THERE WAS NO ANSWER WHEN TERESA rang Reg Mortimer’s bell, but when she tried the door it swung open.
“Reg?” she called softly as she stepped inside and looked round. The sitting room was a maze of cardboard boxes, some sealed, some still standing open, and the bare walls made the flat feel even more abandoned.
She had called out again when she saw him, sitting in a chair on the little round balcony, huddled into a shapeless old cardigan even though it was quite warm.
When she went out to him, he said, “I will miss the view,” as if continuing a conversation.
“Where are you going?”
“To my parents’ for a bit. Until I can find a job, get back on my feet. The removal men come tomorrow.”
“I want to talk to you.” She moved between him and the river, so that he had to look at her. “About Hammond’s.”
“Teresa, I—”
“No, listen to me. I thought about leaving, too. I didn’t know if I could go on, with everything that’s happened.… But there’s Jo to consider now. She needs me. And I … I don’t think I can do it without you,” she finished hurriedly. How could she say things any more clearly and still retain a shred of pride?
Reg looked past her, frowning. “I’ve told you, you don’t give yourself enough credit, Teresa. You’ll be fine.”
“All right, I’ll give myself credit,” she said on a rush of anger. “I may be fine, but you’re not. You’re—you’re a mess, Reg. Look at you.”
He seemed to take her command seriously, picking at his shabby cardigan, but when he looked up and met her eyes for the first time, she saw a trace of amusement in his. “I was cold.”
“You know what I meant.”
“The funny thing is, I was so afraid of failure, afraid of losing Annabelle. And now that there’s nothing to fear, it’s rather peaceful. I’m not sure I want to put myself in jeopardy again.”
“I’m not Annabelle,” Teresa said softly, and for the first time, she was glad.
“No.” He said it with a sort of wonder that made Teresa’s pulse spring with hope. “You’re not.”
BRAVING THE FRIDAY AFTERNOON TRAFFIC ON his way back from Cambridge, Kincaid fought to hold the Midget on course as a lorry roared past him on the motorway and the little car shook and rattled in its tailwind. He really must do something about the damned old thing, he thought, swearing. But he had promised Kit he’d keep it, and he was learning not to take such promises lightly.
Ian had rung him earlier in the week, asking him to come to Cambridge at the earliest opportunity. Since Ian had brought Kit back to the Grantchester cottage, the boy had been silent and unresponsive, spending all his time down by the river with the dog.
That was where Kincaid had found him, stretched out on his stomach on the damp bank under the chestnut trees, making holes in the mud with a stick.
“I used to do that,” Kincaid said, sitting down beside him and scratching Tess behind the ears. “The water will bubble up in them, after a bit.”
Kit gave him a sideways glance and went back to his digging. “I didn’t think you’d come.”
“I said I would.” Kincaid took a stick and poked a hole himself. “Do you want to come to London next weekend? I’ve a few days off.”
“Are they really off?”
“Yes. I promise.” He would make sure of it, even if it meant tossing his phone and pager in the nearest bin.
“I might,” said Kit, but he dug a little harder.
“What’s up with you and Ian?” Kincaid asked casually, reaching for a flat stone and skimming it across the water. “He’s worried about you.”
Kit pushed himself up to his knees and sat back, staring at the river. After a moment, he said, “I asked him if you were really my dad, and he said he thought you might be—but that it didn’t matter. He says he and I are family, and he wants us to be together.”
Kincaid waited as Kit snapped his stick into pieces and fed them to the current.
When the last piece of wood had lodged in the roots of a chestnut tree, Kit said, “But he left last time.”
“I think,” Kincaid said slowly, “that Ian needs to be with you just now. He’s done some things he knows were wrong, and this is his way of trying to make it up. You could help him.”
Kit gave him a surprised glance. “Me?”
“I think so. And I know he misses your mum, and he needs someone to share that with.”
Sitting back, Kit wrapped one arm round his knees and absently petted the dog with his free hand, but it seemed to Kincaid that there was a receptive quality to the boy’s silence.
After a bit, Kincaid said, “Hungry?” and Kit looked up and smiled.
“Starving.”
Kincaid took him to tea at The Orchard, and they spent an easy hour under the apple trees with the wasps while Kit worked his way through the menu.
When it was time to go, Kincaid walked him back to the cottage and said, “I’ll ring you about next weekend.” Then he offered his hand for their customary high five, and it seemed to him that his son left his palm in his just an instant longer than usual.
HE FOUND THAT GEMMA HAD LEFT him a note on her door, and another on the Cavendishes’, directing him to the sitting room. Bemused, he followed the trail and found her sitting at Hazel’s upright piano. She wore a crinkly, white cotton dress that ended just above her bare ankles, and she’d pulled her hair back loosely at the nape of her neck with a seashell slide.
“Where are Hazel and Tim and the kids?” he asked, pulling a chair up beside her.
“They went to the pictures. A Friday night treat.”
“You didn’t want to go?”
“I thought I’d be here when you got back. How was it with Kit?”
“All right,” he said, suddenly realizing that perhaps, at least for the time being, it was. “What’s this?” he added, noticing the piano primer standing open on the music rack.
Gemma poised her hands over the keys, then tentatively touched middle C. “I’ve started lessons.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?” he asked, surprised. “I’d no idea you wanted to play.”
“I thought you might laugh. And … I know it’s silly, but I wanted something in my life that was just mine.”
“I don’t understand,” he said, baffled.
“I know.” Gemma turned to him. “I’ve been thinking about Annabelle Hammond.”
“What has Annabelle to do with this?”
“She lived by other people’s expectations—because she was so beautiful, everyone in her life had their idea of who she was, what they wanted her to be. And what seems tragic to me is that she finally made different choices, her own choices, about what mattered to her—but she never got to see where they might have led. Or who she might have become.”
Kincaid still didn’t understand, but he saw the fear that had been hovering at the back of his mind for what it was. “Gemma, if this is about Gordon Finch—if you want—”
“No. This isn’t about Gordon … or only a little bit. It’s me. I don’t know what I want.… I only know that I’m in the process of becoming, and I want to see where it takes me, who I might be. I love you, Duncan. I do know that.”
“Well, that’s something, anyway,” he said, trying to make light of the chasm yawning before him.
But Gemma regarded him with perfect gravity. “It’s all we ever have, really. Isn’t it?” she said.
LEWIS SAT FACING IRENE IN THE rusting iron chairs of the cottage’s rose garden. Their knees touched, and she held his hand in both of hers lightly.
It had been John Pebbles’s cottage once, and John had tended these fragrant roses with as much care as Irene evidently did now. It was fitting, Lewis thought, that Irene should be here, and that he had come back at last.
He had told her everything, and she had listened without comment. Now she looked up at him, and in the clear afternoon light he could see the tracing of fine lines in her fair skin. Her eyes were as blue as he remembered, and she looked the way he’d imagined she would, as if she’d grown into herself.