The young man on his box was not the only speaker. Further back, at the very edge of the crowds, a black priest was addressing a small makeshift congregation of perhaps a dozen people. Even from this distance, you could make out his dark clerical robes, the white dog collar. But when he knelt to pray, half of his flock turned away, and wandered towards the young man on the box.
It was impossible to know what he was saying and why he had them rapt. It looked like he was giving his own kind of sermon. And the priest could not compete.
I called Edie Wren, not taking my eyes from the TV screen.
‘Edie, are you watching this on TV?’
‘Max?’ I had woken her.
I felt bad about that but I needed to understand what I was looking at in Borodino Street. Who was this guy?
‘Turn on your TV,’ I said. ‘There’s some guy talking to the crowd outside the Khan house. It looks like – I don’t know – it looks like he’s preaching to them.’
‘Max.’ She was awake now.
‘Are you watching it?’
‘Max – forget about it all for a while, OK? I know you were in the middle of it when that Air Ambulance came down. I know you saw Alice Stone die. I know you will never forget any of it. Of course I bloody do. But none of it is our investigation. Let it go, Max.’
‘You haven’t turned on your TV?’
I couldn’t pretend I was not disappointed.
‘Enjoy your weekend, Max,’ Edie said, fully awake now. ‘You and Scout and Stan. Try to put Lake Meadows out of your head. Forget about Borodino Street for a while. I know it’s hard. But you’ve done your bit, Max. Now let someone else deal with it.’
And then I heard the man in her bed, his voice thick with sleep, stirring next to her.
‘Who is it?’
I felt embarrassed, humiliated and stupid.
Mr Big. Edie’s married man.
I wondered how he swung this at home, what smooth lie he had told to be given an overnight pass on the night before the weekend. Friday night, Saturday morning. A business trip, I thought. It had to be a business trip.
‘Work,’ Edie said, and somewhere in my thick head I could see it all.
Her face turned away from the phone. The man in her bed.
‘Max?’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ I said. ‘Sorry. See you Monday.’
I sat down in front of the TV.
It was hypnotic. The sight of a nation in mourning. We mourned the victims of the latest atrocity at Lake Meadows, and we mourned all those who had died in previous attacks, and we mourned all those who would die in the future. And we mourned Alice Stone.
Everyone knew her now. Everyone knew about her copper husband, her two small children, her idyllic childhood in the Lincolnshire countryside. Everyone knew her smile. The country was haunted by that smile.
I watched TV until Scout wandered out of her bedroom. Then I turned it off and I followed her into the kitchen even though I knew that she could make breakfast for herself now – using a step stool to remove the loaf from the cupboard and butter and orange juice from the fridge, growing up faster than scheduled, the way that the children of divorced parents always will.
‘You want me to make some breakfast for us, Scout?’
A sly smile. ‘Today I’m making breakfast for you.’
So I went downstairs to get the mail.
There were the two magazines I subscribed to, Boxing Monthly and Your Dog, and an assortment of bills, junk mail about PPI and flyers offering pizza and Phad Thai delivered to your door. A smiling Gennady Golovkin was on the cover of Boxing Monthly and a grinning Labrador Retriever was on the cover of Your Dog. It was only when I was back in the loft that I realised there was also a card from my ex-wife.
You know handwriting. Even when years have gone by.
Even in this age when nobody writes letters or postcards any more. You still know someone’s handwriting, if they have been close enough. You never forget it.
Anne’s handwriting was neat, small but thick somehow, as if she pressed too hard, as if she was trying to make her point on a world that was not paying her enough attention.
But the card was not addressed to me.
It was for Scout. I didn’t open it. I didn’t tell her about it. I left it between Your Dog and Boxing Monthly and sat down to eat the toast Scout had made for me. It was a bit burned but slathered in lots of glorious New Zealand butter, just the way I liked it.
‘It’s good toast, Scout.’
She was staring down sternly at the dog.
Stan was bug-eyed with longing.
‘Carbs are bad for you, Stan,’ she said. ‘We have to watch your weight or you’ll get sick and die.’
He licked his lips, ready to take his chances.
A light summer rain pattered against the giant windows of the loft.
‘We’re going to have to walk between the raindrops,’ Scout said, and I laughed out loud.
Nobody could make me laugh like my daughter.
‘Scout,’ I said, as casually as I could manage. ‘Your mum has written to you.’
I picked up the card and handed it to her, making her transfer her jam-smeared toast from right hand to left. I didn’t know what else to say. There was nothing else to say.
Scout’s mother had left us before Scout started school, walking out because she was in love with someone else and expecting his child and planning to build a new life. It was as simple and brutal as that. So that was all pretty final. There had been some patchy contact between Anne and Scout at first but it had spluttered out as the new life crowded in.
It might have been a bit different if Anne had not been pregnant when she left – and then quickly got pregnant again – but Scout did not fit easily into this new life. My ex-wife tried to fit her in, but she did not try hard enough. And so she drifted away and Scout and I were left to get on with it. Which we did.
It happens all the time. And when people talk to me as if they have never heard anything like it happening before – a father being left to bring up his kid alone, a mother too wrapped up in her new life to think much about the beautiful child from the old life – I always truly envy them their sheltered, civilised, cosy, middle-class lives.
Adults carry on, I thought, watching Scout hold the card, and children pay the price. And for a mad moment I thought that the card contained an apology to Scout and all the sons and daughters of all the divorced mothers and fathers. Only divorced adults get new lives, I thought. Divorced children are stuck with their old lives – and with their dumb-ass divorced parents – for ever.
Her fingers sticky with butter and strawberry jam and toast crumbs, Scout tore open the envelope.
‘It’s a party invitation,’ she said.
She showed me the card. There were laughing cartoon animals juggling balloons and cake while driving toy cars. Inside was an invitation to a fourth birthday party.
I couldn’t bring myself to think of the birthday boy as Scout’s brother. Even half-brother was beyond me.
‘Mummy’s little boy,’ Scout said. ‘It’s his birthday.’
‘That’s very nice,’ I said.
‘Is he four already?’
‘I guess he must be.’
Scout frowned.
‘But he’s young.’
I had to smile at that. ‘And what are you? An old lady? You’re only seven, Scout. You’re not getting your free bus pass just yet.’
I took the card from her.
And I saw that she was angry.
If this contact after so many years of silence was strange for me, then how must it be for Scout?
‘You know your mother never stopped loving you,’ I said, and I believed it, despite all the evidence. Or maybe I just could not bear the thought of my daughter not being loved exactly as she deserved to be loved.