Chapter 5

 After my unsuccessful attempt to reach Harriet, I sat back in my chair and stared at the bounced‑back email notification. It felt strangely final, as though the address hadn’t just been wrong — it had been closed off to me. I hesitated for a moment, then opened a new draft and began typing to Jane, hoping she might bridge the gap.

I read the message aloud quietly before sending it, just to make sure it sounded right:

“Dear Jane, I hope you’ll be able to help me. I’ve been trying to contact Rachel—Harriet, as she introduced herself—because we met and she was keen for me to carry out some research. The email address I used must have been wrong. Could you drop her a line and arrange another meeting? Kind regards, Archie.”

I hit Send and watched the message disappear from my outbox. There was nothing more I could do but wait.

The reply came later that afternoon. Short, direct, and exactly what I needed:

Harriet would meet me at The Ship & Shovell.

I exhaled, relieved. At least the line of communication wasn’t broken — just rerouted.

The rest of the day passed in a kind of quiet anticipation. I gathered my notes, printed a few documents, and tried to organise my thoughts. Something about Harriet’s request felt different from the usual family‑history enquiries. She had been eager, almost urgent, and the way she’d used two names still lingered in my mind.

The next day, the rain finally stopped.

By early evening, London had begun to dry out. The pavements still shone beneath the streetlights, and water pooled in the gutters, but after days of grey skies and umbrellas, it felt almost pleasant to walk without rain beating against my coat.

I made my way towards The Ship & Shovell at 1–3 Craven Passage, not far from Charing Cross Station. I had chosen it partly for convenience and partly because I liked the place. The Ship & Shovell is an unusual pub—two separate buildings facing each other across the narrow passage, connected by an underground tunnel where the kitchen sits. You can order food in one building and have it prepared below ground before it is carried up to whichever side you happen to be sitting in. There is something wonderfully eccentric about that arrangement. From outside, you might assume you were looking at two different pubs. Only when you know about the tunnel beneath your feet does the whole thing make sense.

One side looks like a traditional Victorian pub, all mirrors, dark wood and polished brass catching the light. The other is cosier, with booths tucked against the walls and an upstairs room slightly removed from the bustle below.

I paused for a moment before going in, adjusting my bag on my shoulder. The message to Jane, Harriet’s pseudonym, the bounced email — all of it had led to this meeting. Whatever she wanted me to uncover, whatever she suspected about her family line, tonight would be the start of it.

I arrived early.

I nearly always arrive early when meeting someone for the first time. It gives me time to settle, observe the room and—perhaps most importantly—choose where to sit. I ordered a drink and found a booth where I could see the entrance without appearing to watch it. I placed my notebook on the table, set my pen beside it and waited.

Five minutes passed.

Then ten.

The pub grew busier around me. Office workers came through the door in twos and threes, loosening ties and shrugging off coats. Behind me came the clatter of glasses being collected. Each time the door opened, I glanced towards it.

Still no Harriet.

I began to wonder whether I had misunderstood the arrangement.

Then she arrived.

She walked in with the confidence of someone who expected to be noticed but had no particular interest in whether she was. A couple of men at the bar turned to look at her as she passed. She either didn’t notice or had long ago learned to ignore such things.

She spoke briefly to the bartender. He looked across the room and pointed towards me. She ordered a drink before coming over.

“Mr Winterbottom,” she said, offering her hand.

I stood and shook it. “Yes. Please call me Archie.”

“Archie, then.”

She sat opposite me.

Harriet—or Rachel, as I would later learn—was in her fifties and dressed as though she had come straight from work. There was something distinctly teacher‑like about her: practical clothes, sensible shoes and a large bag that looked heavy enough to contain a small library.

She had the composed, quietly efficient air of someone accustomed to long days filled with small decisions—marking, planning, answering questions, solving problems before they grew large enough to require attention from anyone else. Her hair, pulled back in a way that suggested both habit and necessity, had loosened slightly over the course of the day, giving her a faintly dishevelled look that did nothing to diminish her authority. If anything, it made her seem more real, more lived‑in.

Her coat was the sort worn by people who walk between buildings in all weathers: sturdy, dark, and chosen for its reliability rather than its appearance. When she shrugged it off, she did so with the practised motion of someone who has repeated the gesture thousands of times—staffroom, classroom, meeting, home, and now here, in a London pub with me.

Even the way she sat down had a certain deliberateness to it. She placed her glass exactly where she wanted it, adjusted her seat so she could see me clearly, and positioned her notebook with the precision of someone who had spent years arranging papers on desks. There was no fuss, no wasted movement. Everything she did seemed to have a purpose.

