‘No,’ he says, without consideration, letting me know he’s asked himself the question before. ‘I’d never be so presumptuous. And there was happiness back then.’ (Love too,said Ellen.So much love. Don’t forget that.) ‘I couldn’t steal that from them. And if you’re right, and we do keep going, then maybe we’ll one day learn to do better. Although …’ His voice softens. ‘… I don’t know where that would leave you or your picture.’
‘I don’t care about the picture.’
‘I do. Very much. Like I said, we need to set the record straight. But, Claudia –’ he looks into my eyes, his own once again filling – ‘I care about you more. A great deal more. Your father, too.’
‘My father?’
Silently, he nods.
I frown, confused.
Why do you care about my father?I almost ask.
Why do you care about me?
But I don’t say anything.
I’m thinking back to his upset before, speaking of his unbiddable mind, and my dad’s being the same.
Noah,he said, in that sad, strained way.
‘Did you know him?’ I ask.
‘Just wait,’ he says. ‘I’ll get to that.’
‘Will you tell me straight away if anything happens?’ Robbie’s mother had asked Iris, back in February.
‘I’ll tell you,’ Iris had promised, knowing, even then, that the day would come when she’d be forced to keep her word.
She hadn’t forgotten it.
Her dreams hadn’t let her.
She was grateful for that, at least: that she’d never taken a moment for granted.
Moving mechanically, she’d left Doverley at dawn for Annabelle Grayson’s nursing home.
‘Where are you going?’ Ambrose had demanded of her, emerging through the cold morning mist to intercept her as she’d left the tower.
‘To where I need to be,’ she’d said, and, ignoring his orders to stop, carried on.
She’d caught the first bus to York from Heaton, then another to the home, where she hadn’t had to tell Annabelle anything, because the instant Annabelle had seen her in her doorway, her entire being had crumpled, and she’d known.
‘Is there any hope?’ she asked Iris, as Iris knelt before her.
‘There’s always hope,’ Iris said, offering her that comfort at least.
But there wasn’t hope.
Robbie was gone.
She knew it.
She felt it, in the hollow he’d left inside her: a space she hadn’t even been aware that his presence on this earth had been occupying.
A space that, here, now, kneeling beside Annabelle, she felt Robbie’s fluttering child turn and reach into, as though searching with its miniscule fingers for the touch of a father it would now never know.
‘I’m pregnant,’ she told Annabelle, wanting to give her that comfort too. ‘He knew.’ Her eyes swam.That’s the most incredible news.‘He was happy.’
