The Missing One Read Free

time will heal – we must have faith in that. Time will bring forgiveness and healing. We will have a good life together, I will make sure of that.
    I want you to know that I do understand that it will take a long time for you to get over what has happened. But I do – fervently – believe that recoveryis possible. And you must too. As agreed, we will not talk about this any more – for all our sakes.
    I think you’ll like it here in Sussex. It is a lot as you have always imagined England to be – the village is pretty, and there’s a small school for Kali when she gets to that age. The house stands right at the bottom of the main street where the roads fork. From our bedroom window you look down on the signpost and the roundabout, which is why I called it Signpost House. It is a proud Sussex Victorian – red brick and flint, original sash windows, well-proportioned rooms though smaller and less airy, of course, than the Californian properties we are both used to. It has a pleasant (though rather small) garden, which I hope you will enjoy. It is a fine place to start a new life.
    I shall be at the airport to meet your flight and will drive you both straight down. It takes about two hours to get to Sussex from the airport. I’ve been getting the London train every day from Cooksbridge – the station is a few miles from the village – and it is perfectly manageable, though it does make for a long day. I shall probably have to find a place to stay in London for some nights during the week, eventually. Working at the firm is exciting, if exhausting, and although Derwent treats me like a schoolboy, I think he is pleased with what I’ve contributed so far.
    I do miss you and long to see you. You must know that I never stopped loving you – and I never will stop loving you.
    Gray
    The paper crackles as I refold it and stuff it back in the file. I feel as if I have barged into a room that someone forgot to lock. My father would be appalled if he knew that I had read this. Whatever happened between them all those years ago, I have no right to know.
    But it’s obvious what happened – his guilt is palpable – and it makes total sense. They never talked about California or reminisced about how they met. There is no family story of a romantic proposal and I have never seen a wedding album. My mother always shut me down instantly if I asked about America. Now I know why.
    It is hard to imagine my father doing anything so passionate or so morally wrong as to have an affair. But it was California in the seventies, and maybe he was different then; priorities or morals were different then. I have never heard him call himself Gray. He has always been Graham.
    I shouldn’t have read the letter. The last thing I need is confirmation that all marriages are subject to betrayal, or that even my upright father could cheat.
    I wonder if Alice knows about the affair. She might, since she and our mother talked about everything. I’d hear the chatting in the kitchen with Radio 4 in the background, spaghetti sauce bubbling on the hob, Alice’s homeworkspread across the table, and I’d walk through the door and they’d stop talking and look at me. Then Alice would jump up and make a space, or ask me for help with her maths, trying, almost pathetically, to include me – as if it were her job to make me feel wanted. But at some point, inevitably, my mother and I would lock eyes over her head. It must have been exhausting for my sister to be stuck between us all the time.
    But this is old news. I’m not going to do this, not now. It’s much too late.
    The birth certificate isn’t in these files. It isn’t here at all. I scoop everything back and scramble to my feet, resting my hands on the desktop. I feel the tightness around my heart, a physical reality, but a numbness, too. Somewhere in my gut the pain is organizing