‘Never! I’ve only got one of them. Actually, I call him Mr January. Your sister doesn’t appreciate that much, but I won’t put on a false front for her. Is he good at what he does, do you know?’
‘I’m told that he is. He specialises in taxation and reparations, but he’s done some time in the Crown Office, so he knows the criminal side as well. That’s the sort of profile an ambitious lawyer should have if he wants to go to the Supreme Court bench. If our Ellie marries the guy, there’s a good chance she’ll end up being Lady January.’
‘So there isn’t a Mrs January anywhere in the background? With a man that age, you wonder.’
‘You are a cynical old bastard, aren’t you?’ I glanced at him. ‘And I take after you, because I asked the same question myself. There was a wife, but she left him ten years ago: ran off with an actor, believe it or not.’
‘Too dull for her, was he?’
‘Thanks, Dad. Primavera ran off with an actor too, remember.’
‘Christ, so she did! Sorry, son.’
‘And a policeman, and a car salesman, and my best friend.’
‘Oh dear; you never told me about those.’
‘Why should I have? You liked her, remember?’
‘So did you. You didn’t treat her very well, though.’
‘It’s the first time you’ve said that to me as well.’
‘Let’s just say that love blinded me to your faults too: over the last year or so, I’ve been able to look at them more objectively.’
‘Touche. The truth is that I didn’t treat anyone too well in those days: Jan most of all.’
‘Maybe not, but she understood. She told Mary that she thought, with you two having been together since you were kids, it was probably a good thing for you to go off and sow some wild oats. She knew you’d come back to her when you were ready.’
‘Hey, it wasn’t just me sowing oats!’
He grinned. ‘She had to make you think that, didn’t she? To keep you a wee bit jealous, like. She was a smart girl, was Jan.’ He seemed to drift away for a second.
I brought him back, sharpish. ‘Are you saying she used Prim, and Alison Goodchild before her?’
‘No, I’m saying that you did. She accepted them, that was all.’
‘Maybe.’
‘Do you know what Prim’s doing now?’
‘She went back to nursing for a while, I believe: to get her head back together, so I understand. But to be honest, Dad, I don’t want to know. I don’t want her in my life any more, in any way.’
‘That’s a bit hard: you were married to her too, remember, even if it was a disaster.’ He frowned. ‘You’re not still bearing a torch, are you?’
‘Secretly lusting after her, you mean? Dad, there’s no way that I want, or that I need, anything that Primavera Phillips has got.’ I paused. ‘How did we get into this, anyway? Why did you ask about her?’
‘Because she called in to see me.’
‘She did? When did she do that?’
‘About a week ago, as it happens. She said she was just passing by, and looked in on the off-chance.’
‘And you believed her?’
‘Why not?’
‘Prim never does anything on the off-chance. What did you talk about?’
A great hand scratched his chin. I’m a pretty strong guy, but I work at it: so is he and he doesn’t. . apart from yanking teeth, that is. ‘As I remember, she asked how I was doing, and how Mary was, and Ellie and the boys.’
‘Nothing about me?’
‘Not specifically. I did tell her that I had a new grandson, and that your career was coming on in leaps and bounds. That got us into talking about you.’
‘So what did she have to say?’
‘She told me she was sorry that it hadn’t worked out between you, but that, honestly, it was as much her fault as yours.’
‘Big of her.’
‘I thought so at the time, I must say.’
‘If she’s been to see you, why did you ask me what she’s doing now?’
‘Because she’d gone before it occurred to me to ask her. It was just a flying visit, as she said.’
‘How did she look?’
‘A bit plumper in places than when I saw her last, and her hair was different, but much the same otherwise.’
‘How was her hair different?’
‘It was longer and not so blonde. Now that I think of it, she was dressed differently too. I used to think of her as a shirt-and-jeans person, but when she called in she was wearing, well, designer clothes, I suppose you’d call them. And she had more makeup on than I remember.’
‘Was she alone?’
‘I take it that you mean was she with a bloke? No, she was on her own. She said that she was driving her father’s car: she’d been bored and so she’d decided to go for a run.’
‘You’d buy anything off anyone, wouldn’t you?’ I said. ‘She came to see you, and for no other reason. And with respect, Dad, she didn’t come to find out how you were doing. God, and I called you a cynic earlier on.’
‘Oz,’ he protested, ‘if she was that interested in you, why didn’t she just call you? You’ve had the same mobile number for the last five or six years, and so has she.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘Because she told me. She said that if I ever wanted to contact her for anything, I could always get her on it.’
‘Are you sure she was telling you that?’
‘There you go again.’
He had a fair point about the mobile number, I suppose, but my suspicions were roused. Experience had taught me that with my ex-wife that was always the safest way to proceed. She had turned up, pumped my dad for information, and given nothing away except a phone number that she must have known would be mentioned to me. But she hadn’t been as smart as she’d thought. She’d told me that whatever she was doing now, it wasn’t nursing.
When she’d got into the habit of wearing her hair short, it was to make it fit easily and quickly under her cap, for she hated pinning it up on top of her head. The makeup style had come from the same era, and for similar reasons. When Susie and I are going out on the razzle, it takes her half an hour to do her face … not that she needs it. Primavera did the same job in five minutes.
I know my dad hadn’t meant to unsettle me, but he had all the same. Long after I had dropped him off back in Anstruther, said, ‘Hello and cheerio,’ to my stepmother, and set off on the road back to the west, I was still thinking about Primavera Phillips Blackstone.
Chapter 4
The kids were in bed when I got home, although Janet was still awake, waiting for Daddy to read her a story, as I tried to do every night when I wasn’t away on a project. We were well into The Hobbit, at the part where Gandalf, Bilbo and the dwarfs had escaped from the goblins and found Beorn the skin-changer. My daughter loved it. A bit advanced for a three-and-three-quarter-year-old? Maybe, but I had started her on The House at Pooh Corner, only to have to abandon it because I couldn’t read much of it before cracking up with laughter. Whatever: for a bright kid, a story’s a story.
We moved further down the road that goes on for ever, until her eyes grew heavy, and she showed the first signs of nodding off. (It’s the way you tell them, Oz.) I kissed her goodnight, changed my shirt, and went down to the drawing room, where Susie was waiting, dressed for dinner. (It’s not a house rule: it’s just something she likes to do, and I go along with it.)
She handed me a glass of something white and slightly acidic. (No, not Anne Robinson: it was Gran Vina Sol, I think.) ‘How is he, then?’ she asked.
I played the game. ‘Who?’
‘Mac, who else?’
‘Maybe I’ve got a mistress.’
‘In that case, after last night you’ve got more stamina than I gave you credit for. But I don’t think that even you would be crass enough to take my car when you visit her. You left your mobile, and you didn’t say where you were going, but you took your clubs. They’re your tools for mending fences.’
‘I’d better never try to fool you,’ I told her. ‘Yes, I went to see my dad.’