Read My Second Life for Free Online Page A

don’t know — try the hall.”
    I walked into the hall and moved the mail around, searching.
    â€œWhy don’t you ring it?”
    I bent down to look under the side table.
    â€œGot it — I’ve got it,” I said, picking up the phone.
    â€œBrilliant. Look, I’m expecting a call this afternoon. I’ll come to school at lunchtime. How about I take you for a crepe. You can give it to me then. Okay?”
    I turned Rachel’s phone over in my hand.
    There was a missed call from school.
    Yesterday, 3 p.m.
    And an icon indicating there was a new voice mail.
    â€œAna? Did you hear me?”
    â€œYup. That’s fine,” I said.
    â€œI’ll meet you at the school gates. We’ll walk to the crêperie together. Okay?”
    â€œOkay,” I said, and she hung up.
    I deleted the voice mail and turned her phone off, dropping it in my bag as I closed the front door behind me.
    *   *   *
    The local library was not like the school library. It smelled damp. It was muffled in every way — muffled noise, muffled people in muffled coats. It personified hush. The school library was bright and light, and full of computers.
    I had no idea where to start. I went up to the desk and asked the librarian if she could help me. She sighed, set down her pen and said, “Come with me.”
    I followed her as she padded across the spongy carpet into a back room with three computers. They looked like ancient relics.
    â€œAll our archived periodicals are stored here. You’ve got your library number?”
    I gave her Rachel’s card. I’d taken it out of the kitchen drawer before I left. She plugged in the number across the card with her right hand and pushed her glasses up over her nose with her left simultaneously.
    â€œIt’s pretty simple. You put in some key words … here … Use this scroll button here … to search through what comes up … Click into the record or report you wish to view. You can’t take copies but you can make a note of the document number that comes up … here … And then you can always come back and go straight to it if you need to refer to it again.” Every time she said the word “here” she pointed with a slightly arthritic finger, paused heavily, and looked at me seriously through her smeary glasses.
    When she left, I was relieved. I took my coat off and started.
    42 The Avenue.
    Nothing. Of course. I wasn’t sure why I’d plugged that in first.
    I started again.
    Drowning.
    Hundreds of references came up in twenty-eight separate publications. I started to look through the first few. Nothing relevant. Anywhere the word “drowning” or “drown” occurred in any local newspaper or publication from the time records began seemed to be logged here.
    The council offices are drowning in applications for …
    Dog drowns after swimming in high river tides …
    â€œDrowned Rats” was the caption under a photograph from 1967 of a group of pensioners who were all soaked by a new sprinkler system set up in a care home in Richmond.
    I realized I could literally spend the next five days of my life in this room if I was going to get anywhere. I needed to narrow the search.
    Catherine Wells, Drowning.
    Typing it out, seeing her name like that in black and white, made it feel so real again. I could see her face opposite mine, the crowns of our heads gently touching as I bent down to help her put on her shoes in the hall. Frances was laughing in the other room, and then she came out and she told us to hurry up so we could go out to play before it got dark. And we went. But I didn’t want to go at all.
    The computer churned through the records, and five publications came up from my search. The third report from the local newspaper — the Teddington Times dated Monday, September 28, 1981 — told me all I needed to know:
    Catherine Wells,