office. She walked back slowly and glanced into the side-hall that housed the tiers of tiny steel post-boxes. It was almost six in the evening, and the main post office was long ago closed. There were a couple of teenagers necking in the corner of the postal hall, but they scurried away guiltily as she glared at them. Isabella took the precaution of never approaching or opening her box while a stranger was in the hall.
She glanced back at the entrance to make sure she was alone, and then inserted her key in the lock of the tiny steel door in the fifth row of tiered boxes. The shock was greater for the fact that she was expecting the box to be empty. Adrenalin squirted into her bloodstream, and she felt her cheeks burn and her breathing choke.
She snatched up the thick brown envelope and crammed it into her sling bag.
Then, as guilty as a thief, she slammed and locked the box and ran back to where the Mini was parked. She was trembling so that she had difficulty fitting the key in the door-lock. She was breathing as hard as though she had played a long rally on the tennis-court as she started the Mini and U- turned back across the road.
She parked above the beach under the palms that line the drive. At this hour the beach was almost deserted. An elderly couple exercised an Irish setter at the edge of the water, and a single bather braved the south-easter and the icy green waters of the Benguela current.
Isabella rolled up the windows and locked both doors of the Mini before she took the envelope out of her bag and held it in her lap.
The address was typed, Mrs. Rose Cohen, and the Queen's-head postage-stamps had been franked at Trafalgar Square post office. She turned the envelope over, reluctant to open it, terrified of what it might contain. There was no return address on the reverse. Stidl delaying the moment, she searched for the gold lady's penknife in her bag and carefully slit the flap of the envelope with its razor-edged blade.
A coloured photograph slid out, and every nerve in her body tingled as she turned it face-up and recognized her son.
Nicky sat on a blue blanket on a garden lawn. He wore only a napkin. He was sitting up unsupported, and she reminded herself that he was nearly seven months old. He had grown, his cheeks were not so chubby, his limbs longer and sleeker. His hair was thicker and longer, curling darkly on to his forehead. His expression was quizzical, but there was a smile hovering at the corners of his mouth, and his eyes were bright and green as emeralds.
'Oh God. He's more beautiful!' she gasped, holding the photograph up to the light to study every tiny detail of his face. 'He's grown so big already, and sitting up on his own. My clever little manikin.' She touched the image and then saw with consternation that she had left a fingerprint on the glossy surface of the photograph. She wiped it off carefully with a Kleenex.
'My baby,' she whispered, and felt her loss tear at her heart with renewed ferocity. 'Oh, my babyp The sun had sunk to touch the line of the horizon far out on the Atlantic before she could rouse herself. Only then, as she returned the photograph to the envelope, did she realize that she had overlooked the other items it contained.
First, there was a photostat copy of a page from what was obviously a medical register at some children's clinic, but the name and address of the clinic had been obliterated. It was written in Spanish.
His name was at the head of the sheet, 'Nicholas Miguel Ramsey de Machado', followed by his date of birth and a record of weekly visits to the clinic.
Each dated entry was in a variety of handwritings and signed by the clinic's doctors or sisters.
It showed his weight and diet and dental records. She saw that on 15 July he had been treated for a rash that the doctor diagnosed as prickly heat and two weeks later for a mild oral thrush. Otherwise he was healthy and normal. With a rush of maternal pride, she read that his first two teeth had erupted at four months, and he, weighed almost sixteen kilos.
Isabella turned to the last folded sheet of paper that the envelope contained and immediately recognized the handwriting. It was in Spanish, in Adra's firm restrained hand.
Sefiorita Bella, Nicky grows every day stronger and cleverer. He has a temper like one of the bulls of the corrida. He can crawl on hands and knees almost as fast as I can run, and I expect that at any day now he will rise up on his back legs and walk.
The first word he spoke was 'Mamma', and I tell him each day how beautiful you are and how one day you will come to him. He does not yet understand, but one day he will.
I think of you often, sefiorita. You must believe that I will care for Nicky with my own life. Please do not do anything to endanger him.
