Jennifer had not moved from my side. She was searching her bag for a small hairbrush which she said was called a Tangle Teezer. I took it from her and began to brush her hair. It was very calming. She had her back to me as she perched on my bed. Her silver hair came down to her waist. Every brush stroke took a long time. The shadow of my hands in her hair danced across the wall. It was livelier than my feeble fingers, but somehow it gave me courage.
I told Jennifer how her beauty came from all of her and how her talent was bigger than my envy.
She was wearing a green raincoat.
Although she did not reply, I knew she was listening. After a while, I suggested she take another photo of myself crossing the Abbey Road. We would then have two copies, one from 1988 and one from 2016. It would be a stretch of history.
‘If it’s your last wish, I will take that photograph.’
‘It is my first wish,’ I replied.
‘It’s like this, Saul Adler: I’ve been talking to Jack. He’s decided not to take the train back to Ipswich. He’s staying in a hotel near the Euston Road so he can be near you.’
‘Tell him I’ll be home in a week.’
I continued to drag the brush through her hair, but the steady rhythm no longer made me feel calm.
‘It’s like this, Jennifer Moreau: we were young and clueless and reckless, but I never stopped loving you.’
‘It’s like this, Saul Adler’ – she still had her back to me – ‘you were so detached and absent, the only way I could reach you was with my camera.’
The brush fell from my hand. I was very frightened. Of everything. Of everything I felt. Of how my son lifted his hands as he lay in my arms while I sang ‘Penny Lane’ to him under the blue Suffolk skies. Yes, there is a nurse in the song, Isaac, and a banker and a barber and a fireman. And people are looking at photographs in ‘Penny Lane’. Like your mother, your young mother, let her sleep while I hold you, she won’t walk away, like I will. I was frightened of the way his fingers pulled at my lips as I sang. I was frightened of everything in the past and whatever was going to happen next. I heard Jack’s voice, nearby. His silver hair hung down to his shoulders. He had grown a beard. ‘I forgive you for everything and I love you, Saul.’
He told me with his eyes that I would never see the apple trees he had planted in our garden. The fruit would fall in autumn and I would not be there to gather it up. I was deeply grateful for Jack’s honest love. It lifted me from the Euston Road to Abbey Road, but I think I was still in my bed when I got there.