Twenty-eight
Connor stood in front of the long mirror and tried to fasten the blue and silver tie that Gaby had given him. His fingers trembled; he couldn’t get the knot quite right and today it seemed important that it should be perfect, that his white shirt was ironed, his face smoothly shaven and dabbed with aftershave, his shoes polished, his hair brushed. For the past few days he’d been untypically shabby, but now he thought it was only the punctiliousness of his preparation that was holding him together – take away the sober suit and knotted tie and he’d fly apart into many fragments. He looked up briefly to meet his own eyes, then glanced rapidly away. He did not want to see his thin, tense face, the face that had acquired so many lines and wrinkles over the years and that she would be seeing in less than an hour. What did she look like now? He hadn’t asked Gaby, and Gaby hadn’t told him. He tried to imagine the young woman he had known – the blazing eyes in the sculpted face – and superimpose two decades on to its youth, the way they can do on a computer program to mark the passing of years: carve brackets round her mouth, furrows between her eyebrows, add a slackness to that stubborn jaw, put weight on the slim, hard body, turn her hair grey. Maybe she’d be matronly, with wide hips and a soft shelf where her shallow breasts had been, or perhaps skinny, all bones and loose flesh, with a knuckly grip. For a moment he thought of his long-dead mother and shuddered.
And what would she see? He lifted his eyes once more and this time made himself examine the self that gazed back from the mirror. He was thin, as if time had pared him back. The skull beneath the skin. There were frown marks corrugating his forehead and fine smile lines round his eyes, which were bloodshot after days of little sleep. He leant closer, pressing his fingers against the tiny wrinkles in his cheeks, trying to smooth them. His dark eyebrows were turning silver, his hair had grey in it and was starting to recede. His teeth had fillings in them. His sight was fading and he needed glasses to read or write. For a moment, he saw with perfect clarity the young man he had been when he first met Gaby and Nancy – a coiled spring of energy, anxiety and burning hope. And he saw them: two beautiful young women, arm in arm and laughing at him in the sunshine that poured from the imagined sky on to their soft hair and smooth skin. He felt their bright eyes on him, and even now, so many years and so many regrets later, he felt himself blush with delight under the teasing kindness of their regard.
Connor groaned and pressed his forehead to the mirror. Then he straightened and went slowly down the stairs. Gaby had already left to meet Ethan and collect the car, so the house was still. Usually he treasured the rare times when he was alone in the house but today it filled him with a premonitory dread. This was what it would be like if she were gone for good – silent, the air pressing round him, his footfall loud on the stairs, rooms empty and lifeless, and all the routines they’d built up together over their marriage meaningless, serving only to remind him of what he’d lost. He prepared the breakfast he had every morning: two oranges, freshly squeezed (with which he swilled down the omega 3 and vitamin E he took religiously, though he had little faith in their power to hold off age and decay), brown bread toasted, with marmalade (made by himself last year), a large cup of coffee with heated milk. He turned on the radio for company but, after hearing a few words from an unctuous politician spouting clichés, quickly switched it off again. Then he sat at the table with his breakfast in front of him. He looked at it for several minutes, then lifted the cup to his lips and took a cautious sip of coffee. He put it down and wiped his lips with a napkin, then sat perfectly still, his hands lying on either side of the plate, the amber capsules just above his left thumb. Finally he stood up, swept the toast and pills into the bin, put the glass of juice into the fridge and poured the coffee down the sink.
He and Nancy had arranged to meet outside Tate Modern; if it was fine, they could walk along the river, and if wet, take shelter in the café. It was important to Connor that they were meeting in a place that held no memories for either of them. He left the house early to walk there, for he could not bear to be pressed up against a crowd in the Underground on this particular morning. Anyway, he wanted to steady himself before the encounter. It had rained in the night, but now the day was fresh and bright. The sun shone on the wet road and turned it into a stream of light. Birds swayed in the branches of the bare plane trees, sending down tiny silver drops of water that burst on the pavement. Connor walked at a brisk pace – through Camden towards King’s Cross, then down to Blackfriars and the river. Though the traffic was thick, the river was calm and golden. The people crossing the bridge were dark silhouettes against the sky, and small waves thwacked against the bank.
