“So, we should probably think about heading back soon.”
Stacey murmured a non-committal ‘Uh-huh’ beside me.
“I think I have enough to go on to write the first part of the book, and I don’t see why we can’t do the rest back in London. You’re probably aching to get back to... work, aren’t not? See friends? I can do more research down there, it will be easier. Bit more hectic, maybe, but easier in other ways. Eh?”
Stacey made another noise, if just to dutifully plug the gaps between my words.
“So I suppose I should ask, is there anything you’ve not told me, anything I should know about before we leave? Anything integral to the book?”
Like...
“The tapes?”
No noise this time, just a shrug.
“At my flat, you asked me to collect stuff for you, from storage – the adoption papers, death certificate and will... and a box of tapes. In the shoebox?”
Stacey looked into the middle-distance, as if replaying that night in her mind.
“I never listened to them,” she said, finally. “I never had a tape player.”
“So you have no idea what is on them, who is on them?”
“Who? No. No idea at all...”
The microclimate in the room altered.
“...Why are you asking me?”
“Because we need to go home and... ”
“But what makes you think the tapes are important? They could be old recordings of the charts off the radio, anything.”
“I just want to be sure.”
Stacey’s eyes narrowed.
“You have listened to them. This place is ancient, it might have a tape player lying around somewhere.”
“It didn’t, I looked.”
She didn’t miss my slip.
“Didn’t?”
It was quicker to come clean. “I saw a Walkman in a charity shop this afternoon, so I bought it.”
“And?”
I couldn’t magic the tapes back under her bed, so...
“And, when you were in the bath, I had a listen to one.”
“They’re not yours to listen to!”
“No, they’re yours, but you didn’t listen to them!”
“That’s my choice!”
“Well, you made a stupid choice. What if they explain everything?”
“Do they?”
“I don’t know.”
“How can you not know, if you’ve listened to them?”
“I’ve listened to a few minutes of one of them, that’s all. You weren’t in the bath that long.”
“And what was it?”
“An interview. With an old woman. Who was in love with Charlie Chaplin. So she could be anybody. It is like, in 80-odd years, finding a recording of a woman who was gag for George Clooney and trying to work out her identity from that.”
“Nothing else?”
“She came from London, went to America, and that is as far as I have got. It might just be some school-project thing.”
“Or, it might be Estella’s mum – my grandma.”
“It might be.”
“So we should find out, listen to more of the tapes.”
Relieved the row had run aground, I sheepishly retrieved the shoebox and Walkman and we shared a pair of earbuds.
I zoned out for the first minute or two, just trying to catch a word the interviewer said, then, after “Concorde... Karno... Charles...” I started to pay attention again.