Girl A(26)

‘Are they all OK?’ he said, when he was back. He placed the coffees on the table, and Dr Kay took one for the warmth of it.

‘They are,’ she said. ‘You’ll have seen the press releases, of course. “The current whereabouts of the children are unknown.”’

‘So – with families who’ll care for them,’ he said. ‘People don’t need to know any more than that.’ He lifted his plastic cup, and toasted. ‘May they all live long and happy lives.’

‘There’s an exception,’ she said. She exhaled, covered her eyes with her hands. He reached for her.

‘I only came to you,’ she said, ‘on the basis of what you’ve said to me before. About what particular people take for granted. About what you and your wife might want.’

She had covered her eyes so that she didn’t have to look at him. Beneath her palms, her face was tired and hard. She knew exactly what she was doing.

Now, at sixty-five, the phone is ringing again.

Jameson is in the garden, working through the Sunday paper. Alice lies on the grass, reading the travel section. ‘You’re closer,’ she says. He swears, and rises from his deckchair, gathering his body out of it. He counts the rings of the phone, aware that he is becoming slower; each year there seem to be more rings before he can reach it.

‘Hello?’

‘Hello, Dad,’ I said.

‘Lex. We’ve been worried.’

All week, Delilah had ignored my messages, until her voicemail greeting started to sound secretive, then spiteful. That left a long Sunday afternoon in London, with little to do. The streets were still quiet, although a few early drinkers clustered at the tables in the sunshine. Behind tinted windows, people wiped down tables and floors, reluctant to come outside. Here, the half-drunk pints and abandoned take-outs were starting to rot. Hot, dank smells sweated from the drain covers; the city couldn’t hide its insides so well in the heat. I bought a coffee and sat in Soho Square to call home.

Dad wanted me to come to stay, for a few nights at least. ‘All of this family contact,’ he said. ‘I don’t know if it’s good for you.’ This was a tired debate, which was roused for special occasions: Dad had spent the last year arguing against my attendance at Ethan’s wedding. When they adopted me, my parents moved as far away from Hollowfield as they could, and although Mum said that she had always wanted to live closer to the sea, I suspected that they also wanted to remove me from the region altogether. To them, the past was a sickness which my siblings still carried; you could catch it from a conversation.

‘I’ll come,’ I said. In Sussex, they had boundless time and intermittent Internet access, and they would want to hear all about New York, and my weekend with Ethan, and what, precisely, a genomics company was supposed to do. ‘Just not yet.’

I told Dad about the prison and the chaplain’s monologue. ‘I should have referred her to you,’ I said. ‘My accomplice. Do you remember burning the letters?’

‘Of course I remember. I remember that it was all your idea, too. You know, I could have come with you, to the prison.’

‘I was fine.’

‘I don’t like the thought of you there alone.’

‘Like I said. It was fine. And I have the others, too.’

‘And will they be much use?’

‘It’s not looking particularly promising.’

‘Have you been speaking to Eve again, Lex?’

Here it was: the old determination to preserve me from the rest of them. ‘What if I have?’ I said, knowing that he wouldn’t answer. We were coming to the end of the conversation, and he always had to hang up on good terms.

‘Look. If you can’t come home just yet, at least see Dr K.’

‘I don’t think that’s necessary.’

‘Maybe not. But it might be a good idea.’

I thought of what Devlin said when faced with a suggestion she had no intention of entertaining: Thank you for your input. The polite disregard of it was crueller than disagreement or debate, which at least took a little effort. I saw Dad’s damp handprints on the phone, and the little minutes of terror he had allowed himself over the last week, wondering why I hadn’t called.

‘I’ll consider it,’ I said. ‘I promise.’

In my room at the Romilly Townhouse, I called Olivia. ‘I’m at work,’ she said. ‘I’m in a terrible mood.’

‘Oh.’

‘They turn the AC off over the weekend. Who thought that was a good idea?’

‘You can come to my hotel,’ I said. ‘I have a tab.’

‘And air conditioning?’

‘That, too.’

I met Olivia on the day that I arrived at university. We shared a bathroom. She was the kind of person whom you notice right away, even if they’re on the other side of the bar and talking to somebody else. I arrived in the halls before her, and Dad helped me to lug my belongings to my room. He seemed older than any of the other fathers; ‘I’ll bring things from the car,’ I suggested, ‘and you take them down the hallway.’ I had spent half a day searching for just the right duvet cover, dismissing Mum’s suggestions as too juvenile; too middle-aged; too flowery; too feminine; just hideous. I settled on a dark blue cover embroidered with constellations, and the moon on the pillow, which, now that I looked at it, seemed deeply, irreparably embarrassing. Dad and I made the bed, and I smoothed down the cover. My hands were shaking. The bed was set in the corner of the room, and I would wake with my head beneath the window.