Now – glancing at his watch to make sure he was in good time – he slowed and forced himself to think about what lay ahead. Not just Nancy in a few minutes’ time, but after that telling Ethan and then Stefan, as he and Gaby had agreed he should do. For years now Connor had been the one to receive the confessions and pleas of others. He had sat in his small room and heard his patients tell him the stories of their lives and bodies. He had given them news about what was going on inside themselves; looked into their eyes when he told them it wasn’t good. He had watched them cry and, laying a hand on their shoulder or leaning towards them with a tissue or a glass of water, had offered them advice, consolation and help. He was the good doctor. Like a priest, he was there at the end. Now, though, instead of being the calm, dependable figure of authority, he had become a ragged, weeping supplicant, festering with the sins he’d hidden in the dark all his adult life. He had pretended to be blameless and wise, until he’d almost believed it himself, but the time had come at last for him to lay his misdeeds and his guilt at the feet of the people he loved and wait for their verdict. He tried to imagine looking into Ethan’s face and telling him he had a half-sister somewhere. Or Stefan – what would Stefan say? He always insisted on thinking the best of everyone and had a guileless admiration for Connor. He would probably not be angry; his shy face would sag with sadness instead, or defeat and retrospective humiliation. Connor knew that look. He knew that in the small hours his brother-in-law probably saw his life as a failure. He was not-a-husband, not-a-father. He was a lonely, dreamy academic in a small, untidy house, whose sister bought his shirts and whose students thought he was a ‘teddy bear’ and ‘darling’. And maybe he, Connor, was the agent of Stefan’s private wretchedness.
He slowed to a halt and stared out over the broad Thames, watching as a boat passed. A few weeks ago, he and Gaby had walked together over this bridge late at night. They’d stopped at its highest point and looked down to see a leisure boat crammed with dancing people and in its centre, raised on a circular dais, a woman in a low-cut dress singing into a microphone. The music had filtered up to them. They’d leant on the railings and gazed down at the party as it chugged slowly past, until it was a miniature bauble of light in the distance. He’d put his hand on the small of Gaby’s back and she’d turned her head towards him and smiled, then straightened up and taken his hand. Connor, a single child from an unhappy home, was perpetually moved by the way a good marriage becomes filled with shared experiences, the same memories lodged in two minds. But that comradely moment on the bridge lay in a past from which he was now separated by a deep crevasse. He had not known at the time how precious it was.
Connor walked over the Millennium Bridge with a stream of other people. He narrowed his eyes and squinted at the entrance of the large building, where she would be waiting, but could not make her out. He fiddled with the buttons on his coat to make sure they were done up properly, cleared his throat, made himself breathe steadily. Stepping off the bridge, he thought he saw her a few feet away, then realized that the woman he was looking at was in her early twenties, as Nancy had been the last time they’d met. She wasn’t there yet; after all, he was a few minutes early. He put his hands into his pockets, bowed his head in the wind, and waited.
That was how she first saw him, standing absolutely still, face set in granite composure. She stood for a moment, watching, then walked up to him. He turned.
‘Hello, Connor.’
‘Nancy.’ His voice choked. There was a pebble in his throat, a boulder in his chest, a mist in front of his eyes.
‘You’ve hardly changed,’ she said.
‘Nor you,’ he replied formally, wondering if they were meant to shake hands or kiss each other’s cheek.
He had tried to imagine how she would look, but when he had pictured her, her face had taken on either a fierce beauty or a dramatic malevolence. He had made her firm jaw firmer, her eyes blaze like a blowtorch, her hair shine like a helmet. Now she stood before him and she was smaller than he had remembered, and less extraordinary. Her face was weathered, her hair short and neat, her eyes – which were looking at him – not as piercing as he’d drawn them in his mind. She was wearing a black coat, belted at the waist, and a scarf in muted greens and golds round her neck. He looked at her and Gaby’s mobile, despairing, joyful face came into his mind. Relief surged through him, making him feel dizzy: he felt nothing for this woman. Neither love nor hatred, desire nor disgust. She was a stranger, and it was hard to believe that he had lain sobbing in her arms.
‘Shall we walk?’ she asked, and he nodded.
Neither knew how to begin, though both had rehearsed this moment. For several minutes, they walked in silence along the riverbank. Eventually Connor spoke: ‘You should have told me.’
