‘I’m thinking about it, all right?’ She knew she sounded defiant and petulant, like a teenager just before conceding a point.
‘Good,’ said Fiona. ‘Do please think about it, seriously.’ She stood up. ‘Thanks for the tea, Hope. Enjoy your dinner tonight! It’s all right, I’ll see myself out.’
Hope nodded, unable to say anything more. She was angry enough to smirk at the sounds of Fiona Donnelly bumping into a handlebar, and then closing the door behind her so firmly it was almost a slam.
The casserole was, indeed, good, though Nick was very picky about it, leaving a ring of carrot slices around the edge of his plate and insisting that Hope tease apart the beef chunks into strands and mash them in with the potatoes before he deigned to eat them. After dinner he wanted to play outside, and Hugh, though tired as well as replete, loyally went out with him to kick a ball about on the back grass.
By the time they came back in – Hugh with a stitch, Nick all grubby – Hope had finished washing the plates and the pan and the big heavy crock-pot and was lying feet up on the sofa, reading on her glasses. Hugh took this as a hint, and busied himself getting Nick to tidy away his toys and get ready for bed. By the time Nick came through in his pyjamas for his good-night kiss, Hope had fallen asleep herself. She woke to the boy’s voice and to text scrolling across her vision like a fragment of dream. She swung her feet to the floor and sat up, taking her glasses off.
‘Good night, Nick.’
‘Good night, Mummy.’
She hugged him a little harder than usual, breathing in the smell of his just-washed skin. Off he went, Max trailing him, both waving from the doorway.
‘Night night,’ she said, waving back.
Hugh came back about ten minutes later and joined her on the sofa.
‘Ach,’ he said. ‘I’m tempted to pour a dram. But I won’t.’
He waved towards the screen. Hope leaned forward and chopped her hand down, turning the television back off.
‘ ’Scuse me,’ she said. ‘Something we’ve got to talk about.’
She told him about Fiona’s visit. He listened in silence until she’d finished.
‘We have to go,’ he said. ‘Tomorrow night.’
Nick was having none of it.
‘Grandpa’s chin is scratchy and his house smells.’
‘But he’s very kind to you,’ Hope said, cutting toast for eggy soldiers. ‘And Grandma Island is lovely. She’s so fond of you, and she’s such fun.’
‘Not as much fun as Granny Abendorf.’
Hope wasn’t sure if this was Nick being stubborn or loyal. She decided to make light of it.
‘Well, Granny Abendorf is fun, yes, but she doesn’t live in a big sprawly house on a hill with the sea down below and lots of sheep and cows around and eagles and seagulls in the sky, does she?’
‘It rains all the time and the house is smelly.’
For answer, Hope flicked up the weather forecast on the big screen in the living room, and pointed Nick to it through the knock-through. ‘That’s Lewis up at the top, see? And it’s sunny today.’
They sat down at the kitchen table. Hope munched her cereal and Nick dunked his eggy soldiers. Then:
‘It’s still smelly.’
‘Oh, for – look, Nick, it’s just cooking. And peat smoke.’
Nick wrinkled his nose. ‘And fish.’ He pushed away the remainder of his breakfast. ‘And wet things.’
‘All right, fish and washing. But you soon don’t notice smells, and it’s nice in other ways.’
‘I’ll miss my friends.’
Lower-lip tremble. Time to move fast.
‘It’s only for a little while, and you can talk to them any time, and you’ll have lots of exciting things to tell them when you come back, and you’ll make new friends while you’re up there.’
‘Can I take Max?’
‘Of course you can. Now let’s get you ready for nursery.’
Nick slid off the chair and ran to the hallway for his jacket, apparently cheered up. He got it on after several attempts, proud of his new accomplishment, while Hope packed his lunch.
‘I’ll tell all my friends we’re going to Lewis,’ he announced, as they headed out the door.
Uh-oh. That could be awkward. She couldn’t tell him to keep it a secret – like all kids at nursery and in primary school, Nick had been solemnly warned against any adult at all telling him to keep secrets. Nothing was more certain to get social services on the case than a whisper of secrets.
‘I’ve had an idea,’ said Hope, climbing up the steps. ‘Let’s not tell them until we’re there, and it’ll be a nice surprise.’
15. The Stornoway Run
Hugh cycled to work as usual, in a cheerful mood. Last night the hot rush of his anger and protectiveness had turned Hope on, and she’d dragged him off to bed almost before he was ready, and they’d had hotter sex than they’d had for a while. Every so often his mind went back to it with a reminiscent smile.
The weather was sunny and not too warm. The leaves and grass along his route had a gloss to their green. As he whizzed along Camden’s back streets and canal banks and along the edge of Regent’s Park he sometimes glimpsed the whole scene as a vast, broken woodland, the forest of London. It was like when as a lad he’d seen from the hilltop how the landscape of Lewis wasn’t moor and field and bog with outcrops of rock, but a gnarly mass of rock with a thin overlay of peaty soil. The vision of the city as a forest uplifted him. It was almost utopian, and within it he felt the bike’s smooth engineered wooden frame and handlebars as an extension of himself.
On top of that elation, he was cheerful because the Ealing job was about to finish. The timing had worked out well, right to the half-day – he only had a morning’s work left. Ashid still had work to do, and Hugh had a waiting list of clients for renovation work, so he could easily have stuck around, just up the street. But at noon today he’d get his cash in hand, and tell Ashid he was taking a short holiday.
He also felt cheerful about leaving London for Lewis. The reason was one he could have done without. But if you looked at it the right way, it appeared positive. He didn’t care what Hope decided. He just wanted her to make her own decision, without social services and the Health Centre breathing down her neck. He’d never understood her objection to the fix. It annoyed him sometimes. That, he now realised, was one reason why he felt so cheerful. One way or another the matter was going to be resolved.
‘You see the future,’ Hope had told him, in a mutually exhausted moment last night. Then she’d explained. Tachyons and rhodopsin, good grief. Just as well she hadn’t brought that up in her latest confrontation with Fiona Donnelly! A gene for hallucinations – now that would have convinced Donnelly to back off! Aye, right. Even if there was anything to it, there was no way he was seeing the future. What sort of future had barbarians in it? If he was seeing anything real, it was people from the Dark Ages. Far more likely he was… maybe not seeing things – meaning, seeing not things but figments – he was convinced there was something objective behind it, though not necessarily what he saw. Which, to any outside observer, meant hallucinations. He was glad Hope had more sense than that science girl, Geena. Strange woman. There had been something odd about her intensity. Something she wasn’t letting on. She hadn’t told him why she was so interested. That query had been diverted by the stuff about police stops, at the end. More emotional than you’d expect.
Hugh made the connection with what Hope had told him about what Fiona had said so abruptly that he almost lost control of the bike. Geena had recently been questioned about Naxals. Of course, of course! And it hadn’t been one of the usual stops, the ones that she and Ashid had shared a nervous laugh about. She’d probably been hauled into the back of a van. She might even have been tortured. No wonder she was upset!