a funeral, what else? Your knighthood’s finally arrived?’
‘Not yet, but it will.’ He felt bewildered. Gail wasn’t like this. She was soft.
‘Your services to British business. One in the eye for my father.’
‘Here’s hoping.’ He felt the trembling ghosts of parties and dinners, the familiar plates he’d eaten off, the cupboards that held them. The bunches of herbs hanging up. ‘The lane,’ he said abruptly. ‘It’s in a shocking state, do you want me to make a call? You’ll never get round to it and it’ll just get worse. I don’t mind.’ He had not meant to say that.
‘I know you’re a master of the universe and all that—’
‘Those are bankers, I’ve never been a banker—’
‘—but in case you hadn’t noticed, it’s been raining solidly for a month.’
‘It hasn’t rained a drop in London.’
‘I don’t care what happens in London! You can’t grade a flooded lane, you have to wait for it to drain. It’s all organised. But thank you for pointing it out.’
‘So you’re OK then. Not – clinically depressed.’
‘Sorry to tell you, I’m absolutely fine.’ She wiped her eyes, her back to him.
‘Is that Sean?’ His daughter Rosie swerved round the kitchen door in a long T-shirt that said OCCUPY, and her honey brown hair ruined into dreadlocks. Her ears were multiply pierced, and to his dismay, he noticed another tribal tattoo on her upper arm.
‘Rosie,’ he groaned. ‘What have you done to yourself?’
‘Grown up without you? Why is Mum crying? Sean, why are you even here?’ Rosie put her arm around her mother and glared at him.
‘I’m fine,’ said Gail, ‘really. We’re just talking.’
‘And I don’t like you calling me that,’ he said. ‘I’m still your father.’ The way she looked at him broke his heart.
‘Uh-uh, you sacked yourself. A father is someone you’re supposed to be able to trust, who gives his word and keeps it, who doesn’t cheat and lie again and again, when they’ve promised not to. Mum cries every day you know.’
‘Oh for goodness sake, I do not—’
‘My god! Why does everybody lie the whole time?’
‘Some day, Rosie,’ he said, ‘you might understand that things are not always black and—’
‘White,’ she finished for him, ‘I know. They’re in the grey, and in the grey, Rosie, is where people like me make their money and tell their lies and generally screw up other people’s lives. In the grey. I’ve got it. Sean.’
‘She doesn’t know,’ Gail said quietly.
‘Know what? Ugh: you’re expecting a little bébé with her. Well it’s never going to have anything to do with me.’
‘No, that’s not why I’ve come, and I didn’t know you were here, I thought it was term time. I came to tell your mother that Tom’s body has been found. And in person, Rosie, not to be insulted by you but to break it gently to her. Except she already knew.’
Rosie stared at her mother in shock.
‘Ruth called me this morning.’ Gail put her arm round her daughter. ‘I’ll tell you all about it.’ She looked at Sean over Rosie’s shoulder. ‘Thank you for coming. I appreciate it.’
He stared at his crying daughter, and his stranger of an ex-wife. He was being dismissed from his own home. Ex-home. But still his child.
‘Rosie,’ he said gently, ‘if you ever wanted to see me—’
‘Why would I want to do that?’ She didn’t look at him.
‘Because you’re my daughter and I love you.’
‘Don’t hold your breath.’ She ducked out from under her mother’s arm and ran upstairs, her face crumpling.
The Vanquish blinked an electronic greeting. Sean drove carefully down the rutted, waterlogged private lane, then into the long single-lane road. The numbness was definitely gone, the encounter had left him raw with failure.
A short sharp blast of a horn ahead returned his attention to the narrow road, where a battered red Land Rover pulling a trailer was upon him. A man and a woman in matching jackets – James and Emma Goring. OK, he could do this. He’d only just gone by a passing place so he waved then reversed, shaking himself out of his funk, ready to greet them. The shattered bones of the past, knitting back together. He would tell them what had happened.
James and Emma – he couldn’t remember their children’s names – but over nearly a decade they had eaten at each other’s houses, bought rounds at the Acorn, gone to firework parties, shared New Year – the stuff of life that slowly accretes into friendship. But they did not appear to recognise him. In fact, James raised a casual finger of thanks and was about to drive on, until Sean called out.
James did a double-take, and stopped. ‘Sean!’ he said. Emma lowered the phone she had been checking, and just that second also officially recognised him too, with a bright smile.
Engines running, they exchanged enthusiastic concerns about the weather and the state of the lanes, and Sean told them about the dust storm, which they’d seen on TV but only got a little of here, weren’t they lucky with their microclimate? And then the awkward pause.
Sean knew they wanted to go. He felt angry, he kept them talking, anything, about all the new vineyards, the farm, while he absorbed the fact they hadn’t wanted to stop. Pretending they hadn’t recognised him. People got divorced, people moved on – he looked pointedly at their trailer, where big sound speakers were covered with a tarp.
‘Of course!’ he said. ‘Your solstice party – here’s hoping for sunshine!’
‘Oh,’ James said quickly, ‘very small this year.’
‘Big speakers, for a small party.’
‘Not really.’
They looked at each other, their smiles fading. They were not going to invite him.
‘I came down to tell Gail a dear friend of ours died.’ Sean had to look up at them from his lower vehicle. ‘We’re still friends.’
‘Best way,’ said James. ‘And sorry for your loss.’
‘Absolutely,’ Emma said. ‘So sorry. Take care, Sean.’
James put the Land Rover in gear and the loaded trailer rattled dangerously close to the Aston as they passed, attention fixed on the lane ahead. Then they were gone.
Sean stared after them in the rear-view mirror, his heart pounding like he’d been in a fight.
