The Mapmaker's Daughter by Clare Marchant

Author:Clare Marchant [Marchant, Clare]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2022-07-07T12:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-Six

August 2022

Robyn had just put dinner on the table when her phone rang. She glanced across at her father who raised his eyebrows silently. She knew his opinion on phones at the dinner table, but she’d already seen the caller display and was desperate to know what information may be forthcoming.

‘Sorry,’ she mouthed at him before pressing the answer button.

‘Hi, Geoff, good to hear from you. Do you have news?’ She couldn’t hide the anticipation in her voice.

‘Hello, Robyn, I won’t keep you but yes; I’ve just emailed the translations of the letters to you.’

‘Brilliant, thank you so much!’ She gave her father a thumbs up. ‘I wasn’t expecting you to have finished them so quickly.’

‘I did have to call in a few favours; you owe me several slabs of beer. Anyway, I think you’re going to be very excited when you discover what they say. Call me back if you need anything clarified when you’ve read them.’ They said their goodbyes and Robyn placed her phone back on the table. Now she needed to eat dinner, even though every fibre in her body wanted to open her laptop and see what Geoff had sent. She relayed the conversation to her father.

‘That sounds like it may be an important breakthrough,’ he replied. ‘It’ll keep you busy this evening. I’m amazed at how much you’ve been able to unearth about the map. When I first discovered it, I honestly thought you’d hit a brick wall, it’s so unusual. You were right to suggest I let you investigate it; you’ve learned more than I realised since you arrived here. I’m really proud of you. It feels as though the map has started opening your world up again.’

Robyn reached across and squeezed his hand, her eyes filling with unexpected tears at his words. She looked down at the back of his hand. Despite his work to keep trim and remain youthful, the skin here belied his age, lined and creased with the passage of time, sandy-coloured spots beginning to develop. He wasn’t getting any younger. She realised that he’d put his own life on hold seven years ago when she’d arrived home and she wasn’t being fair to him. Not him or Alison. They had a chance for a new life together; was she stopping them fulfilling their dreams?

The rest of the meal was eaten in silence as Robyn considered what she’d recognised, that her living in the flat and how it affected all those around her wasn’t something that was just going to go away. But first she needed to know what her letters had divulged, and the moment they both finished eating she dropped her plate in the sink and booted up her laptop.

‘Leave the dishes. I’ll do them later,’ she said, drumming her fingers on the arm of the sofa, waiting for the computer to boot up. It had never seemed so slow. Finally, she opened her inbox and double-clicked on the email. There were two documents, each titled with the original Latin of the letters she’d seen in Oxford.

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