The phone rang and Daniel got up from the table to answer it.
“Hi Dan, it’s Julia.”
“Julia! How are you? And Toby and the girls?”
Julia was an old friend from university days. They met now and then for lunch when Daniel was in London on business, though it occurred to Daniel now that it had been a while since the last time.
“We’re all fine. And you and Rachel? And Chloe?”
“We’re OK, thanks.”
There was a pause, then Julia said, “It’s terrible about Jennifer.” She sounded awkward, and Daniel understood why. Just what was the right level of condolence in a situation like this?
“I hadn’t seen her since the divorce. But yeah, it is.”
“Look, Dan, I didn’t ring about that – at least, not exactly. Thing is, I hear you’ve taken over from her on the Calliope patent case. You’re working for Lyle Linstrum, yes?”
Alarm bells were ringing. Julia was a financial journalist, and a very good one.
“What have you heard?” Daniel asked.
“Nothing I’d go public on,” she warned, “but one of my sources informs me that Lyle might be on the way out.”
“Really?”
“You know how these things go. There’ve been a lot of problems with Calliope. First that disaster with the clinical trial, now the problem with the patent. Of course it won’t make that much difference to you, you’re working for the company rather than Lyle personally, but I thought you should know. Like I say, there might be nothing in it – ”
“But you think there is.”
“That’s my instinct. Of course if you hear anything your end…” Julia said, hopefully.
Daniel laughed. “Come off it, Julia. You know me better than that.”
“Yeah,” she sighed. “Always worth a try, though.”
“But tell you what, lunch is on me next time.”
As he went back to the table, he thought about what Julia had said. That instinct of hers… A few years ago she had broken a story that had got her a Press Association award. And this time she didn’t know the half of it. When news got out about the missing lab book, the balloon would really go up. It wasn’t Lyle’s fault, but that didn’t matter. He was developing a reputation for being unlucky.
“Shall I heat that up?” Rachel asked, pointing at his plate of risotto.
“No, it’s fine,” he said, picking up his fork. He told her what Julia had said.
Rachel stared at him, her glass of wine half way to her lips. “How do you mean, on the way out?”
“He might be fired.”
“But how can that happen? It’s his own company, isn’t it?”
“But it’s not his money. At least, not all of it. It’s kept afloat by venture capital. If they want to get rid of Lyle, they can. People are ousted from companies they’ve founded all the time. Look at Steve Jobs.”
“It seems so unfair!” She thought for a few moments. “How will this affect you?”
“It won’t. At least, not personally. None of what’s happened is down to me. But it means the stakes are that much higher for Lyle. No wonder he lost his temper this morning.” Daniel looked at his watch. “Is that the time? I’ve got stuff I’ve got to finish.”
He pushed back his chair and began stacking the plates.
“Leave them,” Rachel said. “I’ll do them after the news. You get on with what you’ve got to do.” She hesitated. “There’s something in the Ely Standard about Jennifer. I thought you’d want to see it. I’ve left it on your desk.”
He’d only opened the door to his study when she called him. “Dan, Dan, come quickly!”
He got there in time to see a policeman talking to the camera. “… and so we would be grateful if anyone who saw Jennifer Blunt that evening would come forward.”
“What was that about?” he asked Rachel.
“The police don’t think she was alone in the car.”
He stared at her. “You mean, when she crashed it?”
“They didn’t say that. All they said was that someone had reported seeing the car before it happened and there was a passenger. They’re asking whoever it was to come forward.”
He sat at his desk, turning it over in his mind. Had someone left the scene of the accident without alerting the emergency services? He wondered how long Jennifer had been lying there – but it was better not to think about that.
He turned his attention to the newspaper, lying open at the page with the piece about her. They had managed to find a photo from their archives. Jennifer’s company had sponsored the restoration of a local children’s playground and she had represented the firm at the opening. The photo showed her with Nick and their son. Again he had the feeling that there was something familiar about that child. When you are a parent, you see a lot of small children, but where could he have seen Harry without seeing Jennifer or Nick too?
He gazed at the three faces. What was it? He thought of the way he had scrutinized the photographs on Jennifer’s desk looking for her likeness in Harry. It hadn’t occurred to him to look for Nick’s. Now he did look and he couldn’t see it. Of course, that didn’t necessarily mean anything.
And yet, and yet… A memory that he could no longer keep at bay came sidling into the front of his mind and suddenly it was as if it were yesterday, that July afternoon in the house in Chesterton. The removal men had been and gone. Dust moats danced in the shafts of light that came through curtainless windows. His footsteps echoed on the floorboards as he roamed the empty house, waiting for Jennifer to come and collect the desk that had belonged to her mother, the only piece of furniture that she wanted to keep. She arrived and he helped her carry the desk out. It was a baking hot day and she came into the house to get a drink of water. There weren’t any glasses, and she drank from the tap. When she straightened up, her chin was wet. He saw the tiny blonde down at the corner of her lips and something inside him shifted. The outline of her legs through the thin summer dress, the swell of her breasts, the freckles on her chest: he had never desired her more.
