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‘Okay … Well sat nav says forty-five minutes so what are we going to chat about until then?’
Helen shrugged and felt her stomach grumble.
‘How about a game of I spy? Come on, it’ll be a laugh. I’ll start, then you can think of the next one. I spy with my little eye something beginning with ‘B’.’
Brody?
‘Building?’
‘Nope.’
‘Brick?’
‘Nope.’
‘I give up.’
‘Ya only had two goes, are you sure?’
‘I’m sure.’
‘Beech. As in the tree.’
‘That’s hard, Ish, you can’t go level eight difficulty on our first round of I spy!’ Helen twisted in her seat and swatted Ish on the arm.
‘Okay next game: first person to name five types of dinosaur wins.’
‘A don’t-even-go-there-saurus.’ Helen swatted Ish again, but noticed she was smiling in the rear-view mirror.
‘What about a you’re-not-even-trying-rex?’ Ish’s eyes met hers in the reflection.
By the time they got to Ealing, Helen had managed to remember seven.
Chapter 22
Lionel Road was a stretch of houses made from little red bricks, with even smaller little green doors. Apart from some double glazing, not much looked like it had changed since 1939. Helen could just imagine Vernon stepping outside of the front door, brushing past the limp daffodils outside his door, and tipping his hat to his neighbours. He’d be suspiciously charming like that.
Helen and Ish leaned against his Golf and eyeballed the door to 292. Net curtains hung in the living room windows. A prim white planter sat on the doorstep, with a few loose stalks hanging out of it.
‘So, are you going to knock?’ Ish nodded towards the door.
‘I can’t knock! I don’t know them. What am I going to say?’ Helen hissed.
‘That you’re on the hunt for a (probably deceased) man that your nan had a wild fling with in 1939 and can they help you with that.’
‘It wasn’t a fling … at least not for Nanny G.’ In reality, Nanny G probably wouldn’t object to that word, thought Helen.
‘All right then.’ Ish stepped forwards and knocked loudly on the door of 292.
‘Ish … you can’t do that! We don’tknowthem.’
‘Well, we will soon … Hi!’ Ish smiled awkwardly at a little old lady who only half filled up the door. She had small, shrewd, pale blue eyes, and tributaries of wrinkles over her face. Her little remaining hair was folded into neat curls close to her head, clipped close with bobby pins.
‘We’re looking for a man called Vernon, he lived here, well a long time ago …’
The woman’s eyes narrowed. ‘And how do you know Vernon?’
‘It was my nan who knew Vernon. During the war …’ Helen looked hopefully at the old woman.
