The Secret Kiss of Darkness by Christina Courtenay

told her in her dream. Now that she was actually here she suddenly felt very stupid. Surely it must have been a figment of her imagination? After all, how could it not have been? And what would Jessie say when none of it was found to be true and no one of that name had ever existed?
    ‘Jago Kerswell, born 1754 at Marcombe in Devon,’ Jessie read out loud. ‘Okay, let’s see if there are any indexes here for the parish of Marcombe.’ The library had an entire shelf full of books relating to the county of Devonshire, and Jessie was soon browsing while Kayla waited nearby. She chewed on a fingernail and looked around in awe at all the other people in the room who seemed very busy with their research. She felt like a fraud, but Jessie’s next words calmed her down slightly. ‘You mustn’t expect too much, you know. Sometimes the records of a certain place haven’t survived and even if they have, they might be fragmentary. So don’t be too upset if we don’t find anything today.’
    ‘All right.’
    ‘Oh, look, here’s something.’ Jessie took a book off the shelf and started to leaf through it. ‘Hmm, well, it says here that Marcombe is a tiny little place by the coast and there is a family of the same name who held the manor for a long time, but there’s no index to the parish registers.’
    Kayla almost blurted out, ‘So it exists then!’, but managed to bite back the words. She didn’t want Jessie to think her completely mad. She was extremely relieved to find there was at least a place of that name in Devon though, but she supposed she could have heard it somewhere and still made the rest of the story up. ‘Er, so then what do we do?’ she asked.
    ‘We’ll have to go downstairs and see if they have the actual register on microfilm. Then it’s just a case of trawling through it. Let’s go.’ Jessie replaced the book and set off towards the stairs, looking over her shoulder with a smile. ‘You’ll have to excuse me if I get a bit carried away. It’s the thrill of the chase, so to speak. I just love it.’
    ‘You do this a lot?’
    ‘Oh, yes. I’m doing a one-name study on my mother’s surname which is Delessay and I’ve been working on it for years. My grandmother got me started with one of those stories about how the family had been rich and owned lots of land which they were subsequently cheated out of. I was curious to find out if it was true and pretty soon I was hooked on genealogy. It’s really addictive, you know.’
    ‘And was it true, the story?’
    Jessie laughed. ‘No, at least not back to the seventeenth century, which is as far as I’ve got. I think it was wishful thinking on Grandma’s part, but then she was never happy with anything she had. I’ve found farmers, blacksmiths and innkeepers, but the majority of my ancestors were agricultural labourers who couldn’t even read or write. None of them owned much land, if any.’
    ‘What did your granny say when you told her?’
    ‘Luckily she died before I got very far, so I didn’t have to disillusion her.’ Jessie smiled again. ‘I doubt if she’d have believed me anyway. She was the sort of person who would say it was a misprint if you showed her proof of something in a book.’ They both laughed.
    ‘I know the type. My dad’s a bit like that.’
    Kayla found the microfilm room fascinating. There were lots of other eager genealogists – whether amateur or professional she didn’t know – who were glued to the lit-up screens of the microfilm readers, quietly browsing through reel after reel of genealogical documents. She observed them and admired their patience, while Jessie left her to look for the Marcombe parish registers.
    ‘I’ve got it.’ Jessie returned, triumphantly brandishing a small plastic box. ‘That was lucky because they don’t have copies of all the registers here. Saves you going all the way to Exeter or waiting weeks for the film to arrive at the Mormon centre.’
    ‘What have they got to do