The red front door is partially obscured by a semi-circular flower bed packed with white roses in full bloom. The scent of the roses, myrrh, is so thick it carries to this side of the street.
My fingers curl into fists in the back pockets of my jeans.
I have been waiting for nearly an hour.
I am sure they’re in the house.
A large, warm drop of rain falls on my forehead, another drop falls on my hair, a third leaves a damp spot on my shoulder in a final warning. Then the rain comes down in a harsh rush, hammering on my head, hitting my shoulders and soaking through my T-shirt in seconds.
I run for the sanctuary of the church entrance.
When I am under cover, I slide the rucksack off my shoulder, let it drop onto the tiled floor and turn to watch the rain.
It is the heaviest rainfall I remember.
I reach out a hand to catch the large, warm drops of water. I have spent years hiding from rain; hiding from life. I do not have to hide any more. I am not weak. I do not need to be afraid of consequences.
My arms open wide, I take another step forward, closing my lips and eyes and tipping back my head so the rain runs over my face. I don’t remember feeling rain before.
I love it.
Why do people complain about rain? It feels beautiful.
The darkness behind my eyelids lets me focus on the sensations of the water soaking through my hair and clothes.
I am alive – living.
‘We need to hurry.’
I open my eyes and look over the road. The front door is open and a man has stepped out.
I take a step, pulled forward by emotions I can only describe as longing. I am not sure if the emotions are mine or Louise’s.
I stand at the edge of the car park, under the trembling green canopy of a large conker tree.
A woman steps out of the front door and hurries to reach the passenger side of the car.
I’m not sure it’s them. I can’t see them properly. The roses are in the way and they’re using an umbrella.
The rain stops as quickly as it started just as the woman pulls the car door open and ducks inside.
Rain is dripping from my fingertips onto the tarmac.
The man walks around the front of the car to the driver’s door, his face covered by the umbrella as he lowers it.
Heavy, colder drops of water drip off the leaves of the tree onto my hair and shoulders.
He opens the car door, his back turned to me, and collapses the umbrella.
Cars travel along the road, passing between us. The cars are noisier now their tyres run over the wet tarmac, the surface water flicking up behind the wheels.
They are both in the car. I see the movement of his arm as he turns the key in the ignition, then he looks at the woman.
It’s them.
I step forward again, trying to see better, to read their lips, to know what they are saying to one another.
Hours of research have brought me here.
It is the half-circle flower bed full of white roses that convinced me this is the house I saw. The roses were in bloom in the picture on Facebook.
There was one clue a long way down in the stream of posts under Louise Lovett’s profile. A public post from someone else. ‘Happy birthday my darling daughter.’ The picture beneath the words contained an older man and woman holding up a glinting happy birthday banner with two grinning, young blond children.
My heart knew the children. Emotion wrapped around the heart and pulled tight, like yellow ribbons tied around the trunk of an old oak tree, with loose ends waving in the breeze – holding onto memories.
The post was published by Robert Dowling. Robert Dowling wrote the word ‘daughter’.
His Facebook account is not private and he posts everything. He checks into coffee shops, cinemas, restaurants and parks.
He lives in Swindon. Louise Lovett died in Swindon. They could have transported her heart to London within two hours of her death. I am sure it’s her heart.
Louise Lovett’s funeral took place in an Anglican church half a mile from here.
There is a picture on Robert’s Facebook page that pointed me to this side of Swindon too. In that picture, he is reaching out, holding the top of a Christmas tree, in a posture that asks questions of the onlookers. Is this the one? Are the branches even? The onlookers in the picture are the two blond children. But the thing that stood out to me in the post was the sign in the background. Waitrose Wichelstowe.
I have become a detective. I’ve spent all my hours, when alone, looking at the places Robert Dowling has been to, working out where he lives. There’s a map of Swindon in a drawer in my bedroom with dots marking in blue Biro the places Robert checks into and posts from. There’s a cluster of blue dots around this church.
There are three parks he visits near here: Queens Park, The Lawns and Coate Water Country Park. When he goes to the cinema, McDonald’s or Frankie & Benny’s it is always in the Greenbridge Retail Park, which is less than ten minutes by car. He uses shops in Old Town, a few minutes in the other direction, and takes the children to the library and the museum there.
It was a guess that he lives somewhere in the middle of these places.
Hours of my time have been consumed dragging a yellow man over street maps on the tip of the cursor, turning the camera from angle to angle, searching for the flower bed his wife stood in front of. Her raised hand was covered by a muddy gardening glove and the smear of mud marking her nose said she was weeding and had wiped her face. It was a moment of very normal life preserved forever.
The car is facing me. The man is looking right and left, waiting for a chance to turn but cars are passing. He looks at me through a brief gap in the passing traffic.
It is Robert Dowling.
My heart bursts, rushing into a rhythm of excitement that does not feel as if it is my emotion.
Is he wondering why I am staring?
My hand lifts unconsciously as if to wave.
She wants me to speak. Louise. She is trying to push words out of my mouth, to form them with my lips and tongue. But I still can’t hear her voice clearly.
He looks left, right and left again then steers the car out into the road.
His aura, and his wife’s, are shades of red from a deep blushing pink on to scarlet and the darkest claret.
13.21.
The man sitting diagonally across the table from me is playing loud music. It would be better if I could hear the song, but all I hear is the thud of the rhythm. The same rhythm my heart is playing.
I want to forget about the rhythm. Forget that the heart is not really mine. The heart separates itself from me when it does this, as if the rhythm is from a music speaker, not from within me.
The edge of the table rubs my forearms. I am trying to play a game on my phone to distract my mind, but my concentration is constantly broken by that man’s music.
A suited-man in the seat beside me coughs loudly as though the music is annoying him too.
The woman opposite, who has been clicking away on her laptop ever since I boarded the train in Swindon, looks up from the screen and glances at the music player.
A