‘Should I? Of course, now that it’s discovered, it’s easy to say that. But if it had never been discovered – if Gaby hadn’t turned up on my doorstep the way she did, never mind rooting through my private papers – nobody would have known and perhaps it would have remained better that I didn’t say.’ She stopped and made an abrupt gesture. ‘Oh, shit, this is starting off wrong, Connor. I’ve lain awake night after night thinking how to deal with this meeting and the first thing I want to say is that I’m sorry.’
‘It’s for me to –’
‘Listen. Let me talk first, then you.’
‘All right. Go on.’
‘I’m sorry in many ways. I’m sorry for what we did. I’ve always been sorry and I always will be. It was wrong. I’m not really saying sorry to you, of course. It wasn’t you I wronged, nor me that you wronged. We have nothing to forgive each other. We’re not the victims. Gaby and Stefan were – and still are. I’m just expressing my profound regret. And I’m sorry I got pregnant and you didn’t know. Once I decided to keep the baby – actually, “decided” is not the right word, but leave that. Anyway, once I knew I was keeping it – her – you had a right to know. I see that. I just thought that other things were more important than your right to know. Like Gaby, for instance. I didn’t want – I couldn’t bear to think –’ She bit her lip, looked fixedly out at the river, steadying herself.
‘And I’m sorry, too, that it had to be found out. I thought the secret would stop with me and no one else would ever know. I made that decision and I was going to carry it through until the day I died. But one thing I’ve been thinking, Connor, is that the fact of Sonia doesn’t make what we did any worse.’
‘I don’t know.’
‘It just makes it more complicated.’
‘It reverberates,’ said Connor.
Nancy glanced at him, her brow furrowed. ‘You really haven’t changed,’ she said, almost affectionately.
Connor winced at her tone. ‘It means the past can’t be left behind,’ he said. He was finding it hard to keep his voice even. His breath was coming in unsteady gasps, and he was reminded of how he used to feel before he gave a talk in public. ‘We can never be free of it. Perhaps that’s always true of the past, however we try to hide from it. But in this case –’
‘In this case, it’s visited on other people.’
‘Yes,’ said Connor.
‘And then there’s Sonia.’
‘Sonia,’ repeated Connor. He couldn’t look at Nancy. He had to stare straight ahead, at the winding river and the layers of bridges, the spires, towers and familiar landmarks of the city. He and Nancy had a daughter, theirs but not theirs. Mentally, he shook himself. ‘It seems to me,’ he said, in a businesslike voice, ‘that what we need to talk about is Sonia. How this affects Gaby, Stefan and Ethan, of course, is not for us to discuss. I’ve talked everything through with Gaby and we’re agreed that soon I will have to tell them, but that’s for me, not you.’ His voice became harsh. ‘You’re not in their lives, after all. They don’t know you any more.’
‘True.’
‘But about Sonia we do need to talk.’
‘Do you want to see her photograph?’
‘What?’ He stopped dead and glared at her. ‘What’s that?’
‘I’ve got a small photograph here with me. Do you want to see it?’
‘A photo of Sonia? No. No, I don’t.’
‘OK.’
‘Does she look –?’
‘Like you? Yes, I think so. And Gaby recognized she was yours at once, you know.’
‘All right, then. Show me.’
‘Sure?’
‘I said, show me.’ Nancy took her wallet out of her bag, unzipped the inner compartment and drew out a passport-sized photograph. She passed it to Connor.
He turned away from her. Dark, spiky hair, a triangular face, a defiant look. He was shocked by the thrill of pride that ran through him. ‘Thanks,’ he said, handing it back.
‘I’m seeing her later today.’
‘Today?’
‘Yes.’
‘I see.’
‘Connor, she’ll probably want to know about you. She might ask your name, want to meet you. I would if I was her. Have you thought –?’
‘Yes.’ His voice grated. ‘I mean, yes, I’ve thought about it and, yes, you can tell her about me, if she asks.’
‘And if she wants to meet you?’
Connor swallowed. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘But –’
‘But?’
‘But not with you.’
Nancy gave a short snort of laughter, and he was catapulted back to the days when he and this woman had been simple friends, and they would sit around a table, the four of them, and Gaby would throw back her head and peal out laughter and Nancy would give her sardonic snort of comic delight, while Stefan beamed beside her. Those were happy days, he thought.
‘You mean, you don’t want us to be like a little alternative family together? Of course I agree with that.’
