman and her two pre-school children.

I had spent a sleepless night in a cheap hotel near the station, with no change of clothes or even a toothbrush. The news from Orla that Lulu had turned up safely had flooded me with relief, but done little to alleviate my anger – at my daughter, but most of all at myself.

‘Sorry,’ the mum mouthed at me across the table as her smaller child decided that now was the time to test the volume at which he was capable of screeching.

‘It gets easier,’ I said, as kindly as I could.

Except that, of course, was the biggest load of bollocks ever. I was returning home to deal with the fallout of my own child’s actions: my sixteen-year-old daughter, who I’d trusted, or at least prayed, had learned her lesson.

Clearly, I’d been wrong. Wrong on more levels than I could count. Wrong to think it would be okay to leave the kids alone. Wrong to believe Lulu when she said she would be having an early dinner with Laurel and would make sure she and Barney were safely in bed by ten. Wrong to put my own desire to uncover Gray’s past above my duties as a mother.

I turned away from the little girl on my right, who was scooping yoghurt out of its pot with her fingers, and gazed out of the window. I couldn’t be sure whether the train had passed over the border from Wales to England, but I guessed not – I could still see gently undulating fields, grey stone buildings and, of course, sheep.

I willed the landscape to pass more quickly outside the windows, willed the time to pass – because there was no way I could turn it back. No way I could undo the decision I’d made to leave them alone, even knowing that Lulu’s behaviour was erratic, that her grief over the loss of her father was making her act in ways she wouldn’t normally.

‘Mummy, I need a wee.’ The piercing voice of the child next to me interrupted my thoughts. Ten minutes before, it had been her brother who’d needed one, and the mum had had to fight her way through the crowds of people standing in the aisle to the toilet with both her kids, facing a barrage of scowls and tuts.

‘You can leave your little boy here,’ I offered with a smile. ‘I’ll make sure he doesn’t get up to any mischief.’

She looked at me. Her hair was escaping from its ponytail and there was yoghurt on her jumper. Her kids’ toys, books and snack wrappers were scattered all over the table, and I could see she was nearing the end of her tether.

‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘That’s very kind, but I’ll keep them both with me.’