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46. SUMMER 2013

How could Nancy possibly have known what went on between Jonathan and the whore? How could she describe their intimacy in such detail? She had the photographs with their gruesome detail and she used her imagination: it’s what writers do. She played around with some of the facts — I doubt very much whether Jonathan would have been interested in pursuing Orwell, Bowles, or Kerouac. Wishful thinking? Artistic licence. Of course she changed names. To protect the innocent? Perhaps I should have changed them back again. It was a work of fiction, but still, I like to believe that it released the truth from its ballast, it allowed it to float up to the surface. It’s the substance of a story which is important, after all.

Jonathan had travelled out to Europe with his girlfriend, a fact Nancy left intact, but she changed the reason for Sarah’s early return home. Her father hadn’t been taken ill, that’s not why she came home. She and Jonathan had had a row and Sarah had stormed home in a strop. That’s a fact. But it’s not an important one. What is important is that Jonathan continued his travels alone. He was a nineteen-year-old boy, alone in a foreign country. He was vulnerable. I remember how Nancy worried about him being on his own. I didn’t. I suspected he’d have a much better time without his girlfriend there. I thought he might meet someone more fun.

When we’d returned from Spain after identifying Jonathan’s body, Sarah was the first person Nancy called. She didn’t want her to hear about his death from anyone else. It was Sarah’s mother who answered the phone. She said that Sarah was out, but that she would tell her what had happened. We never knew whether she did or not because we never heard from Sarah again. Nancy always sent her cards on her birthday and at Christmas, but we never heard back from her. I was furious and upset of course but Nancy was more generous. She said she understood. Sarah was young, it was too much to expect of her, and certainly her mother would not have encouraged her to stay in touch. Relations with Sarah’s mother had never been easy.

When Sarah had returned home from Europe, I remember Nancy taking a call from her mother. I only heard Nancy’s end of the conversation but I remember her patience while she listened to the woman’s rant. She stayed calm as she repeated over and over that it was up to the two young people to sort out their differences, it was not right for parents to interfere. She managed to end the call with civility, but when she put down the receiver I could see she was white with anger and yet she had not lost her temper and I admired her for that. She has that same even tone in her notebooks. They whisper, they don’t rant. She wishes for things, she doesn’t demand them.

“I wish her child knew that he owed his life to my son. I wish he knew that if it wasn’t for Jonathan he wouldn’t be here.”