‘Think I’ll grab lunch off site if you don’t mind. I’m trying to persuade Amanda, the uni PR, to meet me. I’m hoping she can recommend a counsellor for Amelie. And obviously it’s more urgent now.’
‘OK. Good. And once you’ve sorted help for Amelie, see what you can get from this Amanda about the professor affair rumours.’
‘Still nothing from the formal interviews?’
‘No. We’ve now seen all seven men who’ve taught Gemma. Nothing so far. But we need to find out who the father of that baby is . . . somehow. And urgently.’
‘I’ll try my best. Might hang around the campus a bit. See what I can dig up.’
‘Good. OK. Excellent. How’s Amelie doing?’
‘Not good. Wet the bed last night, which she hasn’t done for months.’
‘Poor poppet.’
And then Mel’s phone goes. She checks the screen, mouths ‘Canada’ before answering. Matthew watches her face concentrate and then darken. ‘Right. Thanks for tipping me off. And you’ll send all this through officially?’ Another pause. ‘OK. Thank you. I’ll look out for the email. Appreciate the call.’
Matthew raises his eyebrows as Mel puts her phone back in her pocket.
‘Laura – Ed’s first wife – took a flight to the UK several weeks back.’
‘You’re kidding me.’
‘I wish.’
CHAPTER 26
THE FATHER – BEFORE
When he was thirteen years old, Ed Hartley was called to the head teacher’s study. An urgent message had been sent to the tennis courts where he’d just finished thrashing his arch-rival Ben McClaren. Ed was as confused as he was nervous. He knew it was some kind of serious to get a summons like this; he’d never been called to the head teacher before.
Ed was more people pleaser than troublemaker. A good pupil. Unless he’d been set up, he couldn’t imagine what this was about. Unless there was a problem with the fees? His parents were always telling him how expensive his boarding school was. How tight they were finding it; how very lucky he was.
Ed had grown more used to boarding school in recent years. At first, he had terrible homesickness and had to fight hard not to let the other boys see him upset. He’d long since managed to get past all that but he still carried this slight undercurrent of unease in his stomach. Always a tiny bit on edge. It was, he decided later, an awareness of being exposed. Vulnerable. The realisation that he had to depend entirely on himself and not on his family day to day. There was just one weekly call home and he always told his mother and father he was absolutely fine as this was clearly what was expected of him.
This particular day as he walked to the head teacher’s study, he turned over the possible problem with the fees and wondered if he would mind if he had to leave the school. He realised, bouncing his tennis racket against his knee as he walked, that he would actually be a bit disappointed. But not too much. Certainly not devastated. Maybe even relieved? And so he knocked on the head teacher’s door with a strange mix of curiosity and hope.
His mood only switched to true alarm when he was called inside to find his Aunt Cathy, his mother’s sister, sitting across the desk from the head teacher, dabbing her eyes. He hadn’t seen his aunt in years. The sisters weren’t close – some falling out, though he never knew the details. So what the hell was she doing here?
‘Please sit down, Edmund.’ The head teacher looked nervous rather than cross and Ed began to worry even more.
The news, when it was came, was both terrible. And also some dreadful mistake.
The head teacher was mumbling about an accident. How very sorry. Everything was instant. They wouldn’t have known a thing – your parents. How terribly, terribly sorry they all were . . .
All Ed could think was how awful for there to have been this muddle. How terrible it would be when they found the right boy, the other Ed Hartley in some other school far, far away, whose parents really had been killed when a lorry knocked their car across the central reservation, right through a barrier so that it rolled down a steep bank.
Three somersaults of the car and then a burst of flames. The head teacher didn’t tell him that. He read that later in the papers, when it turned out it wasn’t a mistake. He was the Ed Hartley, waking from his dreams to see the car burst into flames in front of his eyes.
And now, here he was in Canada, all alone and once again awaiting news.
He was sitting in another smart office, again feeling small and strangely detached, wondering when someone was going to announce there had been a terrible mistake and it was another Ed Hartley this was all happening to.