Her bag, resting beside her like a loyal companion, told its own story. The leather was worn at the corners, the strap reinforced where it had begun to fray. When she opened it, I caught a glimpse of the organised chaos inside: folders, books, loose sheets, a pencil case, something that looked like a rolled‑up timetable. It was the sort of bag that accumulates the detritus of a profession—things added with the intention of sorting them later, but later never quite arriving.

She carried herself with a confidence that wasn’t showy but deeply rooted. A confidence built not from arrogance but from competence. The kind of confidence that comes from years of being the person others rely on to know what is happening, what should happen next, and what must be done when things go wrong.

And yet, beneath all that practicality, there was a faint sense of performance—as though the teacher‑like exterior was a role she could slip into and out of when needed. A mask, perhaps. Or simply one layer of a person who had several.

I found myself watching her more closely than I intended, trying to understand the mixture of certainty and secrecy she carried with her. She seemed entirely at ease, yet there was something about her that suggested she had not come here merely to ask about her ancestors. Something in her manner hinted at expectation. Something in her eyes suggested she already knew more than she was saying.

She placed her bag beside her, set her glass carefully on the table, and produced a notebook. It was already well used. She opened it and turned through page after page of handwriting—dates, names, underlined words, short lists. Some pages had arrows connecting one note to another. Others had things circled two or three times.

Eventually she reached a blank page.

“Once again we meet,” she said.

“Yes,” I replied.

I hesitated. “Last time… well, there was some misfortune. I met a number of people who…” I stopped. There are moments when finishing a sentence will only create several more questions, none of which you particularly want to answer. There was no need to tell her everything.

I changed direction. “You’re interested in me doing your family history?”

“Yes. Very much so.”

She uncapped her pen. “I want to know how far you can go back, who you might find, and anything else you might uncover beyond the basic names.”

That caught my attention.

Most people begin with the same question: How far back can you get? They imagine genealogy as a ladder—parents, grandparents, great‑grandparents, each generation another rung. For some, success means reaching the seventeenth century. Others want a connection to royalty, a famous surname or someone who once owned a large house.

Names and dates satisfy most people.

But names and dates have never interested me as much as the lives between them.

A birth certificate tells you somebody arrived.

A marriage certificate tells you whom they married.

A death certificate tells you when they left.

The interesting part is everything that happened in between.

Occupations. Addresses. Money. Court cases. Newspapers. Wills. Arguments. Scandals. Businesses that succeeded and businesses that collapsed. Children who disappeared from later censuses. Families who moved halfway across the country without any obvious reason.

Sometimes there was no mystery at all.

Sometimes there was far too much of one.

“As you know,” Rachel continued, “you did a huge family tree for Jane in Australia.”

“I remember.”

“That was where you found my three‑times‑great‑grandmother, Mary Herbert.”

I opened my notebook.

“She married Joseph Simpson,” Rachel said.

I wrote the names down.

Mary Herbert. Joseph Simpson.

A good starting point.

“I want you to follow his line.”

“Joseph’s?”

“Yes.”

She wrote the same names in her own notebook. For a moment we were both doing exactly the same thing.

“You know I’m going to be doing the research?” I asked.

She smiled. “I like to have a plan.”

“A plan?”

“To see where I should go.”

It struck me as slightly odd. She had hired me to investigate her family, yet she seemed determined to map the investigation herself. I wondered whether she simply enjoyed being organised or whether she already knew more about Joseph Simpson than she was telling me.

“Do you know anything about him already?” I asked.

“Only what came from Jane’s tree.”

“Nothing else?”

“Nothing useful.”

The wording interested me.

Not nothing.

Nothing useful.

Before I could ask what she meant, she finished her drink.

“Another?”

“Yes, please.”

She took my glass and went to the bar.

I watched her for a moment before looking back at the two names on the page. Joseph Simpson. There was nothing remarkable about the name. If anything, it was the opposite. Simpson was common enough, and Joseph hardly narrowed matters down. Researching men with ordinary names can be maddening. One wrong census entry and you can spend hours following the life of an entirely unrelated Joseph Simpson who happened to be born in roughly the right place at roughly the right time.

Rachel returned with two glasses and placed mine in front of me.

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

She sat down and immediately reopened the notebook.

There was still one question I needed to ask. It had been bothering me since our first correspondence.

“May I ask you something?”

“Of course.”

“Why are you Harriet?”

She looked amused.

“Considering your name is Rachel,” I added.

She laughed. “Yes, Archie. I wondered when you’d ask.”

She took a drink.

“Why?”

“‘Harriet’ is my pseudonym.”

“For various things.”

A wonderfully vague answer.

“And Rachel?”

“Rachel is my real name.”

