Читать книгу It Had to Be You - David Nobbs - Страница 6

A husband and wife were driving, in separate cars, towards two very different luncheon appointments. It was a glorious June morning, quite unsuitable for sudden death, yet only one of them would arrive.

Deborah Hollinghurst was driving along a quiet country road. She was in danger of being early, and she really didn’t think it would be stylish to be early, not today, not yet. So she was driving sedately, at a steady forty-five miles an hour along the winding road, to the irritation of the drivers of a couple of vans that had once been white. Her car was a convertible, but the roof was not down. She didn’t want the wind in her hair, not today. Next month she would be forty-seven. She was still lovely, but she was beginning to feel that her loveliness needed all the help it could get. Especially today. She felt excited, but also a little fearful. The fear was only faint, but it was getting stronger with every mile that she drove. She felt as if she was about to step off the edge of the world. Her world, anyway. She told herself that she didn’t have to step off. Nothing had been decided. She didn’t believe herself. She knew that everything had been decided.

A rabbit with myxomatosis stood at the side of the road, blind, impervious, a stone statue, like a ghastly garden sculpture of a rabbit. Deborah swerved to put it out of its misery, shuddered at the squelch of the tiny impact, on that glorious June morning, so unsuitable for sudden death.

A heron flapped slowly, contentedly across a field beside the road. Soon, if it had its way, a fish would meet its sudden death. The calm of the morning was illusory, its beauty marred by a thousand little tragedies.

To James Hollinghurst the morning had no beauty. The windows of the totally unnecessary 4 x 4 were closed, the air conditioning was on, his world was a mobile fridge, summer had no place in it, summer had been banished as a frivolous nuisance. He was on the M1, in the middle lane. He was in danger of being late, and he didn’t think it would be wise to be late, not today.

He was anxious. It was not going to be an easy meeting. He put his foot down. Eighty-five. Ninety. Ninety-five. He didn’t want to be caught on a speed camera, but anything was better than being late today.

He was listening to Classic FM. The adverts began, and he leant forward and pressed a button, which switched the radio over to another channel. He didn’t like the adverts. Their repetition irritated him. He had dark, unruly hair, thick untamed eyebrows, a high forehead and a low boredom threshold.

The next station that he found had music on it, or what passed for music. ‘Call that music,’ he shouted. He shouted at the radio a lot. It was what he had it on for. He was forty-eight. He was on quinapril, amlodipine and bisoprolol hemifumerate for his blood pressure, and simvastatins for his cholesterol.

Unfortunately the music stopped, and the DJ announced that he was going to speak to Tracey from Doncaster. James groaned. It was very possible that Tracey from Doncaster was a lovely girl. He often met people who were much nicer than the towns they lived in. But he didn’t think Tracey could tell him anything that he really needed to know at this moment. He switched back to Classic FM. The adverts were almost over.

‘We’ve more relaxing music for you in the next hour,’ purred the presenter in the honeyed, reassuring, faintly patronising tone adopted by almost all the announcers on Classic FM.

‘Relaxing?’ groaned James. He desperately needed to relax. Packaging was the first thing to suffer in a recession. If people had bought less, they had fewer things to pack. But he didn’t want to listen to relaxing music. He wanted to be transported into another world by great music. ‘I know you’ve done a lot for classical music,’ he told the presenter sorrowfully. After all, the man sounded nice and was probably kind to his wife. ‘But really, is that what you think great music is about? Did Beethoven say, “Darling, I think I created something memorably relaxing this morning”? Did Mrs Mahler find Mahler spark out as she brought him his morning coffee? “Sorry, Ingeborg, this symphony I’m writing is so relaxing I must have nodded off.” Give me great music. Stirring music. Please.’

He reached forward to press the button again, feeling a stab of pleasure at reducing the announcer to impotence. How he wished people could feel it when he switched them off. ‘Bad news, Monty. We’ve lost James Hollinghurst. The bastard was distinctly unimpressed. He’s switched over to BBC Radio 3.’

He accelerated with a sudden surge of impotent anger, and swung out into the fast lane. Surely, the way James was driving, if one of the Hollinghursts was to have a fatal accident that day, it would be him?

Not so.

Deborah came to a rare straight stretch of road. Four cars were proceeding smoothly in the opposite direction. A fifth, a Porsche, was overtaking them at speed. Suddenly she realised that it was going to be a close-run thing, if she didn’t slow down to let the driver through. Why should she, though? He was the one at fault, arrogant, rich, spoilt, in his expensive car. He deserved to have a moment of shock, of doubt, of fear. She’d brake, of course she would, she’d have to, but not for a couple of seconds.

It was the worst decision she ever made in her life.

It was also the last decision she ever made in her life.

A tall man, elegant in white linen, sat at a window table in the pink and cream restaurant, toyed with a glass of rather average house white and looked out over the gardens, which sloped down towards the gently flowing water. He wouldn’t like his name to be revealed. He shouldn’t be there. He’d chosen the place because he wasn’t known there. He’d kept his wits about him, and he was certain that nobody had followed him. The only private dick he needed to be concerned with was the one in his sharply creased trousers, which was so stimulated that he was finding it hard to keep it private. Let us allow him his precious anonymity – for the moment, at least.

There’s no need to name the hotel either. One of the things that had most attracted him to it was its obscurity. It was a long way from anybody he knew, and a long way from anybody whom the woman he was expecting knew. Let’s just say it was the Whatsit Arms, prettily situated on the banks of the River Thingamayjig, just outside the pleasant but not distinguished little village of Somewhere-juxta-Nowhere. It was mentioned in no guidebooks. It had no Michelin stars. It was perfect.

He had the table furthest from the door. He sat facing the door. Every time anybody entered he felt a frisson of excitement, soon dashed. My God, he said to himself with a wry internal smile, as he watched the lunchers enter, we’re an ugly race.

He wasn’t surprised that she was late. He’d expected her to be late. It was stylish for a woman to arrive late, and she was very stylish. He’d guessed that she would be eight, nine, perhaps ten minutes late. It was correct, and he always liked to be correct, which was why he’d had to be so secretive. There was no way what he was doing today was correct. A clandestine lunch with a married woman. Not his style at all. And, of all married women, this one.

Not just lunch, either. Or so he hoped. Not half an hour ago he had booked a double room for the night, just in case. He could hardly believe that he had been so bold. But if things went well, and if the mood was right, and if he did manage to persuade her, it might be disastrous to have to go through all the business of booking, of pretending to be a married couple, of giving false names. Do you need any help with your luggage? We have no luggage. Only baggage.

He’d had to give a name of course, fill in a form. Mr and Mrs Rivers, Lake View, 69 Pond Street, Poole. Utterly unbelievable, but it had aroused no suspicion from the Hungarian receptionist, whose skin was like a white pudding he had once eaten in the Languedoc. He’d blushed slightly at the boldness, the wild optimism of his choice of house number. He couldn’t remember ever having been even remotely risqué before. What had got into him? Love? Madness? The girl hadn’t reacted. Perhaps they didn’t use that term in the villages around Lake Balaton.

Suddenly he realised that he was wearing his wedding ring, and that might be tactless. He stood up abruptly, then calmed himself down and walked out of the restaurant, trying to look insouciant. He went to the Gents and forced the ring off his finger. He had never taken it off before, and it didn’t come easily, this was taking time, she would arrive before he got back, he began to panic. His finger felt trapped inside the ring.

At last it came off, and he breathed more easily again. But now he needed a pee, his third in the last hour. He had rarely been so nervous. Oh, hurry, hurry, lazy prick. She’ll be there. She’ll have arrived and found him absent, the great moment ruined.

He walked back, trying to look calm and carefree. She wasn’t there yet. For a moment he was glad.

Twelve minutes late. Thirteen. He began to feel just faintly uneasy.

James was late. The traffic had been heavy, but he should have allowed for that. And the BWC (Big White Chief) was a stickler for punctuality. The summons to the head office in Birmingham would have been unnerving at any time, but the recession was beginning to bite, the coalition’s threatened cuts hung heavily, and he felt very nervous. It shamed him to feel so nervous.

He drove past the ugly, glass and stained concrete building that housed the world HQ of Globpack. He turned right at the side of the building, then at the back turned left. A bar blocked his way into the car park. It irritated him that the intercom was so inconveniently placed that he had to get out of the car to speak into it. The intense heat of the city was a shock after the iciness of his car.

‘The car park’s full,’ announced a crackly disembodied Birmingham voice with barely concealed delight.

He gave his registration number, and added, ‘I have a space reserved.’

‘I have no record of this, I’m afraid,’ said the voice, sounding more pleased than afraid.

James swallowed. He found it difficult to be assertive to people when they weren’t on the radio.

‘I think you’d better find me a space,’ he said. ‘I’m the Managing Director of the London office.’

