Libby throws him a quizzical look.
‘There were initials on the suicide note, remember? ML, HL, DT. So I asked police for names of missing person cases that had involved the initials DT. David Thomsen was one of thirty-eight that they unearthed. Thirty-eight missing persons with the initials DT. Ten within the John Doe’s estimated age range. And one by one I eliminated all of them.
‘But this one fascinated me. I don’t know. There was just something about his story that rang true. Forty-two-year-old guy from Hampshire. Normal upbringing. But no record of him anywhere, not since he arrived back in the UK from France, in 1988, with a wife called Sally, and two children, Phineas and Clemency. The four of them arrive by ferry from Saint-Malo into Portsmouth in …’ He flicks through a notebook for a moment. ‘… September 1988. And then there is literally no trace of any of them from that point onwards: no doctors’ records, no tax, no school registers, no hospital visits, nothing. Their families described them as “loners” – there were rifts and grudges, a huge falling-out over an inheritance of some sort. So nobody wondered where they were. Not for years and years. Until David Thomsen’s mother, nearing the end of her life, decides she wants a deathbed reconciliation and reports her son and his family as missing persons. The police run some perfunctory searches, find no trace of David or his family, then David’s mother dies and no one asks about David or Sally Thomsen ever again. Until me, three years ago.’ Miller sighs. ‘I tried so hard to track them down. Phineas. Clemency. Unusual names. If they were out there they’d have been easy enough to find. But nothing. Not a trace. And I needed to file the article, I needed to get paid, I had to give up.’ He shakes his head. ‘Can you see now? Can you see why it took two years, why it nearly killed me? Why my wife left me? I was literally a research zombie. It was all I talked about, all I thought about.’
He sighs and runs his fingers across the bunch of keys. ‘But yes. Let’s do it. Let’s find out what happened to all those people. Let’s find out what happened to you.’
He holds his hand out to hers to shake. ‘Are we on, Serenity Lamb?’
‘Yes,’ says Libby, putting her hand in his. ‘We’re on.’
Libby goes straight to the showroom from her breakfast with Miller Roe. It’s only half past nine and Dido barely registers her lateness. When she does, she does a double take and says, in an urgent whisper, ‘Oh God! The journalist! How did it go!’
‘Amazing,’ Libby replies. ‘We’re going to meet at the house this evening. Start our investigation.’
‘Just you,’ says Dido, her nose wrinkling slightly, ‘and him?’
‘Yes.’
‘Hmm. Are you sure that’s a good idea?’
‘What? Why?’
‘I don’t know. Maybe he’s not what he seems.’ Dido narrows her eyes at her. ‘I think I should come too.’
Libby blinks slowly and then smiles. ‘You could have just asked.’
‘I don’t know what you mean.’ Dido turns back to her laptop. ‘I just want to look out for you.’
‘Fine,’ says Libby, still smiling. ‘You can “look out” for me. I’m meeting him at seven. We’ll need to be on the six eleven. OK?’
‘Yes,’ says Dido, her gaze resolutely on her computer screen. ‘OK. And by the way’ – she looks up suddenly – ‘I’ve read every single Agatha Christie novel ever published. Twice. So I might even be quite useful.’
19
Lucy leaves the children sleeping with a note on the bedside table for Marco that says: ‘I’ve gone to sort out passports. I’ll be back in a couple of hours. Give your sister something to eat. The dog’s with Giuseppe.’
She leaves the house at 8 a.m. and takes the long route across town to the Gare de Nice. She stops for a while and sits on a bench, letting the soft morning sun warm up her skin. At eight forty-five, she boards the train to Antibes.
Just after 9 a.m. she is in front of Michael’s house. A metal jacket of bluebottles sits on Fitz’s shit from the morning before. She smiles a tight smile. Then, very slowly, bile burning in the pit of her stomach, she rings on Michael’s doorbell.
The maid answers. She smiles when she recognises Lucy and she says, ‘Good morning to you! You are the wife of Michael! From before! The mother of Michael’s son. I did not know before that Michael, he had a son!’ She has her hand clasped to her chest and she looks genuinely joyful. ‘Such beautiful boy. Come, come in.’
The house is silent. Lucy says, ‘Is Michael available?’
‘Yes, yes. He is having a shower. You wait for him on terrace. Is OK?’
Joy leads her on to the terrace and tells her to sit, insisting on bringing coffee with amaretti on the side, even when Lucy says water will be fine. Michael does not deserve such a woman, she thinks. Michael does not deserve anything.
She puts her hand into her shoulder bag and pulls out her old passport, and the tiny wallet with the photos of Stella and Marco tucked inside. She drinks her coffee but leaves the amaretti which she cannot stomach. A colourful bee-eater sits in a tree overhead surveying the garden for snacks. She breaks up the amaretti and drops it on the floor for him. He doesn’t notice, and flies away. Lucy’s stomach rolls and reels. It’s half past nine.
Then finally he is there, immaculate in a white T-shirt and pea-green shorts, his thinning hair still wet from the shower and his feet bare.
‘Well, my goodness me,’ he says, brushing her cheek with his on both sides. ‘Twice in two days. It must be my birthday. No kids?’
‘No. I left them sleeping. We had a very late night.’
‘Next time.’ He hits her with his big golden smile, sits and crosses his legs. ‘So, to what do I owe the pleasure?’