And eventually the words started to spill out. He couldn’t look at her, but he could talk. Just.
‘I’m sorry for snapping at you.’
‘It’s OK.’
‘No, it isn’t. But Truffle...’ How did he explain? ‘She’s not just my dog. She’s my family.’
‘I know.’
She didn’t seem to be judging him. ‘My only family,’ he clarified.
Again, she didn’t say anything. Didn’t ask, didn’t probe, just gave him the space to think and talk when he was ready. Although Georgie hadn’t promised to keep everything confidential, he was pretty sure that she would: just as he hadn’t said anything to anyone else in the department about her being a widow. She understood how excruciating it was to be gossiped about.
‘My mum had me when she was very young,’ he said. ‘She was sixteen. I don’t know who my dad was. She didn’t put his name on my birth certificate. And she wouldn’t tell anyone who he was, so her parents kicked her out before I was born.’
Georgie said nothing, but her fingers tightened around his. And suddenly it was easy to talk. Easy, for the first time ever.
‘She got a flat and a job, and we were doing OK together. But then Mum was killed in an accident when I was six. Someone knocked her off her bike when she was on her way from work to pick me up from school and she wasn’t wearing a helmet. She hit her head in the wrong place, and that was it.’ He shrugged. ‘So that left just me. And her parents—well, they hadn’t wanted to know me when she was alive and they told the social worker they didn’t want to be lumbered with me. So I went into care.’
Ryan had been abandoned by his family after his mother had died at the cruelly young age of twenty-two?
Just like his dog had been abandoned by her first owners.
Now Georgie understood just how deeply Ryan identified with his Labrador. No wonder he considered the dog his only family. They were two of a kind.
There were no words. So she just kept holding his hand and giving him the space to talk. He wasn’t looking at her; she didn’t think his gaze was focused on anything, because his expression was so far away.
‘I was an angry six-year-old. I missed my mum and I didn’t understand why the hospital couldn’t make her better, why she’d died. I couldn’t settle anywhere. I wet the bed. I kicked doors and walls. I threw things. I stole. I smashed things up.’
A small, frightened child’s equivalent of Truffle and her anxious chewing, Georgie thought.
‘So the foster parents didn’t tend to keep me for very long. I went through a few sets and then I ended up in a children’s home.’
‘Your grandparents never changed their minds?’
‘No.’
She still couldn’t get her head round this. ‘And your mum was their only child?’
‘Aye.’
How sad. Georgie couldn’t understand why any parent would throw their only child onto the street like that. Her parents had been there for Joshua after his wife had died and they’d even offered to come back to London to help, despite the fact they loved their retirement in Norfolk. Just as they’d been there for her after Charlie had been killed, given her a space to stay and to grieve.
If Georgie had fallen pregnant at sixteen, maybe her parents would’ve been disappointed that her options were narrower than they wanted for her, but they would’ve supported any decision she made. And they would’ve helped out with childcare, so she could go on to study and have the career she’d always wanted as well as a baby. And if anything had happened to her, she knew without a doubt that they would’ve stepped straight in to give her child a home and make sure the child felt loved and wanted. Her elder brother Joshua would’ve helped, too.
Ryan hadn’t had any of that support. He’d made it to where he was completely on his own.
Since his divorce and Clara doing the job swap, all he had was his dog.
‘I’m not pitying you,’ she said. ‘But right now I’m pretty angry on your behalf. And your mum’s.’
‘There’s no need. The McGregors don’t deserve any emotion from you,’ he said. ‘They’ll face a lonely old age, instead of having their daughter and their grandson to look in on them and brighten their day with a visit. They were very keen to tell my mother that “as ye sow, so shall ye reap”—the letter they wrote her was in the box of stuff that social services kept for me for when I was old enough. And now they’ll perhaps learn the truth of that themselves. I’ve thought about facing them, but I decided they’re not worth it. The best revenge is living well.’
‘That’s true,’ she said. ‘And, just so you know, everything you’ve just told me is going nowhere.’
He looked at her then. ‘Thank you.’
‘Does Clara know?’
‘Yes. She was the one who suggested I get a dog in the first place, when I split up with Zoe.’ He gave her a wry smile. ‘She said much the same as you. She also said I should try to find my father. So did Zoe. But, as my mother refused to name him, there isn’t anyone left to ask.’
‘Maybe your mum’s best friend from school?’ she suggested.
‘That’s what they suggested,’ he said. ‘But I don’t know who she was. And, even supposing I found someone who was at school with her, someone who remembered her and might help trace her best friend, what if Mum never told anyone at all? And if she did...’ He shook his head. ‘If my father didn’t want to know when she was pregnant or when I was born, he certainly won’t want to know thirty-six years later. And I don’t want another person in my life who’d let me down.’
So he expected nothing from relationships. Nothing at all.
It was a warning.
And, at the same time, it made her want to
