The Lies We Told(67)

He turned to Tom. ‘I don’t deserve forgiveness, but I want, at least, to try and explain.’ There was a pause, the silence broken only by the sound of Rose crying. ‘Her name was Nadia, she was a student of mine. We became close, and I suppose I was too infatuated, too flattered, to realize how troubled, how … unstable she was. It wasn’t until later that I learned quite how unstable.’

Clara stared at him in horrified fascination. This brilliant man, this loving father and devoted husband, whom she had admired, loved, from the first moment they had met, was a cheat? Had betrayed his wife and child for the sake of a vulnerable woman far younger than himself? Something hard and bitter lodged in her throat as she listened to him speak. For the first time since she’d met him she suddenly saw Oliver very differently. Her gaze turned to Tom and she saw that he was very still, his eyes fastened on his father’s face.

‘Your mother was completely blameless,’ Oliver went on. ‘Emily was only a baby, it was an unforgivable betrayal for which I was entirely responsible. When I came to my senses and ended things between Nadia and me …’ he paused, and swallowed, glancing at each of their faces, ‘I didn’t know that she had already fallen pregnant with my child.’

Rose’s head whipped round at this. ‘Don’t, Oliver,’ she cried. ‘You promised me!’

Oliver’s voice was tender: ‘Rose, don’t you see? There’s nothing we can do now. She’s won. Hannah’s won.’

At this, Tom’s head shot up. ‘What the fuck are you talking about, Dad?’ he said. ‘What do you mean “she’s won”?’

Oliver flinched at his anger. ‘When Hannah was a baby, she was adopted by a woman named Beth Jennings and her husband. She grew up believing they were her natural parents, but then, when she was seven, she found out the truth.’

‘That you were her real father,’ Tom said coldly.

‘That, and what happened to Nadia, to her mother.’

Tom shook his head in frustration. ‘Well, what did happen to her?’

Oliver glanced at Rose, something passing between them, fraught with pain. Rose cleared her throat and said, ‘She died. Nadia died. It was all my fault.’

Clara shot Mac a look of stunned disbelief. ‘What do you mean?’ she asked.

‘When Oliver finished things with Nadia, after he’d confessed to me about the pregnancy, she became obsessed with him,’ Rose said. ‘She persecuted him – both of us – she wouldn’t leave us alone. She said she was going to expose him to his university, finish his career.’ She turned to Tom. ‘Your father told her he would provide for the child, but that wasn’t enough for her. She wanted him. She became manic, obsessed, she wouldn’t be happy until she had Oliver to herself, until he left me and Emily for her.’

There was absolute silence, the three of them staring at her mutely. ‘I arranged to meet her,’ Rose continued. ‘I wanted to make her see sense. And if that didn’t work, I decided I’d offer her money, enough to leave the area, to start again somewhere else. I asked her to meet me somewhere we wouldn’t be seen. I used to walk the dogs along Widow’s Cliff, above Dunwich beach, you know. It seemed like as good a place as any, equidistant to where we both lived. It was usually deserted and I knew she’d make a scene.’

Rose hesitated, her eyes gazing unseeingly at the window as she remembered. ‘She was quite calm at first. But when I told her what I was offering, that I’d pay her to go away, that Oliver didn’t want her and never would, she went crazy. She had her daughter in her pram, and Emily was sleeping in her pushchair. She started ranting and raving, shouting that it wasn’t fair that Emily had her father but her daughter wouldn’t. And then … and then …’ Rose broke down, crying into her hands.

The three of them exchanged horrified glances. ‘What?’ Tom asked. ‘What happened to her?’

‘She jumped,’ Rose whispered. ‘Without any warning, she stepped off the edge and she jumped, leaving her poor baby alone up there with me! I ran to the edge and looked down, and her body was … oh God it was so awful, so horrible, her body was there, on the rocks below, before she got swept away.’

‘Jesus Christ,’ Tom whispered.

‘We found out later that she had made suicide attempts before, had been diagnosed with bipolar long before she met your father. I didn’t know what to do,’ Rose cried, ‘I was in shock. I took the baby, took her from her pram, and put her in the pushchair with Emily, and then I ran. I thought people would say I pushed her, or that I made her jump, or I had driven her to it, that when it all came out about your father and her, it would look like I’d engineered the whole thing. I wasn’t thinking straight, I panicked, I just ran, I didn’t know what else to do!’

For a long moment after she had finished speaking, Rose and Tom stood silently in the centre of the room, while Oliver sat, his head in his hands. Beyond the window, clouds moved in front of the moon, the endless empty fields stretching on beneath it cast suddenly into darkness.





26


Suffolk, 1981

I didn’t notice the baby, not straight away. Rose and Oliver both looked so awful, were in such a state, that it took me a few moments before I saw the tiny creature wrapped in a blanket in Rose’s arms. And it’s funny but I realized immediately; before they said anything, I had already guessed whose she was. ‘Oh, Rose …’ I said.