Respectfully, Adra Olivares The warning contained in the last line twisted like a knife between her ribs, and was more urgent and poignant for being so mildly expressed. She knew then that she could never risk telling anyone, not Pater or Nana' or even Michael.
She hesitated now with her hand on the handle of her bedroom door. 'I have to lie to you, Mickey. I'm sorry. Perhaps, one day, I will tell you the truth.' She listened for a moment, but the great house was silent, and she turned the handle and quietly swung the door open.
The long gallery was deserted with only the night lights burning in their brackets on the wood-panelled walls. On bare feet, Isabella slipped silently over the Persian carpets scattered on the parquet floor. Since he was so seldom at Weltevreden, Michael kept his old room in the nursery wing.
He was sitting up in bed reading. As soon as she pushed the door open, he dropped the book on the bedside table and lifted the bedclothes for her.
As she climbed in beside him, he tucked the eiderdown around her shoulders and she clung to him, shivering with misery. They held each other for a long time in silence before Michael invited her gently.
'Tell me, Bella.' Even then she could not say it immediately. Her good intentions wavered, she felt the desperate temptation to ignore Adra's warning. Mickey was the only one of the family who knew that Ramsey and Nicky even existed. She wanted desperately to blurt it all out to him and have his gentle warming comfort to help fill the terrible void in her soul.
Then the image of Nicky that she had watched on the video film flashed before her eyes once more. She drew a deep breath and pressed her face to Michael's chest. 'Nicky is dead,' she whispered, and felt him flinch in her embrace. He did not reply at once.
'It's true,' she consoled herself silently. 'Nicky is dead to all of us now.' And yet the words seemed a dreadful betrayal of Michael and of Nicky.
She did not, dare not, trust him. She had denied the existence of her own son to him, and the falsehood seemed to increase her own misery and isolation, if that were possible.
'How?' Michael asked at last, and she had anticipated the question.
'Cot death,' she whispered. 'I went to wake him for his feed, and he was cold and dead.' She felt Michael shiver against her. 'Oh God! My poor Bella! How horrible!
How cruel!' The reality was crueller and more horrible than he could imagine, but she could not share it with him.
After a long minute, he asked: 'Ramsey? Where is Rarnen? He should be here to comfort you.'.
'Ramsey,' she repeated the name, trying to keep fear out of her voice. 'When Nicky was gone, Ramsey changed completely. I think he blamed me. His love for me died with Nicky.' She found herself weeping now, hard tearing sobs that expressed all the grief and terror and loneliness that had haunted her for so long. 'Nicky is gone. Ramsey is gone. I will never see either of them again, not as long as I live.' Michael hugged her tightly. His body was hard and warm and strong.
Masculine strength that was completely devoid of sexuality was what she needed most. She felt it flowing into her like water filling the depleted dam of her courage and fortitude, and she clung to him silently.
After a while, he began to talk. She lay and listened, her ear pressed to his chest so that his voice was a reverberating murmur. He talked of love and suffering, of loneliness and of hope, and at last, of death.
'The true terror of death is its finality. The ending so abrupt, the void beyond so irrevocable. You cannot challenge death, or appeal against it.
You only break your heart if you try.' Platitudes, she thought, old clichds, the same ones with which man has tried to console himself for tens of thousands of years. Yet, like most cliches, they were true, and they were the only comfort that she had available to her. More important than the sense of the words, was the soft lulling music of Michael's voice, the warmth and strength of his body, and his love for her.
At last, she fell asleep. z9e She awoke before dawn and was immediately aware that he had lain all night without moving so as not to disturb her, and that he was awake also.
'Thank you, Mickey,'she whispered. 'You'll never know how alone I have been. I needed that badly.' 'I do know, Bella. I know what loneliness is.' And she felt her heart go out to him, her own pain temporarily assuaged. She wanted to be there for him now. It was his turn.
'Tell me about your new book, Mickey. I haven't read it yet - I'm sorry.' He had sent her a pre-publication copy, lovingly inscribed, but she had been totally engrossed with her own suffering. There had been no time for anybody else, not even Mickey. So this time, while she listened, he talked about the book and then about himself and his view of the world around them.
'I have spoken to
