‘Sure.’ She squeezes his shoulder affectionately, then jumps down from his lap. ‘I’m going to carry on with my tanning.’ She grins at him over her shoulder as she heads back into the garden. Theo watches her go. Her shoulders have already started to turn red. He knows she won’t be satisfied until she’s sat out there for another hour, at least, despite his warnings of skin cancer. A doctor’s son, after all.

Later that afternoon Theo goes to visit his mum’s grave. The cemetery is busier than it usually is on a Saturday, which he puts down to the weather. Couples are strolling through the grounds arm in arm, families with young children and buggies. His heart contracts. He wants it so badly for himself and Jen. It’s a cruel irony to him that his dad illegally fathered all those children when he, Theo, can’t even get his wife pregnant. He wonders why his dad did it. He’d read up on other cases of doctors performing fertility fraud – he’d never heard of it before. A God complex is usually one reason. That sums up his father perfectly.

When he reaches his mum’s grave he kneels down to take the old flowers out of the vase and replaces them with the fresh roses. ‘They got him, Mum,’ he says, as he arranges the roses in the vase. ‘He’s admitted to pushing you and I think they’ll get him for Rose’s death too. I’ll . . .’ his voice catches ‘. . . I’ll never understand what happened that day. I’ll never understand him. But I promise, Mum, I promise that if I’m lucky enough to be a dad I’ll be everything he wasn’t.’

He touches the glossy marble tombstone, remembering the last time he’d seen his mum: the weekend before she died. She’d stood on the doorstep, pressing a bag of homemade cottage pies and lasagnes into his hands. She was the one who’d made him want to become a chef. She’d given him a huge hug, almost as if she knew it would be the last. And then she’d stood waving until he’d reversed out of the driveway, her smile hiding the pain she must have been feeling. ‘I’m sorry,’ he says, a lump forming in his throat. ‘I’m sorry I never knew what he was capable of. I’m sorry I couldn’t save you.’

59

Daphne

August 2018

TWO WOMEN COME AND VISIT ME TODAY. THEY HAVE dark curly hair, although one is older than the other. The younger one is wearing denim dungarees and looks like she might be pregnant. The older of the two is in an orange sundress. They are both beautiful. But all young women are beautiful to me, with their youth and their agility and their hips that don’t ache when they walk.