‘Adelaide,’ Hector says.
‘Yes, love.’ Daphne pats his hand again. ‘You remember Adelaide.’
His eyes soften and he says it again, more gently. ‘Adelaide.’
Janet walks back in holding a jug of water and places it on the table.
‘Our baby,’ Hector says, looking pained.
Adelaide starts, then realises he’s looking at Janet.
‘Yes, our baby girl,’ Daphne says soothingly. ‘That’s Janet.’
Hector shakes his head slowly. ‘Our baby,’ he repeats.
Now he’s staring at Adelaide, who feels a cold flash of fear.
‘Our baby.’ Hector seems quite upset, and Daphne puts an arm around him.
‘Sorry, Addy,’ she says. ‘He’s really so confused.’
Adelaide swallows slowly. ‘That’s all right.’
‘Adelaide,’ Hector says, staring at her.
‘Love …’ Daphne jiggles his arm. ‘Calm down.’
‘Adelaide. Our baby.’ Hector makes a sound like a sob.
Adelaide looks away, her hands gripping the plate she’s holding so hard she thinks she’ll snap it. She can’t look at Daphne. She mustn’t. Her eyes will give her away.
Daphne hushes Hector, who starts to move in his seat, almost like he’s trying to shrug her off.
‘Adelaide,’ he cries. ‘Our son.’
Adelaide can’t help it then. She looks at him, because she has to, because this is the father of her only child, and as they stare into each other’s eyes she feels it – that hook he has in her heart, tugging her toward him.
That’s the thing about loving someone over the course of decades: their eyes may change with age, but what’s in them – really in them – does not. The connection you make with each other, the recognition by one soul of another, that is always there.
Adelaide remembers the day it happened for the first time. She’d come to the house to drop off some fabric for Daphne that her mother wasn’t going to use. Daphne wasn’t home, but Hector was.
He made her tea. They talked. He asked if she was lonely. She said she was, surprised by her own candour.
‘I am too,’ he confessed, and their eyes met.
For years afterward she would marvel at how that look between them said so much.
They didn’t utter another word until after he had taken her to the guest bedroom – mindful, she supposed, of not wanting to be in the marital bed – and she hadn’t hesitated, for even one second, as he undressed her and kissed her all over and made love to her, and made love to her again.
She doesn’t know why they weren’t worried that they would be discovered, but she remembers that everything seemed to be in its right time, unhurried, almost like they had slipped through a crevasse in the day where no one else could reach them.
She didn’t feel guilt; not straightaway. That came later, when he started visiting her. It found her, full force, when she became pregnant.
Hector kept visiting her until she had to go away. They didn’t say goodbye. She couldn’t bear to; she didn’t know what he thought.
It was so tempting, of course, to think of this as her grand love story. Because she loved him, and believed he loved her. But they were only star-cross’d in the sense that they had pulledthe planets out of alignment themselves by betraying Daphne. Adelaide knew she didn’t deserve to think of herself as wronged by the situation, but she couldn’t help feeling abandoned by everyone when she gave birth to George alone and gave him up, alone.
How is it that she can still feel all of this as forcefully as she felt it then? Her body has aged, but the feelings – the way she feels for Hector – haven’t. They exist in her body but are also like an aura around her. Or a shadow. She’s never been able to decide if her love for Hector was of the light or of the dark.