That Little Thread by John Lucas

Description

Peter Simpson, recently promoted to professor at a Midlands university, finds himself early one evening confronted by a man he hasn’t met for some twenty years and with whom he has no wish to renew acquaintance. Terry DeVine, a pushy youth from the south, had gone off with one of Simpson’s favourite students, a brilliant young woman who disappeared from the university without taking her degree and who, Simpson later heard, had died in giving birth to a daughter.

What he doesn’t and can’t guess is why the father of that child should now choose to reappear.

Discovering the answer to this question and, in the process unearthing much else besides about both young lovers, is at the heart of the stories, as compelling as they are tragic, which run through That Little Thread.  188pp