“And when, too late for an abortion, she told me about the pregnancy, we both knew that her family must never be told, particularly her father. She said that he despised her and would despise her more, not for the sex itself, which probably wouldn’t worry him, but because it had been with the wrong person and she had been a fool in getting pregnant. She could tell me exactly what he would say, and it disgusted and horrified me. I was approaching middle age and unmarried. I had no wish to take responsibility for a child. I see now, when it is too late to put anything right, that we treated the baby as if she was some kind of malignant growth which had to be cut out, or at any rate got rid of, and then could be forgotten. If we’re thinking in terms of a sin—and you, so I’ve heard, are the son of a priest and no doubt family influence still means something—then that was our sin. She kept the pregnancy secret and, when there was a risk of discovery, she went abroad, then came back and had the baby in a London nursing home. It wasn’t difficult for me to arrange for private fostering followed by adoption. I was a lawyer; I had the knowledge and the money. And things were less controlled in those days.

“Candace was stoical throughout. If she loved her child, she managed to conceal it. Candace and I didn’t see each other after the adoption. I suppose there was no true relationship on which we could build, and even to meet was to invite embarrassment, shame, the memory of inconvenience, of lies told, careers disrupted. Later she made up her time at Oxford. I suppose she read classics in an attempt to win her father’s love. All I know is that she didn’t succeed. She didn’t see Annabel again—even her name was chosen by the prospective foster parents—until she was eighteen, but I think she must have kept in touch, however indirectly, and without ever acknowledging that the child was hers. She obviously discovered to which university Annabel had gained admission and took a job there, although it wasn’t a natural choice for a classicist and one with a D.Phil.”

Dalgliesh asked, “Did you see Candace again?”