The bar rose. James got back into his car. Its iciness was a shock after the intense heat of the city. He drove in. The car park was full. He managed to squeeze his Subaru into a corner, at a somewhat humiliatingly awkward angle. Every little setback was making him feel even worse about the day’s prospects. He strode towards the ugly back of the building, which was called, as it deserved to be, Packaging House.

He had forgotten the four-figure security number that would unlock the back door. He would have to go round the front. He was getting later and later. This was bad. He didn’t feel like the Managing Director of the London office. He felt like an underling. And that was what he was, in reality, when he was meeting the Managing Director of the whole global venture.

He longed to break into a run, but in this heat it would have brought him out in a sweat, and that would have been disastrous. The BWC was a stickler for hygiene. Americans usually are.

As he walked towards the main entrance, James remembered something his father had said. This tended to happen at moments of stress. The voice came clearly to him from that Christmas fifteen years ago.

‘I feel guilty about you, James. I haven’t dealt with my children fairly. I’ve given Charles my artistry, Philip my brains, and you my eyebrows.’

How typical of his father, to have wrapped a grenade in a coating of sympathy. Fifteen years, and it still rankled. If only Deborah was with him, striding beside him on her long, strong, fleshy farmer’s daughter’s legs. He closed his eyes for a second in a sudden revulsion at how he had treated her, and almost fell as his foot caught the raised edge of a paving stone.

Careful, James. Get a grip.

Easily said, but in a few minutes he would know what this summons was all about. Surely it couldn’t be the sack? He’d been chosen to make the speech on behalf of the company at the big luncheon next Wednesday to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the formation of Globpack UK. They’d hardly do that and then sack him.

Or would they? Maybe that would give out a sign of the company’s ruthlessness very effectively. No, he wasn’t secure.

Nobody was.

And even if it wasn’t the sack, it might be the dreaded news that the London office was to move to share premises with the global HQ – in Birmingham. That would be almost as bad.

Globpack! How had they come up with that? He had inherited a bit of his dad’s artistic taste, and he found it hard to believe that a career that had begun in the Basingstoke Box Company had led him, inexorably, to being employed by a firm called Globpack.

Another intercom outside the main entrance.

‘James Hollinghurst to see Mr Schenkman.’

The doors opened, with, it seemed to James, a sigh of resignation. We don’t want to let him in, but we can find no reason not to.

‘I have an appointment with Mr Schenkman. I’m afraid I’m late.’

The receptionist winced sympathetically, phoned Mr Schenkman’s office, and then said, to James’s surprise, ‘He’s coming down.’

Did this mean … could it mean … lunch? His spirits rose.

In the early years of their relationship, James had enjoyed many lunches, lunches marred only by the fact that the giant American was so abstemious that James had felt like an alcoholic every time he took a sip of his wine.

And now here the man was striding gigantically and rather aggressively over the even more gigantic foyer.

‘I’m so sorry I’m late,’ said James, just before he was enveloped in Mr Schenkman’s global handshake. ‘The traffic!’

Dwight Schenkman the Third frowned. James felt that the frown said, Anticipation of difficulty is halfway towards success in the intensely competitive world of global packaging. No. He was becoming paranoid. The man was addicted to verbosity, but he must stop attributing quite such pompous words to him.

‘Could I have a taxi, please, to go to the Hotel du Vin?’ said Mr Schenkman to the receptionist.

The Hotel du Vin. James’s spirits took another cautious leap, then plummeted. When you feel insecure, no signs are good, and this could be a way of saying goodbye, and thank you.

A taxi pulled in almost immediately. James felt that they always would, for Dwight Schenkman the Third.

‘Hotel du Vin, please.’

The moment the taxi had slid away from the main entrance, the immaculately groomed American leant forward and said, ‘Driver, we’re actually going to the Pizza Express.’

James raised his bushy eyebrows, those unwelcome gifts from his father.

‘Couldn’t let them know that in the office,’ explained Dwight Schenkman the Third. ‘One word out of place, and the shares could slide. Confidence is fragile in the intensely competitive world of global packaging.’

The man in the white linen suit studied the menu for the third time. There were two misprints. There was ‘loin of God’, which was careless, and ‘expresso coffee’, which was ominously ignorant.

Thirty minutes. Thirty-one. Thirty-two. The serious doubts began.

At the next table they noticed ‘loin of God’, and the conversation turned to misprints on menus.

‘In a restaurant I went to in the Ardeche,’ said a crayfish cocktail, ‘there was a starter of “avocat farci”. It was translated in the English version as “stuffed lawyer”.’

There was laughter.

‘I wouldn’t have ordered that,’ said a soup of the day. ‘Too tough.’

There was more laughter.

‘Too expensive,’ added a chicken liver pâté, and there was yet more laughter.

All this laughter hit the man in the white linen suit like a punch in the stomach. He was in a state of anxiety that no laughter could penetrate. Suddenly he was convinced that something serious had happened.

He still didn’t think of an accident, though. He certainly didn’t think of death. It was the third day of Wimbledon. The day smelt of strawberries and cream. It wasn’t a time for accidents.

His first thought was that she had fallen ill, was in hospital, couldn’t phone, hadn’t dared to reveal their secret plans. That would be surprising, though. She was very fit.

He shook his head, to rid it of these speculations. A rather plump, middle-aged woman, lunching with a woman of similar age, caught his eye, and he tried not to look as if he was waiting for someone who hadn’t turned up. This irritated him. Why should he care? No wonder she hadn’t come, if that was the amount of confidence and poise he had.

No … on second thoughts … on second thoughts that was exactly what he thought she had had … second thoughts. She had seen the road ahead. The clandestine meetings. The lies. The deceptions. The hurt. She had decided that she didn’t want to have to be Mrs Rivers, of Lake View, 69 Pond Street, Poole.

He wasn’t worth it.

This was ridiculous. There was some utterly trivial explanation. Any minute now she would breeze in, smiling her apologies with that memorable wide smile of hers.

But she didn’t.

The Pizza Express was like … well, it was like every other Pizza Express. Just about Italian enough to be acceptable to the sophisticated, not so Italian that it discomfited the gauche. Warm enough to be pleasant to enter, cool enough to discourage a long stay.

A Polish waiter approached, trying to look Italian, trying to pretend to be really rather excited to see them. His insufficiently practised Eastern European smile foundered on the rock of Dwight Schenkman’s face.

‘Anything to drink, gentlemen?’

God, I could sink a Peroni.

‘Just a small sparkling water, please,’ said Dwight Schenkman.

Maybe a glass of the Montepulciano, thought James. A large one. But the words died in his throat.

‘Still water, please.’

James studied the menu. How, when the main course was mainly pizza, could there be dough balls as a starter? How much dough could a man consume?

‘How’s the lovely Deborah?’

‘Very well. Very well indeed.’

‘You’re a lucky son of a gun.’

‘I know I am. More than I deserve.’

‘And Max?’

‘Great.’

‘And Charlotte? The absent Charlotte?’

‘Still absent.’

The tension grew with every devastating drip of politeness. Now he had to take his turn at asking questions, and there was a problem. The names of Dwight’s wife and family escaped him entirely. He had once begun a correspondence course to improve his memory. ‘That’ll be a futile gesture,’ Deborah had predicted, and she’d been right. Halfway through the course he’d forgotten all about it.

‘Everything all right with your family?’ he enquired.

Pathetic. The lack of detail was blatant. But the BWC didn’t seem to notice. He took a photograph from his wallet.

‘We have our very first grandchild.’ He handed James a photo of an ugly, podgy baby being held in the excessively ample arms of an unrealistically blonde lady with slightly stick-out teeth. In the background was a bungalow of quite spectacular dreariness. ‘Who do you think that is?’

Inspiration, that rare visitor to his life, struck James.

‘Dwight Schenkman the Fifth?’

‘Yessir!’ This was said so loudly that several people in the vicinity turned to look.

‘Lovely,’ said James. ‘They make a lovely couple. And is that their home? It looks … cosy.’

‘James, that is exactly what it is. Dwight’s very New York, but Howard’s a real home bird. That’s his wife, Josie. James, it gives me great pleasure that you, my old friend, my trusted manager of the London office, think that Josie and Howard make a lovely couple. Thank you.’

James looked desperately for sarcasm and found none. But ‘old friend’, ‘trusted manager’. Maybe things weren’t so bad after all.

The waiter scurried across with their water, and asked if they were ready to order.

‘Absolutely,’ said Dwight Schenkman the third without consulting James. ‘James?’

‘I’ll have the capricciosa, please.’

‘Great choice, James. I’ll have the Veneziana. I like to feel I’m giving 25p to Venice. It’s a great little town. And those dough balls sound nice to start. You going for the dough balls, James?’

‘No, thank you.’ How thankful he was that he hadn’t made any comment about them.

‘We’ve had some great lunches, haven’t we? Le Gavroche. Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons with Claire and the lovely Deborah.’

Claire! Must remember that. Claire. An éclair with the e on the end instead of the beginning. Easy-peasy.

‘And now the Pizza Express.’

‘Hard times?’

‘Got it in one. What’s your view of the state of the packaging industry, James?’

