Thomas came down the steps heading for the street, and Peter instinctively put out a hand to stop him.
“One more question,” he said. “Just one more. Was Rosie his first name or his last?”
“How should I know? The other man just called him that. What is it about his name that’s so important?”
The angry tone of his son’s voice incensed Peter. Part of him wanted to push Thomas away or even strike him again, like he had in Woodbridge, but the need for an answer stayed his hand. There was nobody except Thomas whom he could talk to about the conversation he’d overheard. He had to know if there was a connection.
“On the night after your mother’s funeral, I heard Greta talking to someone on the phone,” said Peter slowly. “I just heard the end of the conversation; that’s all. She said to whoever it was: ‘Don’t call me that. I’m not your Greta Rose. Not anymore.’ Then afterward I asked her what that meant and she said it was her name, that Rose was her middle name.”
“And then today you heard about Rosie for the first time and you wondered — ”
“I don’t know what I wondered.”
“You wondered about Rosie and Greta. You wondered…” Thomas stopped in midsentence. He didn’t need to spell it out for his father. If he could prove a connection, then he could still win.
“Have you looked through her things?” Thomas asked.
“For what?”
“To see if she’s really called Greta Rose. She must have a passport or a birth certificate or something like that.”
“I suppose I could,” said Peter doubtfully. Talking to Thomas behind Greta’s back was a betrayal, but going through her papers would be worse, far worse.
“Where is she now?” asked Thomas.
“She’s talking to her barrister.”
“Cooking up more lies.”
“No, going through her evidence,” said Peter angrily. He swung like a pendulum between his loyalty to Greta, which made him feel almost violent toward his son, and the doubts about her innocence that he couldn’t get out of his head.
“When’s she coming back?” asked Thomas.
“I don’t know. Not before eight.”
“There’s time then. Let’s go and look.”
They began walking toward the house. Peter’s agitation became more evident with every step they took.
“I can’t give evidence like this,” he said as they turned the corner. “I need to know first.”
“When are you giving evidence?”
“I don’t know. Sometime on Thursday probably. The prosecution have still got some statements to read, and then there’s Greta. I don’t know how long she’ll take.”
Peter was talking in order not to think about the significance of what he was doing as he beckoned to Thomas to follow him into the house.
Thomas expected his father to turn into the room on the right, but instead he carried on up the stairs to the first floor and went over to the very same oak bureau in the corner of the drawing room where Thomas had found the locket the previous October.
“Greta keeps most of her papers in here now,” said Peter, opening the bureau.
“Not much point in looking in the secret place, I wouldn’t think,” said Thomas from behind his father’s shoulder. He was right. The recess was empty, but in the drawer below Peter found his wife’s passport. It had been issued the previous year, three months before Greta’s marriage. There was an unflattering photograph taken just after Greta had had an unusually severe haircut, and next to it the details of the holder. Last name, Grahame. Given names, Greta. Nothing else. Just Greta.
Thomas leaned across his father and jabbed his finger against the name so hard that the passport almost fell out of Peter’s trembling hand.
“Look, Dad. No Rose. No nothing. She lied to you about it being her middle name. That’s not why she used to be called Greta Rose.”
“It’s not enough,” said Peter stubbornly. “It doesn’t mean anything. Greta told me herself that she stopped calling herself Greta Rose after she left Manchester, and so it makes sense that she’d leave it off her renewal application. It’s the birth certificate that’s important. It’ll be here somewhere.”
“Let me look,” said Thomas impatiently. “You’re taking forever.”
“No, I don’t want you touching anything,” said Peter angrily.
“Look in the drawer where the passport was, then,” said Thomas. “She’s going to keep all those kind of documents together.”
Thomas was right. There was an old black address book held together by a liberal application of masking tape and underneath it a thick brown envelope with the word certificates written on it in Greta’s neat handwriting.
Peter emptied the contents of the envelope out onto the writing surface of the bureau. At the top was a much newer piece of paper than the others, which turned out to be the certificate of Greta’s marriage to Peter. Underneath it was a document headed University of Birmingham, and then a copy of a death certificate for a George Grahame, and at the bottom the certified copy of an entry of birth for Greta Rose Grahame, a girl born on November 17, 1971, at 2 °Cale Street in Manchester. Greta Rose had had a home birth.
Peter felt an overwhelming surge of relief flood his body. For a moment it was ecstasy. He was like a soldier told that he’s lost a leg who then looks down to find the leg still there. Peter’s spinning world righted itself, and he forgot for a moment that Thomas was the enemy.
“Thank God,” he said. “Deep down I always knew she was Greta Rose. She dropped the Rose because she had a bad time up north. Just like she said.”
“She may be called Rose, but that doesn’t mean a thing,” said Thomas furiously. He felt crushed by the disappointment that the birth certificate had inflicted upon him. For a moment he had really believed that the nightmare of the last year was going to end. He wouldn’t be alone anymore; people wouldn’t say he was a liar. But now it was worse. Doubt removed is certainty redoubled. Thomas felt his final defeat approaching. Greta had almost won. He made a last appeal to his father.
“It’s not the birth certificate that matters, Dad. It’s me and you. I heard Rosie talking about Greta. I saw him outside this house. She had Mum’s locket in this desk.”
The smile on Peter’s face faded and the light went out of his eyes. It was as if Thomas’s words had reminded him of who Thomas really was. His son was the enemy. He’d brought all this about. He was the reason why his wife was on trial for murder when she was innocent, entirely innocent.
“You saw; you heard,” said Peter angrily. “It’s always you. Not you and me. You and your lies.”
“I’m not lying. What do you think I am? Why would I want to make it up?”
“Because she rejected you when you tried to — ”
“Tried to what?”
“Tried to… I don’t know what you did. I wasn’t there, but I know what you wanted. Greta told me.”
“What did I want?”
“To sleep with her.”
“And she said no and I went crazy. Is that the idea?”
“You feel guilty too. That’s another reason why you’ve done what you’ve done.”
“Guilty! You’re the one who should be guilty. You left Mum on her own all those years and she never complained. And you left me too even though I was small and would have liked to have had a father. What did you ever do with me?”
Peter said nothing. Thomas didn’t know if he was even listening, but it did him good to tell his father what he felt. He probably wouldn’t have another opportunity.
“I can’t even remember you taking me for a walk. You just weren’t there. Your career was too important for you to spend time with your family.”
“I was earning money for you and Anne,” said Peter defensively.
“No, you weren’t. You were suiting yourself. And it got better, didn’t it, when Greta came along. Green-eyed