“Why not use it?”

“I do.” She paused. “When I’m comfortable with someone.”

I looked at her. “So I’m supposed to take this as a compliment.”

“You may take it however you like.”

I smiled. “Rachel it is, then.”

“For now.”

There was something about the way she said it that made me wonder whether I had passed some test without knowing I had been taking one.

She turned to another page in her notebook and wrote down a date, the pen moving with quick, decisive strokes.

“How does a fortnight, or sooner, sound, Archie, for you to carry out this work?”

She wrote the date down on the page and circled it several times—once, twice, a third time—each loop firm, deliberate, as though she were marking the beginning of something rather than merely scheduling it.

“After all,” she said, looking up, “you have done half the work with Jane.”

“Yes, of course,” I replied. “I’ll have all this done, then. Shall we say we meet back here?”

That was written down as well—same neat handwriting, same certainty of intention.

She closed the notebook but kept one hand resting on top of it.

For a few moments neither of us spoke. Around us, the pub had grown louder. Someone laughed near the bar. A door opened somewhere behind me, bringing a brief draught through the room. Beneath our feet, invisible to everyone drinking above it, people moved through the tunnel between the two halves of the pub.

I found myself thinking about Joseph Simpson. A dead man with an ordinary name. A man who had probably never imagined that, generations later, two strangers would be sitting in a London pub discussing him.

I looked across at Rachel. She had hired me to find him. Yet I couldn’t shake the feeling that she already knew where she wanted me to look.

By now the pub had swollen to its usual evening density — office workers shedding their day, revellers beginning theirs, the air thick with laughter, clinking glassware, and the warm fug of conversation. The quiet hour I had enjoyed earlier had vanished beneath the rising tide of voices. People pressed shoulder to shoulder around the bar, and every few seconds someone squeezed past our booth, heading either upstairs or toward the mirrored half of the pub across the tunnel.

Among them was Len.

At first, I wasn’t certain.

He stood at the bar with a pint balanced loosely in one hand, apparently waiting to be served, though his attention was nowhere near the pumps. His gaze drifted slowly across the room, cataloguing faces with the patience of a man who already knew what — or whom — he was looking for.

Searching.

Then he saw me.

Our eyes met for barely a heartbeat.

That was enough.

A thin ribbon of unease unfurled in my stomach and began its slow ascent toward my chest.

Rachel was still talking — Joseph Simpson, Mary Herbert, dates, something about a baptism or a census return — but her voice had begun to recede, as though she were speaking from the far end of a long corridor. I nodded occasionally, hoping the timing matched whatever she had just said, while keeping Len fixed at the edge of my vision.

He hadn’t moved.

He was watching me.

“Archie?”

I turned back to her.

“Sorry?”

She studied my face with a teacher’s instinct for distraction.

“You seem… elsewhere.”

“No. Just thinking.”

It wasn’t convincing.

She glanced over her shoulder, perhaps trying to identify the source of my sudden disquiet.

I immediately dropped my gaze to my notebook.

“You were saying?”

She watched me for a moment longer.

Then she closed her notebook with quiet finality.

“Archie, you have everything you need.”

“Yes.”

“I must go. I’ve a mountain of work before school tomorrow.”

“Of course.”

She slipped the notebook into her bag, followed by several books and a precarious bundle of papers. How she carried that weight daily without permanent spinal damage was a mystery.

She stood.

“A fortnight.”

“A fortnight,” I echoed.

“And sooner if—”

“If I find anything interesting.”

“Exactly.”

She smiled, adjusted the strap on her shoulder, and began moving toward the door.

Len moved before she reached it.

He stepped away from the bar and opened the door for her.

Rachel offered a polite smile.

“Thank you.”

“My pleasure,” Len replied.

She passed him and disappeared into Craven Passage.

Len held the door open for a second longer.

Then he let it close.

He turned toward me.

The smile vanished.

I remained seated. Every instinct urged me to leave, but doing so would have meant walking directly toward him. Instead, I stared at my notebook as though Joseph Simpson had suddenly become the most compelling figure in British genealogical history.

I heard Len approaching.

Not because his footsteps were loud.

Because I was listening for them.

He stopped beside the booth.

I looked up.

“Evening,” he said.

“Len.”

He smiled again.

It wasn’t a pleasant smile.

Without invitation, he slid into the seat Rachel had just vacated.

For a moment, neither of us spoke.

The pub carried on around us — football arguments, bursts of laughter, the clatter of glasses being stacked. Nobody paid us any attention.

That was the peculiar truth of threatening conversations: you imagined the entire room must sense them, yet everyone else continued with their evening.

Len leaned back.