Afterwards he felt that it couldn’t have happened any other way. It was as if the heat and the light, that specific time of day, had somehow brought it about.
“I’ve got to have you. Now,” he heard himself say.
“Yes,” she said.
Those were the last words they had ever spoken to each other.
There was no furniture in the room except the large sofa that the next inhabitants had agreed to have. Without a word they moved towards it.
It was a coupling like nothing in their married life, and thinking of it now, he was aroused. It wasn’t about love. It was about taking back what had been stolen from him, getting his own back on Nick.
When it was over, he went out into the garden and watched the river flowing past. Standing there, he understood that until that day there’d been a part of him that did not believe his marriage was over – a part that even today had hoped that when she walked into the house she’d say that it had all been a mistake and it wasn’t too late to cancel the divorce and pull out of the house sale. Now he saw that for the fantasy it was.
When he went back into the house, Jennifer had gone.
The next day the decree nisi had come through, and two months later the marriage was officially over.
From that day onwards they had managed to avoid each other. They had contrived things so that their paths would not cross. They were strangers to one another. How else could it be when your wife ran off with your best friend? Just that once he had seen her in the distance at Cambridge station and his heart had lurched.
He knew that he didn’t love, had never loved, Rachel in the way that he had once loved Jennifer. Perhaps it just wasn’t possible to fall in love at thirty-five in the way that you can at twenty. Or perhaps that kind of love only comes once –
“Dan,” Rachel said. She was standing in the doorway.
He gave a start.
“I’m off to bed,” she
said. “I need an early night. Don’t stay up too long, will you, love?”
“No, no, I won’t. I’ll be up soon.”
He waited until he had heard her go upstairs into the bedroom, then he examined the photo again.
“With her son, aged five,” he read. A year older than Chloe. But was he only just five or was he nearly six? Could it be…? He stared at the photo, looking now for his own features. He knew it wasn’t easy to see your own face in another’s. People told him that Chloe took after him, but he couldn’t see it himself. Of course, likeness wasn’t just a matter of physical resemblance: it was also a fleeting expression, a smile, the tilt of the head. And those were things that Harry would have picked up from Nick, just from being around him.
He counted forward from July. When had Harry been born? If it was April, or perhaps May... It shouldn’t be difficult to find out. It was a matter of public record, after all. After prowling around the internet for a while, he realized that it wasn’t as straightforward as he had hoped. There were records, but he would have to consult them in person. Was there maybe another way? Jennifer’s parents were both dead, but what about Nick’s parents? His father was retired from the army, his mother was a local conservative councillor, both of them inveterate Daily Telegraph readers. Nick was an only child and, OK, they certainly wouldn’t have approved of his running off with his best friend’s wife, but on the other hand, Harry was their grandson. He typed “Daily Telegraph” and “Birth Announcements” into Google. Seconds later he was looking at an online entry: “On 30th April to Jennifer (née Ewing) and Nick, a son Harry David Francis.”
He told himself to get a grip. Yes, the timing was right, but that still didn’t mean he was Harry’s father. Jennifer and Nick were in the full flush of their affair and would have been at it like rabbits. And come to think of it, wouldn’t she have been using some sort of contraception? Otherwise she wouldn’t have risked having sex with Daniel. Would she?
An idea came to him. He looked at his watch. Eleven o’clock. Dad would still be up.
He punched in the number. Sure enough, his father answered on the third ring.
“Hi, Dad.”
“What’s up, son?” He sounded anxious.
When there is a sick child in the family, an unexpected phone call always rings alarm bells.
Daniel hastened to reassure him. “Chloe’s fine. I was just wondering if you could lay your hands on a photo of me, aged five or six.” What reason could he give? “Chloe needs one for a project at her nursery.”
“Your mother never did get round to putting the photos in albums, but she wrote names and dates on them all. I’ve got them all in a box somewhere. I’ll see what I can do.”
They chatted for a bit, and the call ended with loving messages for Chloe and Rachel. In his father’s eyes, Rachel, the mother of his only grandchild, could do no wrong. Rachel loved the old man and was an attentive daughter-in-law. Her own father had died young.
When Daniel went up to bed, Rachel was asleep.
He lay awake for a long time beside her, his thoughts churning.
What if Jennifer had risked it? What if Harry had inherited half his chromosomes from Daniel and was Chloe’s half-brother? What were the odds that Harry would be a match for Chloe? It wasn’t straightforward, because he would need to have the same rare tissue type that Chloe had inherited from Daniel and a more common one that belonged to one in five of the population. So this meant that if Harry was Daniel’s child, there was a one in ten chance that his bone marrow could rescue Chloe from a lifetime of blood transfusions and the spectre of an early death. A one in ten chance… not great, but far, far better than anything else that was on offer.
A photo of Daniel as a child would only tell so much. Even if Harry turned out to be a dead ringer for the six-year-old Daniel, it wouldn’t be actual proof. If he’d only realized earlier, he could have taken something of Harry’s – a hairbrush or, better, a toothbrush – when he had been at Jennifer’s house. But at the time he hadn’t suspected, and now there was no way he could get back in.
Or was there?
