‘Tax avoidance? Charming.’
‘Tax management, is what I prefer to call it.’
‘I’m sure you do. So where do you go to learn that, then? Do they send you on a course?’
‘Well, I took what I thought to be the simplest and most obvious route. I went to work with HMRC for a while.’
‘You became a tax inspector?’
‘It seemed to be the best way of learning the ins and outs of the system. You’d be surprised, nowadays, how many tax inspectors leave the Revenue and go straight into the City to set themselves up as independent advisers. But I was one of the first. I blazed the trail.’
‘Your mother must be very proud.’
Freddie was starting to tire of Rachel’s sarcasm. ‘This chap you’re meeting tonight,’ he said. ‘What does he do?’
‘He’s a postgrad,’ said Rachel. ‘He’s writing a thesis on The Invisible Man.’ She noticed Freddie’s blank look. ‘H. G. Wells.’
‘A whole thesis,’ he said, incredulously, ‘on one book?’
‘He’s using invisibility as a metaphor,’ said Rachel, not sure why she was bothering to explain any of this, ‘to talk about politics. How people become invisible, when the system loses sight of them.’
‘Sounds as though he’s spotted a real gap in the market there.’
‘Not everybody thinks about “the market” when they decide what to do with their lives.’ She leaned forward and addressed the chauffeur. ‘Could you let me out here please, Jules?’
The car pulled over and came to a noiseless halt.
‘Well, let me know when he makes his first million,’ said Freddie. ‘I’ll help minimize his tax liability.’
‘Lovely talking to you,’ said Rachel, and then she said thank you and goodbye to Jules before stepping out into the crowds of tourists clogging up Shaftesbury Avenue; relieved to find herself surrounded, once again, by people she felt she could probably understand.
9
‘So, you had a nice time last night, with your boyfriend?’ said Livia.
‘Very nice, thank you,’ said Rachel, smiling, but she did not divulge any more information. She didn’t feel that she knew Livia well enough yet.
This was their third walk together, and their longest. Livia had three dogs today: Mortimer, plus a pair of Airedale terriers she collected from a flat in a mansion block off Gloucester Road. They took the dogs to Hyde Park, let them off the lead near the Round Pond and then, when they had run themselves into a state of near-exhaustion, strolled over to the Serpentine Gallery. Now they were crossing West Carriage Drive and heading down towards the café. It was a bright and sunny but fiercely cold morning in early December. It seemed the only people in the park that day were women walking their dogs: they’d already come across Jane, the Queen of dog-walkers, who sometimes walked as many as ten at a time. Her dogs had been restless and unruly this morning, so they’d not had much time to stop and talk. Now Mortimer and the Airedales were looking tired and ready for a bowl of water.
Rachel was starting to like Livia very much. By training she was a musician. She played in a string quartet which gave occasional London recitals but of course she did not earn anything from this, and walking dogs provided the bulk of her meagre income. Her instrument was the cello and, to Rachel’s ears, her voice itself was reminiscent of a cello, with something of its sonorous depth and melancholy richness. She spoke slowly and carefully, with a thick Romanian accent which sometimes made her words hard to understand.
‘You remember that woman I told you about?’ she said, when they were sitting inside the café, in the warmth, with expensive lattes in front of them. ‘The one who has the same kind of cancer as your grandfather?’
‘Yes,’ said Rachel. ‘I remember. You said she’d come out of hospital and was doing really well.’
‘That’s right. Well, last week she asked me to walk her dog again. She has a wonderful Afghan hound, called William. She lives in a house between the Kings Road and the river. A beautiful part of Chelsea. The house is only small but I think it is worth several million pounds. My client, whose name is Hermione, is a member of the aristocracy, I think. She is some sort of duchess or baroness or something — I don’t really understand what all these titles mean in this country. Anyway, as I said to you last time, she was told almost two years ago that she had cancer of the liver and would only live for a few months. Just like your grandfather has been told. They didn’t want to give her chemotherapy or radiotherapy or anything like that. But when she went into hospital she was taken to see a doctor who said there were new drugs which could help with this condition. Not to cure it, just to make it easier to bear. So last week I asked her what these drugs were called and she told me that they were giving her one called cetuximab. And she said it had helped her a lot. It had removed many of the symptoms and there had not been many side effects. Of course, she still has the cancer, there’s nothing she can do about that, but she was diagnosed two years ago now and since then her quality of life has been good, very good. She’s just come back from visiting friends in Paris and now she’s going to spend Christmas in Rome with her daughter.’
‘That sounds amazing,’ said Rachel.
‘Are you seeing your grandfather soon?’
‘Yes, I’ll be seeing him at Christmas. I’m not sure whether he’ll be at home or in hospital. But I’ll definitely be seeing him.’
‘Then maybe you can ask his doctor if he can give him some of these drugs.’
‘Yes, I will,’ said Rachel. ‘It’s got to be worth a try, hasn’t it?’
10
Grace and Sophia’s school term came to an end two weeks before Christmas. At around the same time, Lucas returned from Eton, reporting that his interview at Oxford had been a great success. (He would find out, in the New Year, that he had won a place at Magdalen College, Oxford, and by way of thanks would present Rachel with an expensive, linen-covered notebook from a stationer’s in Venice.) Madiana told Rachel that her services would probably not be required, now, until the beginning of January, and she was free to go home.
Her grandfather had been moved to a hospice on the outskirts of Beverley. It was a functional, 1970s redbrick building, surrounded by a couple of acres of lawn which were dusted with patchy snow on the afternoon that Rachel made her first visit. Her mother and grandmother were with her. They had stopped off at the local supermarket to buy some packets of fruit salad, since Gran was concerned that Grandad was not getting enough fruit. As their car pulled into the crowded car park, in the middle of the afternoon, the December light was already beginning to fade. The thin, half-hearted snow was turning to sleet. Rachel took her grandmother’s arm, feeling the sharp boniness of her elbow even through her thick tweed coat, and supported her as she shuffled slowly and carefully across the icy asphalt. It took a long time to get from the car to the entrance, with its glowing yellow light and promise of warmth: long enough for Rachel to reflect on the desperate sadness of the occasion, but also — again — its sense of inevitability. She remembered the whisper she had heard amidst the branches of the plum tree a few months earlier.
As for Grandad’s appearance, Rachel had been expecting the worst, and she found it. He was sitting up in bed, in a ward with five other patients. He was the one, without doubt, who looked most seriously ill. He had lost so much weight that his collar-and breastbones stood out starkly where his pyjama jacket lay open. His skin had yellowed horribly. He was attached to a subcutaneous drip and the smile of recognition when he saw them enter the ward was faint and effortful. Almost as soon as they pulled up their chairs and sat around the bed, the listless gaze returned to his eyes. His throat was parched and conversation seemed to sap his energy. His hand kept straying to the right-hand side of his stomach, which he would touch involuntarily even though it made him wince in pain.