‘Only if you want to,’ he said, notebook on the table, pen at the ready. ‘I don’t want to pry.’
‘I don’t mind,’ I replied. ‘I never have much opportunity to talk about him, despite the fact that he’s on my mind almost constantly. But before I do, I suppose I should go back a little further. To my wife.’
He flicked through his notes. ‘Edith Camberley,’ he said, nodding. ‘Actually, I read her novel a few weeks ago. Fury. It was very good.’
‘It was,’ I agreed.
‘She died quite young, didn’t she?’
‘Sadly, yes. We were living in Norwich at the time. She fell down a staircase. I’d been intending to repair the handrail since we’d moved in but, somehow, I’d never quite got around to it. Too busy working on my novel. She ended up in a coma for several months and eventually the decision was made to turn off the life support.’
‘You made that decision?’
‘I did, yes.’
‘That must have been very difficult.’
‘Of course,’ I said. ‘She was my wife.’
‘And you loved her.’
‘I wouldn’t have married her if I hadn’t loved her.’
‘She was black, wasn’t she?’ asked Theo, and I frowned, surprised by the question.
‘Is that relevant in some way?’ I asked. ‘To your thesis, I mean?’
‘Only that it must have been difficult back then. To be in a mixed-race relationship.’
‘Not especially, no,’ I said, shrugging my shoulders. ‘It wasn’t the 1950s, you know, it was the 1990s. That might seem a long time ago to someone your age but, really, it’s just the blink of an eye. And the circles we moved in would have been the least likely to hold any racist attitudes. Yes, once in a while someone might have given us a sideways glance on the street, and from time to time some uneducated prick might have made an offensive comment as we passed. But it was nothing compared to what previous generations went through.’
‘Can I ask, when her novel became such a success, did you feel any sort of … What’s the word …？’
‘Envy?’ I suggested, trying to keep the smile off my face. ‘A deep and embittered sense of resentment?’
‘I suppose.’
‘Not in the slightest,’ I said. ‘Edith was a brilliant writer. She might have been one of the greats, had she lived. I was pleased for her.’
‘Still, for a time she must have taken some of the spotlight away from you.’
‘I’ve never been much interested in that,’ I lied. ‘And, as I said, I loved her. What kind of man would it make me if I had begrudged her her success?’
He said nothing but scribbled a lot of things down in his notepad. Whenever he went to the bar, to the bathroom or outside for a smoke, he always took his notepad with him. Young Mr Field was diligent in that respect.
‘Your son must have missed her,’ he remarked eventually, looking up again.
I shook my head. ‘No, Edith wasn’t Daniel’s mother. I conceived him with an Italian chambermaid who worked in a London hotel.’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘It was a business transaction. Nothing more, nothing less. She wanted money and I wanted a child. The arrangement was mutually beneficial.’
‘Isn’t that …？’ He hesitated for a moment and gave a half-laugh. ‘Isn’t that illegal?’
‘Probably,’ I said. ‘Why, are you going to report me to the police? I assure you, there are worse things that you could tell them.’
‘No, I just—’
‘The law is ridiculous on this point. Why shouldn’t a girl be allowed to sell nine months of her life if she wants to? And why shouldn’t I be able to buy them? We were both entirely happy with the choices we made and, ultimately, it was no one else’s business. I can’t even remember her name, to be honest, if I ever knew it. I expect she’s gone on to live a happy life and never thinks about her first baby.’
‘She probably does,’ he said, and I was surprised that he would contradict me, but perhaps he was right. Wherever she was, there was a good chance that she thought of him a hundred times a day. I know I did.
‘Anyway, it was just Daniel and me all those years,’ I continued. ‘We were a pair, you see. Rarely apart. He didn’t even have his own bedroom until he was three years old because he didn’t want to be separated from me. He never asked about a mother; the absence of a female presence in his life didn’t seem to be an issue for him. We were in New York then, of course. Daniel lived there all his life. You’re aware of Storī?’
‘Of course.’
‘Well, I set that up when we first moved to Manhattan and then I edited it for several years. Before my son started school, he used to come into the office with me every day and sit in the corner at his own desk, colouring, reading or playing with his toys. I think people thought it was rather sweet, a father and a little boy so attached to each other, but it rather annoyed me when they did. I wasn’t doing it for appearances’ sake. We just enjoyed each other’s company.’
‘What was he like?’ asked Theo. ‘Personality-wise, I mean.’
‘He was quiet,’ I said, and I felt a deep pain at the pit of my stomach, remembering his good qualities, of which he had many. ‘Bookish, like me. Shy. Very loving. Very warm. A good cook for such a young boy. It’s something that he might have pursued as a career, had he been given a chance. He was interested in photography too and had started talking about taking dance classes, which I encouraged, as I thought he was rather too introverted.’
‘Did he have many friends?’
I shook my head again. ‘Not many. At least, not many that I knew of.’
‘How old was he when he died?’
‘Thirteen.’
‘Too young to have a girlfriend, I suppose.’
I smiled regretfully. Daniel had never introduced me to a girl, nor had he ever spoken about girls he liked, but I knew that he was beginning to get interested because he’d grown very self-conscious around an attractive young woman who was interning at Storī, and once, when she engaged him in a conversation about a movie she’d just seen, he’d turned bright red, startlingly so, and I’d felt embarrassed for him, being unable to control his emotions like that. I thought it rather sad that the boy had surely died with his innocence intact.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘He kept that part of his life very quiet from me. I mean, he was thirteen years old, and boys that age don’t like to discuss such things with their fathers, do they?’
‘I certainly didn’t. Do you have a picture of him? Of Daniel?’
‘Not with me,’ I said.
‘So Edith and he weren’t related,’ he said quietly, more to himself than to me. He glanced out of the window for a moment, tapped his finger against his chin, then turned back, scribbled something down and turned his page.
‘There was something else I wanted to ask you about your wife,’ he said.
‘Feel free.’
‘I hope you won’t take it the wrong way. It might seem rather … audacious on my part.’