‘Olivia Kemp. You must have met her. She was living with Mummy after I was born.’

‘Ah – Kemp. Yes, school friend of hers – the councillor’s daughter. I do remember someone was staying for a bit but I never met her. Course, when I saw a lot more of you both, you were already living in Florence Road.’

‘It’s so strange,’ Anna said slowly. ‘She seems to have kept bits of her life in such separate compartments. Didn’t she ever talk to you about Olivia?’

‘Not that I remember. She didn’t hark back to school much. No real reason to I don’t think. Why?’

‘I just . . .’ She felt weary suddenly, ready to go and lie under a tree and sleep, rest her brain from all these thoughts. ‘You think you know people, don’t you? And instead you only see little glimpses of them.’ She could feel herself growing tearful.

‘Anna, my dear . . .’

She knelt down and was in his arms, his smell of sweat and shaving cream. Sobbing as she had done as a child after scares or bumps. ‘You’re such a good man,’ she said into his warm, fleshy chest. ‘There aren’t many about like you.’

He didn’t speak and she could tell that he was unable. His body gave little jerks. She didn’t look up at him, knowing his shyness and that he wouldn’t want her to see his tears. As he wiped his pink face with the back of his hand, she said, ‘My father didn’t want to know me. You’ve been a father to me.’

He spoke softly, in a controlled voice, holding her with great tenderness. ‘Nothing would have made me happier than to have been your father.’

Chapter 31

The two of them wouldn’t leave her alone: Kate and Olivia. Those days immediately after the funeral and her visit to Coventry it was as if she was paralysed. She moved round the house, tired and stunned, not achieving anything. When the phone rang she ignored it now. Often she found herself standing or sitting, just staring across the silent rooms. She might wander up and down stairs opening cupboards and drawers, looking, not certain for what, but somehow unable to begin disturbing anything.

On the window-sill of Kate’s bedroom, overlooking the garden, were photographs, all of Anna at different ages. A tiny monochrome print with white edges and her serious little face looking out, all eyes. This was stuck into the lower edge of the frame of her graduation portrait, the brick Italianate tower of Birmingham University in the background. 1969. She smiled at the shortness of her dress, her hair bobbed round her ears and backcombed specially for the occasion. There were the familiar snaps Kate had had on show for years: Anna in the backyard of the Florence Road house, aged about eleven, a black and white kitten cuddled close to her face. Another at nine, on a beach, bending over a metal-tipped spade and looking up to grin delightedly into the lens, hair swept to one side by the wind. Wales, and their first-ever holiday.