‘Good.’
‘So I can give her your address?’
‘Yes.’
‘Does –?’
‘Does Gaby know of my decision? Of course she does. It was Gaby who insisted on it, in fact. She’s being very honourable.’
‘I’m sure.’
‘Nancy?’
‘Yes.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘You have to say more than that.’
‘I don’t. I can’t. It was so long ago. What’s the point in knowing, anyway? What difference does it make now? It’s all over and done with, long ago.’
‘It doesn’t feel that simple,’ he almost shouted. ‘You left years ago. You disappeared out of our lives. I thought I’d never see you again, never have to think about what happened. Then all of a sudden – this. Like a bomb in the middle of my placid life, everything blown apart. Everything. And I don’t know what’s the right thing to do. I’ve tried to do a thought experiment on myself. Why are you smiling like that? Is it so ridiculous? I’ve asked myself that if God were looking down on this situation, what would he say was the right thing to do? The ethical thing. But God doesn’t seem to know. Should I see Sonia or not? Tell Ethan and Stefan or not? Talk to you and walk with you like this or not? If I behave well to one person, I hurt another. It’s as if I’m in a thick fog, wandering around and not knowing where I’m going. Everything’s so –’ He passed a hand over his face. ‘I don’t know,’ he said eventually. ‘I don’t know any more. I don’t know what I think and I don’t know what I feel and I don’t know who I am.’
‘I’m sorry,’ she said gravely, and Connor shrugged.
‘Why didn’t you have an abortion?’ he said, in a weary tone.
‘You mean, if I’d had an abortion you wouldn’t have to be going through all of this?’
‘No, of course not. I just don’t understand why. You always used to be vehemently pro-Choice.’
‘I still am. Maybe without the vehemence.’
‘So?’
‘I don’t know that, either. I thought I would, but I kept delaying it. I didn’t understand it myself. I left it till it was too late for it to be a simple procedure – and then I left it even longer. And then – well, then I went ahead with it because it was the only thing left to do. Perhaps I was punishing myself.’
‘But you never wanted to keep it?’
‘Her.’
‘Her. Never wanted to keep her?’
She wheeled to face him, putting a hand across her stomach as if the memory of her pregnancy was a physical presence inside her. ‘What do you think, Connor? Of course I fucking wanted to. Do you have any idea what it feels like to go through a pregnancy and give birth, then give your baby away? The violence of my loss was like – never mind. That’s over. I didn’t know what else to do, is the real answer. It was your baby. Gaby was the person I loved most in the world. Stefan was the person I thought I loved second best. We’d wrecked all of that – and I didn’t know what to do. I was on my own.’
Connor looked at her. The austere face seemed to have fractured, and now he did not feel that she was a stranger any more. He saw the lines on her face and the grey flecking her hair and was filled with a heavy, melancholy affection. He put out a hand and touched her shoulder. ‘I’m sorry too,’ he said. ‘I’m so very, very sorry for all you’ve been through. And I’m glad I know. In spite of everything, I find I’m glad.’
She took his hand then and they walked along the path together, not saying anything.
He felt her warm fingers between his. ‘What time are you meeting her?’ he asked at last.
‘In about an hour and a half.’
‘So soon! Where? Not here?’
He had a vision of the girl seeing them together like this, hand in hand. He let go of her fingers and put his hands back into his pockets.
‘No, not here. Can I ask you something?’
‘Go on.’
‘How’s Gaby?’
‘She’s – I don’t know. She’s calm.’
‘Calm?’
‘I know. Not like her, is it? She’s calm and kind and practical. And almost, well, pitying. She pities me.’
‘Oh!’ said Nancy. She bit her lip.
‘It makes me feel ashamed.’
‘Will you and her – will it be all right?’
‘I don’t know. Sometimes I think that it was all so long ago, and we’ve been so good to each other since, how can it not? And sometimes I think that something’s been broken and, whatever I do, I can’t put it back together. It feels wrong, telling you this.’
‘I understand. Sorry, I shouldn’t have asked.’
‘It’s not your fault. I should go now. I have to get to work.’
‘Connor?’
‘Yes.’
‘You’re not a bad man, you know.’
‘Goodbye,’ he said. She could see that there were tears in his eyes. ‘I don’t know if we’ll –’
‘No, nor do I. Good luck with everything.’
