‘I can’t believe what you were saying tonight,’ he declares one evening after a dinner with friends. ‘All that stuff about Andy being half paralysed and brain damaged. It was never true, and certainly not now. Why do you have to fucking lie to everyone?’
Edward hardly ever swears but he has been drinking more than usual that evening. This time she is the calm one. ‘It’s what you have to say in these cases, Ed – explain why the birth parent is giving up the child for adoption. It’s what we’ll tell Callum: “Andy couldn’t look after you.” If I exaggerate a little it’s just to make it easier to explain.’
‘And to satisfy your own conscience for stealing his child.’
‘God, you talk shit sometimes. I don’t know why you are acting like this.’
And she doesn’t. She doesn’t understand Edward at all now. He always wanted a son. He loves his grandson – he will be a perfect father to Callum as he was to Izzy, but somewhere in that complicated mind of her husband he can’t accept what is happening. Some kind of self-denying ordinance is at work; he wants to be a father to Callum but not at the expense of someone else – someone whom he thinks has a better claim to love and be loved by their three-year-old grandson.
Then it happens, the event that she has dreaded. Andy is coming for a visit. She remains calm. What is the thinking behind this? she asks. It seems that the Scottish social workers think Andy should see his child again before making an irrevocable decision. ‘Best if your husband is here as well,’ they say.
‘Of course,’ she says, but she deliberately agrees a date when she knows he will be in London. She doesn’t know how he’ll react and she doesn’t want to take any risks.
When Andy arrives, he is smartly dressed and accompanied by two social workers: Yvonne, her normal Cambridge visitor, and another woman from Glasgow. He walks with a trace of a limp but otherwise seems recovered. He gives Marianne a sheepish look.
‘Hello Andy,’ she says, ‘you are looking very well.’ Her voice sounds a little too loud.
‘I’m fine,’ he says, and she notices that this time the Glaswegian accent is largely absent. They stand around awkwardly in the kitchen watching Callum through the window as he plays in the sandpit outside.
‘I’ll bring him in,’ she says.
‘It’s OK, we can go out,’ Andy says, and to her surprise he leads them all outside.
‘Hello, Callum,’ says Yvonne, squatting down beside him. ‘Are you making a castle?’
‘Boat,’ says Callum.
‘Callum, darling, this is Andy,’ says Marianne. ‘I don’t suppose you remember him, do you?’ Eighteen months ago he had been Daddy but she won’t use that word now – not now Edward is Daddy. Callum looks briefly at Andy then turns back to the sand.
‘How you daein’, Cal?’ says Andy. Callum ignores him. Marianne says she will make coffee and returns to the kitchen, watching through the window as the group outside watch Callum – standing around in a self-conscious semi-circle. They are just here to observe him, she tells herself. Yvonne had promised they would not confuse Callum by trying to re-awaken a lost connection, but when they come into the house the other woman does exactly that.
‘Don’t you remember your first Daddy?’ she says, kneeling beside Callum and looking towards Andy. ‘Come and give him a cuddle,’ and she takes Callum’s hand and half leads and half drags him towards Andy. Predictably, Callum struggles, falls over and starts to whimper. Marianne shoots an angry glance at the woman, picks him up, puts him on her knee and lets him nibble a biscuit. The visit seems to drag on interminably. She watches Andy out of a corner of her eye. She senses he is feeling less and less comfortable and she also notices how his eyes keep straying towards Izzy’s framed photo on the dresser. Andy’s silence fills the room. Marianne declines to interrupt so the two social workers make small talk and try to interest Callum in a toy car.
Andy stands up. ‘I think I’d like to leave now,’ he says. Muttering their acquiescence, they all rise to their feet. She is standing directly opposite him. They look at each other. She is searching for the right words but he speaks first. ‘It’s for the best,’ he says. He looks again at Izzy’s photo. ‘It’s what she would have wanted.’ Marianne takes a step forward and hugs him. He turns away blinking, seemingly embarrassed at his own emotion. And then they are all gone. Marianne sits on the sofa and hugs Callum; she presses her face into his neck and then she is also weeping, for herself and for Isabelle – but also for Andy.
Marianne knew she needed to talk to someone and so the next day she arranged to have a lunchtime sandwich at The Eagle with her friend Dorrie. The day was warm for the end of March and she and Dorrie sat outside in the yard. Dorrie sipped her lager and gazed at Marianne with her kelly-green eyes, while Marianne gave her an abbreviated version of her affair with Larry twenty years earlier and the photos which the blackmailer now had in his possession.
‘For fuck’s sake Marianne – just tell him,’ she said. ‘I mean, that long ago…’
‘It’s different for you.’
‘What – because I’ve gone off men?’
‘Not just that. I mean, you’ve chosen a different way – no commitments… Edward is just so… so moral – I don’t know how he’d react. And the pictures…’
‘Explicit, are they?’
‘You could say that…’
‘Well, my advice is to do nothing. Blackmail is a game of bluff – if the blackmailer has to pull the trigger, then he’s lost.’
‘But then so have I?’
‘Look, I doubt this guy has any experience of the world outside Russia. For all he knows the letter didn’t arrive, or more likely your husband knows all about the affair and you are already having a laugh together about it.’
‘You are probably right, but…’
‘Anyway, you don’t have a choice. If you pay him money, he’ll only come back for more. Even if you get hold of the negatives you don’t know how many prints he may have.’
Marianne looked down at the remains of her prawn sandwich. ‘So I have to sit it out?’
‘What else? Go to the police – there is nothing they can do; and the Russian police? They would probably want their cut of the blackmail price. My guess is that you’ll get a couple more letters then he’ll give up.’
Marianne contemplated Dorrie’s advice as she walked back down a narrow lane towards the river and her own college. The high walls on either side seemed to speak to her sense of entrapment. Not for the first time she cursed her cowardice all those years ago in not confessing everything to Edward. In the years after their return to England, their marriage had been rock solid and Edward was such a kind and considerate man… But now things felt different. Izzy’s death had damaged them both; she suspected that he looked back to the time he had tried to persuade her to have a second child – and the accident that had finally prevented it. Then there was the adoption. Even now he was inclined to criticise her for ‘lying’ about the extent of Andy’s incapacity. God, what a shithole I have dug for myself, she thought.
And so, she waited; and as Dorrie had predicted, another letter arrived a week later which she also ignored. A month passed without any more developments until one Saturday morning Edward walked into the kitchen, holding an envelope addressed to her.
‘No stamp,’ he said. ‘It must have been hand delivered.’
Some student wanting more time, she thought. Really, they should leave these notes for me in college. Tearing open the envelope, she watched as a folded square of paper floated to the ground.
‘Something’s fallen out,’ Edward said, but as he bent down to pick it up, its familiar shape sent a stab of adrenalin down to her fingertips and she made a grab for it first. Holding the folded square in one hand she glanced at the letter, muttered, ‘Usual student nonsense…’ and retreated as casually as she could to the privacy of her upstairs study.