more.’

I pull out the photograph from Father Julian’s collection. The rest are in the envelope, tucked inside my jacket pocket. I hand it over. I know immediately that she recognises it. Her knuckles turn white as she holds it ever tighter.

‘Where did you get this?’ she asks, though I’m pretty sure she already knows.

‘Please, can I come inside?’

She takes a step back for me to move in, and leads me down

the hallway.

‘Michael isn’t here,’ she says, then pauses. ‘Thankfully’

The photographs on the wall are all the same as the last time

I was here, but I see them a little differently now. Michael Tyler, who is holding her hand when she is maybe five years old, doesn’t appear in any earlier photographs.

We sit down in the lounge. Patricia Tyler offers me a drink and I tell her I’d like some water. She gets up and returns a minute later, carrying two glasses. She sets them down carefully on a pair of coasters and I ask the question I came here to ask.

‘You’re right,’ she says. ‘It all seems like a lifetime ago. Longer, when I think about it really hard. Rachel was four when I met

Michael and six when we got married. It was like starting a new life. I could only hope that Michael would one day look at Rachel as if she was his own.’ She takes a sip of water. ‘He did see her that way too. He loved her, and the past years — well, they’re killing him as much as they’re killing me.’

And Father Julian, he was Rachel’s biological father,’ I say, and it isn’t a question.

‘It’s been over twenty years, and you’re the first person to

ever ask me about him.’ She looks back down at the photograph.

“I remember this moment,’ she says. ‘It was the day Rachel turned two. I was leaving work early. My mother would look after Rachel while I was at work. She made a cake and we had a party, but

Rachel didn’t understand the occasion.’

I remember a similar party for my own daughter. I remember

getting carried away and buying too many gifts. Emily was excited tearing them open, but her concentration would drift from her

new toy to the wrapping paper the toy had come in, and she

would run around the room as if she was on a sugar high while

friends and family watched and laughed and played with her.

She would have five more birthdays. Rachel Tyler had seventeen more.

‘This moment,’ she says, and she twists the photo towards

me for the briefest of seconds. Rachel is sitting in the corner of a room with her head resting on her knees, her arms wrapped

around her legs, and her eyes either half open or half closed, ‘was at the end of the day. I was getting ready to take her back home and she didn’t want to go. She wanted to stay with my mother,

because she thought that it meant there would be more presents tomorrow’

She pauses, and I have the feeling her mind is travelling down a path of a possibility not taken. She’s thinking that if she’d left her daughter at her mother’s house on that day nearly twenty

years ago, Rachel would still be alive.

“I don’t even know why I took the photo,’ she says. “I mean,

I remember taking it, and I remember asking her to smile, but

I don’t really know why I went about it. I’d already taken lots that day. I sent it to Father Julian. He’d asked for one. This, this is all about Father Julian, isn’t it? About Stewart? You having this photo. You took it from him. And he’s dead and Rachel’s

dead and there’s something to that, isn’t there? That’s why you’re here.’

‘What happened after you had the baby?’

‘Things were already in motion before Rachel was born. We

both knew I could never have an abortion. He wouldn’t allow

it, and anyway, it wasn’t something I would have considered.

I also knew he couldn’t be with me. I was going to be a single mother, but it wasn’t going to be the end of the world. I had

to give up work for the first year and a half. Stewart told me he would support me. We set up bank accounts. Once I got married, Stewart didn’t have to pay as much but he did keep paying.

I never asked him for anything more, and he never asked to see Rachel.’

I think about this for a few moments, sure that there is something else here. If Julian did Father those other children, was he paying child support to all of them? If so, how did he get the money?

I keep the conversation moving along, but make a mental note to come back to this.

‘Did Rachel know?’

‘When she was old enough she figured out Michael wasn’t

her real dad. She asked who her father was, but I never told her.’

She takes a drink. “I could really do with something stronger. Can I get you something?’

‘Water’s fine,’ I say, and I take a sip to show just how fine it is.

“I guess water’s fine for me too. I know how it sounds, getting pregnant to a priest of all people, but, well, I don’t regret it. Things were different back then. Father Julian … huh, it sounds so funny when I call him that, doesn’t it? The father of my child, and here I am calling him Father Julian instead of Stewart. I wonder if that means anything.’

“I don’t know.’

‘Look at me, I’m starting to ramble.’

“No, please, it’s all important.’

‘Back then Stewart was a young man, and he was very, very

striking. Almost insanely handsome. I think women were going

to church just to see him, not to hear what he had to say. He

had this — well, this magnetism — and it was more than just his looks. Everybody liked him; he was very charming, very likeable.

But he was also lonely, really lonely, and seemingly vulnerable, and somehow that made him even more appealing. One day that

loneliness became too much for him, for me, and we, we …

well, you know the rest. Anyway, he would always be quiet after we … you know, after we were together in that way. He was

intense too, and even though he knew he was making a mistake,

neither of us could help ourselves. He would tell me that when he was around me it was like somebody else was taking over, like he was a different man. I think he was a good man trapped in the wrong profession.’

‘Did you ever tell him that?’

‘More than once. But he said the priesthood was a calling, that he could help people, that he could do more good with a collar than without one. It was hard to watch. He was so dedicated to the church, it pained him every time we were together. In the end, I finished it, I had to. I didn’t want to, but what choice did I have?

It was tearing him apart. A month after we stopped seeing each other, I found out I was pregnant.’

‘What happened when you told him?’

“He wanted to do the right thing, only the right thing didn’t fall in line with his big picture of right things. It was like every day he was fighting a personal war within himself. I think that war was there his entire life. He was never going to leave the priesthood to be with me, and he couldn’t stay being a priest if others found out. So we both agreed to keep it quiet. I also stopped going to church.’ She dabs her knuckles into the bottoms of her eyes and pulls away some tears before taking another sip of water.

‘Did Michael know?’

‘He knew. I had to tell him. Can you imagine if he hadn’t

known? Every day he would wonder. He would think maybe

I was sleeping with so many people that I didn’t know who

Rachel’s dad was. I told him, and he wasn’t angry or disappointed.

He was relieved, for some reason. I’m not sure why exactly. I

think maybe knowing a priest had got me pregnant was much

better than thinking I’d slept with some drug addict or criminal.

Purer, or something. If that makes sense.’

It does, in a weird kind of way. ‘Did you keep in touch with

Father Julian?’