“I should leave it as it is—that is, unless Ronald isn’t happy about it.”

“It isn’t that. A little bit extra always comes in useful. I just thought you might need it yourself.”

She turned and touched Rhoda’s left cheek, a touch so soft that Rhoda was only conscious of the fingers shaking in a gentle tremble against the scar. She closed her eyes, willing herself not to flinch. But she didn’t draw back.

Her mother said, “He wasn’t a bad man, Rhoda. It was the drink. You oughtn’t to blame him. It was an illness, and he loved you, really. That money he sent you after you left home—it wasn’t easy finding it. He spent nothing on himself.”

Rhoda thought, Except on drink, but she didn’t speak the words. She had never thanked her father for that weekly five pounds, had never spoken to him after she left home.

Her mother’s voice seemed to come out of a silence. “Remember those walks in the park?”

She remembered the walks in the suburban park when it seemed always autumn, the straight gravelled paths, the rectangular or round flowerbeds thick with the discordant colours of dahlias, a flower she hated, walking beside her father, neither speaking.

Her mother said, “He was all right when he wasn’t drinking.”

“I don’t remember him when he wasn’t drinking.” Had she spoken those words or only thought them?

“It wasn’t easy for him, working for the council. I know he was lucky to get that job after he’d been sacked from the law firm, but it was beneath him. He was clever, Rhoda, that’s where you get your brains. He won a scholarship to university and he came in first.”

“You mean he got a first?”

“I think that’s what he said. Anyway, it means he was clever. That’s why he was so proud when you got into the grammar school.”

“I never knew he’d been to university. He never told me.”

“Well, he wouldn’t, would he? He thought you weren’t interested. He wasn’t one for talking, not about himself.”

None of them had been. Those outbursts of violence, the impotent rage, the shame, had done for them all. The important things had been unsayable. And looking into her mother’s face, she asked herself how could she begin now? She thought her mother was right. It couldn’t have been easy for her father to find that five-pound note week after week. It had come with a few words, sometimes in shaky handwriting: With love from Father. She had taken the money because she needed it and had thrown away the paper. With the casual cruelty of an adolescent, she had judged him unworthy to offer her his love, which she had always known was a more difficult gift than money. Perhaps the truth was that she hadn’t been worthy to receive it. For over thirty years she had nursed her contempt, her resentment and, yes, her hatred. But that muddy Essex stream, that lonely death, had put him out of her power for ever. It was herself she had harmed and to recognise this might be the beginning of healing.