He would have to tell Alice straight away, there was no choice: this situation had made them promise never to keep secrets from one another.
‘Aren’t you hungry, Jack?’ his mom asked across the table.
‘Sorry—it was good but I’m full,’ he replied, setting his knife and fork down beside the half-eaten chicken pie.
‘Did you use an entire chicken?’ his dad asked, turning and winking at Jack. He too placed his cutlery down with a sigh that said that the dinner had beaten him.
‘Oh, stop it,’ Velda said with a chuckle. ‘I don’t suppose you boys have any space for dessert, then?’
‘Well, I expect we could squeeze a little in. Don’t you think so, Jack?’
Jack nodded, his mask—replete with broad, beaming smile—safely in place. Every meal time, or other occasion that necessitated that the three of them be in the same room at the same time was identical: a bizarre and nightmarish game where, by tacit agreement, they played versions of themselves without pasts.
Velda grinned as she collected the dinner plates from the table.
A crash of thunder from close by coincided almost perfectly with the peal of the doorbell, causing the three of them to pause and consider if they had heard correctly.
‘I’ll go,’ Jack volunteered, leaping up, grateful for an excuse to leave the table. As he headed to the door, he heard his dad commenting that it was probably one of the neighbours needing something because of the storm. But it wasn’t, it was Laura. She was standing under the cover of the porch, her saturated hair stuck to the side of face and water dripping from her coat. ‘Hey. You sure picked a good time to come here.’ Jack stepped to one side. ‘Come on in.’
‘Didn’t I just,’ she replied, stepping inside the house.
He kissed her lingeringly on the lips. It was still new and slightly awkward; they had grown closer and crossed the line of friendship into a new territory, unfamiliar to him. Nobody but the two of them and Michael knew about it and it had yet to receive any official designation. Dating. The word was exotic-sounding to him and came with such expectations.
‘Are your mom and dad in?’ she mouthed silently, to which Jack nodded. She rolled her eyes.
‘Who is it, Jack?’ his dad called.
‘Just Laura—we’re going up to my room.’
‘Oh, but don’t you want any dessert?’ his mom called from the kitchen. ‘There’s enough for Laura, too.’
Jack raised his eyebrows questioningly to Laura. She shook her head. ‘No, we’re okay, thanks.’
In his bedroom, Jack closed the door, grateful to have been saved from the charade downstairs.
‘Just Laura?’ she chided, backing him playfully into the door. ‘Just Laura?’
‘Yeah, just Laura,’ he joked. Jack smiled and pulled her close. He kissed her again, but this time the awkwardness had vanished and passion had taken hold.
Chapter Eighteen
27th August 2016, Boston Logan International Airport, Massachusetts, USA
Morton’s head was killing him and he was struggling to keep up. Juliette was marching a few paces ahead of him, dragging her suitcase behind her. Every tiny sound in the busy airport car park was amplified, smashing against his eardrum. The migraine’s arrival this morning—probably his worst ever and the first since leaving England—was no coincidence, for today was the day that they were leaving Massachusetts, thereby ending the active search for his father.
‘Oh, air con—thank God,’ Morton mumbled, as they entered the terminal building. ‘Can we stop for a second?’
Juliette paused and turned. ‘Tablets not kicking in yet?’
‘No,’ he breathed, gently wiping sweat from his brow. After a long, slow inhalation he said, ‘Come on, then, lead the way to check-in.’
‘Listen, we’ve got bags of time—let’s get a water and have a sit down first,’ Juliette said.
‘Or a coffee?’ he suggested through squinted eyes.
‘No, a water. Go and sit over there—’ she directed him to a cluster of plastic seats, ‘—and I’ll get us a drink.’
He sat down, only too willing to accept Juliette’s orders, and held his head in his hands. He looked and felt pitiful. On the journey here Juliette had tried to console him and frame the failure to find his father in a different way. ‘Look at all that you have discovered,’ she had said with great enthusiasm. ‘You’ve found your dad’s high school year book, which included his photo; you found the report into your grandfather’s death, which included his photo; you’ve been to their house; you’ve met your grandmother; you’ve met your aunt and, best of all, you’ve had a glorious two weeks of honeymoon with me—with another week in New York still to come. I’d say that was pretty good going.’
Morton had managed a smile, realising that he was coming across as being ungrateful. He had realised, too, upon hearing his achievements listed in such a way, that he had accomplished an awful lot in a short time. But it felt as though he had run a marathon and stopped just a few yards from the finish line.
‘Leaving Massachusetts doesn’t mean the search is over,’ Juliette had continued. ‘You might still get a phone call from the article—not everyone reads the paper the day it comes out, you know.’
Not a single person had yet contacted him about the story in the newspaper. Not one. It was like a giant conspiracy, Morton had thought, recalling the pages and pages of classmates that had attended Barnstable High School with his father. Not one of them, apparently, still resided on Cape Cod or read the local paper.
‘Besides which,’ Juliette had added. ‘There must still be some research you can do back home: this can’t
