Then she got to work.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Olivia’s parting words had rung in Lorna’s head all morning like the reverberations from a struck gong. There was a baby.

As the front door closed, she had staggered a little with the shock. She clutched at the radiator for a moment, unable to fully comprehend the magnitude of what she had just heard. There was a baby. A baby! She blinked a few times, her mind racing with impossible questions. Did this mean . . . ? Could it be that . . . ?

‘Roy!’ she cried, turning the envelope between her fingers and gazing down at it as if it contained the mysteries of the universe. In a funny sort of way, it did. ‘Roy, where are you?’

They had sat on the sofa together, the letter between them. Her hands were shaking so much, he ended up having to hold the closely written pages. ‘It’s a boy,’ she said, a sob in her throat. She could hardly read the words any more because the tears in her eyes were making the world blur and shimmer. It was as if an enchantment had been revealed, changing everything. ‘Our grandson, Roy. He’s out there somewhere, Aidan’s boy. Can you believe it?’

They held hands and stared at one another, neither of them able to quite find the words that adequately described their feelings. For twenty long painful years, she had thought their little family had come to the end of its journey; that it would terminate with them, in a dead-end of a disused siding, never to go any further. But now . . . But here . . . According to this letter, there was another stop on the family line, after all. Another person in the world with Aidan’s genes. A grandchild, just as they’d always wanted. Longed for!

‘What will we do?’ Roy asked. His voice was hoarse as if he too had a lump in his throat.

‘We’ll find him, of course,’ said Lorna. She wiped her eyes and read the letter all over again, just to make sure she hadn’t imagined any of it. A baby. Their grandson. ‘He’d be nineteen now,’ she worked out. ‘A young man. Older than Aidan ever lived to be . . .’ Sadness pushed up through her, the usual sadness at the injustice of their having lost their only child, at imagining all the things he could have achieved: a career, a family, great happiness. And yet there was a strange elation mingled in there too; bubbles ascending. The story wasn’t over yet, after all. If they could just find this boy – this young man, rather – it would be the closest thing to having Aidan back again. ‘So he was born in Dorchester . . . there must be records of the birth and adoption. We’ll find a way to trace him.’ She blew her nose. ‘Our grandson, Roy!’