‘Difficult, Dwight. We pack what people buy. We can’t pack more or less than that. We’re a kind of barometer of the economy.’

‘I like that.’ The BWC rolled the phrase round his mouth as if it was a glass of premier cru Chateau Margaux. God, James could do with a glass of wine. Any wine. ‘A barometer of the economy. I’ll remember that.’

Of course you will. You remember everything, you bastard.

Dwight Schenkman the Third leant so far forward that James could smell his toothpaste and his aftershave.

‘To business,’ he said.

James’s heart began to pump very fast. Thank goodness he’d remembered to take all his pills.

‘There are two elements to this, James. A global element and a UK element.’

The pumping of James’s heart began to slow just a little. It didn’t sound like the sack.

‘In the short term, James, I am requiring every element of our global operation to make a fifteen per cent cut across the board. Across the board, James, from personnel to toilet paper via water coolers and stationery. I need your specific proposal as to how this target may be met in Bridgend and Kilmarnock, and I need it within six months.’

James knew how difficult this would be, but all he could feel was relief, immense, shattering relief. He had been given a job to do. He had not been sacked.

Dwight’s dough balls arrived. Since he was far too well bred to talk with his mouth full, and since he was an exhaustive chewer, his outlining of James’s greatest challenge came with long interruptions.

‘There is a real possibility, James, that we might have to consider transferring some, if not most, of our total British production capacity to …’

James tried not to watch the curiously sterile rhythmic movement of Dwight’s jaw as he chewed.

‘… Taiwan. Well, there are other possibilities, but Taiwan is favourite as of this moment in time.’

As opposed to this moment in space, thought James irreverently.

‘In six months I will have received estimates of the saving that we can achieve by moving production to Taiwan. I want you to set up a committee to give me another report producing equal …’

James took a sip of his water and tried to pretend it was gin.

‘… savings in the UK. Otherwise, Taiwan it is. In which case we could …’

He chewed on his next morsel of dough ball as if he couldn’t bear the pleasure to end.

‘… close the London office and you could all join us here in Birming-ham.’

Dwight Schenkman pronounced England’s second city as if it was a type of meat.

James’s heart sank. Even the arrival of his pizza capricciosa couldn’t lift it.

She was more than three-quarters of an hour late now. He was in turmoil. He stared wildly at the door, willing her to hurry in. But he knew in his heart that she wouldn’t.

He had ruled out the possibility that she had had second thoughts. Apart from the fact that there was no reason why she should – they had talked about it and talked about it and she had committed herself and told him how much she loved him and told him of James’s lack of real passion in recent years – there was also his knowledge of her character. She was a woman of courage, of spirit, of compassion, of style. If she had had second thoughts, she would have phoned to tell him.

He began to think about the possibility of an accident. He could barely allow himself to believe that she would have had a bad accident. His happiness, his utterly unexpected happiness, was not to be taken away so cruelly. But a minor accident, that would be what it was.

If it was a very minor accident, though, she would have been able to phone.

So why didn’t he phone her? Not in the restaurant, though. It was too quiet. Too many people were eating in whispers, in that strange, overawed English way.

He strolled out into the garden, slowly, trying to look casual.

He had chosen this remote spot so well that there was no network coverage.

He returned to his table, smiled at the lunchers and sat down, trying to look as if he hadn’t a care in the world.

Round and round went his mind.

He told himself that he had lived without her reasonably happily for fifty-one years. Surely he could manage another thirty or so?

He knew that this was nonsense.

He caught the eye of the plump, plain woman. She had a stern, stiff look on her face, and traces of tiramisu on both her chins. He had a sudden fear that he knew her, and that, therefore, she knew him. He smiled at her, trying to make the smile look casual and relaxed. She gave a defensive half-smile in response, as if she wasn’t sure whether she knew him.

What did it matter, anyway? Deborah hadn’t come. Nothing had happened.

A waitress lumbered over towards him, English, local, with inelegant legs and not a shred of style.

‘Would you like to order, sir?’ she asked. ‘Only the chef’s got the hospital at two forty-five, with his boils.’

‘Well, he could hardly go there without them, could he?’

‘Sorry, sir?’

‘I’ll have the chicken liver pâté and then the loin of God.’

‘Good?’

‘Fine, Dwight. It was fine.’

‘You’re an unusual eater. I was watching you.’

Too right. Like a hawk. Disconcerting. Very.

‘I make sure that I don’t run out of the things I particularly like, which in this case were the egg, the anchovy, the capers,’ explained James. ‘There must be a bit of those left at the end. Not too much, though. That would be childish.’

‘I see,’ said Dwight, not seeing at all. ‘Right. So there we are, James. A simple task. Not too frightening, is it?’

It’s terrifying.

‘Not at all.’

‘I could have just phoned you, James, but we go back a long way. I wanted to establish the continuation of a relationship that is a substantial part of the bedrock that has helped to cement the British sphere of the Globpack operation over the years, not to say the decades.’

‘Thank you.’

‘Coffee? No. Back to work. Quite right, James. Time is money.’ He summoned a waiter and asked for the bill. It came instantly.

‘Thank you very much for lunch,’ said James.

‘My pleasure. We must do it properly soon. The four of us. Not on the company, though. Those days are over, never to return.’ The waiter moved off and Dwight leant forward. ‘One other matter, James. Sack your PA. Immediately. She’s incompetent. She’s a liability to the company image.’

‘I know, but …’

‘You’re not having…?’

‘Of course I’m not.’

‘I know. I’m sorry.’

‘It’s just …’

It’s just that she’s so useless she’ll never get another job. And I like her. I’m comfortable with her.

Can’t say any of that.

‘Immediately. Absolutely.’

Oh, God.

‘How would Deborah feel if one day your whole operation did move to Birmingham?’

She’d go ape-shit.

‘I don’t say she’d be thrilled, Dwight, she’s a London lady through and through, despite her farming background, but she’d accept it without complaint if it was necessary.’

Dwight stood up. James rose with him as if they were tied together.

They got a taxi back to Globpack. The two men stood outside the main entrance for a moment, in the stifling sunshine.

‘My very best to the marvellous Deborah,’ said Dwight Schenkman the Third, shaking James’s hand ferociously.

‘Thank you. And my very best to …’ Oh, God. What was it? Ah! Cake. That was the clue. And ending in an e. Got it. ‘… Madeleine.’

‘Madeleine?’

Oh, shit. That was Proust.

He could feel the eyes of Dwight Schenkman the Third, those piercing yet strangely unseeing eyes, boring into his back as he strode towards the car park.

The man in the white linen suit cancelled his room.

‘We not charge. You not use,’ said the Hungarian receptionist.

‘Thank you.’

‘I hoping you finding your wife very all right, Mr Rivers.’

‘Thank you.’

As he walked slowly, sadly, exhaustedly to his car through a wall of heat, the man who had called himself Mr Rivers realised that he had indeed been hoping that this lunch would be the first stage in the long process of finding a wife, and that Deborah as his wife would indeed be very all right, although the whole thing was so very all wrong.

What on earth had happened to her? He found it almost intolerable that he had no idea.

‘That was a twenty-three-stroke rally. I wonder when there was last a twenty-three-stroke rally at Wimbledon on the twenty-third of June,’ said the commentator.

‘Do you really? How sad is that?’ called out James.

‘Interestingly enough—’

James pressed the button. He smiled internally at the thought that he would never know whether the commentator’s remark would have been interesting enough. He was already far away, on Radio 2, listening to Steve Wright in the Afternoon.

His phone rang almost immediately. Sadly, Steve Wright spent only twelve seconds in James’s afternoon.

It was Marcia, his PA. At the sound of her posh Benenden voice his heart sank. Dwight wanted him to sack her tomorrow. He wasn’t sure if he had the power to sack her any more. Didn’t he have to give her a warning, maybe several warnings? He didn’t want to sack her, but he didn’t want not to have the power to sack her if he wanted to. It was odd being a boss these days.

‘Hello. It’s me.’ So bright and warm and innocent and naive. She hadn’t been to Benenden. She’d been to an obscure private school, now defunct, where they taught you to talk as if you had been to Benenden. James sometimes thought that it was the only thing they had taught her.

‘Hello, Marcia.’

‘How did it go? Do I still have you as my boss?’

Marcia, that really is a little bit forward.

‘Sorry. Am I being a bit cheeky?’

‘No. Not at all. It went well. You still have me as your boss.’ Not for long, though. Poor girl. ‘No, we just have to make savings. Fifteen per cent across the board.’

‘Heavens.’

‘Quite.’

‘And we have to produce a report stating why we shouldn’t move all our production to Taiwan.’

‘Oops.’

‘Exactly.’

‘Are you coming back in?’

‘No. The traffic’s terrible. I’m crawling at forty in the fast lane.’

‘Oh, poor you.’

‘Always nice to hear your cheerful voice, Marcia, but was there any particular reason for ringing?’

‘Yes. There was.’