‘And to you. Take care.’
‘I did love you,’ she said in a rush, as he started to walk away from her, then put her fist into her mouth.
‘Nothing,’ she managed to say. ‘You must go now. Goodbye.’
He set off along the riverbank and she watched as his thin figure, in its dark overcoat, melted into the crowd.
Connor walked until he was sure he was out of sight, then stopped. He had no idea what he was feeling, except that he was sick and empty and tired. He left the river and walked up towards St Paul’s, where he stood for a few minutes, at a loss for what he should do next. Perhaps he should go inside and kneel down in the cold, lofty space, bend his head and pray. But he never prayed. He had no God, nor had he ever had. He had had only a belief in himself, ever since he was a small boy striving to escape the grim world his parents had given him. What would he say to God? Make it not have happened, make Gaby love me the way she used to, make Ethan never have to think of me as the man who hurt his mother, make Stefan live a happy life, make me someone else, turn back the clock, undo the past, make it all right in a way that it never can be.
There was a stall selling coffee, and he asked for a cappuccino. When it came he wrapped his hands round the cardboard cup and felt warmth return to his fingers. He lifted the plastic lid and leant over the steam to let it lick his face. Then he shuffled a few paces and sat on a wooden bench in the lee of the cathedral and closed his eyes. He saw Nancy’s forty-year-old face and Gaby’s. He saw their younger faces. His cheeks were wet and when he felt them with his fingers he discovered he was crying. The salt tears stung his skin. He put the coffee, half finished, on the ground, and bent forward on the bench with his face in his hands. Tears dripped through his fingers, and his shoulders were shaking. Small whimpers were coming from deep within him, like the first warning sounds of a great quake. The whimpers grew louder and now his whole body was shuddering. He was dimly aware that people would be passing the bench and looking curiously at the well-dressed middle-aged man weeping like a baby. He didn’t care. He pressed his head deeper into the cup of his hands and was in his own warm, wet, private darkness. His throat was sore and his chest ached. His eyes hurt and against his closed lids he could still see the faces of those he loved, his own private film of anguish.
‘There, there,’ someone was saying, more like a rustle of leaves than a voice.
A hand was on his bent head, stroking his hair. For a mad second, he thought it was his mother, comforting him as she never had when he was little. His sobs grew louder.
‘There, there.’
At last he lifted his face from his hands and looked around through his watery, bloodshot eyes. A woman was sitting on the bench beside him. She was tiny and ancient, wrapped in a thick, oversized coat tied at the waist with a length of rope and her feet stuffed into moth-eaten slippers. An absurd hat, more like a grubby turban, was perched on her head, and her lined, weathered face reminded Connor of an onion. Her little blue eyes peered at him. ‘Hello, dear,’ she said. ‘You needed to get that out of you.’
‘When you want to cry, you have to cry or it poisons your insides,’ she said. ‘Me and Billy have a good weep together sometimes, don’t we, Billy?’
Connor stared around, bewildered, then saw a small, scruffy dog sheltering between her legs, its face peering out from between the flaps of her coat.
‘Sometimes I sit on this bench all day,’ said the woman, ‘and no one even looks at me. They walk by me and their eyes go right through me. I’m invisible. They even drop litter at my feet. Once someone threw an apple core and it landed in my lap and they didn’t even turn and say sorry. People are very rude nowadays. My name is Mildred May Clegg. I have a name. My mother gave it to me eighty-eight years ago, but there are days when I have to go and stand outside a shop window so I can see my reflection in the glass, just to make sure I’m still there. I say, “Hello, Mildred May.” Maybe I wave at myself. People think I’m not right in my head. They walk in a wide circle so they don’t come anywhere near me. There’s nothing wrong with my head, is there, Billy? There, Billy can tell you. He knows. Dogs see more than people. Billy recognizes when someone’s a bad one. He snarls or backs away. He likes you, though. Look, he’s wagging his tail, that’s a sure sign he thinks you’re all right. It doesn’t matter what they look like, they can be dressed up all fancy and speak ever so proper, but he can tell what they’re like inside. People can’t do that, can they? Or not many, anyway. I reckon I can. I’ve had practice. Years of practice. I used to sing, you know, when I was young. You wouldn’t think it, would you? I wasn’t always like this. I was a pretty girl and I sang and everyone said I’d go far. Life doesn’t turn out the way you think, does it? It was the drink that did for me, or the death. Death first, and then drink. That was the order, though the order’s got muddled up since then and, anyway, nobody cares to ask any more. They used to care. They used to say, “Mildred May, you have to pull yourself together.” They were probably right. I mean, if you don’t pull yourself together quite quickly you stop remembering how to do it. Since then, I’ve sat on this bench and watched people. It’s a bit like watching the river after a bit. Faces flow by, they do, and mostly you don’t properly look at them. A tide of humanity,’ she said, shaking her head from side to side and winking at him. ‘Just a tide passing by.’
