‘Well, maybe what you’ve built with your father is strong enough …’ Her son didn’t reply, just leant in to her and laid his head wearily on her shoulder. ‘You know you’ve been wonderful these last few months,’ she added. ‘You really stepped up to the plate in such a fantastic way.’

Leo straightened up and gave her a wry grin. ‘Sounds like I surprised you, Mum.’

Romy smiled. ‘Put it this way, I always knew you could, but it was a very big ask, for all of us, coping with your dad.’

Leo didn’t speak for a moment. Then he said, his voice tinged with cynicism, ‘Yeah, turned out to be a bigger bloody ask than I could ever have imagined.’ There was a long pause, during which neither of them spoke. ‘But Dad’s obviously contrite,’ he added. ‘He even said he intends to write and apologize to Grace.’

Romy raised a sceptical eyebrow. ‘Would he do that? It’s evidence, and he’s a lawyer.’

Her son shrugged. ‘He sounded pretty convincing.’

As she saw Leo off on the London train, Romy really felt for her son. He’d looked so preoccupied, so bewildered as he’d tried to work out what best to do. But although she sympathized wholeheartedly with his desire not to know something so dreadful about a parent, she was convinced it was better this way. Better than allowing the secret to fester indefinitely, like a piece of rotting meat, sitting at the centre of all their lives.

Selfishly, she knew Michael’s confession to Leo had cut the last thread that bound her to that secret. Despite Leo’s distress, she couldn’t help feeling an overwhelming sense of relief, realizing for the first time just how much it had cost her – since the letter – not to be honest with her sons. Now, at last, she could put Michael’s crime behind her. She hoped, eventually, that he would write to Grace. She hoped Leo would come round – he was a kind man and he loved his father. But it was out of her hands now.

Thank God I don’t have to go back to the flat tonight, she thought, as she walked briskly through the village – her village, now – and opened the front door to her cosy cottage. Tonight felt like a full stop on her past.

60

It was a few weeks since Finch had walked the steep, windy hillside behind his house with Grace, since Romy had sat on the sea wall, listening to her traumatized son. She and Finch were in her bright, newly painted primrose kitchen, Schubert playing softly on the radio, Romy rinsing out a blue metal Thermos at the sink. They were dressed in jeans and thermal tops, thick socks, ready for a morning on Ebernoe Common and Finch’s first encounter with her conservationist friends.

‘I always put the milk in with the tea,’ she said.