Free Love Story, With Murders by Harry Bingham Page B

the same kind of sunny street, it feels weird to me that the car ever existed without me in it.
    ‘When was this, Em?’
    ‘When your dad bought it. What, eighty-four, was it? Eighty-five?’
    Before me, in other words. I’m looking at life before me. Or rather: I was alive, somewhere, with someone, doing something. I just don’t know where or who or what.
    ‘It must have been strange for you. Dad finding me like that.’
    It’s the first time Emrys has allowed his expression to wobble atall. I guess he hasn’t prepared for this particular contingency. Hasn’t been instructed on how to react. But
he rides the swell. ‘Strange, yes. But your dad – Kathleen and him, both of them – were delighted. I’ve never seen your pa so happy. Quite right too, eh? He did well,
didn’t he?’
    I shrug and put the photo back. ‘I’m pleased it was him. I’ve never wanted any other dad.’
    ‘Youdid well. You chose well.’
    ‘Yes.’ I look at the photo again. Interrogating it. ‘Yes.’
    An empty car.
    An absent girl.
    A road filled with sunshine and secrets.
    ‘Em, can I borrow this? I’ll give it back.’
    ‘You want to borrow it? Of course you can.’
    I thank him and hold on to the photo. On the shelves, below where the photo was sitting, there’s a pile of magazines, somevideos, and a photo album in fake burgundy leather.
    ‘It’d be nice to spend some proper time together sometime, Em,’ I say. ‘A bit less last minute.’
    He agrees. I think he’s pleased. We promise to make a date and mean it. He sees me to the door and tells me to drive safely.
    I do drive off, but don’t know how safe I am. My thoughts are with that sunny street, that empty car. I’ve alreadyasked the most obvious questions about my past. Asked them, and got
answers that take me nowhere.
    Do I, in fact, have some genetic relationship to my father
? The most obvious question of them all. A man, known to be something of a rogue, finds a little girl in the back of his car. If
he’d fathered me with some woman other than my mother, and if something happened to that other woman, mighthe not engineer it that I was ‘found’ in his car one sunny Sunday?
    Well, the answer on this occasion is no. I’ve taken DNA swabs from me, my mam, and my dad – they didn’t know I was taking them – and sent the material to a private
laboratory for analysis. There was no genetic relationship between any of the three samples.
    Do the clothes, shoes, or hair grip that I was wearing provideany useful clue as to their provenance?
No. All the items I’ve been able to trace were widely sold in the UK in the
1980s. Some may have been sold overseas too. The items were neither expensive nor cheap. The sort of thing that more or less anyone might have bought.
    Are there any useful DNA traces on the clothes, shoes, or camera?
Harder to check that one, but I did get them all checkedat a forensics lab. No DNA showed up, except my own, my
mam’s, and my dad’s. Which makes sense. DNA is quite easily destroyed. Sunlight, for example, can destroy a sample. Washing certainly can, and my mam would have washed my dress before
putting it away. The only DNA samples that were found probably date from the very recent past: when Dad, Mam, and I were passing the items around the kitchentable.
    Does the camera provide me with any other kind of clue?
No. Again: it was a fairly ordinary camera. A few years old, but people back then didn’t change their gadgets as often as
they do now. There were no pictures on the film in it other than of me in that car.
    I’ve looked at other questions too. I was found when my mam and dad came out of chapel. The minister could perhaps haveengineered something, but I’ve spoken privately to him and
investigated his background as much as I could and found nothing there. Him, two churchwardens, and a family friend my mam used to go to chapel with. I’ve tried to figure out something from
the location of the chapel itself.
    And