Chapter 29: The Empty Study

Miles's POV

My father had packed one box.

It sat on the study desk with its flaps open, and he was standing at the window with his hands behind him when I came in.

He did not turn round.

"They have given me until six to resign the chair," he said. "Eleven to two."

"Who was the two?"

"I haven't asked."

He turned.

He looked ten years older than he had at breakfast on Friday.

"I assume you came to enjoy it."

"I came because you asked."

"Sit down."

"No."

He nodded, as if that were the answer he had expected.

"Your mother has taken a room at the inn. She has left me."

"I know."

"She did not say so. She took the suitcase."

"She told me in the garden. She said she'd said it in her head forty times."

He crossed to the desk and laid his hand on the closed lid of the safe.

"I want to know about the child," he said.

I waited.

"I would like to see her, Miles. Once she's born. I will not claim anything."

"You tried to."

"I did." It cost him. "I was wrong. I'd like that on the record. I'm told that is how it's done now."

I took the papers from the inside of my coat.

The July agreement, and the second sheet with the clause.

I laid them on the desk in front of him, and I put a pen on top.

"Void them," I said. "Both. Sign across the face, and date it."

"That is not..."

"It's what Lydia gets before she lets you in a room with that baby. It's not what she asks for. It's what I'm asking for, on her behalf."

He looked at the pen.

"If I sign, I have nothing to bargain with."

"You've had nothing since the church."

He sat down in the chair that had been my grandfather's.

He wrote VOID across the first page in a firm square hand, and across the second, and signed under each.

He did not look up when he put the pen down.

"Your mother used to say you got your spine from her."

"I got it from Clara."

"Yes." He almost smiled. "I thought so."

I picked up the pages.

At the door I stopped.

"She'll ask you for nothing," I said. "She's got a better family than the one you built her."

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