‘Oh. Yeah.’
‘Yeah what? You remember? Or yeah, you’re coming?’
He tapped his fingers on the steering-wheel. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Look, Dad was asking for you yesterday. I told him you’re tied up with a work project but he’s so frail, Ed. This is really important to him. To both of them.’
‘Gemma, I’ve told you –’
Her voice exploded into the interior of the car. ‘Yeah, I know, you’re too busy. You’ve told me you’ve got a lot on. You’ve told me you’ve got stuff going on.’
‘I have got stuff going on! You have no idea!’
‘Oh, no, I couldn’t possibly hope to understand, could I? Just the stupid social worker who doesn’t earn a six-figure f**king salary. This is our dad, Ed. This is the man who sacrificed everything to buy you a f**king education. He thinks the sun shines out of your backside. And he’s not going to last much longer. You need to get down there and show your face and say the things that sons are meant to say to their dying fathers, okay?’
‘He’s not dying.’
‘How the f**k would you know? You haven’t been to see him in two months!’
‘Look, I will go. It’s just I’ve got to –’
‘Why do you keep making excuses?’
‘I’m not making excuses, Gem –’
‘Bullshit. You’re a businessman. You make stuff happen. Make this happen. Or I swear I –’
‘I’m losing you, Gem. Sorry, the reception’s really patchy here. I –’ He began to make ssssh noises, then reached over, pressed a button. The phone went dead, but not before he detected the muffled cry of ‘Arsehole!’
He turned on the radio. It was a monotone programme about milk yields. He changed the channel, but the music was abrasive and shrieky and reminded him too much of his sister. He tried a classical music station (too melancholy) and commercial local radio (DJ too irritating) before giving up and turning it off again.
The phone rang. He looked at the number and ignored it. It rang again. He ignored it. The third time he sighed, then pressed the button.
‘One lunch,’ she said, her social-work voice on, all calm and conciliatory. ‘One little lunch, Ed. That’s all I’m asking.’
He spotted a police car up ahead, and checked the speedometer, half braced for tangled metal. A filthy Rolls-Royce, one headlight dimmed, sat half up on the verge under the orange glow of a sodium light. A small girl stood beside it holding an enormous dog on a lead. Her head swivelled slowly as he passed.
‘I do understand that you have a lot of commitments, and your job is really important. We all understand that, Mr Big Swinging Technodick. But just one awkward family lunch with your sick father and your overworked, underpaid do-gooder sister. Would that be too much to ask?’
‘Hang on, Gem. There’s an accident.’
Beside her a ghostly teenager – boy? girl? – with a shock of dark hair, stood with his hands in his pockets, his shoulders slumped and, turning briefly away from a policeman who was writing something, another child – no, a small woman, her hair tied back into a scrappy ponytail. She was lifting her hands in exasperation in a gesture that reminded him of Lara. You are so annoying!
He had driven a further hundred yards before he understood the jolt that went through him. He knew that woman. He racked his brain: bar? Holiday park? He had a sudden image of her taking his car keys, a memory of her removing his glasses in his house. What was she doing out there with children at this time of night? He pulled over and glanced into the rear-view mirror, watching. He could just make out the group. The little girl had sat down on the dark verge, the dog a mountainous black lump beside her.
‘Ed? Are you okay?’ Gemma’s voice broke into the silence.
Afterwards he wasn’t entirely sure what made him do it. Perhaps it was an attempt to delay his arrival back in that empty house to sit staring at a television screen until the small hours. Perhaps it was the strangeness of it – that making himself part of such a scene seemed no longer an odd thing to do in a life that had gone so far off the rails.
Perhaps it was just that he wanted to convince himself, against all available evidence, that he was not entirely an arsehole.
‘Gem, I’ll have to call you back. It’s someone I know.’
He pulled over and did a three-point turn, driving back down the dimly lit road slowly until he reached the police car. He pulled up on the other side of the road.
‘Hi,’ Ed said, lowering the window. ‘Can I help?’
9.
Tanzie
They let Nicky out at a quarter to five. Tanzie handed over the Nintendo she’d brought on the bus from home and watched silently as he played with grazed fingers. Her happy mood had disappeared a bit when she first saw Nicky’s swollen face. It didn’t really look like him and she’d had to make her eyes stay very firmly on his when they would have liked to go somewhere else, even to the stupid picture of galloping horses on the wall opposite, which didn’t even look like horses. She wanted to tell him about how they’d registered at St Anne’s, but it was hard to think about it too much in that little room, with the smell of hospitals in her nose and Nicky’s eye all the wrong shape.
He made funny little sounds as he walked, and tried to close his mouth over them, like he didn’t want to let on how much it hurt. Tanzie found herself thinking, The Fishers did this, the Fishers did this, and she felt a bit scared because she couldn’t believe anyone they knew would do this for no reason. Mum had to have all the usual arguments with the hospital people about how, no, she wasn’t his actual mum, but as good as. And, no, he didn’t have a social worker. And it always made Tanzie feel a bit odd, like Nicky wasn’t a proper part of their family, even though he was.
When Nicky got up to go down the corridor she put her hand gently into his, and even though normally he would have told her to ‘Scoot, small fry’ or one of the other stupid things he said, he just squeezed her fingers a bit and his swollen mouth gave her this little smile, like just for once she was allowed (or at least until he said, ‘Tanze, mate, I do actually need to go to the loo now’).
Mum’s face was all pale, and she kept chewing her lip, like she wanted to say a lot more than she did. Nicky didn’t look at her once.
And then, when lots of doctors and people arrived in his room, Mum told Tanzie to wait outside and she walked up and down the long antiseptic corridors, reading her papers and working on her algebra. Numbers always made her feel better. If you treated them properly they always did what they were meant to do – like there was a magical order all around that you could unlock if you had the right key.