Are they dead?

[Phoenix]

I am researching a parade of shops - Cranleigh Parade, Nell! - and popped into the local estate agents, in search of more information.

They told me that the old lady who ran the local hairdressers lived above the shop and was working into her nineties. When she died, her nephew sold the shop and the flat upstairs.

Hmm.

One electoral roll from the early 2000s shows the "nephew" also living in the flat, and gives me the hairdresser's name. Same surname as his, and she is born in 1928.

His father had one brother and his aunt by marriage died in Sussex.

His father remarried in the 1980s. His mother had the same christian name as the woman he was living with.

Tracing her back, she is the only child of her parents, and is redacted on the 1939 register.

It's perfectly reasonable that I should have been told a few porky pies. GDPR and all that.

I have found the property sale, in 2021. I've also found a will, for a death in 2024.

As I cannot find a death around the time of the sale, but the name is uncommon, do you reckon I go for the will? Any other things to go for? I can't find anything regarding her death online.