“Should I let you get to bed?” Flynn asked amused.
“It’s been a long day.” She wasn’t keen to end the call, though. “Oh, I forgot to tell you. Maria came over.”
“Just for a visit?”
“Yeah. She wanted to show me photos of my uncle.” Slowly, Lily wandered to the bedroom. “And ask me how he died.”
“So she didn’t already know?”
“I guess not.”
“That makes sense. How could she have known?”
“Yeah.” In her bedroom, she sank onto the bed, then immediately stood again and slid open the wardrobe drawer. “She couldn’t have known. So it seems as though she’s finally telling the truth.”
“Why do you sound put out by that?”
Her eyes went to the backpack at the bottom of the wardrobe. The one that was packed for emergencies, the way her uncle had always taught her. She pulled it out and moved back to the bed.
“I still think maybe there’s a lot about my childhood that I don’t know. If Maria doesn’t have answers for me, I can’t imagine I’ll ever find out.”
“Is this because of the fire at your parents’ house and the one at the ice cream shop?”
“Partly.” She pulled out the small bundle of clothes from the backpack and set them beside her on the bed. Then she did the same with the selection of chargers and her pen knife and torch. “But I also just have this feeling there was stuff Uncle Derek didn’t tell me about.”
“Like what?”
Lily opened her mouth, then closed it again. Desperately, she wanted to tell him everything, but a part of her insisted she couldn’t tell anyone. Especially not a police officer.
“Ignore me,” she said breezily. “I think I’m just tired.”
“I’ll leave you to sleep,” he said. “Talk to you tomorrow?”
“Yeah.” She smiled into the phone as she wished him goodnight.
Setting the phone aside, she went to repack the backpack, but paused.
Lifting it onto her lap, she reached into the bottom and pulled out the Ziploc bags filled with an obscene amount ofmoney. The notes were mostly euros, but there were several thousand pounds as well.
Her heart rate increased, just as it had done when she’d first found the cash at her uncle’s house after he died. It sped up even further when she took the brown envelope from the bag.
Her passport and birth certificate. She flicked to the photo page of her passport, then put it aside and slid her hand into the envelope again.
Given the state of the world, maybe it made sense to have a bag of supplies ready to go.
The envelope fell to the floor as she pulled out the second passport – the one she’d found with the money when she’d cleared out Uncle Derek’s house – and which made no sense at all.
As always, she felt slightly nauseous as she flicked through the pages, opening it to the photo of herself. The same photo as her other passport.
There were a few distinct differences with this passport, though.
In this one, her name wasn’t Lily Larkin. And she wasn’t British.
Realising she’d forgotten to breathe, she released a breath while hastily stuffing everything back into the backpack. Quickly, she returned it to its place.
The bottom of the wardrobe – and the back of her mind.
To be continued…
