‘This Friday,’ said Lauren. ‘Good Friday. I know that it’s, ah, the anniversary –’

Rachel froze. ‘Yes,’ she said in her chilliest voice. ‘Yes it is.’ She had no desire to discuss this Friday with Lauren, of all people. Her body had known weeks ago that Friday was coming up. It happened every year in the last days of summer, when she felt that very first hint of crispness in the air. She’d feel a tension in her muscles, a prickling sense of horror, and then she’d remember: Of course. Here comes another autumn. A pity. She used to love autumn.

‘I understand that you go to the park,’ said Lauren, as if they were discussing the venue for an upcoming cocktail party. ‘It’s just that I wondered –’

Rachel couldn’t bear it.

‘Would you mind if we didn’t talk about it? Just not right now? Another time?’

‘Of course!’ Lauren flushed, and Rachel felt a pang of guilt. She rarely played that card. It made her feel cheap.

‘I’ll make us a cup of tea,’ she said, and began to stack the plates.

‘Let me help.’ Lauren half-stood.

‘Leave that,’ ordered Rachel.

‘If you’re sure.’ Lauren pushed a lock of strawberry-blonde hair behind her ear. She was a pretty girl. The first time Rob had brought her home to meet Rachel he’d barely been able to contain his pride. It had reminded her of his rosy plump face when he’d brought home a new painting from preschool.

What had happened to their family in 1984 should have made Rachel love her son even more, but it didn’t. It was like she’d lost her ability to love, until Jacob was born. By then, she and Rob had developed a relationship that was perfectly nice; but it was like that dreadful carob chocolate – as soon as you tasted it you knew it was just a wrong, sad imitation. So Rob had every right to take Jacob away from her. She deserved it for not loving him enough. This was her penance. Two hundred Hail Marys and your grandson goes to New York. There was always a price, and Rachel always had to pay it in full. No discounts. Just like she’d paid for her mistake in 1984.

Rob was making Jacob giggle now. Wrestling with him, probably, hanging him upside down by his ankles, the same way Ed used to wrestle with him.

‘Here comes the . . . TICKLE MONSTER!’ cried Rob.

Peal after peal of Jacob’s laughter floated into the room like streams of bubbles and Rachel and Lauren both laughed together. It was irresistible, like they were being tickled themselves. Their eyes met across the table, and at that instant Rachel’s laughter turned into a sob.

‘Oh, Rachel.’ Lauren half-rose from her seat and reached out a perfectly manicured hand (she had a manicure, a pedicure and a massage every third Saturday. She called it ‘Lauren time’. Rob brought Jacob over to Rachel’s place, whenever it was ‘Lauren time’, and they walked to the park on the corner and ate egg sandwiches). ‘I’m so sorry, I know how much you’ll miss Jacob, but –’

Rachel took a deep shaky breath and pulled herself together with all the strength that she had, as if she was heaving herself back up from a cliff edge.

‘Don’t be silly,’ she said so sharply that Lauren flinched and dropped back into her seat. ‘I’ll be fine. This is a wonderful opportunity for you all.’

She began stacking their dessert plates, roughly scraping leftover Sara Lee into a messy, unappealing pile of food.

‘By the way,’ she said, just before she left the room, ‘that child needs a haircut.’

chapter four

‘John-Paul? Are you there?’

Cecilia pressed the phone so hard to her ear that it hurt.

Finally he spoke. ‘Have you opened it?’ His voice was thin and reedy, like a querulous old man in a nursing home.

‘No,’ said Cecilia. ‘You’re not dead, so I thought I’d better not.’ She’d been trying for a flippant tone, but she sounded shrill, as if she was nagging him.

There was silence again. She heard someone with an American accent call out, ‘Sir! This way, sir!’

‘Hello?’ said Cecilia.

‘Could you please not open it? Would you mind? I wrote it a long time ago, when Isabel was a baby, I think. It’s sort of embarrassing. I thought I’d lost it actually. Where did you find it?’

He sounded self-conscious, as if he was talking to her in front of people he didn’t know that well.

‘Are you with someone?’ asked Cecilia.

‘No. I’m just having breakfast here in the hotel restaurant.’

‘I found it when I was in the attic, looking for my piece of the Berlin – anyway, I knocked over one of your shoeboxes and there it was.’

‘I must have been doing my taxes around the same time as I wrote it,’ said John-Paul. ‘What an idiot. I remember I looked and looked for it. I thought I was losing my mind. I couldn’t believe I would lose . . .’ His voice faded. ‘Well.’

He sounded so contrite, so full of what seemed like excessive remorse.

‘Well, that doesn’t matter.’ Now she sounded motherly, like she was talking to one of the girls. ‘But what made you write it in the first place?’

‘Just an impulse. I guess I was all emotional. Our first baby. It got me thinking about my dad and the things he didn’t get to say after he died. Things left unsaid. All the clichés. It just says sappy stuff, about how much I love you. Nothing earth-shattering. I can’t really remember to be honest.’

‘So why can’t I open it then?’ She put on a wheedling voice that slightly sickened her. ‘What’s the big deal?’

Silence again.

‘It’s not a big deal, but Cecilia, please, I’m asking you not to open it.’ He sounded quite desperate. For heaven’s sake! What a fuss. Men were so ridiculous about emotional stuff.

‘Fine. I won’t open it. Let’s hope I don’t get to read it for another fifty years.’

‘Unless I outlast you.’

‘No chance. You eat too much red meat. I bet you’re eating bacon right now.’

‘And I bet you fed those poor girls fish tonight, didn’t you?’ He was making a joke, but he still sounded tense.

‘Is that Daddy?’ Polly skidded into the room. ‘I need to talk to him urgently!’

‘Here’s Polly,’ said Cecilia, as Polly attempted to pull the phone from her grasp. ‘Polly, stop it. Just a moment. Talk to you tomorrow. Love you.’

‘Love you too,’ she heard him say as Polly grabbed the phone. She ran from the room with it pressed to her ear. ‘Daddy, listen, I need to tell you something, and it’s quite a big secret.’

Polly loved secrets. She hadn’t stopped talking about them, or sharing them, ever since she’d learned of their existence at the age of two.

‘Let your sisters talk to him too!’ called out Cecilia.

She picked up her cup of tea and placed the letter next to her, squaring it up with the edge of the table. So that was that. Nothing to worry about. She would file it away and forget about it.

He’d been embarrassed. That was all. It was sweet.

Of course, now she’d promised not to open it, she couldn’t. It would have been better not to have mentioned it. She’d finish her tea and make a start on that slice.

She pulled Esther’s book about the Berlin Wall over, flipped the pages and stopped at a photo of a young boy with an angelic, serious face that reminded her a little of John-Paul, the way he’d looked as a young man, when she’d first fallen in love with him. John-Paul had always taken great care with his hair, using a lot of gel to sculpt it into place, and he’d been quite adorably serious, even when he was drunk (they were often drunk in those early days). His gravity used to make Cecilia feel girly and giggly. They’d been together for ages before he’d revealed a lighter side.

The boy, she read, was Peter Fechter, an eighteen-year-old bricklayer who was one of the first people to die trying to escape the Berlin Wall. He was shot in the pelvis and fell back into the ‘death strip’ on the Eastern side, where he took an hour to bleed to death. Hundreds of witnesses on both sides watched, but nobody offered him medical assistance, although some people threw him bandages.