“Dave…”

He frowned theatrically, as though rummaging through a cluttered memory.

“Oh yes. Winterbottom.”

“My name’s Archie.”

“Is it?”

“You know it is.”

He shrugged.

“Names. I meet a lot of people.”

He took a drink.

“We haven’t heard from you in a while.”

I said nothing.

“Mr Anderson is getting concerned.”

A pause.

“Anxious, even.”

“I’ve been busy.”

“Have you?”

“Yes.”

Len’s gaze drifted to my notebook.

“Family trees?”

I closed it.

“Work.”

“Right.”

He nodded slowly.

“Work.”

The way he repeated the word made it sound faintly ridiculous.

He leaned forward.

“Mr Anderson thinks you’ve forgotten him.”

“I haven’t.”

“No?”

“No.”

“Because you haven’t been in touch.”

“I said I’ve been busy.”

“Everyone’s busy.”

He took another sip.

“But when Mr Anderson asks someone to stay in touch, he expects them to stay in touch.”

“I understand.”

“Do you?”

“Yes.”

Len placed his glass carefully on the table.

“Because he’s starting to wonder whether we need to pay you a visit.”

The noise of the pub seemed to fall away.

“A visit?”

“To remind you.”

“No.”

The word escaped too quickly.

Len noticed.

His smile returned.

“No?”

“No need.”

“Good.”

I began gathering my belongings — notebook, pen, phone — shoving them into my bag with none of my usual care.

Len watched.

“Leaving already?”

“Yes.”

“But I’ve only just arrived.”

“I’ve got work.”

“Everyone’s got work, Archie.”

He emphasised my name this time.

I stood.

Len remained seated.

For a moment, I wondered whether he would stop me.

He didn’t.

“Tell Mr Anderson I’ll be in touch.”

“You tell him.”

I looked at him.

“What?”

“He’d rather hear it from you.”

“I said I’ll contact him.”

“When?”

“Soon.”

Len nodded.

“That word means different things to different people.”

“I’ll contact him.”

“Good.”

I stepped away from the table.

“Archie?”

I stopped.

I didn’t want to turn around.

I did anyway.

Len raised his glass.

“Don’t leave it too long.”

I said nothing.

Then I walked out.

The cold evening air struck me immediately. I moved quickly along Craven Passage, resisting the urge to glance back through the pub windows. Charing Cross was alive with commuters and tourists, taxis crawling through traffic, buses grinding toward Trafalgar Square.

I merged into the crowd.

Only then did I realise how tightly I was gripping the strap of my bag.

I loosened my hand.

My palm was damp.

What exactly did Anderson want?

And why now?

I had done what I believed I’d been asked to do. Yet Len’s appearance had not felt accidental.

Perhaps he had simply spotted me.

Perhaps.

I crossed with the lights and continued toward the station.

A peculiar sensation crept over me — not fear, but recognition.

I had felt this before.

A pub. A meeting. Someone appearing unexpectedly. A warning disguised as casual conversation.

I stopped walking.

People flowed around me, irritated by the sudden obstruction.

A memory surfaced — fragmented, indistinct.

Another meeting. Another investigation. That same feeling of being watched.

I tried to grasp it, but the harder I concentrated, the more it dissolved.

Was this what happened last time?

The thought lingered as I entered Charing Cross Station.

I told myself Len’s appearance had nothing to do with Rachel.

It couldn’t.

Anderson belonged to another problem entirely.

Rachel wanted a family tree. Joseph Simpson had been dead for generations. There was no possible connection.

At least, none I could see.

I reached the concourse and checked the departure board.

Then another thought struck me.

Len had been at the bar before Rachel left. He had watched the room. He had seen me sitting with her. And when she walked toward the door, he had opened it for her.

I pictured the moment again.

Rachel approaching. Len stepping forward. The door opening. Her smile. His smile. Thank you. My pleasure.

Perfectly ordinary.

Except Len wasn’t a man who did things simply to be polite.

I reached into my bag and pulled out my notebook. Beneath the departure board, surrounded by hundreds of people hurrying home, I opened it to the page I had written earlier.

Joseph Simpson.

Below it:

Why him?

I stared at the words.

Then I added another question:

Why was Len there?

I closed the notebook.

My train appeared on the board.

I headed toward the platform, reminding myself that genealogists warn against precisely this — finding connections where none exist, turning coincidence into evidence, building a story before establishing the facts.

London held millions of people.

People met by chance every day.

Len could have been drinking at The Ship & Shovell. Rachel could have walked past him. He could have held the door open.

Nothing suspicious.

I repeated that to myself all the way to the platform.

By the time the train arrived, I almost believed it.

Almost.