‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘But Jim lied to me about Simon’s disappearance and I think Archie is lying too. Rebecca was pregnant with Natalie when Simon disappeared and Jim started paying her. It all stinks.’

Thomas frowned. ‘Are you saying Jim was sleeping with Rebecca, she got pregnant, and between them they got rid of Simon? Or he had an affair decades ago and a daughter he never knew about? But then Simon working for you is a crazy coincidence.’

‘Maybe it wasn’t a coincidence, maybe Simon came to us on purpose.’

‘Why?’

Dorothy rubbed at the table. ‘I don’t know.’

‘You realise how insane this sounds.’

Dorothy touched her eyebrows. ‘Yes.’

‘He would’ve been sixty years old when he was sleeping with Rebecca – if he did.’

She stared at him. ‘Sixty-year-olds can’t have sex?’

‘She would’ve been in her mid-thirties then.’

‘So?’

‘In a happy marriage.’

‘We don’t know that. Maybe Natalie isn’t his, maybe Jim bonded with Rebecca over her missing husband, took advantage of a distressed pregnant woman.’

‘Then this DNA test is pointless.’

‘It’s just one possibility.’

‘Jim was a good man, Dorothy. He loved you, that was obvious.’

‘That’s right, men who are in love with their wives never have affairs.’

‘Not Jim.’

‘Especially when those wives are old and wrinkled and dried up.’128

Thomas paused and held her gaze. ‘You’re none of those things.’

She looked away, embarrassed that she’d fished for the compliment. This wasn’t about that.

A young woman walked past pushing a girl in a buggy. The toddler had a banana squished in her fist, chewing at the fruit from the edge of her fingers. Her mum was on the phone, talking loudly about booking a holiday.

Dorothy turned back to Thomas and lifted the two hair samples off the table.

‘Can you do it or not?’ she said, holding them out.

He looked at the samples then at her. Eventually he took them and put them in his pocket.

‘It’ll take as long as it takes,’ he says. ‘It depends how busy they are and the quality of the sample.’

Dorothy exhaled. ‘Thank you.’

Thomas finished his coffee and placed the cup in the saucer. ‘What happens if it comes back negative?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘What happens if it comes back positive?’

She looked at the stream of people, hundreds of them getting on with their lives, talking and eating and breathing and laughing and crying like regular people. She felt disconnected from it all.

‘I don’t know that either,’ she said.

129

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JENNY