Eddy looks at her as though he’s adding one more random clue to an ongoing mystery.
‘I’d like to stay here tonight,’ I tell Michael, as we eat cold pizza and drink a beer some hours later in the staff kitchen. ‘If it’s okay for me to sleep on the couch in his room.’
‘You might regret it. He wanders a lot. You might not exactly sleep.’
‘If he wanders, I’ll wander with him. If that’s all right.’
‘Of course. And we do have a spare room here for guests. If you get tired, you can always go in there and rest properly. No one will bother you – or at least, we can hope. It’ll be like a dry run for when you get old.’ He smiles, still looking at me with so much affection. ‘I’ll unlock the door for you and leave the key on the inside.’
‘Michael,’ I rest a hand on his pleasantly muscular upper arm, recognising, as I do, that I actually just want to touch him. ‘Why have you not been snatched up by some lucky young woman?’
‘I don’t know. Older ones seem to like me more.’ His face fills with devilishness.
We walk to Eddy’s room now. ‘Tell me,’ I say, because I have to ask this. ‘Did you know all along that Eddy was my dad? I think you must have done. The names . . . Evelyn’s stories.’
‘Ah!’ I see a tell-tale flicker of guilt in his expression. ‘I can’t really say. Remember I once told you I can keep a secret? But, say I didn’t know, I’d know, anyway.’ He smiles. ‘You look like him.’ He taps the end of my nose. ‘The hooter’s a dead giveaway.’
I laugh. ‘My hooter! How can you call my lovely nose that?’
‘Well, it’s the high cheekbones, too . . .’ He looks at me with a certain prolonged objectivity that makes me flush. ‘It’s obvious to anyone with eyes.’
‘That might well be the best thing anyone has ever said to me, Michael,’ I tell him, very quietly. ‘It actually makes me happier than you could ever know.’
We stop at Eddy’s door. Michael’s bare arm accidentally grazes mine; the warm brush of his fine hairs is a lovely static charge. ‘I’d like to make you happier than you’ve ever known,’ he says. And he says it so quietly that I have to stare into his eyes for a sign that I’ve heard him correctly.
All the things I should say line up. I’m not ready. It’s too early. How can I ever trust again? But he places one finger on my slightly parted mouth and presses there, his eyes busy telling me something. Michael isn’t in a rush. Michael is modestly saying, Fall for me in your own good time.
I kiss his finger and smile.
FORTY-FOUR
Evelyn is one of the most enigmatic people I know. Every time I see her, she has a surprise for me.
‘I found it!’ She gives a joyful little skip. ‘I’ve looked everywhere. I knew it had to be in one of these amazingly bountiful boxes somewhere.’
In the centre of Evelyn’s lounge are about eight storage containers with their contents – everything from a corset to ancient-looking magazines – strewn all over the place.
‘My gosh, it looks like you’re having a jumble sale!’ I laugh.
She hands me a book. It’s a glossy paperback with a simple, intriguing cover of a dark-red Venetian blind pulled part way down a window. At the bottom, in embossed gold, are the words: After You Left, A Novel, by Joanna Smart.
‘Who’s Joanna Smart?’ I ask, but immediately realise. ‘Oh gosh! You are!’
‘I was published in 1987 by one of Britain’s most venerated publishing houses.’
‘This is fabulous!’ I turn the book over and scan the blurb.
They meet at a wedding. They know each other for only one day. But it’s a day that changes the rest of their lives . . .
One magazine has called it, A modern-day Lady Chatterley’s Lover. ‘It’s the story of you and my dad!’
Evelyn’s eyes light up. ‘Well, it didn’t start off that way. I’m not really sure what it started off as. I think I always had the theme, I just needed the right story to hang it on. And when I met your dad again, I found my story. It was like it had always been there.’
I look at her tears and think, God, is it really possible to cry for an entire lifetime over someone? ‘But the title? You were the one who left, not Eddy?’
‘Yes. And yet you can never know how many times I’ve played over the vision of him walking away from my front door when he’d come to take me on our date. As I stood and peeked from behind those curtains . . .’
My brows pull together. I can’t bear to picture it. I flick through the first couple of pages. ‘Look! You dedicated it: For Eddy.’
I just want to disappear into a room and read. I quickly find the first page.
Northumberland. 1983
At first all she saw was the back of his head. He was on the other side of the vast laurel tree that divided two sections of the garden . . . I skip ahead. He always came on Tuesdays, her mother had told her.
‘After he would leave, after we had made love and I was glowing from him, I would scramble to get it all on to paper. Everything I’d done and felt and said, all day. Everything he’d said . . . I was always good at shorthand. I knew that abysmal secretarial training would finally come in handy.’ She smiles. ‘I’d like you to have it, obviously. You didn’t have the benefit of knowing him as a dad. So at least this way, you’re going to know Eddy, the man – more of an account than I’ve even been able to give you.’
I clutch it to my heart. She watches me, and there’s a vaguely self-satisfied expression on her face, and I love it. I am unspeakably grateful to her.
‘I walked away from Eddy. Justin walked away from you. Neither of us did it because we’d stopped caring. You and your father both lost the person they loved to someone else. You have more in common than you might have thought.’