Silence.

A Vauxhall Corsa pulled into the space between James and the car in front. He hooted angrily. It happened all the time if you tried to keep your distance. Keep two chevrons’ distance? Impossible. Had anybody in the government ever driven on a motorway? No, they had chauffeurs and slept, dreaming of their expenses.

It was yet another irritation on an irritating day.

‘Are you still there, Marcia?’

‘Yes. Sorry, it’s gone. Oh, lorks, maybe I’m going to have to be a bit more on the ball if you’re having to make these savings.’

It’s too late, darling.

‘Oh, yes. It’s come back. The police rang.’

‘The police?’

‘Yes. Sorry. I should have written it down, ’cause I usually do, but I thought it was so important and unusual that I couldn’t possibly forget it.’

‘Quite. What did they want?’

‘He didn’t say. He sounded nice, though. Quite young, I think.’

‘Yes, I don’t care what age he was, Marcia, but didn’t he say anything?’

‘He asked for your home number and your address. I didn’t think it would sound good to be too inquisitive. I think they’ll be in touch with you this evening.’

‘Thank you.’

‘James?’

‘Yes?’

‘I hope it’s nothing serious.’

‘Thank you. Probably some scrape my bloody daughter’s got into.’

‘I guess. James?’

‘Yes, Marcia?’

‘I’ll be in all evening. Will you ring and let me know? ’Cause I’ll worry.’

‘That’s very sweet of you.’

‘Well, you know I …’

‘What? What, Marcia?’

‘No. Nothing. Sorry.’

She rang off. Oh, how how how could he sack her tomorrow? Or even give her a warning. How could he bear to witness the hurt that she would have no ability to conceal?

It was his barely admitted wish that he had been born as his brother Charles that had led James to choose to live in a three-storey Georgian end-of-terrace house in one of the more fashionable parts of Islington rather than in the five-bedroom two-garage four-bathroom suburban home with conservatory, summer house, tree house and large lawn hidden from the envious by leylandii that might have seemed more suitable for the Managing Director of the London office. The only real drawback was the absence of those two garages. Even with his residents’ pass he often had to park quite a way from the house, and on this day of irritations it was no surprise that this should be so.

As he dragged himself through the poisoned early-evening heat past the reticent charms of the nicely proportioned brick-built houses in the modestly elegant, understated street he longed for a drink, but even more than that, he craved the peace of his home. Every visitor commented on how restful and quietly artistic the house was, and he was always generous in admitting how much of this achievement was down to Deborah, his style guru.

His legs were leaden. The heavy traffic, the tense meeting, the fear of sacking the lovely, useless Marcia, and the news that he was going to get a call from the police all contributed to a debilitating unease.

He couldn’t find his front-door key, so he rang the bell, but there was no reply. That was odd. He had expected Deborah to be in.

Thank goodness the house was on the end of the terrace. He took the narrow path on the eastern side of the house, picked up the back-door key from under the third stone behind the statue of Diana (Greek goddess, not princess), and entered the house through the garden door.

Perhaps it was just as well that Deborah wasn’t home. She would have raised her eyebrows at the sight of him going to the gin bottle before he even took his tie off.

He poured himself a gin and Noilly Prat with ice and a slice, sniffed it eagerly, and took the first of many sips.

He sat in a green eighteenth-century armchair – no three-piece suites for Deborah – and stretched his body and his legs into full relaxing mode. He gazed with pleasure, as he did almost every day, at the carefully chosen semi-abstract landscapes by little-known modern artists that decorated the most serene living room of this man who hardly knew what the word ‘serenity’ meant.

At last, he gave a deep sigh, stood up carefully – his back was not something to be relied upon, especially after a long drive – and strode with sudden resolution towards the telephone. As he passed the piano, he ran his hand along the smooth walnut lid. It was a most beautiful piano. Neither he nor Deborah played. They had bought it for his brother Charles to play when he visited. James may have wished that he was Charles, but there was no envy in him. He was very proud of his brother.

He picked up the telephone, paused for a moment, summoning up his strength, then dialled his daughter’s number. Well, he wasn’t sure if it was her number. He’d been given it by someone at a number which had previously been said to be her number. Deborah had tried it a few times, at moments when she’d felt brave, he standing beside her and touching her to give her the strength he hadn’t quite got. There had never been a reply. He felt brave now, his resolve stiffened by the task and the challenge set him by Dwight Schenkman the Third, and even more by the gin and Noilly Prat. But his chest was contracting, and his heart was beating as if it was a swallow trapped in a bedroom.

He almost rang off. He should ring off. It wasn’t right to do this when Deborah wasn’t here. It would be a great moment, a historic moment, and she should be part of it.

Just as he was about to ring off, there was a voice. A man’s voice.

‘Yep?’

The shock was immense. He had to sit down.

‘Oh, hello. Um …’ He felt foolish. ‘Does … um … have I got the right number for …’ He could barely say it. ‘… Charlotte Hollinghurst?’

Even as he spoke it the name seemed all wrong, so middle class, so … serene, satisfied.

‘Who is this?’

‘I’m her father. Charlotte Hollinghurst’s father. She … um …’ It was difficult to say the words. They made the fact of it so real. ‘… She … um … she disappeared from home a … um … long ago. Does … um …’ Oh, Lord. What answer did he want? ‘Is she … does she … live there?’

‘Yeah, she sure does.’

Hope, fear but mainly astonishment surged through James. He had slowly become certain that he would never find her, that all alleys were blind, all clues imagined.

‘Wow.’

‘Yep. Wow.’

‘Um … who am I speaking to?’

‘Chuck.’

‘Pardon?’

‘I’m Chuck.’

‘Ah.’

‘Sorry.’

‘No, no. Not at all. Um … is Charlotte there, by any chance … Chuck?’

‘Absolutely.’

An electric current ran through James, as if he had been struck by lightning. She was there, alive and at the end of a phone line. He could barely bring himself to speak.

‘Um … could I speak to her, please?’

‘Absolutely.’

As easy as that.

James heard the phone being put down and heard Chuck call out, ‘Babe, it’s your old man.’ Then there was silence.

He was desperately trying to control his breathing. He was deeply shaken. Chuck and Babe? Babe and Chuck. What had happened in the last five years? How had Charlotte met Chuck? How had she become Babe? Oh, Charlotte, my … no.

He heard nothing for a couple of minutes and wondered if he’d been cut off. How hard it would be to ring back. Then Chuck’s voice came again, and he was catapulted into sorrow that it wasn’t Charlotte speaking and relief that somebody was and, strangely, almost into a feeling that Chuck was his friend.

‘Hi.’

‘Hi, Chuck.’

‘She says she has nothing to say to you. Sorry.’

How naive to have even dreamt that it would be easy.

‘Not your fault, Chuck. Chuck, is she all right? Is everything all right?’

‘Yeah, man. Cool. Everything’s cool.’

‘Good. Good. That’s good. Chuck, will you try again? Could you tell her for me that she may have nothing to say to me but I have something to say to her? Could you tell her that I agree with her that it’s a wicked world and that the values of our civilisation are fucking crap and will destroy our planet unless we do something about it pretty quickly?’

‘Wow. Cool, man.’

‘Thank you. I’m … um … I’m quoting her actually. Um … so would you say to her that because it’s such a wicked world it’s all the more important for people who love each other as much as her mother and I love her to stick together and support each other. We just want to see her, Chuck.’

Saying ‘we’ made him feel slightly better about making the call on his own.

‘Yeah. Right. Cool. Got that. Will do.’

It was five years since he’d heard his daughter’s voice. She had rung, once, about two years ago, to say she was all right, but it was Deborah who had answered. Charlotte had left them a phone number, but had said that she would disappear for ever if they rang except in emergencies. They had phoned when a favourite godmother died, but by that time Charlotte had moved on. He wondered how much of what she had experienced in those five years would be reflected in her voice. But, when the voice came, it was Chuck’s again.

‘Hi there. Sorry. No dice,’ he said.

James found himself nodding his head in acknowledgement that this was what he had expected, as if Chuck was in the room with him. He almost felt that Chuck was in the room with him.

‘Well, thank you for trying.’

‘No probs. Um …’

‘Yes?’

‘She didn’t sound angry. She didn’t say anything negative about you.’

‘Are you saying that that’s … surprising … unusual?’

‘Well, it is a bit, yeah. Sorry.’

‘No, no. Thank you. I …’ What? Nothing. This was all too difficult. ‘Well, thank you, Chuck. That’s something, I suppose.’

‘I think it might be.’

Chuck’s reply surprised James, but his own next remark surprised him even more. He found himself saying, ‘Chuck? Look after my baby.’

‘I do try, Mr Hollinghurst.’

‘Do you know something, Chuck? I actually believe you.’

As he’d talked to Chuck, James had almost felt relieved that he was talking about Charlotte rather than to her. But as soon as he had rung off he felt devastated that he had been so close to his daughter but still had not spoken to her.

