was Amelia Wozniak’s grandfather—Edward O’Hagan, the one who emigrated to America. He only died in 1976; it’s quite likely that she knew him well. Except with this, it may feel as if she didn’t know him that well after all. He wasn’t Edward O’Hagan, he was Edward McNamara. An entirely different person, in some ways if not all. And”—scattering spinach into the pan—“that new person comes with an awful lot of grief attached, a lot of injustice. That sixteen-year-old being sent away from her family in disgrace, having her baby taken away whether she liked it or not, was Amelia’s great-grandmother. And all of that grief and injustice is bound up with Amelia’s existence. Without it she might have been Amelia McNamara, or she might never have existed at all.”
“I guess,” I said. I was having a hard time working up much sympathy. I would have swapped my own problems, or his, for Mrs. Wozniak’s existential crisis any day.
“Well, who knows, maybe she’ll see it your way. But I’d rather go about it delicately, just in case.” It took him a couple of tries, but he got the omelet folded over. “It’s not today’s problem, anyway. We’ll have to decipher the rest of the diary first—I’d like to find out what happened to Elaine in the end, and see if we can get any kind of lead on the baby’s father. At some point we can ask Mrs. Wozniak whether there are any male-line descendants floating around, for Y-DNA matching; but for now maybe you could start on the parish records, try to find out whether Elaine eventually married? I doubt any husband would have been the baby’s father, or why wouldn’t she just marry him in the first place—more likely he was ineligible, one way or another—but it’s worth looking into.”
“OK,” I said. Apparently we were supposed to go right back to our comfy routine and pretend that none of last night had happened, although I couldn’t imagine how Hugo thought that was going to work in practice. Never mind how on earth he thought he was going to sort everything out: I was starting to wonder if his plan had been some illness-generated delusion involving the bat-signal or a Rafferty voodoo doll or something. Was it possible that he hadn’t worked out what was going on? That he thought the only problems here were a cousin-spat and a relationship rocky patch, everyone under stress and being silly, just need a good firm talking-to? “Cheers. Here’s to us.”
“And to Elaine McNamara.” Hugo took the glass from me and stepped aside to let me turn the omelet out of the heavy pan. “Poor child.”
I surprised myself by wolfing down my half of the omelet, fast enough that Hugo laughed at me. “There are more eggs, if you’re still hungry.”
“You were right,” I said. “I needed that.”
“Of course I was. Maybe next time I tell you something”—smiling at me, over his glass—“you’ll stop fussing and take my word for it.” And as I scraped up the last bite: “Now go find your cigarettes, would you? Since we’re being decadent.”
We sat there quietly, smoking a cigarette and then another, topping up our prosecco glasses. Hugo’s head was tilted back and his eyes half-closed, gazing up at the ceiling with grave, dreamy calm. Faint trail of cries from wild geese somewhere, carrying all the flavor of autumn, first frost and turf smoke. Hugo’s big hand tapping ash into the chipped saucer we were using as a makeshift ashtray, sunlight bringing the battered wood of the table alive with an impossible holy glow.
* * *
I stayed in the shower for a very long time. The night before was right inside my skin; no matter how hard I scrubbed, I still caught the stench of stale booze, stale hash, garden earth. Finally I gave up and just stood there with the water turned up as hard and as hot as it would go, letting it hammer down on my head.
Now that I was on my own the stoneover had rushed back up, a nasty mishmash of physical and mental, all-consuming sapping despair and a sense of doom that seemed to come not from my mind but from deep inside my stomach and my spine. Melissa had been right all along, going after answers was the stupidest thing I could possibly have done, and now it was too late.
Part of me was still clinging to the slim chance that I had got it all wrong, and