Free The Child Who by Simon Lelic Page B

made reference to the ‘depth of feeling’ and though Leo would have taken issue with the first aspect of the sentiment, there was no denying that the feeling was there. The weight of numbers, after all, was hard to ignore.
    ‘Is he watching this?’ said Megan. She spoke to the screen. ‘He should be made to.’
    Leo glanced again. He said nothing.
    The coverage cut from the procession to an air shot of Exeter cathedral. The building, a Gothic colossus that might have been constructed with just such an occasion in mind, was sited in a large open area behind the High Street, ringed by a cobbled lane and a grass verge that was popular, on a normal day, with sandwiching students. Today only a cordoned-off strip of ground was visible beneath the throng.
    Leo reached for his paperwork. He set it on his lap. He felt Megan gauging him and stared at the topmost page as though reading it. He flipped over to the next sheet.
    ‘Who is this character?’ he said, not looking at the television but failing not to hear the talking head. ‘He sounds like he’s swallowed the Daily Mail .’ Every word spoken, every image cast, seemed also somehow a condemnation. They did not name names, of course. But the point was, they did not have to.
    Megan gave a sob and Leo raised his head. What? he was about to say but then he saw.
    Felicity’s family. The cortège had reached the cathedral and the passengers were unfolding from the cars. The uncles were out first, the voice-over said, fastening their jackets and fixing their expressions into frowns. They formed a perimeter, and only once it was secure did the aunts, under hats, follow. Next came the cousins and the grandparents, the children in unwashed black, the pensioners in fades of grey. They drew together, the generations, and moved with the cameras towards the foremost car.
    There was a delay, long enough to cause a ripple. This – those within – was what everyone watching had been waiting for. The page in Leo’s hands drooped into his lap.
    The door cracked and a foot appeared: a man’s lace-up, polished to a patent black. The gap widened and Felicity’s father followed. He was not a tall man but he unfurled himself to his full height, raising his chins and marshalling his shoulders. He faced out, and for a moment found the camera, but his expression did not alter and he turned back towards the car. He dipped and then withdrew and his sons, Felicity’s brothers, joined him on the cobblestones.
    Even the youngest was a clenched fist taller than his father. The boys were fifteen and seventeen, Leo seemed to recall. Frederick, was it? And Francis? Names beginning with F, anyway, because it was one of the Forbes family’s idiosyncrasies that all the children had names that began with F. Both boys were blond, unlike Felicity, and Leo was reminded of an image from a few years before, of the princes beside their father at Diana’s funeral. The boys, like their royal counterparts, appeared composed but heartbreakingly so. Even the commentator seemed struck, for he fell silent. Not a conscious choice, Leo supposed, but the appropriate reaction nonetheless.
    On screen there was confusion, briefly, until someone approached the group and guided them with an outstretched arm. The camera, though, floundered. Someone was missing. The picture panned left, then jerked right, before settling, it seemed, on a target. A woman and a girl, hand in hand, rounding the lead car from the passenger side. Felicity’s mother and Faye, Felicity’s sister, had emerged off screen, under cover of the mother’s improbably wide-brimmed hat. Again the camera jerked, as though jostled, and the picture switched to a different angle. The girl’s face – a more fraught, less rounded version of Felicity’s – became visible but the picture passed her by. The director, the cameramen: they wanted the mother. Anna Forbes’s hat, however, had clearly been chosen for a reason. Tipped towards the cameras, it masked