a woman half her age.
‘Lovely to see you, so glad you could make it,’ Harvey said smoothly. ‘Violet, why don’t you go and see if anyone would like a top-up? There’s more champagne inside.’
Gratefully, I broke away. Harvey had an instinct for seeing when people needed to be rescued and an admirably selfsacrificing nature when it came to substituting himself into the firing line; it was something I had forgotten about him in these months of near-isolation. As I retreated, I stole a look back at him. He appeared relaxed, urbane and smiling. It was impossible to tell whether it was just an act.
I spent the next hour passing through the crowd, offering drinks and canapés, stopping here and there for a brief five minutes of small talk. Most of the guests had eyes that flooded with a mixture of pity and curiosity as they spoke to me, but at least, unlike Miranda, they had the good sense to keep their tongues in check and stuck to chatting about the weather. As time passed I felt myself begin to unwind, the tension relaxing from my muscles. A couple of Harvey’s colleagues flirted gallantly and unthreateningly with me, making me roll my eyes and blush. I wondered whether I might be having fun. Standing there on the lawn in my red dress, tossing my hair over my shoulders and laughing, I caught a glimpse of the future opening up. It was not the future I had planned and not the kind of fun I had been accustomed to, but there was little prospect of that any more. Glancing into the crowd of guests, I tried to imagine Jonathan among them, moving with his old confident ease from group to group, and found that I could not. For so long I had carried him around with me like a dead weight, projecting him so vividly into every situation I found myself in that it sometimes seemed I had summoned his ghost. The thought felt disloyal, but if I had lost the knack, I was not sure that I wanted it back. I was tired of missing him, tired of living my life around someone who no longer existed. Any respite from it, no matter how temporary, made me giddily thankful.
I was helping Laura to collect some empty glasses when I saw Harvey stride across the lawn towards us. He put his arm lightly around Laura’s waist, bending in towards her so that his mouth almost brushed her ear. ‘What is that man doing here?’ I heard him murmur, jerking his head to indicate who he meant. To anyone who knew him less, his voice would have sounded unruffled, but I caught a steely undertone to it, the merest hint of a threat.
Laura followed his gaze, narrowing her eyes in the sunlight, and I did the same. Underneath the low-spreading apple tree at the edge of the lawn, a little apart from the crowd, a man stood, smoking a cigarette and looking out across the grass, his face half turned away.
‘It’s Max Croft, isn’t it?’ Laura said. When Harvey did not reply, she turned her face up to his appealingly, searching for a clue as to what to say. ‘I suppose his parents brought him,’ she said finally.
‘His parents?’ Harvey repeated, a little bitingly. ‘Couldn’t they find a babysitter?’ His voice threatened to become louder, and he took a full minute to compose himself, smoothing the flat of his hand slowly and repeatedly over the knot of his tie. I squinted harder at the man, but could make out little but the short, angry-seeming drags he was taking on his cigarette; hard, muscular movements.
‘I didn’t realise that you didn’t want him here.’ Laura fluttered, her hands making desperate shapes in the air now as she spoke. ‘I mean, I didn’t specifically tell Patricia and James that they couldn’t bring him, I wouldn’t really have thought of it – and after all, he did know Jonathan, I thought they were quite friendly once—’
‘Actually,’ Harvey cut in levelly, ‘I don’t think Jonathan liked him at all.’
‘Oh dear…’ Laura began to flap, her eyes darting wildly back and forth between Harvey and the man underneath the apple tree. ‘I’m not sure…I don’t think I can…’
‘Of course you can’t,’ Harvey said, so softly that I could barely catch the words. ‘All the same, next time, perhaps you could finalise the guest list with me.’ His tone was perfectly pleasant, almost soothing. Before Laura had a chance to reply, he had turned and melted into the crowd, clapping yet another well-wisher on the back. Laura looked after him, wringing her hands, her face haunted. I knew that she would worry about the incident for the rest of the afternoon.
I drifted away from the central tables to get a better look at the man whose appearance had jolted Harvey’s famous equilibrium. As I stood on the fringes of the group, staring across at him, he saw me and half raised his hand in a silent salute. Automatically, I waved back. He paused, stubbing out his cigarette against the tree, then beckoned me over. I hesitated, glancing back, but curiosity drove me forward; I walked slowly across the lawn, the pointed heels of my shoes sinking a little into the earth with each step. As I drew closer I realised that Harvey was right. This face had no business at his garden party. The features were bold, tough and cruel; brutal slashed cheekbones, a hard, unsmiling gangster’s mouth. His dark hair was cropped close to his skull, bristling along the strong lines of his bones. His shoulders looked tensed for battle, and his body gave the impression of being hard-packed into a container a little too small for it, restraining its force. If I ran into you in an alleyway, I thought, I would be terrified. I could smell the powerful scent of nicotine and burnt smoke rising off him.
‘All right,’ he said when I halted a few feet away from him. His voice was every bit as harsh as his appearance, a faint rasping rattle running underneath the surface that made me want to clear my throat. When I didn’t reply, he lit up another cigarette, keeping his eyes warily on me, cupping his hand secretively around his mouth.
‘Hello,’ I said at last.
‘Max Croft,’ he said, thrusting his hand out so that I had no choice but to take it. He crushed mine for a few painful seconds before throwing it back. ‘I think you work with my sister.’
It took me a beat to understand who he meant. I looked more closely at him, and could see no trace of Catherine’s elfin prettiness in his face. ‘Really?’ I said.
He gave a grin more like a sneer, showing even, regular teeth. ‘Well, you tell me,’ he said. ‘Do you or don’t you?’
‘If you mean Catherine,’ I said, ‘then yes.’
‘That’s the one.’ He was silent for a few moments, leaning back against the apple tree and smoking, his lips sucking on the cigarette in a way that made my skin prickle with revulsion and fascination. ‘Nice do,’ he said eventually, jerking his head in the direction of the clustered guests. His voice was lightly laced with irony.
‘For those who were invited,’ I said. His mocking tone had set off a small fire of protectiveness in me, and I folded my arms. ‘Harvey didn’t seem to think you were one of those.’
Max raised his eyebrows, looking at me speculatively. ‘Come to kick me out, then?’ he asked. I was silent. ‘Look,’ he said after a few more drags, ‘I don’t want to cause any trouble. I don’t think your old man likes me very much, but it’s not down to anything I’ve done. I liked Jonathan – we didn’t have a lot in common, granted, but he was a good guy. We played a few games of pool, hung out a few times. If your old man doesn’t think I was a suitable friend, then that’s his problem.’
I frowned, trying to remember. As far as I could recall, Jonathan had never mentioned this man. I had certainly never seen him before. I thought of Harvey’s quiet words to Laura: Actually, I don’t think Jonathan liked him at all. There was no way of telling who was right. The silence threatened to stifle me. ‘He’s not my old man,’ I said.
Max shrugged. ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘Obviously. He might as well be, though. Seems you’ve been well and truly welcomed into the family bosom. Just shows
