Nicholson takes a large gulp of water and a deep breath. He looks back and forth between the two of us with a pained expression.
‘Ah, yes. Well. I suppose I was.’
I try to keep my face still but feel my eyes bug open. An odd little trickle of relief courses through me as I wonder whether this means Rodney is off the hook. ‘You were in a relationship with her?’
He stares past us towards the lemon tree. ‘Of sorts.’
Felix inhales sharply. A butterfly veers close to my head and I think I can hear the beat of its tiny wings.
Felix says, ‘Were you having a sexual relationship with Ms Ryan? I need you to answer.’
Nicholson looks at Felix with something between pity and sadness. ‘No, no. The very opposite, I suppose you’d say.’
I lean forward, forcing his eyes to meet mine. ‘Mr Nicholson, you need to be more specific. This is a murder investigation, so it is very important for us to understand any relationship Ms Ryan was in.’
He holds my gaze. ‘She was my daughter.’
A strange sense of calm washes over me.
Felix avoids my eyes. ‘Your daughter!’ he says.
I feel like I am in a tunnel. Wind kisses at my face and as I look at Nicholson suddenly I can see it: the same curve of the cheekbones, the similar slant of his eyes. ‘Your daughter,’ I repeat dumbly.
‘Yes.’ He sighs, clearly exhausted at birthing this revelation. His hand wobbles as he drinks some more water. ‘I’m not sure exactly how it’s relevant, but what do you need to know?’
‘Tell us everything.’
Birds twitter from behind their leafy curtain as John Nicholson tells us the story of how he came to be Rosalind Ryan’s father.
‘I was married to Jessica, you see. Probably for almost three years when I met Olivia Ryan. Jessica and I were happy, but—and this is hard to explain—she didn’t need me. She loved me, I knew that, but she was very self-sufficient, very strong. And then Olivia came along and all she did was need. She had her three sons already, but she was miserable. She wasn’t happy in her marriage, she had a tendency to intense melancholy. In hindsight it’s obvious that she was deeply troubled, but at the time I admit I was simply captivated.’
‘Where did you meet?’
He chuckles softly, remembering. ‘At the library, actually. She was there with her boys, who were giving her a hard time. I noticed her struggling and offered to help her carry the books to the car. We put the children in the car and then she started crying. I comforted her as best I could and instantly I knew I wanted to see her again.’ He toyed with his watch, unclipping it and then snapping it gently back on. ‘I’ve never felt an attraction so strong.’ Nicholson looks at me intensely again and I have to look away. I avoid looking at Felix, worrying that our own attraction will betray us.
‘And this was when?’ I ask quietly.
‘About a year before Rosalind was born.’
‘Okay, then what happened?’
He shrugs simply. ‘We started seeing each other. She would call me at the school or on Sunday morning, when I told her Jessie would be at church, and we would arrange to meet. We’d go on drives, meet for coffee in Gowran. She had help with the boys and Jessica and I had no children so it was remarkably easy to find time to meet. She was unwell though. She hid it quite well, but even so, I knew. I suppose I didn’t really want to admit how unwell she might be in case it meant I had to stop seeing her.’
‘And then she got pregnant?’ Felix asks.
His eyes become cloudy. ‘Yes. That was not part of the plan, but she told me a few months later that she was pregnant. I asked if the child was mine and she said she thought so but she wasn’t sure. We never spoke much about her marriage but she was fascinated with mine. I knew that she felt trapped, that George Ryan was a formidable man and that she loved the children, but the details of how they were when they were alone together remain a mystery to me. I don’t know if they were still lovers or not. She was vague on the topic. Olivia never spoke about things she didn’t want to.’ He clears his throat and breaks into a cough, tapping his fist against his chest. ‘I assumed the child was mine and I am ashamed to say that I panicked. I didn’t want to hurt Jessie, or lose her, and I wasn’t quite sure what to do. Olivia seemed terrified at the idea of having another baby but seemed sure that staying with George was for the best. She wasn’t exactly a maternal woman but she had a fierce love for her sons.’
‘Did you see her during the pregnancy?’ I picture a caged Olivia Ryan, heavy with her baby, trapped in her castle, yearning for her true love.
‘I did, but less. She became aggressive, very difficult. We would arrange to meet and then she wouldn’t show up. Or she would call me at odd times, crying uncontrollably. Jessica became suspicious and I was beside myself. I didn’t know what to do. It was around this time that Jessica told me she wanted to try for a baby and it was all very hard.’
My throat feels tight and I sit up straight to try to let the air in. I feel the weight of the past few weeks begin to close in on me. ‘When did you last speak to Olivia?’ I manage to ask.
‘Well, of course I had no idea that it would end up the way it did. I saw her, I think, about four days before Rose was born. She was still quite manic but she was excited about the baby. She told me she would name the child Rosalind if it was a girl. And of course she did. I read about her death in the paper just after Christmas. Almost thirty years ago now …’ He trails off in wonder.
This story still feels so raw somehow, its fault lines running across Nicholson’s face.
‘Did George Ryan ever contact you?’ I ask him. ‘Did you see the baby?’
‘Oh no, no. You see, I didn’t know what he knew and I would not have dreamed of intruding on that. I had Jessica to think about too. She’d been told that it was unlikely she could have children of her own, a cruel twist of fate. I always did wonder if that was my punishment.’
‘It must have been very hard for you to grieve so privately,’ I say, ‘without being able to tell anyone.’
‘Oh, Gemma, my dear girl, thank you for saying that. It’s so hard, you see, because you feel guilty for feeling sorry for yourself when you have behaved so badly, but the truth is I loved Olivia very much and not being able to grieve for her properly remains one of my biggest regrets. She may not have been my true love but I did love her.’
Felix says, ‘Okay, so you thought that Rosalind was your child but you stayed away. And then she suddenly turns up as a teacher?’
‘Well, she was a student first, of course.’
I nod, thinking of all the times I’d caught him watching her. I had assumed that he was simply under her spell like everyone else.
‘Yes, right. So first a student and then a teacher,’ I say. ‘And you never talked to her about any of this?’
‘I never once spoke to her of it. Definitely not when she was a student; I never would have destabilised her like that. I always assumed that she knew nothing.’