At first, Dorothy said, when he’d asked after Connie, she’d told him that Connie had left London and that she, Dorothy, didn’t know where she’d gone. Marina supposes that his feelings hadn’t been strong enough for him to search. He hadn’t loved her as Harry had done. She can’t help but wish for Connie’s sake that she had chosen him instead of Johnny. How differently everything might have turned out if only that had been the case. But Marina knows it’s pointless to think like that; she might as well wish that Connie had left the flat just five minutes earlier, or later; or that there had been no haemorrhage; or . . . The list is infinite, the same as Marina’s grief.

Dorothy will be prosecuted for the part she played in covering up Connie’s death and not coming forward with the identity of the baby. Her complicity with Kenneth. She had made mistakes and she has admitted to them. She had tried to make amends and she had suffered years of guilt. Perhaps the judge will look on her favourably for that. In a strange way, Marina hopes so. After all, Dorothy is the only blood relative she has met. Naturally Kenneth will suffer his worst nightmare. Back to prison – at least for what happened to Frank.

In the restaurant, Marina chooses pasta from the menu and a glass of wine. It feels right to toast her mother here. Later, she heads towards the galleries. The calm and the quiet and the soft hum of voices reminds her of a church. She overhears conversations as she wanders through the different rooms, searching for the painting. She doesn’t even know if it’s still exhibited. She could ask, but she prefers to move slowly, pausing occasionally at a picture that captures her imagination, or hanging on the coat-tails of a guided tour.

The final gallery she walks into is packed. A group of people gather around a woman who is giving a lecture. Marina stays listening for a while. She is about to leave when she sees the painting, tucked in the corner. She moves across and sits on a bench opposite. The Virgin is leaning, head bowed, hands pressed together in prayer. There is a mystery about her. A sadness, too. Marina considers the shade and the shadow and the folds of her robes. Clothes like that would hide a pregnancy. Who would ever know?

And those colours. That blue. Better than blue. Marina crosses to read the card. The pigment is ultramarine. Its origins, lapis lazuli. She nods as if this information is the most important thing in the world and then she folds her hands and continues looking at the painting.

37

Connie

7 August 1964