Chapter 85
CHAPTER 85
G emma wanted to ask the old man to walk faster. She wanted to ask him to run—or just tell her the name of the road so she could bolt there herself—but he was intent on doing a good deed, and she didn’t want to rush him. No matter how frustrating she found his slow pace.
“Lovely woman she was,” Wilf said as they ambled along. “I went to school with her, you see. With her and her whole family. Three brothers, god, they got up to some mischief, they did. The youngest in particular. Oliver, I think it was. No, that’s not right. Oscar. Oscar Parker.”
“I know Oscar,” Gemma said, trying to ignore that they were moving slower than a geriatric sloth.
“Is that right?”
“Yes, he was my boss. Owner of the coffee shop I run. I ran,” she corrected herself, uncertain of which tense to use because she didn’t know what her future held.
“Oh, well, pass him my best if you speak to him,” Wilf said. “Say Wilf Winters. He’ll remember me, I’m sure of it.”
“I’ll make sure I do,” Gemma said.
She was about to ask him what he could remember about Lulu, or perhaps if he recalled anything about her grandchildren when Wilf spoke again.
“Well, that’s you,” he said, pointing in the direction of a whitewashed house.
The paint had chipped off the front, and while the wisteria still clung to the walls, there were no flowers in bloom—just the dense, brown stalks of the plant. Even the metal fence had rusted. Slowly, Gemma stepped towards the building.
She knew she was staring at the right place, and not just because of the photo she’d seen or what Wilf had said, but because there, standing on the footpath and shaking hands with a woman in a smart suit, was Kent.