‘Yeah. I was too – by then.’ His eyes glisten again. ‘Funny how things end up,’ he says, grinding his cigarette in the ashtray.

His loss seems almost tangible to Marina; she feels it too, but isn’t sure whether she’s relieved or otherwise to learn that Victor isn’t her father.

26

Connie

3 August 1964

In the morning, it was as if the scene in the garden with Victor had never happened. Normality had been restored. Tea towels and aprons flapped on the line, flowers bloomed, light sparkled on the windows of the church.

But Connie had the stolen banknotes.

Why had she taken them and put herself in debt to Victor?

She bound her belly as usual, slipped on her dress and applied her make-up carefully. Once again, she had been kept awake for most of the night – not just by splintered dreams, but also the baby kicking and turning and, in the early hours, a dull ache that had come and gone. Rummaging amongst her mother’s clothes, Connie found a fringed shawl and draped it over her shoulders.

On the way out, she stopped at her father’s desk and rolled back the lid. In a few days’ time, she would be gone. She would pack later, but now she wrote the note she planned to leave for her father, just in case he came home early or she was delayed. She worded it carefully, making no mention of her pregnancy, but telling him how she had left to find Johnny. I love him, she wrote at the end, and I hope you understand. She signed off and left the lid of the desk open, the note visible on the blotter.

Eileen was collecting her post, and when Connie asked for a word, invited her into the flat. The front room reeked of stale smoke; clothes were draped over the furniture or dropped in suitcases that had themselves been left open on the floor. Despite the warmth of the day, the fire crackled. Connie could see the blackened edges of burning papers. More of Leonard’s things, she guessed.

Sweeping a pile of magazines from an armchair, Eileen indicated that Connie should sit, while she perched on the sofa. ‘You must have wondered what was going on the other day,’ she said. ‘I guess I looked like a crazy woman.’

She said the word crazy in an American drawl with a long, lazy vowel. Her voice was warm like her personality. Connie glanced at the open suitcases. Eileen was obviously leaving soon.

‘Broadway here I come,’ she said, following Connie’s gaze.