He looked at his glass indecisively, then went to the gin bottle and added quite a slurp of gin, but no more Noilly Prat.

Why hadn’t he asked more? Why hadn’t he probed?

Because he sensed that of all the courses he could take, probing would annoy her the most. He would have to wait till she was ready.

If she was ever ready.

‘Oh, Debs, where are you?’ He realised that he had actually said the words out loud. He needed her there. He needed to tell her what was emerging as the most important, the most amazing point of all. Charlotte was alive and at least to a certain extent well and things were good enough to be described as cool and she was at the end of a telephone line and he knew the number and she was with a man and for no reason whatsoever and against all probability he trusted this man.

He tried to rehearse the words he would use, but no words fitted. ‘Debs, there’s great news.’ Well, was it ‘great’? Was that the word? ‘Debs, I’ve found Charlotte.’ Well, not entirely. The words would come when he saw her, the strength of her presence would dictate the words. He stood at the window and looked for her car as she tried to find a parking place. The roof would be down and her straw-coloured hair would be streaming behind her and he would pour her a drink and within minutes they would be talking about their beloved, lost daughter. He was amazed to find how clearly he imagined her, how deeply he needed her, at this visceral moment. He took several sips of his drink in his excitement. It was a long while since he had wanted to share anything with Deborah as much as he wanted to share this news. It was really annoying of her to be late this day of all days. It was the Irish in her. He drowned his irritation with another sip. This was no time to be irritated. This … conditional though it might be, strange though it might be, terrifying though it might still be … was joy.

He had completely forgotten Marcia’s remark about the police, but the moment the knock came, he remembered, and from the nature of the ring he knew that a policeman was calling. This ring said, ‘Hello. Police,’ not, ‘Sorry, darling, I’ve lost my key again,’ or, ‘Kathy and I wondered if you felt like popping to the pub for a quickie.’

And he suddenly knew, because the call could now not be about Charlotte, that it would be about Deborah, it would explain why she was late, something had happened.

As he walked towards the small entrance hall, James took a swallow of his drink and then hid the glass on the top of the piano behind the large photograph of Deborah and him on their wedding day twenty-four years ago.

The policeman looked absurdly young.

‘Good evening, sir,’ said the officer. ‘It’s … um … it’s about your wife. Does she drive …’ he looked down at his notes. ‘… a silver Renault Mégane hard-top convertible?’

‘You’d better come in.’

As he entered the living room, the policeman took off his helmet, revealing hair so close-cropped that he looked almost bald. He had the air of a man who had joined the force to bully members of the underclass, not to be offered a comfortable chair in a living room of the well-heeled.

‘What’s all this about, officer?’

‘I’m afraid your wife’s car has been involved in a serious accident, sir.’ He looked huge and wretched in his delicate chair. ‘I’m afraid the … um … the driver had no chance. I’m sorry.’

He had often dreamt of this moment, in his fantasies, often when half awake, sometimes even when lying beside her in bed. Deborah dying suddenly, without pain, leaving him free, free, free.

But this wasn’t fantasy. It wasn’t right that a man’s fantasy should suddenly become real. He was deeply shocked. He sat down heavily. He wondered if the officer could see into his thoughts – his dreadful thoughts.

Of course he hadn’t really wanted Deborah to die. Only in make-believe.

He was shocked that she had died.

But, the fact remained, he had dreamt of being free and now he was free.

He heard himself say, ‘Is there no chance, officer?’ and to him it was the voice of a man acting out the role of a grieving husband, and acting it badly. It was dreadful.

‘I wonder if you could get me a glass of water, officer,’ he said, to buy himself time. ‘The kitchen’s through there.’

‘Of course, sir.’

The officer looked delighted to have something practical to do.

As soon as he was alone, James closed his eyes and groaned. He couldn’t have explained what he was groaning about, whether he was groaning because Deborah had died or because he had dreamt of her dying or because he was dismayed at the confusion of his emotions or because it was so appalling that a man should have to face his fantasies in real life or because he was a worthless shit who was going to find it very difficult to live with himself.

He had been glad to get the officer out of the room. Now he was glad to see him back. His dreary normality was comforting.

‘Glass of water, sir,’ said the officer, not without a glimmer of satisfaction at his success in carrying out this simple task.

The water tasted quite wonderful. It really was the most magnificent drink. He couldn’t think why he ever drank gin or Noilly Prat or whisky or vodka or port or wine or beer or sherry or Madeira or Ricard or Campari or Manhattans or dry Martinis or Negronis or Harvey Wallbangers or Deborah’s damson gin. Deborah? He was never going to see her again, never feel the warmth of her smile. Never. He was free to marry the woman he loved, but never to see Deborah again, that really was a heavy price to pay.

‘What exactly happened, officer?’

The officer consulted his notes, frowning with concentration. Reading didn’t come naturally to him.

‘It was on a road just outside Diss, sir.’

‘Diss?’

‘It’s a town in Norfolk, sir.’

‘I know it’s a town in Norfolk, but what was she doing there?’

‘I have no idea, sir.’

‘No, of course you don’t. Silly of me. Sorry. Carry on.’

‘She hit a Porsche head on, sir. Both cars are write-offs. Both drivers dead.’

‘I suppose I’ll have to go and identify her.’

‘I … um … I’m afraid that probably won’t be possible, sir. There’s … um …’

The young officer began to break out into a sweat. What had he been on the verge of saying? There’s not enough of her left, sir?

‘It’s my understanding that it will be done with dental records, sir. Shouldn’t be too long.’

‘So the car might have been stolen? It might not be her.’

‘I suppose it’s possible, sir, but there was the remains of a handbag on the back seat, sir, with two credit cards of Mrs DJ Hollinghurst, and … um … on the floor at the back, a pair of high-heeled red Prada shoes, sir.’

‘I see. Thank you.’

Cry, damn you.

‘It seems, sir, that the accident was entirely the fault of the other driver. He was overtaking. A witness said that there just wasn’t room. There was nothing that your wife … if it was your wife … could have done.’

‘It was my wife, officer. Nobody else would have had those red shoes in the car.’

It was the shoes that puzzled him. Why should she have been taking them? She had God knows how many other pairs she could have taken. Why had she taken her very favourite pair, and to Diss?

The policeman had gone half an hour ago, and he had done nothing, except think about having another wonderful glass of water, and then pour more Noilly Prat into his drink instead. He shouldn’t have poured himself any more. He had a lot of phone calls to make, and he didn’t want to end the evening slurring his words. He wanted to be dignified. He would need to have his wits about him. But he had persuaded himself that in pouring more Noilly Prat he was weakening the overall alcoholic content of his drink, since Noilly Prat was less alcoholic than gin, so that was all right.

He’d wished that he hadn’t hidden the drink behind his wedding photograph. It had been difficult to recover it without looking at the photograph, and he could hardly bear to do that. Those smiles. That radiance. Those hopes. He waited for the tears to come. He waited in vain.

So many phone calls. Oh, the burden of those calls. He felt so alone, so desperately alone. That was ridiculous. He had two devoted brothers, many friends he could rely on for support. And Helen. There was no need to be alone. He could ask Helen to come round. No, Helen here? How insensitive would that be?

He could go round to be with her, though. He needed her. He must phone her first. But what could he say? Bad news, Helen. No. Wonderful news, Helen.’ No!

Hello, darling. We’ve often talked about what we’d do if we were free, you’ve urged me to divorce Deborah, and I’ve said I just couldn’t, I couldn’t bear to hurt her that much, well, fate has taken a hand, she’s been killed, instantly, outright, thank goodness for that. We’re free, my darling, to spend the rest of our life together. Isn’t that wonderful?

Couldn’t do it. Not yet anyway. Certainly couldn’t do it in this room, in front of that photograph.

Probably he’d need another drink before he rang her, and that thought struck him as very odd.

No. It wasn’t odd. It was … seemly. He had loved Deborah for, oh, almost twenty-five years. Only in the last few years had he … after he’d met Helen … and even then he and Deborah had had good loving times. He didn’t think that she had suspected anything. She had continued to look after him most splendidly. He owed her a seemly death, a respected death. He … he loved her. In his way. Yes, he did. Despite … although … oh, God.

No, he must ring Max first. Except he couldn’t. Max didn’t like being phoned at work. His bosses frowned upon personal calls. We were six hours ahead of Canada. Max usually finished work at about five-thirty. He’d try him on his mobile at twenty to six Canadian time.

That meant that he’d have to stay at least reasonably sober until twenty to twelve British time. Oh, Lord.

It had to be Charlotte. Oh, God.

He forced himself to dial the dreaded number. He hoped he’d get straight through to her, so that in an instant the whole problem of speaking to each other after all those years would have been solved.

‘Yep?’

‘Oh, hello, Chuck. When I rang you earlier it was because I’d had a message that the police wanted to see me.’

‘You thought Charlie’d screwed up again.’

‘Yes. I have to say I wondered. But it wasn’t that. No, it was … there’s been a car crash. Charlotte’s mum’s been killed, Chuck.’

