looked utterly lost. And it was that expression I saw on Duval.’
Anna sighed. ‘It can’t be easy after so many years in prison. Doesn’t he have a parole officer?’
‘I assume so, but the guy’s probably more concerned that Duval stays out of trouble than with actually helping him.’
‘I don’t understand why he wanted to see you.’
‘He said Vanetta asked him to, to thank me for all my family had done for her.’
‘Like what?’
‘Not a lot. I sent her money sometimes – not very much. And I flew back for her funeral. Big deal.’
‘Did he want anything else from you?’
He shook his head. ‘I offered him a loan, but he wouldn’t take it. He did say he was looking for work. They trained him as a TV repairman, but how many TVs get repaired these days? He said he’s good at carpentry, but he can’t get a union job and can’t seem to get a start with word-of-mouth jobs.’
‘Is he broke?’
‘Not yet. I figure he will be soon enough. Benefit isn’t enough to live on.’
‘Can’t you help him?’
‘He wouldn’t take any money from me. He was adamant.’
‘I don’t mean that. There must be some job you could send his way.’
He was interested that she seemed so concerned, but then, she had always had the ability to empathise, even with those clients of hers that were manifestly undeserving.
‘Not really. We’ve got maintenance people in the building. If there’s ever a carpentry job, they just call down somebody from the main campus. That’s all unionised too.’
‘Did he talk about his life in prison?’
‘He made only the slightest reference to it – you’d never have thought he’d spent practically his entire adult life there. He made it sound like some brief hiatus.’
‘How peculiar,’ said Anna. She looked pensive, as if torn in two minds.
‘It was. But there was nothing unpleasant about him. It was just,’ he hesitated, trying to convey the sense he’d had of slight dislocation, ‘a little spooky.’
‘Will you see him again?’
‘I’m not planning to. But I have the feeling he’ll want to see me. He kept talking about the past – all his relatives I can’t even remember, and about Hyde Park and the apartment building. He was disappointed I hadn’t been back.’
‘You should, you know. Sophie keeps saying she wants to see where you grew up.’
‘Yeah, well,’ he said neutrally. It was a small point of contention; when he and Anna had first become involved she had told him all about her life, while he had baulked at her requests to hear about his past. I’m too old even to start, he’d said. If we start going backwards we’ll never have a future.
Moving to Chicago had brought up this same point again. Anna had expected him to embrace his old haunts, show them to her and Sophie, expose his past at last to her curious eyes. He had come to realise she had expected him to show the way. But to Anna’s annoyance, he had acted as if the city were as new to him as to her – which was how he felt, and how he liked it.
As he got up to find the bottle of wine, he realised he hadn’t told her the most important thing. ‘Oh, Duval also said he didn’t do it.’
‘What?’ Anna demanded. He realised his announcement must have sounded bizarre, but he hadn’t been able to think of any better, undramatic way to say it.
‘I know. I couldn’t believe it at first.’ He went and got the bottle from the kitchen, and as he poured them each a refill said, ‘I wish he hadn’t.’
‘What, said it?’ Anna was sitting up now, no longer relaxed.
He nodded. ‘Yes. What’s the point? No one can give him all those years back.’
‘Maybe he didn’t do it. What do you think?’
‘At the time it seemed inconceivable to me. He was a sweet kid. Now I just don’t know. Part of me hopes he was guilty.’ He ignored her look of astonishment. ‘Otherwise I don’t see how he could cope – locked up all those years wrongly. Not that he stood much of a chance anyway. Black kid, white girl – rape, assault. That made for a done deal in a Chicago courtroom back then. I think the jury were out for less than an hour.’
‘How racist.’ This was her one bugbear about Chicago. London wasn’t exactly a multi-racial utopia, but she insisted Chicago was much worse. He wasn’t sure, though he certainly found himself more conscious of race than