And then, one night, at around nine o’clock, when Doug and I were just settling down to watch TV, there was a knock on the door. We looked at each other in surprise and when I went to answer it, there Rose and Oliver stood on our front step, Emily beside them asleep in her buggy. “What’s the matter?” I asked. “What’s happened?” They looked so odd, staring back at me like that, their eyes so big and frightened.
It was Rose who spoke first, and her voice was strange, not like her usual one at all. “Beth,” she said, “you have to help us. You’re the only one who can.”
TWENTY-FIVE
SUFFOLK, 2017
For a long moment in the living room of the Willows, no one moved, as though they were frozen by Oliver’s words. It was Tom, finally, who spoke. “What?” he said faintly. “She’s your what?”
At this, Rose made a low moaning sound, and, dropping her head, began to cry bitterly into her hands. Nobody moved to comfort her. Clara looked at each of their faces, shock reverberating through her. This, surely, was some sort of joke? She glanced at Mac, but he, too, was staring at Oliver in astonishment.
“Before you were born, when Emily was still a baby,” Oliver said, “I had an affair with one of my students.” He paused and for a moment his eyes met Clara’s, until, embarrassed, she looked away. “I was a stupid, weak fool, and I have no excuse—I have no defense—only that I know now that it was the very worst mistake of my life and I have regretted it every single moment since.”
He turned to Tom. “I don’t deserve forgiveness, but I want, at least, to try to explain.” There was a pause, the silence broken only by the sound of Rose crying. “Her name was Nadia, a student of mine. We became close, and I suppose I was too infatuated, too flattered, to realize how troubled, how . . . unstable she was. It wasn’t until later that I learned quite how unstable.”
Clara stared at him in horrified fascination. This brilliant man, this loving father and devoted husband, whom she had admired, loved, from the first moment they had met, was a cheat? Had betrayed his wife and child for the sake of a vulnerable woman far younger than he was? Something hard and bitter lodged in her throat as she listened to him speak. For the first time since she’d met him, she suddenly saw Oliver very differently. Her gaze turned to Tom and she noticed he was very still, his eyes fastened on his father’s face.
“Your mother was completely blameless,” Oliver went on. “Emily was still a baby. It was an unforgivable betrayal for which I was entirely responsible. When I came to my senses and ended things between Nadia and me . . .” He paused and swallowed, glancing at each of their faces. “I didn’t know that she had already fallen pregnant with my child.”
Rose’s head whipped round at this. “Don’t, Oliver,” she cried. “You promised me!”
Oliver’s voice was tender. “Rose, don’t you see? There’s nothing we can do now. She’s won. Hannah’s won.”
At this, Tom’s head shot up. “What the fuck are you talking about, Dad?” he said. “What do you mean, ‘She’s won’?”
Oliver flinched at his anger. “When Hannah was a baby, she was adopted by a woman named Beth Jennings and her husband. She grew up believing they were her natural parents, but then, when she was seven, she found out the truth.”
“That you were her real father,” Tom said coldly.
“That, and what happened to Nadia, to her mother.”
Tom shook his head in frustration. “Well, what did happen to her?”
Oliver glanced at Rose, something passing between them fraught with pain. Finally, Rose cleared her throat and said, “She died. Nadia died. It was all my fault.”
Clara shot Mac a look of stunned disbelief. “What do you mean?” she asked.
“When Oliver finished things with Nadia, after he’d confessed to me about the pregnancy, she became obsessed with him,” Rose said. “She persecuted him—both of us—she wouldn’t leave us alone. She said she was going to expose him to his university, finish his career.” She turned to Tom. “Your father told her he would provide for the child, but that wasn’t enough for her. She wanted him. She became manic, obsessed—she wouldn’t be happy until she had Oliver to herself, until he left me and Emily for her.”
There was absolute silence, the three of them staring at her mutely. “I arranged to meet her,” Rose continued. “I wanted to make her see sense. And if that didn’t work, I decided I’d offer her money, enough to leave the area, to start again somewhere else. I asked her to meet me somewhere we wouldn’t be seen. I used to walk the dogs we had then along Widow’s Cliff, above Dunwich beach, you know. It seemed like as good a place as any, equidistant to where we both lived. It was usually deserted and I knew she’d make a scene.”
Rose hesitated, her eyes staring unseeingly at the window as she remembered. “She was quite calm at first. But then, when I told her what I was offering, that I’d pay her to go away, that Oliver didn’t want her and never would, she went crazy. She had her daughter in her pram, and Emily was sleeping in her pushchair. She started ranting and raving, shouting that it wasn’t fair that Emily had her father, but her daughter wouldn’t. And then . . . and then . . .” Rose broke down, crying into her hands.
The three of them exchanged horrified glances. “What?” Tom asked. “What happened to her?”
“She jumped,” Rose
