Page 66 of All the Things We Never Knew

Are you all right? I asked. Would you like a splash of water with this?

For a moment it was as if he hadn’t heard me. Then he shook his head as if to banish a bothersome fly, closed the magazine and replaced it on the pile.

I will be when I’ve had a drink, he said. Just a blast from the past.

But his face was quite white, and he drank his whisky like it was medicine.

We continued our conversation, and the incident – which had only been fleeting – passed from my mind completely. A month or so later Beatrice returned, and I handed over the magazines along with her other post.

What did he see in the pages that day? I will send Beatrice a message and find out whether she still has that collection of journals – likely she will, because she is quite the hoarder.

I feel as if I am close to finding a missing piece in the puzzle Laurel is trying to solve.

THIRTY-EIGHT

ANNA

It was four days after Lulu and I opened Gray’s box in the attic, and I was sitting in his study, a glass of wine by my side and a pile of papers next to me.

Apart from Gray’s music certificates, the box hadn’t yielded much in the way of secrets. Below the envelope containing them, Lulu and I had found another holding six old school year-group photographs.

‘Oh my God,’ Lulu had shrieked when I handed them over to her. ‘Which one’s Dad?’

Then we’d heard Barney’s voice calling from below, ‘What about Dad?’

‘Come up here, Barn,’ Lulu said. ‘Come see what me and Mum’ve found.’

My son scrambled up the ladder and joined us in the loft, flopping down on the floor next to his sister. He was wearing board shorts and a Queens Park Rangers shirt, and he smelled like he’d been playing football.

‘Sheesh, Barney, you stink,’ she said. ‘Look at these.’

Heads together, the two of them peered down at the first of the photographs. Looking at it upside down, I could see that the year printed at the bottom was 1990. There were three rows of boys in the picture, the middle ones standing, the front ones seated and the back row presumably standing on a bench. There were perhaps thirty of them in total, all identically dressed in grey trousers, maroon blazers and maroon-and-gold striped ties.

They must all have been about the same age as Barney.

‘Is that Dad there, in the middle row behind the teacher?’ Barney asked.

‘No way!’ Lulu argued. ‘He’s wearing glasses, and Dad never did, did he, Mum?’

I remembered Gray complaining, just a few months back, that it was getting hard to read PDFs on his phone. I’ll need spectacles like an old man, Anna, he’d said. He’d never need them now. He’d never be an old man.

‘He wore contact lenses,’ I said. ‘But he would’ve worn glasses back then, probably. Could that be him, there on the end of the front row?’

‘Fuck off!’ Barney said. ‘Sorry, Mum. I mean, that’s never Dad.’

But I wasn’t so sure. I leaned in closer: the boy whose face had caught my eye was one of the smaller ones – one of the late developers. He was sitting a little distance away from the child to his left, as if the photographer had told him to budge up but he’d ignored the instruction. The blazer he was wearing was unbuttoned, unlike the others, and I could see inches of white cuff showing below its sleeves. There was a similar gap between his trouser hems and his shoes, revealing an expanse of grey socks.

There was something – something about the angle of his head, the way his chin was tucked down almost into his chest, his eyes peering upwards to look into the camera, that was Gray. It was the same tilt I saw whenever I looked at the framed photograph on the mantelpiece from our wedding.

It was a look that betrayed whatever lay beneath Gray’s confidence. A look that said, I’m not sure I should be here.

‘You know what, Mum, you might be right.’ Lulu turned the photograph around and handed it to me. ‘Let’s see the next one.’

‘There he is again, second row,’ Barney said, pointing his finger at the photo. ‘He’s taller now. He looks more like Dad this time.’

There was a boy standing behind him, resting his hand on his shoulder – the only one in the second row doing so.

Lulu and Barney had reached the last of the pictures now, charting the progress of the boy who might have been Gray into a young man, beginning to be handsome, who we all agreed was by far the most likely candidate.