The guilt of falling in love had arrived before she’d even admitted to herself that she was falling. She told Claire about Richard on a walk, bracing herself, certain her daughter would feel it as a betrayal of Daniel’s memory. Claire had stopped mid-stride and said, “Mum. Daniel would have been insufferable about how much he liked Richard.” Helen had laughed and then wept.
Richard and Daniel had never met. That was the wound at the centre of her relationship with Richard—small, quiet, permanent. Richard knew Daniel only through her stories, photographs, and the box of letters she kept under her bed. He had told her more than once that he wished he could have known him. Helen believed him.