‘A lot of things would have been different if you hadn’t stayed hidden,’ Miriam says, and she can’t keep the censure out of her voice. Relief that her daughter is alive is giving way to hot fury, the kind she remembers from when Edith was little – those times when she lost sight of her in a park or on a beach, and had to search wildly, shouts becoming hysterical and other mothers helping with instinctive urgency. And then when Edith or Rollo were discovered, nonchalantly playing inside a hedge or squatting in the sand, how she would tear a strip off them and make them cry, that they might experience a tiny millisecond of her fear. ‘Don’t you ever, ever do that again.’ At the same time holding them very, very tight.
‘How could you stay away?’ she asks now. ‘How could you? You must’ve seen the scale of the manhunt, what the police were doing. You must’ve known everyone thought you were dead. That we thought you were dead.’
Edith starts to cry. ‘Don’t you see? It had all gone too far. It had gone too far for me to come back …’ She is gulping, and Miriam wonders if it is guilt that’s catching in her throat. ‘It was a thing I couldn’t undo, and then Helena died. This whole series of events was set off by me and I didn’t even … I didn’t expect it. The bigger it became – all over the news, the number of police officers involved – the more impossible it was for me to come home.’
‘You couldn’t send me an email, a postcard, telling me you were all right?’ Miriam asks.
Edith turns away. There is something in this question she cannot answer.
‘Edith?’ Miriam presses.
Edith
I can feel the gaps in my story, how they must seem to her. I can hear how lame my explanation must sound. And yet, in the quiet of the French countryside, the days went by. The more you don’t make contact, the more impossible contact becomes, as if silence can enlarge like a seep of blood. And in the solitude I found space. Freedom. Something heady and illicit. I didn’t want to return. I can’t say that to her. It is a selfishness too far. Her face, the colour of the ash in the grate, would look at me with too much sorrow and disappointment. Well, I’ve been disappointed too.
‘He let me down,’ I whisper. ‘He wasn’t the person I thought he was. He set such high standards for me and all the while—’
‘People have inner lives, Edie; you’re old enough to know that.’
‘But why would he kill a boy?’ I say, and in saying it, I’ve answered the question to myself.
She looks away. I can see she is ashamed.
‘Mum?’
‘They were …’ she begins. ‘They were having a relationship, it seems.’
‘A relationship?’
‘Yes,’ she says.
‘Is he …?’
‘Is he what?’ she says, looking at me sharply. ‘Gay? Straight? Are you? Is anyone just one thing?’
‘How can you forgive him?’
‘Who said anything about forgive?’
‘You seem …’ I begin, but I can’t find the right word. Accepting?
‘Perhaps I don’t set my standards for people quite as high as yours,’ she says.
‘He has always been the one with impossible standards,’ I say. ‘The one who set the bar so high when all the while he …’ I begin to cry: corrosive, satisfying, righteous tears. ‘I wasn’t even allowed to keep my baby, settle down with Jonti, lead an average life. Oh no, that wasn’t good enough, when all the time he was …’
She looks up, shocked. ‘You could have kept the baby, Edie. We never made you—’
‘That’s not how it felt,’ I say, and I am dealing in half-truths. ‘It was made clear to me that it would have been a failure. There were so many expectations.’
‘I never knew you felt that way about the baby, darling. We didn’t see it as making you get rid of it. We saw it as helping you make a sensible decision – for your life. And maybe we were wrong. I saw Jonti recently, when I was searching for you. And the thought occurred to me that the two of you could have made it work. He’s a decent chap. But we honestly thought we were doing right by you, Edie. There’s lots of time to have a baby; you don’t have to do it at eighteen, when it’s so hard. That’s not expectation – that’s love. We wanted the best for you. I don’t mean Cambridge; I mean I didn’t want you depressed and alone at eighteen with a screaming infant on your hands.’
She is looking at me now, with the concern I have longed for. She says, ‘Oh, I know Ian can be exacting and I can see you might think we wanted you to be perfect. God, maybe there was narcissism in it. I mean, which parent doesn’t want to say: “My daughter’s gone up to Cambridge”? But that’s nothing next to loving you, Edith.’
‘How was I supposed to know what I wanted when your expectation was so huge,’ I say, in a wail. ‘When all I ever wanted was to please you? Why is my life defined by pleasing you, when he … when he … he’s done something so immoral!’
It has backfired.
She has stood up and I can see the rage popping at her temples. Her words come out in a low growl, only just suppressing the violence I can see she feels towards me. ‘You are the child of a man. An ordinary man who has strengths and weaknesses, and who descended into a crisis. Yes, he’s done something terrible, for which he will face a very harsh punishment.