Page 91 of All the Things We Never Knew

‘And then I was well again.’ She spoke slowly, almost meditatively. ‘But fifteen years later, it was Nigel who was sick. He wrote to me then as well. He told me what was happening. But he still didn’t want to see me. I never got to say goodbye.’

‘I’m sorry, Louisa.’ I put my hand over hers. ‘So sorry for the loss of your son.’

She looked down, then back up at me, and she smiled.

‘There was one last letter, though,’ she said. ‘Nigel wrote it before he passed away, and I received it afterwards. I think you should read it.’

She lifted her hand from under mine, slowly and carefully as if I was a sleeping child she didn’t want to wake. Then she lifted the brown envelope and tipped its contents into her lap. It was packed so tightly she had to shake it to release the envelopes inside, and there were so many of them that they overflowed her lap and cascaded to the floor.

Many of them were worn and smudged with finger marks, I noticed with a stab of pain, as if they had been opened and reread many, many times.

But one was still new and pristine: a plain white DL envelope with the address here in Merthyr Adwen written on it in Gray’s familiar hand.

The letter wasn’t handwritten, though – it was typed and had been printed out. The single sheet of paper fluttered as Louisa handed it to me, because her hand was trembling.

Dear Mam

By the time you read this, it will all be over. I have asked our neighbour, a friend who I trust, to post it for me once I am gone, and by the time you read it, it will be too late for me to unmake the decision I made all those years ago.

At the time, it felt like it was the only decision I could have made. I didn’t want to be Nigel any more: the boy with the chaotic home life, the charity case at school, the one who had only one friend. I wanted to be someone else, and I suppose now I am.

But not for much longer. In a few days I will leave the home I have made with Anna and go to the place where I will die. I’ll leave behind everything I wanted when I turned my back on you – my family, my house, my career. It is a long time since I heard anyone call me Nigel, and soon I will hear someone call me Gray, the name I chose, for the final time.

Death has a way of focusing the mind, that’s for sure. When I first told Anna I had no mother – that you had died when I was barely out of my teens – it felt like the only way for me to move past my old life. But when I met Joel on the Underground that time and he told me about his illness, I knew that there was something else I could do. I could create an anchor – a link to the past that could be broken only when one of us died. I assumed it would be Joel, but things don’t always work out how you expect.

Now, though, I find myself looking back at those decisions and wondering why. What was the point? I could have explained to Anna, when I knew you were recovering, why I had lied to her, and she would have understood. I might have been afraid to let you into my children’s lives at first, but that could have changed. I could have played the piano again, shared that with my Barney, who I think will be a fine musician one day.

I could have had a family that wasn’t built on a lie.

It’s too late now for any of that. If Anna finds you, show her this letter and let her decide what to do: to let our children continue to believe the falsehood I told, or to reveal to them who their father really was and where he came from.

I am sorry. I will always be your son.

Nigel

As I looked down at the page, a tear dropped from my eye, staining and wrinkling the paper.

‘I’m sorry.’ Hastily, I thrust it back towards Louisa.

But she said, ‘I’ve cried on it enough myself, Anna. A few more tears won’t make any difference.’

I sniffed and half-laughed, taking the letter back and gazing again at the lines of type, so hard they blurred before my eyes.

‘Take your time,’ she went on. ‘Have another cup of tea.’

She poured more tea into my mug, then stood up and returned to her music stand. A few moments later, the first notes of music drifted into the humble room, falling as softly and gently into the silence as my tears were dropping down on to the page.

FIFTY-TWO

LAUREL

As we rounded a bend in the trail, a gust of wind caught my bike, and I had to brace my arms to stay on course as I felt the rain buffet the side of my face. It was no longer coming directly into my eyes, though, so at least I could see the view ahead – the trail climbing steeply upwards before it curved again beyond a fairytale stone castle perched on the top of the hill we had been toiling up for the past twenty minutes.

The relative calm of the bay, the Airbnb apartment where I was staying and my faithful little car all felt a long way away – and so they were, about twenty miles by now. But they didn’t feel as far away as London, where I knew the streets would be crammed with Christmas shoppers, lights twinkling in windows, everything urban and safe.

There was nothing cosy about this landscape. It was pure wilderness: the granite boulders that studded the sides of the track, the distant glint of a lake like a sheet of stainless steel under the grey sky, the fury of the wind in my ears almost drowning out the cry of a bird.

‘What was that?’ I called, sure my voice would be carried away before it could be heard.