‘Oh, my God.’

‘Yes. Can I speak to her, please?’

‘Trouble is, Mr Hollinghurst …’

‘Yes?’

‘Trouble is … oh, and I’m sorry. Real sorry. That’s a cunt of a thing to happen. Sorry. Bad language.’

‘Hardly matters under the circumstances.’

‘No. Quite. Trouble is, Mr Hollinghurst, I’ll have to tell her what’s happened or she won’t come to the phone. She’ll be so, Tell him to go fuck himself. Oh, sorry.’

‘No. I have a pretty good idea how she talks about me, Chuck. OK, Chuck. Tell her.’

‘Shit, man, I’m not looking forward to this.’

‘Take your time. I’ll wait.’

While he waited, James hurried over to his gin and Noilly Prat and took it back to the phone. He sat on the purple chaise longue and waited. The silence went on and on. It was awful to be so close to her and yet so far away. He longed to hear her voice. She was a woman now. How much would her voice have changed in five years? How much suffering would there be in it? How much evidence of … abuse, frailty, self-harm? He couldn’t face up to the word ‘drugs’ even in his thoughts. But nothing could be worse than her silence. Oh, Charlotte, my darling, speak to me, please.

‘Hi.’

He nodded sadly at the invisible Chuck.

‘Hi.’

‘No go, I’m afraid.’

‘Oh, shit, Chuck.’

‘I know. I know.’

‘How’s she … taken it?’

‘Floods of tears. Floods of tears, Mr Hollinghurst.’

James envied her.

‘Didn’t she say anything?’

‘She said to tell you she’s sorry.’

James felt absurdly pleased, and embarrassed at feeling so pleased. It seemed inexcusably self-centred at this moment. Even to be aware that he was being self-centred seemed self-centred. But he was always hard on himself.

Besides, what she had said, it was nothing.

But it was also everything.

He put the phone down very slowly. He decided that it would do him no harm to have just one more drink. Just Noilly Prat, though. No gin. He picked up the Noilly Prat bottle, looked at it with unseeing eyes and put it down again. Just gin would make more sense, because gin could be diluted with tonic.

He walked slowly back to the phone, taking a sip of the drink as he did so. He realised that he hadn’t done a very good job with the dilution. Diluting drinks had never been one of his strong points. And a gin, Noilly Prat and tonic just wasn’t quite right. What did it matter? What did the taste of a drink matter compared with … with the enormity…

He decided not to dilute it further. He would sip it slowly instead.

Who should he ring next? Helen? He still wasn’t ready for that. Someone on Deborah’s side? Have to be her sister. Couldn’t face that yet either. Couldn’t face being the messenger of such terrible news. A whole family, a close family, all in tears. Couldn’t bear the thought.

Couldn’t bear telling the terrible news, when to him it wasn’t terrible, that was what was so terrible.

Have to be Charles, his eldest brother, his hero, his mentor, his inspiration, his guide, his lodestone.

‘That’s the phone.’

‘Don’t answer it. Valerie, please. Don’t.’

‘I should. It might be somebody.’

‘It might be a call centre in India offering me free balance transfers. Don’t go.’

It was too late anyway. It had gone onto the answer machine.

‘Darling, I really want this meal uninterrupted. This oxtail is awesome. Awesome.’

‘I can’t believe you wanted oxtail in June, in a heatwave.’

‘Well, I did. I get salads everywhere I go. Thank goodness I’m not going to America this summer. I hate those salads as starters. So pointless.’

‘Can I at least go and listen to see if there’s a message?’

‘You sound as if you think you need my permission.’

‘I do when you’re like this. I do when your stomach’s involved.’

They were eating in the dining room. The mullioned windows were open, a light breeze from the east was wafting in, rippling Charles’s luxuriant beard ever so gently, and it was pleasantly cool in the dark elegant sixteenth-century room.

Valerie – Charles didn’t permit her to be called Val by anyone – was seated at the head of the table, with Charles at her left hand. The table was so large that to have each sat at one end would have been to risk seeming like a scene in a comedy, and Charles, for all his virtues, didn’t much like being an object of amusement.

‘Honestly, if it’s an emergency, they’ll ring back straight away. Go if you must, darling, I’m not stopping you, but I really don’t want you to. These next days are going to be a logistical nightmare, the oxtail is quite beautiful, these sweet young turnips are little poems, it isn’t just a question of my stomach, it’s a question of respect, Valerie. Respect for your wonderful cooking. Please. I need this evening.’

‘All right.’

Charles ate more slowly with each passing year, and every mouthful of this was worth savouring. The carrots were bursting with flavour, the meat clung gelatinously to the bone, the sauce was rich and deep. The thought of five concerts in six days in Europe, planned by a madman, faded. And then, three days’ holiday in lovely, much-mocked Belgium, in Ghent, which was Bruges without the crowds, the reflections of the spires and gables shimmering on the canals, the choice of cold beers, the marvellous food, French quality, German quantity. His first break for four months. He could hardly wait. Poor Valerie. She didn’t really like cities. Poor Valerie, she found his long meals tedious. She was still itching to listen to their message. He chewed even more slowly, and he was going to have seconds.

It wasn’t that he was cruel, but this was his day, his space, his renewal.

Valerie didn’t understand.

Deborah would understand.

Sometimes – how James would laugh if he mentioned it – he envied his youngest brother.

Philip, the middle brother, was sitting outside the little wooden summer house in his pleasant garden on the outskirts of Leighton Buzzard, reading in the evening sunshine. He had taken his massage chair outside and was gently manipulating himself on it as he read. He was finding it hard to concentrate this evening, in this heat, and the book was hardly a page turner. It was a comparative study of acidity in the oceans.

The cordless phone sounded shrill and invasive in this suburban setting. It gave him quite a shock.

Not as great a shock as James’s news, though.

‘Deborah!’

‘I know.’

‘Of all people.’

‘Exactly.’

‘How?’

Philip listened to the story of the car crash in silence. Then he said, ‘Oh, James, I am so sorry. Bloody bastard young men with too much money. Bloody Jeremy Clarkson has a lot to answer for.’

‘Oh, Philip, that’s so unfair. That’s ridiculous. Why drag him in? Anyway, who cares? She’s dead, Philip.’

‘Shall I come over?’

‘This sounds awful, Philip, but … I don’t think I could cope … not tonight.’

‘No, no. No problem. Tomorrow, maybe. I’m supposed to be at work, but I can come any time if you’d like it.’

‘I don’t know. I just don’t know, Philip.’

Philip said that he would ring in the morning about eight, before he set off, to see if James needed him.

‘Thanks.’

‘James?’

‘Yes?’

‘Love you.’

Who next? Mum? Oh, God. She’d blame him. I knew something like this would happen. You haven’t looked after her.

He went to the gin bottle, held it over his glass, thought of his mum listening for signs of thickening in his speech, sighed deeply, put it down again, and, on an impulse, phoned Deborah’s sister.

‘Fliss Parkington-Baines.’

‘Hello, Fliss, it’s James.’

‘Hello, James!!’ This in her two-exclamation-marks voice, as if she was really delighted to hear from him, as if there was nobody in the world she’d rather hear from, and perhaps there wasn’t, except the Queen, David Cameron and James Blunt.

Her good cheer didn’t make James’s task any easier.

‘I’m afraid I’ve got bad news, Fliss.’ Already the words were beginning to hang heavy, burdened by all the repetition that was to come. ‘Very bad news. Um …’ How could he say the monstrous words, cut through her good cheer, with Dominic in Indonesia on business as he suddenly remembered. He swallowed. ‘Deborah’s dead.’

‘No!’

It was a cry of pain from a wounded animal, a yell of protest from a middle-class sister, a scream of disbelief and yet of instant understanding.

He started telling her about the car crash, the driver of the Porsche, the fact that it had happened near Diss.

‘Diss? We don’t know anyone near Diss. Do you?’

It was as if she was clinging to the hope that, since the location was unbelievable, the whole story was untrue.

When he had finished his sad tale, Fliss asked if there was anything she could do, and he asked her if she could break the news to the Harcourt clan. She agreed, but reluctantly.

‘No, look, Fliss,’ he said, ‘you don’t want to, it’ll be very difficult, it was unfair to ask, I’ll do it.’

‘I’ll do it, James,’ she said grimly, through gritted teeth. ‘I said I’ll do it and I’ll do it.’

He groaned inwardly. Why did so many of their conversations end with gritted teeth?

‘Oh, dear,’ said Fliss. ‘Oh, dear. I think I’m going to cry.’

‘Do. Do, Fliss. I have.’

How many lies was he going to have to tell in the days ahead?

Mum. Mum next.

He looked at the gin bottle on the sideboard, but didn’t dare go near it.

His mother was shocked, very shocked. With every telling the irresponsibility of the driver of the Porsche grew slightly greater. With every telling the fact of Deborah’s having been near Diss grew more mysterious. When he had finished, she said, ‘I’m so sorry, James. First Philip and now this.’

