Page 65 of All Our Missing Pieces

‘Want to mingle a bit?’ he asked. ‘I’m sure we’ll find Rachel soon, and I’ll introduce you. Don’t worry – it’s going to be fine.’

‘I’m not worried,’ I lied, smiling.

Then I saw her, and I realised just how worried I needed to be.

She was in the living room, standing by the open balcony door. As I had expected any girlfriend of Luke’s to be, she was pretty. More than pretty – beautiful, even. Her hair was long, down to her bra strap, dark and shiny. She was petite, with the pert, clean-cut features of a china doll. She was wearing a costume that I supposed was meant to be a bride of Dracula – long, white and flowing, with dribbles of lipstick blood trickling down the smooth skin of her neck.

With a brief lurch of dread, I wondered whether Luke had planned this – him the vampire, her the former virgin. But it was impossible – Luke had told me just that morning that he had no clue what he was going to wear, and only after lunch dashed out to the market where he’d bought the plastic fangs.

Then I wondered if it was part of her costume – but the look on Luke’s face told me that wasn’t the case, either. It all made sense – why she’d been okay with him coming. She wanted this to be public, to have the support of her friends around her when Luke found out. To front it out, because she didn’t know how he would react, so that if he was angry with her, there’d be waiting arms to comfort her, and if he wasn’t, there’d be witnesses.

As for me – well, it turned out she wasn’t delighted I was there and I couldn’t blame her. But I was just collateral damage in the big reveal she’d planned.

Beneath the white dress, Rachel was clearly heavily pregnant.

FORTY-ONE

‘This can’t be it.’ Beatrice stopped, looking at the roughly drawn map in her hand. ‘It says number eight Lombard Street, but this looks all wrong.’

She gripped her umbrella, keeping the scrap of paper safely out of the rain. The owner of the pub with rooms where they were staying had seemed quite certain he was directing them to the right place, confidently sketching the streets on a piece of paper with the logo of a whiskey distillery at its top and including helpful arrows showing them which way to walk.

Clearly, he hadn’t actually had a clue. That or he’d been playing some kind of elaborate joke on them.

‘Let me see.’ Neil held out his hand, but Beatrice’s own was shaking so badly she almost dropped the paper on the wet cobblestone street.

Since their arrival the previous evening – even before that, since before they’d boarded their flight – she’d been wracked with nerves. She’d felt none of her usual excitement when the plane accelerated down the runway, its speed forcing Beatrice’s back against her seat before the jolting of the wheels stopped and soaring weightlessness began. Her anxiety had lifted only briefly after the bus journey from the airport – the same as any bus journey from any airport to any city, she’d thought, watching the stretches of anonymous motorway and grey industrial buildings flashing past the windows – when she’d been able to show Neil some of the sights she remembered from her first visit.

‘This is Trinity College, where Oscar Wilde studied.’

‘This is Ha’penny Bridge – I’ll show you the sketch I did of it sometime.’

‘This is where I went for dinner – the beef and Guinness pie was insane.’

So they’d gone there for dinner, but when a plate of the identical beef and Guinness pie was placed in front of Beatrice, she’d suddenly felt as if her mouth had been filled with sawdust and was unable to eat a thing.

‘Nervous?’ Neil had asked gently.

She’d nodded. ‘I feel like I’m going to spew.’

‘Come on then.’ Neil had pushed aside his own half-finished plate and gestured for the bill. ‘The sooner we go to bed, the sooner it’ll be tomorrow and you’ll be able to stop worrying.’

They’d walked back to their lodgings and said goodnight outside their separate bedrooms. Beatrice had thought for a moment about pulling Neil into a hug or inviting him in, just to see where it would lead. But it wasn’t right – she couldn’t use him like that, for validation or to pass the time or as some kind of human Zopiclone.

It wouldn’t be fair. He deserved better.

So she had slept alone – or rather, not slept, twisting in her bed in between being tormented by dreams in which the house on Damask Square burned to the ground, her father arrived in Dublin and bundled her off to the airport before she could fulfil the purpose of her visit, and she found a piece of paper with a name on it that should have been her birth mother’s but was Livvie’s.

Now, here they were, outside the General Register Office – or where the General Register Office should have been but wasn’t. Beatrice had thought she’d known what to expect: a grand, official building with pillars at its front and a flight of stone steps leading up to an imposing wooden door, like something out of Harry Potter.

This wasn’t that. It was a modern, double-storey building that looked more like a block of council housing or a government office than a wizard’s bank or a storage vault for secrets.

‘Look.’ Neil gripped her wrist, steadying her hand so the paper didn’t fall. ‘It says over there, Research Room. This is the place.’

‘Yes,’ Beatrice said. ‘I suppose it must be.’

She tucked the scrap of paper into the pocket of her jeans and stepped on to the cracked concrete path leading up to the unassuming door. She could feel her heart pounding; her head felt as if it was floating high above her shoulders – like she was watching herself from above. She was barely conscious that Neil had taken her hand in his.

He pushed the door open and they stepped inside. The room was warm, carpeted in hard-wearing grey tiles. At intervals around it were pods and banks of desks, padded chairs set in front of them and privacy screens dividing them.