Trio - [95]

‘No, but that sounds great.’

She placed the pot on a mat at Pamela’s side with a ladle. ‘Please, help yourself. I’ll get the bread.’

Pamela poured herself a modest serving, relieved at not getting drips on the cloth, and then accepted a warm roll. It was just possible for her to swallow but she remained nervous. She broke the silence. ‘You lived here with Joan?’

‘Yes. She’d always had lodgers, a lot of people from the theatre would come for the summer season. I moved in in ’79. Over twenty years ago now. I had quite a journey to work. I was headmistress at a school in Pickering, that’s about twenty miles from here. But Joan worked from home.’

‘And she wrote songs?’ One of the facts Penny had told her when they had spoken on the phone.

‘Yes. Do you write?’

‘No.’ She smiled and shook her head. ‘I’m not musical, not really. I sang in a choir when I was at school, nothing since.’

‘You’re in management?’

‘Banking.’

‘Is it very pressured?’

‘Can be. But I must be doing something right, they keep promoting me.’

‘Joan was good with money. Shrewd. She was investing and sorting out a pension years before most women even thought about it.’

‘Were they well off – her family?’

‘No, not particularly. She made her money writing, which is nothing short of miraculous, I’m told. But she had a hit very early on and she insisted on a particular clause in the contract, which made her a great deal of money. That’s what I mean about shrewd. That more or less paid for this house. “Walk My Way”, you’ve heard it?’

Pamela frowned.

‘Bit before your time,’ Penny laughed. ‘Nineteen sixty-four. You’d only have been four. But everybody and their brother covered it after that. I’ve got a copy for you. And lots of photographs.’

They finished eating and Penny cleared the bowls away. ‘You’re very like her.’ She shook her head. ‘It’s quite uncanny. Her hair was straight, but apart from that…’

They had always told her she took after Peter with her dark hair and blue eyes.

‘Would you like tea or coffee?’

‘Tea, please. Just milk.’

‘Why don’t you go up and I’ll bring this. Have a look round. It’s her study, I thought you’d like to see it. All her things are there. The top of the stairs at the front on the right.’

Pamela escaped gratefully. The soup had been light but she still felt her stomach churning. She could feel the tension in her neck and along her spine, the strain of the unfamiliar, highly charged visit.

The first thing that struck her was the view: a panorama of the bay, right round to the headland and the sea and sky stretching away on a palette of greys and blues. The desk was quite clear. But this was where she would have sat and written.

Pamela looked back out to the water. The sea was choppy, the outlook bleak, elemental. She had sailed not far from here a couple of years ago. They had fought bitter easterly winds and had to tack for several miles. She had never imagined…

She turned to the fireplace and examined the objects on it. Driftwood, postcards, a carving of dolphins, a small cowbell, a harmonica. There was nothing of herself in any of this. She felt unsettled.

On the piano there was a collection of snapshots in frames. Nothing formal; no weddings or graduation photos, no airbrushed babies on sheepskin rugs. Penny on the beach, Penny with a younger woman by a palm tree, Penny crouched beside a dog, with a baby. With a jolt she realised that Penny was more than a lodger or companion. Embarrassment made her cheeks burn. Not at the fact of it but at the possibility that she had already said something crass in her ignorance. But how was she to know? On top of everything else it was too much to take in.

Penny brought up the tea and they sat on the sofa by the fireplace. Penny gestured to a pile of albums. ‘There are loads here. Anything you want copies of we can sort that out and most of these should come to you anyway. I’ve all her family’s here. Joan’s parents are both dead and she only had one brother, Tommy. He emigrated to Australia. He took what he wanted after their mother died. They didn't keep in touch, just Christmas cards. I found this one last night. She would have been your age in this.’

Pamela took the small, square, black-and-white photograph. She inhaled sharply – it was like looking at a version of herself, the same-shaped face, the long nose, same shape eyes, even the curve of eyebrows exactly alike. Like sisters. Like mother and daughter. She took a breath. Why couldn’t you wait?

‘And this must have been just after she had you, she moved to London…’

On the train home she stared dry-eyed out through her own reflection, replaying fragments of Penny’s narration, her own clumsy questions.

‘When did she tell you about me?’

‘I’d known her for a while. I had just left a very difficult marriage and I’d been talking to her about the whole business of regret. She said there was only one thing she had regretted and that was having a baby and giving it up for adoption.’

‘Which bit did she regret? Having me or giving me up?’ The bitter question appalled her. Penny would think her so rude.