‘A bottle isn’t the same,’ Henry says. ‘We need a wet nurse.’
There is a silence.
‘Could you do it?’ Patrick says.
‘Me?’
‘Please, Dad. Yeah.’
‘Why me?’
‘Because I’d be embarrassed.’
Henry’s not a big man but he’s well-groomed and vicious as a mink. ‘And how do you think it would look if I did it, eh? You chinless little spastic. How would that fucking look?’
‘Please,’ says Patrick.
Henry shushes him through his teeth, then shoves him onto the upstairs landing.
He gently shuts the bedroom door.
Then he grabs Patrick’s hair and rams Patrick’s head into the wall.
Patrick staggers around. He’s confused. Henry cuffs him round the face a few times, then tosses him to the floor.
‘Just take some of the money,’ he says, ‘and fucking do it.’
CHAPTER 8
Zoe and Mark met just over a year ago. He works for Liberte Sans Frontiere; he was her designated liaison on the Munzir Hattem case.
Mark’s handsome; slightly bohemian in tweed and cords; laid-back and sincere; a little earnest sometimes.
The fourth time they met, he offered to buy her lunch. They sat somewhere outside, watching people go past.
She talked about John.
She always talks about John.
In the end, Mark gave up and joined in. ‘So how did you two get together?’
‘How does anyone get together?’
‘I dunno,’ he said. ‘My ex-wife and I were childhood sweethearts.’
‘No!’
‘Yes!’
‘That’s so sweet.’
‘We went to primary school together,’ Mark said, ‘Stockwood Vale Primary. Emily Edwards. She had a ponytail. She could climb trees. All of it. The full package.’
‘So she was your first and only?’
‘Oh, God no. No, no, no. We went out for about, I don’t know, three years? Four years? Split up when sixth form came along. She got a bit political. Ban the Bomb, Socialist Workers. Greenham Common.’
He laughed to remember it.
A flicker of shared sadness passed between them. Zoe wanted to reach out and touch the back of his hand, to give comfort and to take it.
Instead, she flicked back her hair, stirred her latte. ‘So what happened?’
‘Oh, we met again. This is years later. By coincidence really, some New Year’s Eve bash in Brighton. And when we saw each other it was just like old times. She’d gone through her phase and out the other side. And I’d gone through mine.’
‘And what phase is this?’
He shrugged, sheepish. ‘Echo and the Bunnymen, basically.’
‘Echo and the what now?’
‘Bunnymen. You don’t know the Bunnymen?’
‘To my knowledge, I’ve never even set eyes on a Bunny Man.’
‘You ever hear of Eric’s?’
‘No.’
‘It was a club,’ he said. ‘In Liverpool, this was. Elvis Costello, I saw him there. The Clash. Joy Division. The Banshees. The Buzzcocks. You never heard of the Buzzcocks?’
She shook her head.
He sang her a few bars of ‘Ever Fallen in Love With Someone You Shouldn’t’ve’.
Realizing, he trailed off. There was an awkward moment.
‘It’s a good song,’ he said.
Zoe got the bill and they stepped into the autumn, bundled up in their coats.
Mark said, ‘I don’t feel like going back yet.’
She said, ‘Nor me.’
So they walked to the park, found a bench and sat down. She perched on the edge, spine straight. Mark sprawled, took tobacco from a flat tin in his pocket and began to roll a cigarette. ‘Do you mind?’
‘Not at all. Blow the smoke my way.’
‘You a smoker?’
‘Occasional.’
‘I can roll you one, if you like.’
They sat in silence while he rolled her a cigarette, then passed it to her. She placed it in her mouth. The faint burn of unlit tobacco.
He produced a lighter and she leaned into him, smelling him, then sat back, puffing on her first roll-up since she was a student. She liked the taste and the smell of it, wondered how it went with these clothes, these shoes, this hair.
‘So how long did it last?’ she said, picking a thread of tobacco from the tip of her tongue, aware that he was watching her do it.
‘What, me and Emily? Eleven years, all in.’
‘Kids?’
‘There’s Stephen. He’s sixteen. Chloe’s nine. They live with their mum. You?’
‘Me and John? God, no.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘What does what mean?’
‘That tone.’
‘I don’t know. Did I use a tone?’
‘You definitely did. There was definitely a tone in use.’
She snorted, then covered her nose with the back of her hand, embarrassed. Mark was grinning at her.
She said, ‘The thought of it. Me and John with kids.’
‘What’s so mad about that?’
‘We agreed not to. Back when we were kids ourselves.’
‘Really? How long have you known him?’
‘Since the Big Bang.’
It was supposed to sound funny, but it came out sad. She watched the pigeons for a while. Then she said, ‘We met at university.’
‘Same course?’
‘No. I was doing law, obviously. He was postgrad in English.’
She tucked her chin into the warmth of her coat and smiled to think of it, just as she sometimes did when flicking through old photographs.
‘We only met because we were both doing this elective course in comparative religion. I sat next to him in this tiny little lecture theatre. Everybody there already knew each other except me and John. I knew him by reputation.’
‘And what reputation was that?’
‘He’s very tall,’ she said, self-conscious as a schoolgirl. ‘Very strong. Very handsome. And very, very intense.’
She laughed out loud, delighted and liberated to be talking about it. ‘And it was like, all the girls fancied him and he didn’t even notice them, y’know? And the more he didn’t notice them, the more they fancied him. He used to make girls do the stupidest things around him, really clever, brilliant young women who should have known better, behaving like idiots to get his attention. And he never noticed.’
‘Everybody notices.’
‘Swear to God. It wasn’t even arrogance. It was a kind of… myopia.’
‘And you liked that?’
‘I thought it was endearing.’
‘Not, like, a challenge?’
‘God, no.’
This time, they both laughed.
Mark said, ‘So how did you… y’know. Get together?’
She smoked the roll-up to its last quarter-inch, then squeezed it between her fingernails.
‘There wasn’t like a moment,’ she said. ‘We met in that lecture and kind of drifted out for a coffee afterwards. Neither of us asked the other. Or that’s how I remember it. We just sat in the cafe and chatted. I told him everything there was to tell about myself — which at the time wasn’t all that much.’
‘How old were you?’
‘Twenty? So girls’ school, sixth form, gap year, university. It felt like a lot of life experience at the time. So I tell him this, all about myself. Then I ask him about himself and he tells me about books. As if he’s made up of all these books he’s read, or was going to read. And later on, he walks me home. I didn’t question it for a minute. And I’ll tell you one thing about John: if you’re a twenty-year-old girl and you’re not that knowledgeable in the ways of the world and you live in a dodgy area, walking home with him, you never felt so safe. And he stops outside my door and says, This is you, then? And I say, This is me. And I’m thinking, Kiss me you arsehole, kiss me or I’m going to die on the spot.’
‘And did he?’
‘No. He just slouches and gives me this nod — he’s got this shaggy-dog nod he does sometimes. Then he digs his hands in his pockets and walks off.’
‘Well played, that man.’
‘Except it wasn’t,’ she said. ‘It wasn’t a tactic. I swear! It was just him. That’s who he was. Is. Whatever.’