Chapter 505 Big Girls Don't Cry:>36

• The summer eventually fizzled out into the gathering gloom of autumn, and the kids went back to school, but they stayed close; most weekends they were with us, or we went to see them in Portishead, the seaside town in North Somerset Lizzie had chosen to live in, a short way down the M5 motorway. The beach at Portishead is a summer beach not too far from the mouth of the Severn Estuary, and so at the end of the season everything was closed, but it was nice to stroll along the miles of golden sand on the occasional sunny day and watch the big Atlantic rollers come in up the Bristol Channel as the weather in the North Atlantic gradually worsened at the closing of the year. I'd hoped to get some time off over Christmas, but as most junior consultant on the general surgery team, I drew the short straw in the Annual Leave lottery, which meant no real leave until probably near Easter, late March or early April. I got to spend Christmas at home with Lena, Lizzie and the children, and Aunt Doreen, and then they'd all gone to Cyprus, while I went back on rotation until after New Year; while everyone was busily singing 'Auld Lang Syne' I was knee-deep in work, learning the intricacies of triple-bypass surgery.
• I did get some interesting and intriguing news, though; after my conversation with Emma about my aunt and missing cousins in London, I'd asked a few colleagues in the hospitals in and around south and south-west London if there were any correlations with the names Sandra Lois Jameson, Julie Jameson, or Mark Jameson. A Julie Jameson, aged 13, had been treated in St. Georges, Tooting Broadway, for a cracked cheekbone sustained during a volleyball game; that had been five years ago, so she was eighteen now. Her next of kin had been listed as a Mark Jameson, aged sixteen. That made me pause; the coincidence was too compelling. Julie and her brother had been in South London five years before, so there was a chance they still were. The next time I saw Emma I'd pass it on, and she could take it from there.
• Lena, Lizzie and the children came home just in time for the start of school after the Christmas holiday, and I finally got Lena to myself at last. I was jumping with anticipation, as well as talking sternly to a cock that wanted to jump out and ravage her there in the Arrivals Lounge; I think Lizzie read my agonised expression, soundly deflecting Marcus and Allie's request to come back and spend some time with Lena and me, instead persuading them that Lena was tired after the flight and she didn't want to be entertaining after such a long flight. Lizzie insisted on taking a taxi back to Portishead, while giving me the dirtiest wink I'd ever seen...