Connor stared at her with his throbbing eyes.
‘But some you notice. They jump out at you, look into your face, and after that they’re inside your head. When I die, a lot of people die with me.’
‘Can I get you a cup of coffee?’ he asked politely. ‘Or something to eat?’
‘Billy would like a doughnut from there.’ She nodded at the stall where Connor had bought his cappuccino.
‘A doughnut for both of you, then?’
‘And one for you, young man. You need feeding up. Don’t you have a mother?’
‘No.’
‘Everyone needs a mother. I was a mother once, you know.’
‘Were you?’
‘My little Danny boy.’
‘What happened?’ His voice was gentle.
‘My father used to tell me that nobody owns anybody else. You’re here for a while and then you’re gone. Gone without a trace.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘It’s a vale of tears, my dear. Never you mind.’
‘I have a son called Ethan,’ Connor said. ‘He’s nineteen. He’s left home now.’
Once again, fat tears began to roll down his cheek.
‘An apple one for me, and a jam one for Billy.’
‘Very well.’
Connor bought three doughnuts wrapped in paper napkins and returned to the bench. He sat down beside Mildred May, close enough that their thighs touched and he could smell the sweet stench of alcohol on her. ‘Here.’
The old woman took the jam doughnut and held it out. Billy crept from the shelter of her coat and grabbed it before retreating again. Then she tore her own in half and posted the first portion into her pursed mouth, making a smacking sound as she ate. She pulled a glass bottle full of clear liquid out of one of her pockets and took a gulp, then put it away again. Connor took a bite of his own doughnut. It had been many years since he’d eaten one and its fried, doughy sweetness comforted him.
‘There,’ said Mildred May. ‘Shall I sing for you now?’
‘That would be a treat,’ said Connor.
‘Quid pro quo. That’s what I say. You gave us doughnuts.’
She stood up, scattering Billy from the tails of her vast coat, and turned so that she was facing him, ignoring the glances of passers-by, their sneers and sniggers. Placing one hand on her heart, she took a deep breath, opened her mouth and began to sing. Her voice trembled and sometimes almost disappeared before returning louder than before; her eyes shone. Billy wailed at her side. She sang ‘My Bonny Lies Over The Ocean’ and then ‘Foggy Foggy Dew’. She sang ‘Early One Morning’ in a quavery, broken-backed high pitch, before looping round again to ‘My Bonny’, her voice giving up by now. They were all in their own ways songs about absence and heartbreak. Connor gazed at her diminutive, rotund shape; her crinkled, battered face folded round the blue slits of her eyes, the puckered mouth in a choirboy’s ‘O’ of rapture. She lifted her dirty hands into the air and gazed past him, at some distant point only she could see. Perhaps she was on a stage, a young woman again with the world before her, or perhaps she was singing to her lost Danny boy. Perhaps she had never been a singer and never had a son, never had the life she’d lost.
When she finished, Connor clapped loudly and she gave a little bow. Behind them a group of teenage girls were giggling helplessly. Connor and Mildred May ignored them.
‘Thank you,’ he said, standing up, taking both her hands in his and holding them there. ‘That was a great pleasure.’
‘We all have to spread what cheer we can,’ she said. She was panting and there were red blotches on her cheek. ‘In this cold and ragged world.’
‘Indeed,’ he said. ‘Can I come and visit you again?’
‘You’ll find me and Billy here most days,’ she said, ‘on and off. Don’t wait to be invited.’
‘I won’t, you can be sure of that.’
He bent down to kiss her on both pouchy cheeks. She lifted her hand and pushed his hair away from his forehead. ‘You’ll do very nicely,’ she said.
‘Will I?’
‘Of course. Won’t he, Billy?’