Chapter Fifteen
Katie dumped her suitcase and her rucksack in the saloon. It was blissfully warm. Rachel must have come over and lit the fire, bless her. When Katie had realized that she wasn’t going to get back into the lab that day, she’d rung Rachel and asked if she could move into the boat right away. Rachel had said it was fine, so Katie had popped over to pick up a key and had spent the afternoon packing up at her flat. It meant that the day hadn’t been completely wasted, and also she’d save travelling time when she was allowed back into the lab. It was only a few minutes’ drive away.
Coming along the tow path she’d bumped into Frank from the next-door boat. He was a burly bloke with a beard who’d introduced himself and hoicked her case onto the boat for her. Daisy had come out to say hello and to tell her not to hesitate if she needed anything. They seemed a lovely couple. Rachel was right: there was a real sense of community here.
She went up to the wheelhouse and, sighing with relief, locked the door. Talk about “battening down the hatches”; after the day she’d had, that was what she longed to do.
There was a note from Rachel in the galley. “Help yourself to anything that needs eating up. And there’s pasta and so on: just replace anything that you finish.”
As she took her coat off she caught sight of the letters that she’d stuffed in her pocket when she left the flat. She looked at them. Junk mail, except for an envelope with a Glasgow postmark. She ripped it open and found a letter informing her that she hadn’t got the principal scientific officer job that she’d applied for. The end of a perfect day.
She opened her iPad to check her emails. There was one from her mum. A picture of the Shanghai skyline against an improbably blue sky came up. She was out there visiting Katie’s brother and his family, and having the holiday of a lifetime. Australia was next on the itinerary. Well, at least the sun was shining somewhere.
She opened an email from Becky, her best friend from school days. It was to tell Katie that she was pregnant and the baby was due in May. Before she could stop herself, she felt a pang of envy, and how mean was that? She was thrilled for Becky, of course she was, but taken unawares, she’d been ambushed by a feeling that Becky had somehow stolen a march on her. And not only Becky. In the last year, two other friends had had babies. But it was Becky who really brought it home.
Katie’s last relationship had been one of those long-distance ones that are so often the lot of ambitious young scientists. When one of you is in Cambridge and the other is in Durham, you have to be really committed to make it work, and it turned out that they weren’t. Joe had met someone else up there and she discovered that she didn’t really mind. Was even a bit relieved. That had been six months ago, and however was she going to meet someone new, if she went on staying late in the lab before going home to slump on the sofa with a pizza and a box set?
She went into the bedroom, sat down on the bed and kicked off her shoes. She lay back on the pillows, too tired to do anything but gaze at the ceiling. After a while she realized she was hungry. She padded into the galley and looked in the fridge. There was a can of lager, a packet of ground coffee, half a bottle of milk, a lemon, a tub of black cherry yoghurt, and a small piece of cheddar. She opened some cupboards and found teabags, pasta, rice, olive oil, tins of tomatoes and tuna and dried herbs. She could put together a meal of sorts and that was what she’d do, because no way was she going out again tonight. She’d rather expected that she might have a visitor, but it didn’t look as if that was going to happen. She’d got her laptop and Breaking Bad DVDs and that was all the entertainment she needed.
She reached for the can of lager and was just about to snap the ring pull, when there was a knocking upstairs on the wheelhouse door.
“Who is it?” she called, as she went up the stairs.
“It’s Lyle.”
“Hang on.” She unlocked the door.
Lyle’s long, lean face peered in.
“I wondered when you’d show up,” she said.
Lyle stepped in and they went down to the galley together. He put two white plastic bags on the table and the enticing aroma of Chinese food made Katie’s mouth water.
He opened his arms and enveloped her in his usual bear hug. She only went up to his shoulder. Some of the tension left her.
He released her and looked into her face. “You look tired,” he decided, “and I’m guessing you haven’t eaten. No? Good. I bought enough for two.”
He began taking foil cartons out of one of the bags. “Prawn in black bean sauce, beef with ginger and spring onions, plus egg-fried rice, and spring rolls and prawn crackers, and this here is a vegetable dish – I forget what.”
She gave a sigh. “Bliss. But why didn’t you let me know you were coming?”
“Didn’t I reply to your text?”
“You did not.”
“Ah, well.”
Typical Lyle, taking it for granted that everyone was at his beck and call, but there was no point in remonstrating, especially as pretty much everyone was at his beck and call.
He opened the second bag and brought out two bottles of Tsingtao beer.
She found a bottle-opener. He opened both bottles. They took one each and clinked them together.
“Let’s get this food on the table,” Lyle said. “We can talk while we’re eating. Got any chopsticks?”
“What if I’d already eaten? Would you have scoffed the lot?”
“I’d have had a damn good try, but you can save me from myself.”
It was three weeks since at Lyle’s suggestion they had met at Kettle’s Yard in Cambridge.
“Have you been here before?” he’d asked her as they went in through the front door.
She shook her head. “No, never.”
“There’s a gallery, but it’s the house that’s the gem. It was the home of Jim and Helen Ede. There’s a fine collection of twentieth-century British art, but the whole place is a work of art. It’s almost as if they’re still living here.”
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