“I tried to catch her when she came out of work, but—” I shake my head. “I lost her.”
Danny snorts into his coffee.
“For God’s sake,” Edwin says. “Why? What on earth did you expect her to say?”
I jump up and go to the recipe book, sliding the photo out, keeping my back to my brothers for a few seconds, blinking hard. Then I stalk back and lay the picture faceup on the table between them.
“Look. That’s Mum,” I say to Danny, and he draws the picture closer to himself with one finger, staring.
“She’s just had twins,” I say. “She’s dressed, her hair is neat, I’m pretty sure she’s even got lipstick on. She doesn’t look like someone who’s thinking about killing herself.”
“Seraphine...” Edwin murmurs, but he too is frowning at the photo.
“Why did they pose for a family photo with only one of their new babies?” I ask. “Why do they look so—sonormal, Mum and Dad, and yet a few hours after this was taken, Mum was dead? I don’t understand how it happened.”
Danny slides the photo toward Edwin and sits back, studying my face.
“It’s a bit—surprising,” Danny says. “But it was such a longtime ago, what’s the point of worrying about the details? We know Mum became ill, we know what she did. This photo—if anything, it’s reassuring, isn’t it? Shows they were happy, for a while at least, before it happened.”
Edwin’s voice is quiet as he bends over the picture. “They thought they had all the time in the world to take more photos.”
“But why only one of us?” I ask.
Danny shrugs. “Maybe one of us was asleep, inside, and they didn’t want to wake us.”
“That’s what Gran said.” I can’t keep the skepticism from my voice.
Edwin looks at me. “It’s not just that, is it? What’s really upsetting you? That Dad kept this photo hidden, never showed us?”
I look at him. At his thick mass of light brown hair and his blue eyes and his Mayes jaw. And then I look at Danny, with his darker hair just as thick, his eyes just as blue, his jaw just as strong. These days they look more like twins than Danny and I ever did.
“I don’t think I’m Mum and Dad’s baby,” I say, and my brothers sit speechless, staring at me. “Look at me. My skin’s different, my hair’s different, my eyes are brown. I think I might be someone else’s child.” I press my hands to my cheeks for a few moments, drawing a deep breath in and out. “What if I’m Laura’s baby?”
Danny’s mouth falls open, and Edwin shakes his head, but neither can summon an immediate reply. I shove my chair back, scraping it noisily along the tiles.
“I knew you wouldn’t believe me.” I stumble out to the hall, then on into the sitting room, looking for a box of tissues. Edwin and Danny exchange words behind me, and then follow me in.
“Seraphine, listen to me.” Edwin perches next to me on the sofa. “You’re not sleeping, you’re not eating; it’s no wonder you’re not feeling rational. Dad’s accident—we can’t make sense of that. But this—you’re not thinking straight. Of course you’re Mum and Dad’s child. You’re our sister.”
Danny waves the photograph at me. “You look like her, Seph. Look how pretty she was. Everyone always says you get your looks from her, don’t they?” I realize how concerned he is about me when he doesn’t follow this up with a teasing insult.
Edwin nods vigorously. “It’s true. Look at you. You even move like Mum did—graceful, not like me and Lummox here.”
I press my lips together, but I stare at my mother’s short frame in the photo, not so different to mine, and I think about Laura’s height.
“I thought—” I swallow. “But what if Gran wants to leave Summerbourne to Danny because she knows I don’t really belong here?”
Danny coughs. I know he’s covering a chuckle, and I glare at him.
“Ah, come on,” he says. “Can you imagine Granny Vera accepting an interloper at Summerbourne? She’d be outraged!” He draws himself up and does a scarily accurate impression of our grandmother: “‘If you’re not descended from Philip Summerbourne, you can clear orf!’”
I thump him hard on his thigh, but I’m not crying anymore.
“Someone’s coming,” Edwin says suddenly, tilting his ear to the hall, and seconds later the doorbell rings. The three of us look at one another.
“I’ll go,” Edwin says, and we listen as he greets someone at the door and then calls out, “It’s only Joel.”
I groan. If Joel’s staying with Michael, he probably spotted Edwin’s car passing the cottage earlier. I’m still in my dressinggown and not in the mood for any visitors, least of all Joel Harris. Danny opens his mouth to say something, but hesitates, looking from the tissue balled up in my hand to my tear-streaked face.
