‘someone else has done the same, felt the same’
Every little gesture or whispered word, every burst of laughter or ragged sob, every tooth lost, every promise kept or broken, every sulky, door-slamming teenager, every baby’s burp, every name tape sewn on, every brief, shuddery orgasm, every broken heart – life just repeats itself over and over. Past, present, and future colliding in a single house.
Lucy Spawton’s birth and death certificates arrive in the post. Her parents were Elizabeth Spawton and Thomas Harlock Spawton and it says that he was a master draper and that Lucy was born in 1867.
It seems like a huge step forward, to suddenly have this information right here in front of me on the kitchen table, but I’m still not sure how to use it. How is it going to get me any nearer to finding her grandchildren or great-grandchildren who, let’s face it, may not even be called Spawton any more?
The trouble is, I’m not like all those people at the Family Records Centre, launching their massed attacks on posterity. They’re ploughing steadily backwards through time, trying to find out who their eighteenth or even seventeenth-century ancestors were. But it’s descendants I want, not ancestors. I just have this single name, marooned in the 1880s, and I need to move forwards, not backwards.
‘She was a drapery buyer,’ I tell Jonathan. ‘Look, isn’t that amazing? It gives her profession on the death certificate.’
‘Oh, but look at this.’ He snatches it up and looks more closely. ‘This isn’t good news, is it?’
‘What?’
‘That she died a spinster.’
I hadn’t even seen that. I’d been so absorbed in her profession, her age at death and her illness that I hadn’t noticed that small word on the death certificate that changes everything. Lucy Spawton – who lived here in this house for so very long and who has to be so very important in my story – never married and, presumably, never had kids.
‘Well, that’s it then,’ I sigh. ‘I just don’t know where I go from here. How am I ever going to find a single person who even knew her?’
I’m silent for a long moment as I stare at that horrid little word, handwritten in black ink. Spinster.
‘Don’t panic,’ says Jonathan. ‘You always give up too early. How about a will? If she didn’t marry and she could afford to own this house.’
‘We don’t know for certain that she actually owned it.’
‘OK, but she clearly had the means to live here. And she was a working woman. So she must have left either the house or her money to someone.’
‘And you really think it’s possible to find it? After all this time?’
‘Definitely. Or, at least, all wills are in the public domain. Once they’ve been through probate, I know that.’
I look at Jonathan with interest. His father was a barrister and he himself is a JP so he tends to know about legal things. Actually, it’s nothing to do with any of that. He just tends to know things.
‘That’s brilliant,’ I tell him, ‘because if I really can find her will, then it will tell me who her closest descendants are and that’s what I most need to know. As long as they’re alive, of course.’
‘And if they’re not,’ says Jonathan, warming to his own scheme, ‘then all you have to do is find their wills …’
‘And so on! You know, I think we’ve cracked it. Why did we never think of this before?’
‘Well, I just did actually.’
March 1980, a sunny Saturday morning.
John has just picked a grumpy Leon up from his mother’s to take him to football practice, and he can’t believe it when, heading off down the road, he sees a ‘For Sale’ sign going up at Number 34. Well, about to go up anyway. He stops the car – ‘We’re gonna be late, Dad,’ moans Leon, but he ignores him.
He gets out and looks up at the house, dirty windows even dirtier in the shrill spring sunshine. It’s not in a good state. The brick is drab and stained, the paintwork’s peeling and the front door’s hideous, with some kind of bobbly glass in the centre. Is it flats?
‘Da-ad!’
‘Just hang on a minute, boy, I’m coming.’
Squinting through the letter box, he can only see a dingy brown hallway, monstrous dark carpet with a swirly pattern, an orange door, nasty with hardboard panels over it. No signs of partitioning, though. He goes over to the bay window, overgrown with nettles and weeds, and peers into the front room. Ugly purple carpet in there, some kind of zigzag embossed wallpaper, a couple of threadbare armchairs, dark brown three-piece suite, a rubber plant that looks almost dead. Original fireplaces, though – pale marble, ruined by gas fires. And a pair of huge double doors dividing the room from the next. He bets they’re the original pine underneath.
The guy hasn’t even got the For Sale sign up yet. He’s hammering in the post.
‘Who’s it on the market with?’ asks John.
‘ABC
‘Where are they?’
‘Acre Lane. Just past the traffic lights on the left.’
‘You’re not going to buy that house, Dad?’ Leon is frowning and chewing his fingers.
‘Don’t know, I might. Take your hands out of your mouth.’
‘It’s awful. I hate it.’
‘You haven’t even seen it. You’ve no idea. And anyway, wouldn’t you like us all to live in the same road? It means you and Luce could come round any time, whenever you felt like it.’
‘What about Mum?’
‘I don’t think Mum’s going to want to come round.’
‘Would I have my own room?’
‘You know the Spurs wallpaper we saw? You could have a whole room done in that if you wanted.’
‘Seriously?’
As soon as he’s dropped Leon off, John goes round to ABC.
He hadn’t actually thought about another house in Lillieshall Road, but then again he doesn’t imagine that Bubbles will necessarily stay around here anyway. And if she does, well, it really would be good for the kids. And he’s always loved this bit of Clapham. Why should he be the one to move away? The house needs stuff doing to it, but he can already see its potential. In fact the idea of having to start again from scratch excites him.
ABC has only just opened. John had forgotten how early it was. The radio’s on and the man’s spooning Maxwell House coffee granules into a mug.
‘Lillieshall Road?’ he says, surprised. ‘But that’s only just been listed.’
John says he knows that. He fiddles impatiently with his keys. ‘What’s it on at?’
‘Thirty-seven, I think,’ says the man, plonking down his mug and rooting through a file. ‘Yep, thirty-seven thou.’
John looks at his watch. Football ends in ninety minutes. ‘Can I see it today?’
‘You can see it right now if you like.’
‘Anyone home?’ The man from ABC gives a half-hearted shout as he inserts his key and pushes open the front door of 34 Lillieshall Road.
There’s a smell of recent frying