Philip’s wife had died three years ago. James felt a spasm of irritation, swiftly quenched. It was natural for his mother to see it all from her point of view. That’s two sons who’ve put me through pain and suffering because I love them so much. It’ll be Charles next, you mark my words. Valerie’ll fall off a cliff path on one of their walks or something.

Sometimes James felt that he could see right into his mother’s subconscious.

‘I loved her, James,’ she said. ‘I hope you know that. Well, how could you not love her?’

He was already beginning to ask himself that question. Although he did, didn’t he, in his…

‘Am I interrupting a programme?’ he asked, hoping to find an excuse to ring off.

‘No. It’s all right. I’ve lost the thread. Another girl’s been strangled while we’ve been talking, but I won’t know who or why.’

They talked on for a bit, both of them coming slowly to terms with the enormity of what had happened, and then his mother suddenly came out with one of those devastating remarks of hers which showed that she was incapable of believing that her youngest son was not responsible to some extent for whatever had happened.

‘You had had her car properly serviced, hadn’t you?’ she asked.

‘You are going to ring him, aren’t you?’

Charles knew that to a certain extent it was his fault that Valerie was like this. He went away so much and she didn’t like travelling. She was quite pleased that he was famous but she had no desire to move in the world of celebrity.

‘I’m going to speak to him the moment I’ve finished this wine, which is bursting with hints of vanilla and raspberry and even, dare I say, a distant intimation of saffron?’

He took another sip. She gave the faintest sigh because his sip had been so small. He decided to speed up, without giving her the satisfaction of seeing that he was speeding up. But it would be cruel to tease her any more.

At last the glass was finished, and he went to the phone, and dialled James’s number.

‘Hello, James, it’s me. Got your message. What’s up? …’

Valerie saw Charles’s face go very serious. Suddenly she felt cold all over. She walked slowly towards him, as if by being closer to him she might divine what had happened.

‘No. Oh, James, James. How … Oh, my God … Oh, James … Diss? … No, nor do we … That’ll be it. Oh, James, this is so terrible.’

He turned towards Valerie and mouthed, ‘Deborah.’

‘I’d say I’d come over, James … oh, I do wish Surrey wasn’t the wrong side of London … but the awful thing is … well, I suppose death is never exactly convenient, but I’m off to Copenhagen first thing in the morning, I’ve got this ridiculous six-day tour, so here I am completely unable to even provide a shoulder to cry on … Well, the last concert’s Tuesday night in Dresden but then next Wednesday … no … no, nothing … Well, I was going to say that Valerie and I were going to have a couple of days in Ghent … Ghent. You know, where they took the bad news to from Aix … No, a long time ago, and in a poem, nothing to worry about. Look, I can get back Wednesday, so Thursday or Friday next week would be fine … It was only a couple of days, little chance to relax, it’s no big deal … Well it is actually a bigger shame that your wife has died. And James, have you been drinking? … Not slurring exactly, but I can tell … Don’t get upset, James, I’m saying it because I think you’d be sorry if you felt you hadn’t been dignified throughout … Yes, goodb … Wait a minute, Valerie’s waving.’

‘What is it?’ he whispered.

‘Ask him if I can do anything. Anything.’

‘You know he’ll say no.’

‘Ask.’

‘Hello. Yes, Valerie wonders if she can do anything … anything … I thought that’s what you’d say but don’t try to be a hero. Well, she’s here, waiting, ready … Fine. James, I’ll phone every day. And James. I’m doing the Schumann in Helsinki, the one she loves, the piano concerto. I’ll be dedicating it to her now.’

Charles put the phone down abruptly and burst into tears. Valerie went to him and held him tight. They stood there, motionless, sharing silent tears as they had rarely shared anything in recent years. Behind them, unnoticed, beyond the mullioned windows, the horizon rose slowly towards the evening sun.

James didn’t want to phone Helen from the living room. It would be tactless, tonight, to speak to her with Deborah’s radiant wedding photo smiling at him from the top of the piano. Also, the sight of his two older brothers, one at each side of the wedding photo, would have unnerved him. He decided to use the main guest bedroom, which he regarded as neutral ground.

He took his glass with him, topped up with a little gin and quite a lot of tonic. He’d been shaken by Charles’s knowing that he’d been drinking. It didn’t matter so much with Helen, but still … he didn’t want to seem weak. He did feel weak, though. He needed the glass at his side.

The sky was beginning to turn a soft, faint, misty pink. He went into the guest bedroom. It smelt of emptiness and perfection. Over the bed there was a beautiful long mirror which made the room look quite large. The walls were salmon pink. On the bed there was a profusion of cushions, and beside the bed there was a carefully chosen selection of books. How Charlotte would snort. He flinched at the thought of Charlotte snorting. The thought of what she might be snorting terrified him.

His heart was pumping. What a day this had been for the pumping of his heart.

He thought, just for a few seconds, about taking all his clothes off. It was a habit they had, to talk on the phone stark naked. It was one of the things that turned them on. There popped into his mind unbidden and unwelcome, the picture of that time, in his office, under the Hammersmith Flyover, when he’d stayed late to plan his polystyrene presentation and had taken all his clothes off and sat there starkers in the dark, the slatted blinds down on his windows and only the faint sodium glow from the street lamps shining on the filing cabinets, and he had phoned her and they had chatted and he’d had the most enormous hard-on, and suddenly the office had been flooded with light and there had been Marcia staring at him and blushing like a beetroot, and she had said, ‘Oh, sorry. I’ve left my diary somewhere. Golly.’

His erection had slowly subsided, and he had said, ‘Sorry, Marcia. It’s a thing Deborah and I do to keep our marriage exciting,’ and she had repeated, ‘Golly.’

How could he sack the only woman in England who still said ‘Golly’?

He abandoned the thought immediately. Helen wouldn’t be expecting him to ring so she wouldn’t be naked, and, in any case, it would be utterly bad form, it wouldn’t be – that word again – seemly. He broke out into a cold sweat at the very thought of it, took a steadying sip of his drink, and dialled Helen’s number.

‘Hello.’

‘Hello, darling, it’s me.’

‘Are you all right?’

‘Yes, why?’

‘You sound … I don’t know … breathless. Tense. Shaky.’

It always amazed him how sensitive she was to every nuance of his existence.

‘Yes, well … something’s happened, Helen.’ Adjectives flew through his mind like a flock of starlings. Good news. Bad news. Sad news. Amazing news. Shocking news. Startling news. Incredible news. None of them suitable, none of them quite right. Stick to the facts. ‘Helen, Deborah’s dead.’

Silence. Words whirring through her mind. Thoughts and emotions churning uncontrollably. No social formula in which to clothe her naked feelings. He sensed it all, and he felt for her. He knew what it was like.

‘Are you still there?’

‘Yes, sorry, I … I’m dumbfounded, James. Deborah, dead? How?’

‘Car crash. Head on. Instant.’

‘Well, I’m glad of that.’

‘Yes, so am I. That it was instant.’

‘Yes, that’s good.’

‘She won’t have suffered.’

‘No, that’s good.’

‘I don’t expect she even had time to know it was happening.’

‘Well, I hope not.’

It was the only aspect of the thing on which they could express any pleasure or agreement, so it wasn’t surprising that they laboured the point.

He didn’t know what else to say, and it was clear that she didn’t either. Well, what could she say? That she was sorry? That she was glad?

‘How exactly did it happen?’

She didn’t want to know. It was irrelevant. And he didn’t want to tell her. It was pointless. But there was no other way to deal with it, and he heard himself starting off on the tale yet again. The Porsche. Diss.

‘One odd thing, she—’

Suddenly he realised that he didn’t want to tell Helen about the mystery of the red Prada shoes.

‘She what?’

‘Nothing.’

To tell her would seem like a betrayal of Deborah, a revelation of a secret. This surprised him.

‘It doesn’t sound like nothing.’

Oh, God.

‘No, I was just going to say that she always thought East Anglia was flat and boring, so I’m surprised she was going there.’

It sounded lame, but he just couldn’t mention the shoes.

‘Oh. Right.’

She knew that he hadn’t been going to say that. He could hear it in her voice. He could even sense that she was thinking of saying, ‘Maybe she has a lover there,’ but had decided not to say it. And, in thinking that she was thinking of saying that, he articulated the thought to himself for the first time. There really was no other explanation for the red shoes.

One of them had to say something pretty quickly, or this conversation was going to be a disaster.

If only she was there. If only he could kiss that small, slightly pouty, deeply sexy mouth. If only they didn’t need words. For this emotional situation, there were no words.

‘Can you come over?’ she asked.

‘Darling, I’d love to see you, of course, God, I long …’ to unroll your tights and kiss your slender thighs, to fondle your pert little breasts, to gently bite your stiff nipples, ‘… to see you. But … it’s not possible tonight. I have phone calls to make. It’s just not possible.’

‘Tomorrow, then?’

