Chapter 22: Daphne

I found her on the Embankment, on a bench under the plane trees, with her shoes beside her on the pavement.

The river ran past below the wall, wide and grey.

She had taken the pins out of her hair, and it lay on her shoulders, and she held the folded forged note in both hands.

I told Clement to stop at the lamp-post fifty yards back.

He stopped, and he did not like it.

I sat down on the other end of the bench.

Neither of us said anything for a while.

A man went by with a spaniel, and glanced at the bride in blue and the woman in the green coat, and went on.

"You came by yourself," Daphne said.

"I wanted to hear it without anyone else listening."

"Hear what?"

"Why."

She laughed, and it was a real laugh, tired and short.

"You've never once asked me anything about myself, you know. In eighteen years."

"That isn't fair."

"Isn't it?" She turned the note over. "I was the scholarship girl, Thea. You remember. The one with the second-hand blazer.

"You lent me your coat on the first day because I hadn't got one."

"I remember."

"Your father paid the rest of my fees after the first year.

"He never said a word. He just sent the cheque, and I found out from the bursar."

"He never told me that."

"No. He wouldn't."

She looked at the river.

"Everyone loved you for nothing, darling. You walked into a room and the room opened.