She stared at the letter. She thought about Jim Leech, that diffident, sorrowful old man, and she felt sad at the thought that he had died alone and unloved. She wondered about what dreadful wrong he’d done to Dad. Whatever it was, he had not been able to bring himself to reveal it to her when she visited him that day at Albert Mansions. Perhaps she would never know.
The door to the study opened, and Ken put his head round. She stuffed the letter back in the envelope.
‘Hello, stranger,’ he said, coming into the room and giving her a hug. ‘My God, you do look brown.’
‘Yes, it was incredibly hot. By the way, I brought you something from duty-free.’
She went to her backpack in the hall and came back with a bottle of whisky and a long packet of a hundred Marlboro cigarettes.
Ken’s face lit up.
‘Thank you very much, Laura. That is very kind indeed. Would you like a snifter now?’
‘It’s a bit early for me, thanks, Ken,’ she said.
‘I cleared out your Da’s room while you were away,’ said Ken. ‘Took most of the things to the charity shop.’
‘That must have been difficult.’
‘Yes, it was. Most of his stuff was old. He never did care about clothes much, did he?’
‘No,’ she said, smiling, remembering the socks full of holes in the drawer.
‘Did you find anything else?’
‘Anything else?’
‘Letters, for example?’
‘No, nothing like that. There were a few old slips from the bookies. I threw them out, I’m afraid. Why? Were you looking for something?’
‘No, nothing really.’
She looked down at the letter from Jim Leech’s solicitor. ‘A really strange thing has happened. You remember that old guy, the one you saw Dad shouting at when he had his fall?’
Ken nodded. ‘The one your Da wouldn’t talk to?’
‘He wouldn’t talk to him, and he wouldn’t tell me about any of it.’
‘But he never would, would he? He must have made a conscious decision at some point not to talk about it.’
‘Yes, and I’m not much nearer to finding out anything about it. But the strange thing is that Jim Leech died while I was away, and he’s left me some money in his will.’
‘Why would he do that?’
‘No idea. But he did seem to want to repay Dad for saving his life in the war. I don’t think he had any family. Or even any friends by the sound of it.’
‘Well, you are a lucky girl!’
On an impulse, she said, ‘How about selling me Betty? I could hang the painting in my flat.’
Ken gave her a sideways look. ‘I was looking for five hundred for her,’ he said slowly.
‘Five hundred wouldn’t be a problem.’
‘You’re a gem, Laura. That’ll keep me in oil paints and whisky for a good few months. Come here and give me a hug. I’m so glad you’ve come home.’
Later, she went down to the basement to visit Marge. It had been years since she’d been down there. She remembered that she’d promised to go down and visit the day she’d come back from Paris. But she never had.
Now she sat nursing a strong cup of tea in the old armchair in the corner. Marge had a colour television now, but apart from that the little flat had hardly changed. It even smelled the same. Coming down here always brought back the feelings of her childhood: the grief for the death of her mother, the loneliness and boredom of waiting for Dad to come home from work.
Marge was bustling about purposefully. There were bright daffodils in a vase on the windowsill, and the cats lazed on the mat in the glow of the gas fire. She had made a fruit cake as a welcome gift for Laura.
‘Did you find what you wanted on your trip, love?’ she asked, putting a slice of cake on the table next to Laura.
‘I went to the museums in Thailand, and saw the railway where Dad was a prisoner during the war. But I didn’t find out much else. It was a bit disappointing on that front. What I really wanted to do was to find his friend, Joy de Souza. I found a photo of her tucked into one of his books just before he died. I wanted to find out a bit about her.’
‘Joy de Souza. I’ve never heard that name before. Did you find out anything about her, my love?’
‘Yes,’ she said, looking away. ‘I found out that she died in the war.’
‘Well, that is sad.’
‘I had a feeling she might still be alive. I think she’d written to Dad once about ten or eleven years ago. I saw a letter, you see … From Penang. But it couldn’t have been from her, after all.’
Marge looked at her sharply. ‘Then it must have been from someone else.’
‘Do you know anything? Did he ever tell you about anyone from Penang?’
Marge stared at her hands. Then she put down her teacloth and came to sit beside Laura.
‘There was someone who came to the house once around that time. She wasn’t a foreigner, but I know she lived abroad. Had that air about her, looked like one of those colonial types. Thin as a lollipop stick she was, had dyed black hair and makeup like Polyfilla. All done up in furs. She left a box of matches on the sideboard, came from the Penang Club or someplace like that. Stunk of French perfume.’
‘Where was I?’
‘You must have been at school. He’d taken the afternoon off work. All very secretive he was about it. Never mentioned it once, not to me or to Ken.’
‘Do you know who she was?’
‘No idea. But she looked like trouble. Had that air about her. Like Wallis Simpson. Sort of stuck up but lacking in class, all at the same time.’
Laura laughed. ‘How could you tell? You only saw her from the window, Marge.’
‘I could tell.
