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Chapter 5
Abigail sat in the front seat of Lili’s van while her friend put the address of The Hideaway into the Sat Nav. ‘Right, we’re all set.’ Lili was determined she wasn’t leaving without her friend.
Abigail frowned at Lili. If it hadn’t been for what they had found while sorting through the rest of Toby’s possessions, Lili wouldn’t have been able to persuade her to return with her to Suffolk.
She glanced at the paperwork on her lap. She still had the envelope, unopened, that the solicitor had given her. She didn’t want to read Toby’s letter until she had arrived at the cottage. Now that she was on her way, she was thinking that perhaps it wasn’t a bad idea after all to get away from the flat and her life in London for a short time. Besides, Lili was right. If she wanted questions answered, she needed to see Toby’s parents and sister, who still lived on the Suffolk Coast.
‘What do you think it means?’ Abigail asked, fingering the little box she’d found at the back of the wardrobe. Inside was an AncestryDNA test kit.
‘Did you know about this?’ Lili asked, glancing at the box.
Abigail shook her head. She had no clue what it was; she’d never heard of DNA home-testing kits before.
But Lili had. Her previous boyfriend, now working in Washington – they were still on good terms – knew the importance of Lili’s quest to trace her own family. He’d told her that the DNA home-testing kits were huge in America, and they were advertised as the perfect Christmas or birthday gift.
‘He must have sent off a sample and got the results of his DNA search back,’ Lili said as she slowed the car behind the traffic heading out of London towards the North Circular. ‘I wonder what the results were.’
‘That’s the thing, Lili. I’ve looked at the contents of the box. Apparently, you register on their website and that’s how you receive your results, by logging in.’
‘You wouldn’t know the password, would you?’
‘I had no idea he was doing this.’ She had brought her laptop along with her to attempt to figure out the password and log in when they arrived. It bothered her that Toby hadn’t told her about it. They had always spoken about everything. There had been no secrets between them – or so she had thought.
‘Perhaps he was going to tell you, but …’ Lili trailed off.
Abigail glanced at her. ‘Maybe.’
‘He might have mentioned it to his sister. You could speak to Clarissa.’
‘I haven’t spoken to her since the funeral. Or their parents.’
‘But you’ll catch up with them while you’re staying in the cottage?’
‘Yes, that’s the plan.’ Although Abigail wasn’t sure she wanted to. They’d just remind her of Toby. She heaved a sigh as she stared at the traffic. She was starting to regret being talked into this. ‘I know Toby had questions about his past, but he always said he wasn’t interested in trying to find his biological dad.’
Lili took her eyes off the road for a moment. ‘Oh, I didn’t know that …’
‘Peter isn’t his biological dad. His mum met him when Toby was about four or five. A couple of years after they married, they moved away from Suffolk to London, where they had Clarissa, his half-sister.’
Abigail fell silent.
Lili glanced at her friend again. ‘Would you rather I didn’t talk about it?’
‘It’s not that,’ Abigail replied, staring out of the window. ‘Did I ever tell you why Toby liked to return time and time again to that cottage?’
Lili shook her head. ‘He liked the Suffolk Coast. You said once that he spent his early years there before moving to London.’
‘Yes, he had fond childhood memories. It’s the only reason I agreed to go there with him on holiday. You know I don’t like returning to Southwold. And I hate the sea.’
She knew it would delight some people to inherit a cottage by the sea. Not so her good friend, Abigail. The night she was born, during the Great Storm that battered Britain in October 1987, her father, a RNLI volunteer, had been lost at sea. Like Toby, she had grown up with a stepdad. They’d had so much in common. She remembered Abigail telling her about her father when they’d first met in London and discovered they had been in the same primary school, albeit just for a year, and even in the same class. She still had her old class photo. Who could have known that a little boy a few rows back would one day become her husband?
Abigail interrupted her thoughts. ‘That’s where he spent the first four or five years of his life, just him and his mum living in the cottage, until she met Peter.’
‘So, that cottage was his childhood home for a time?’ Lili said in surprise.
‘Yes.’
‘Toby’s mum rented the cottage from the sister of Lord Somerville?’
