It takes me a while to compose myself, to be able to get all this out. ‘I wondered why you went into such detail . . .’ I try to swallow the blockage of emotion in my throat. ‘I thought maybe it was just the writer in you. You more than painted a picture of him, Evelyn. You took me there. You made me know him. I felt I was you. I felt I knew him like I was you.’ I frown. ‘That was all deliberate.’
She mops tears with her knuckles, and nods. A silver bracelet slides down her arm. On it is a single charm of a tiny woman wearing a top hat and sitting on a silver horse. I stare at it, and at the pale-blue veins against her papery pink skin. I can’t reconcile the Evelyn I thought I knew with the person whose actions broke up my parents’ marriage and cost me a father. They could almost be two different people. Or perhaps I’m the one who has changed. I don’t know who I am any more.
‘I wanted you to know about him; as much as I could tell you, anyway. I wanted you to know the truth – that he didn’t abandon you. Events didn’t happen the way you were possibly told – or not told. I realise there is probably a lot you weren’t told.’
She meets my eyes, and I glimpse the tender yet determined streak that I’d observed from day one.
‘He would have wanted you to know that. More than anything in the world, he would have hated you living the rest of your life believing he ran off with some woman and didn’t give a damn about you because he didn’t love you.’
I listen, but am reaching ahead. ‘In all your conversations you never mentioned his daughter’s name, or his wife’s, for that matter. That must have been quite a feat! I’m not sure how I didn’t twig.’
Or had I perhaps had an idea? When I saw Eddy that first day in the gallery, I’d likened his good looks to those of the matinee idols I grew up watching. But could I have possibly remembered him? Did one’s memory even stretch that far back?
I just keep revisiting that moment when I read Eddy’s full name. The complete slap of impossibility and disbelief.
‘I haven’t really thought of myself as April Alice Fairchild in years.’
‘You hated the name April. Your father told me. It was one of the first things he ever said about you, actually. No one you knew was called April, you see. You were only five years old, and yet you knew your own mind enough to know you wanted to be called a popular name.’
She speaks about me as though she was there, witnessing my childhood. Then I think, But in a way she was. At the reference to my father in this context, though, a feeling of pleasure tries to surface, amidst the confusion. ‘I did hate my name. It was a little too Doris Day . . . Some silly kids in my class used to call me March or November . . . When I went to Uni I started going by Alice – my grandmother’s name. I felt I suited it better. It was just way more me.’
‘I know. I saw the roll call of honours graduates. I saw you in your graduation gown.’ A note of pride appears on her face. ‘The alumni magazine listed that you’d taken a position here in Newcastle. That’s how I knew.’
‘I don’t understand. Were you keeping track of me?’ This, too, is only dawning on me now. ‘You must have been! I mean, how did you orchestrate it all?’
‘There wasn’t much to orchestrate. I think I must have had a little help from forces beyond our control. Forces of right.’ She briefly looks up at the ceiling. ‘I kept in touch with Stanley, as you know, simply because I couldn’t sever the link to Eddy entirely. I knew that your mother had moved away. I knew about the terrible thing that happened in the bar . . . Stanley was aware how much I blamed myself.’
She appears to wilt. I’ve seen this before – where something she’s thinking seems to bring her to her knees. ‘Stanley died last year. He was eighty-FOUR. He was a good man. He was a fine friend.’
After a moment, she regains her train of thought. ‘As for other details . . . it was quite easy for me to find things out. I was a journalist, remember? Even if you had worked in Timbuktu, I’d have found you and told you what I felt you needed to know. But, as it was, it ended up being a lot easier than that. The exhibition was just a perfect opportunity that presented itself – pure fluke. When I saw the picture of Christina’s World in the newspaper, it brought back so many memories of my own yearnings for Holy Island and my home. I just thought that if there was anything that could get through to Eddy, turn on a light in his mind, perhaps that image of Christina could . . . And there, at the heart of it, was you.’
I find myself once again in a rush to talk and a rush to listen. ‘I don’t know what to comment on first, Evelyn! My head is spinning! I feel so terrible because I just assumed my father was a shyster. Because my mother led me to believe that.’
‘If it hadn’t been for me, you’d have grown up with him in your life, and you’d have known what a good man he was. And Eddy wouldn’t have ended up with a brain injury and then dementia!’ She cups her mouth for a second or two in a soundless gasp.
I suddenly think of the burden of guilt. And, of course, this makes me think of Justin; Justin and his guilt about his gene pool. I feel so desperately sad.
‘I can’t imagine what it’s like for you to learn all this, or how I would react if I were you, Alice. Or what you must think of me. I hope you don’t feel manipulated. I wasn’t trying to get close to you to somehow make it easier to drop this on you. I felt a genuine bond with you, and I still do.’
‘I don’t know, Evelyn.’ I honestly don’t know how I feel toward Evelyn right now. ‘I think the magnitude of it all is hitting me in waves. I suppose I’m just taking it all in and waiting for the next thing to hit.’