‘I think tomorrow’s going to be very difficult too, sweetheart.’ He began to tell her all the things he would have to do tomorrow. The thought of them all, at the end of this long day, exhausted him. He was going to yawn. No. No. He mustn’t.

‘I do so want to see you, darling, but you must see that it’s difficult.’

‘Oh, I do. I do. It’s just … it seems a shame. I want to help you through this.’

‘And I want your help. It’s just …’

It’s just that there’s no acceptable formula for appropriate social behaviour in such circumstances. Couldn’t say that.

‘Look. You finish at lunchtime, don’t you, Fridays? Let’s … I know. I’ll meet you for afternoon tea at Whistler’s Hotel.’

That wouldn’t be too dangerous if somebody saw them. He could take a folder with him and put it on the end of the table, ready to pretend to be discussing business in the unlikely event of anybody he knew being in that slightly raffish hotel.

‘Afternoon tea?’

‘Well, yes. It seems … I don’t know … appropriate.’

‘Well, OK. Yes. Fine. Oh, James.’

So many things in that ‘Oh, James.’ Shock. Sympathy. Amazement. Hope. Frustration. Love. Fear. Desire. Self-doubt. Sorrow too, because she was not a cruel person. So many things, and he could sense them all.

‘Whistler’s at four, then, Friday.’

The light was fading. Wispy clouds were floating very slowly across the sky. They were tinged with subtle colours, mauves and pale yellows and salmon that matched the walls of the spare bedroom. In the north-west the sky was beginning to darken to a fiery red. Islington glowed. Three small boys, normal bedtime suspended, were kicking a football among the parked Audis as they drifted homewards. How could everything be so normal, and so beautiful, on this of all days? He took a large gulp of his drink. He needed it.

It was past ten o’clock now, too early to phone Max and too late to phone anybody else. He realised that he was very hungry. He went to the fridge-freezer, Deborah’s pride and joy – Deborah! Oh, God. He would never see her again.

There were so many bits of things in the fridge section. Delicious leftovers hidden under foil and cling film. He couldn’t cope, couldn’t choose.

He raised his glass to his lips and found that it was empty. He pressed the glass against the fridge freezer and it filled with an avalanche of ice. No. He mustn’t. There was Max to ring.

He dropped the ice into the Belfast sink in the crowded utility room – my God, he’d have to learn to use the washer and the dryer. And the ironing board. He could take things round to Helen but was she an ironer? She didn’t look like an ironer. Five years, five years of sex, and so much he didn’t know about her.

He uncorked a bottle of Brouilly. Well, it was less dangerous than spirits.

He opened a tin of tomato soup, heated it rapidly, began to eat it eagerly. Lovely. There was something in it, some secret ingredient, that made the thought of it irresistible to men. Halfway through, as always, it began to disgust him. He struggled on for a bit, then poured water into the soup to weaken the mixture, and poured it down the sink.

Sardines. He had a craving for sardines. A bit strong for the Brouilly, but this wasn’t an evening for purists.

Halfway through the tin he suddenly felt absolutely disgusted by the taste of tinned sardines. He chucked the tin into the elegantly concealed waste bin.

He began to feel very uncomfortable in the kitchen. It was Deborah’s room, friendly, lived-in, foody, attractive but unpretentious and rather higgledy-piggledy.

He remembered that there was a box of chocolates in the living room. It was up to him to finish them now.

No need now to defer to Deborah’s wants. He chose the marzipan one from both levels, chewed them greedily, not popping them into his mouth whole as Deborah insisted. Manners hardly mattered now.

Half a tin of tomato soup, half a tin of sardines, two chocolates filled with marzipan. It was not the best three-course meal he had ever eaten.

He went to the phone. He would ring Helen, go straight round, fuck her most tremendously.

He dialled her number, then put the phone down hurriedly.

He decided to make a list of everything he had to do tomorrow. That calmed him. That brought a bit of instant order into his life.

He sat at the mahogany table in the small dining room with the burgundy walls which were just a little darker than the Brouilly, and there, where they had hosted so many little dinner parties over the years, he began his list.

Vicar. (Never met him. Will he be cross because I never ever went to church?)

Funeral Director. (The Hutchinsons used Ferris’s Funeral Services.)

The Hutchinsons. (Were Ferris’s Funeral Services any good?)

Marcia. (Tell her the bad news. Cut her off if she offers help i.e. her body.)

Vernon and Ursula Norris. Tom and Jen…

Oh, sod it. Do it tomorrow.

He dropped the list into the waste bin.

He switched the television on, flicked though the channels, saw a pathologist cutting out the left eye of a middle-aged man and dropping it into a bottle, a panellist in a panic as he thought of the ridicule he was going to get from his workmates after he’d failed to name the capital of Hungary, a C-list fashion designer eating leeches in a mangrove swamp, an audience roaring as an overpaid chat show host held out a box of chocolates to a pretty actress and said, ‘Can I give you one?’, a pathologist cutting up a pretty girl, a celebrity chef cutting up a bulb of fennel, blood pouring from the stomach of a woman in a crypt, an ugly twenty-two-stone man with a horrendous paunch throwing a dart at a board, a lion eating a cheetah, a pathologist cutting up a gay young man, a manly Rock Hudson trying to seduce a virginal Doris Day, a pathologist cutting up a very obese man, a celebrity chef cutting up a loin of pork, and two sloths copulating very … well … slothfully.

He switched off, poured himself another glass of Brouilly, went to the waste bin, rescued his list, went back to the dining room, stretched the list out on the kitchen table, trying to iron it with his hands, added one more name, Mike … Oh God, should he invite Mike, how would he behave? … He began to think about Mike, once his best friend, now a wreck. Memories of happier times with Mike. Lots of drinking. He took a couple more sips of the Brouilly. His head dropped.

He woke suddenly, to find himself face down on a crumpled piece of paper covered in traces of tomato soup and sardine oil. He had no idea where he was. At first he felt that Deborah’s death was part of a dream. Then he was wide awake and standing up and knocking his red wine all over the carpet.

‘Oh, shit,’ he shouted to nobody.

What did you put on red wine? White wine? Salt? Lavatory paper? He tore off some toilet rolls and stamped around on them, watching them go red. Then he remembered that Deborah had some stuff that worked wonders. He rummaged around under the sink, found the stuff, stood up, bashed his head on the edge of the cupboard door, swore violently to the empty room, and worked away on the stain, with moderate success.

Max. He was supposed to be ringing Max.

He felt as though he had been asleep for several hours, but it was only twenty to twelve. He dialled his son’s mobile number very carefully, feeling dismayingly drunk.

‘Hi, Dad. How are you?’

He’d never get used to phones that showed you who was ringing. He didn’t like them. It cut into the preliminaries, the careful approach to difficult subjects. He was thrown by Max’s cheeriness. How could he destroy that carefree youthful happiness? He felt about a hundred and five.

‘I’m fine, Max. Bit drunk …’ get that in before Max did, ‘… but fine.’

‘Great to hear from you, Dad.’

‘Not really.’

‘What?’

‘I’ve got some terribly bad news, Max. It’s your mum. She’s …’

He couldn’t say the word.

‘What? Not…?’

Max couldn’t say the word either.

‘She was in a very bad car crash, Max. I’m afraid … I’m afraid she was killed.’

‘No!’

James shuddered. He had fantasised about something that could cause his son such grief. In that moment he realised just how much he loved Max.

‘I’m afraid so, Max. Max, at least it was instant. She didn’t suffer.’

But Max was clearly too shocked, too bereft, to even care about that at that moment, and as he heard the sorrow of his distant son, James felt real sorrow too. He told Max a few more details. By now the driver of the Porsche was a homicidal villain. They needed a villain, father and son, separated by thousands of miles.

James told Max about his conversation with Chuck, but he could tell that his long-lost sister hardly registered in the ghastly slipstream of his mother’s death. Max was in deep shock. He told Max who he’d rung (omitting Helen) and Max wasn’t interested. He asked Max if there was anyone he’d like him to ring, and he was too numb to care.

‘So when’s the funeral?’ he asked eventually.

‘I don’t know. Rather dependent on when you can come.’

‘I’ll phone Mr Jellico tonight, and then I’ll check the airlines. Oh, Dad, I can’t believe this. Not Mum.’

‘I know. If anyone was indestructible, it was her.’

‘Dad?’ Suddenly Max sounded young, younger than his twenty-two years. Suddenly he sounded like a boy who needed his father. ‘I’ve got some leave owing. I could stay a bit after the funeral. Like a week maybe.’

A week. A whole week with Max. James felt dismayed. He felt dismayed that there would be a whole week in which it would be very hard, even downright dangerous, to see Helen. He felt dismayed that his behaviour, his desire, his love had led him into becoming a man who was dismayed at the thought of his son’s staying for a week.

‘A week. That would be wonderful, Max. That would be simply great.’

James was beginning to realise that things were not going to be as easy as he had thought. If only life was a fantasy.