So very young,Mum said.She really must have been desperately low, not to have sought help.
It’s always hurt, thinking about her.
It torments me now.
Because she’s no longer a stranger to me. She was Iris and Robbie’s child, who I helped to save when I stopped Iris getting on that bus in 1943.
Except, it wasn’t only her I saved.
I saved my father, too.
I saved myself.
With a visible effort, Tim keeps talking, saying that because he had no legal link to Clara, no one contacted him when she died, and, although he sensed something was wrong, it was years before he uncovered what had happened to her, or that my father even existed. ‘No one would tell me where he was, though. I had no rights, there weren’t computers like we have now, no web. I tried, I tried and tried, but I couldn’t find him.’ Miserably, he looks at me. ‘I felt there was something waiting for him, but there was nothing I could do.’ His face strains. ‘It never occurred to me, until I got your letter, that he might have known something was waiting for him, too.’
‘Oh, Tim,’ I say, holding his trembling hands fast in mine. ‘I am so sorry.’
‘Why?’ he says, woefully baffled.
‘You’ve spent all these years torturing yourself.’
‘I failed them. I failed your father … ’
‘You never met my father,’ I say, releasing his hands, pulling his frail body into my arms, desperate to console him, for myself, and for all of them. ‘How could you have failed him?’
‘Because I did.’ His body shakes. ‘I failed them all. I’ve never told anyone about him. Not even Ellie. It’s hurt, too much.’
‘I’m so glad you told me,’ I say.
And I am.
My heart is breaking, but it’s a relief, beyond words, to know the truth at last.
To understand, finally, this thread, between all of us.
I’m not sure how long I hold Tim for.
I feel no urge to move.
Nor, it’s clear, does he.
But as our embrace goes on, I become conscious of a weight that’s stolen over me, not entirely unfamiliar,so heavy it might almost belong to another body, and, for the first time, wonder at the possibility of another’s presence withinme.
In my arms, Tim’s body loosens, and I think he must feel it too.
Do you have a theory for why this only happens for some of us? Ellen asked me.
My father thought it was a gift, I told her.
Does it feel like that to you?she asked.
It’s starting to,I said.
It does now.
‘Thank you,’ says Tim, when, at length, he pulls away from me, keeping a hold of my hand. ‘Thank you, so much, for listening.’
‘Tim,’ I say, ‘thankyou.’
