It was the wine, maybe, or the nerves, but his timing was out. He leaned over too far, too fast, and kissed only her hair; several twisty strands clung to his lips when he withdrew.
That might have been all anyway, the spell broken for both of them, but Neil would never know for certain. The front door opened. She snatched her hand from his leg.
Neil stood up, checking that his trousers were respectable. Harry marched through the living room to the kitchen and opened the fridge. He turned off the music, scraping a stool across the parquet to the counter to eat whatever it was he had extracted.
‘Hello, Uncle Neil,’ he called out, in the ironic tone that kids seemed obliged to affect. He had reached the age when they could no longer count on a smile, their size, the sheer audacity and miracle of their diminutive yet capable bodies, to win the approbation and indulgence of adults. Harry had realised that, from now on, he would have to earn them, and he evidently wasn’t pleased.
‘Me too,’ Ruby yelled as she trailed after her brother. She changed her mind and jumped onto the sofa, thrusting an illuminated, hand-held windmill into Claire’s face. ‘Hello, darling,’ Claire said, hugging her daughter more tightly than their temporary separation called for.
Claire’s mother came in with the children’s kit. She was thinner and greyer than Neil remembered her from the novelty cummerbund days. Her spectacles dangled on a long, professorial cord. She glanced from him to the bottle to her daughter.
‘Hi,’ Neil said, striding towards her and taking her free hand between his. ‘Neil.’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I remember.’
‘Good to see you again.’
‘Yes.’ She turned to Claire.
‘I was about to leave,’ Neil said. ‘Adam’s not here.’
‘Okay,’ she said.
Neil called out goodbyes to the children, and to Claire, without looking at her. ‘Me too,’ he heard Ruby say to somebody.
He plucked his jacket from the banister and swam for the door, slamming it behind him more violently than he intended. He abandoned his car and swayed towards the station to find a taxi.
When he was almost home he took out his CrackBerry. He wasn’t sure he would have Claire’s number — he had no recollection of ever calling her directly — but there it was. He could sense the boozy ripeness of his breath in the cocoon of the cab. An early-onset hangover gripped the back of his head, competing for attention with his instant remorse. The car bucked and jerked in the traffic; the driver was telling a story to someone on his speakerphone: ‘… and he’s only gone and got himself a man bag, the dickhead. I said, what you got that for? He said, it’s for holidays. You dickhead, I said…’
Neil opened a window. No harm done, he thumb-typed. Let’s forget it. He hesitated for a moment and then pressed Send.
I’ve bailed, he wrote to Adam. Next week, maybe? Happy birthday
As he was paying through the window of the taxi, his pocket beeped. He gave the driver a twenty, told him to keep the change, and read her message: Forget what?xx
Not just undocumented immigrants working illegally. That would hardly be news to anyone in London who had renovated a home in the last few years or cash-in-handed a cleaning lady. Nor merely illegal immigrants working as security guards. Illegal immigrants working as security guards in the Home Office. And Parliament. And, very likely, Number 10 and MI6. It would be funny if… okay, it was funny, but you could only laugh in the right company, Adam was streetwise enough to know that. One of the Downing Street enforcers had been in, demanding to know what could be done, when and how much it would cost (the prospect of front-page ignominy always conjured money from the ether). Everyone knew that two or three heads would have to be stuck on pikes in Whitehall. There were dark mutterings about a stash of discarded paperwork that had been discovered in a Croydon housekeeping cupboard.
Croydon: the eternal scapegoat, the illegal immigrants of the Home Office. Thank God for Croydon.
His would almost certainly not be among the impaled heads, Adam reflected as he walked home from the Tube. He was too lowly an official to be a useful sacrifice. All the same, it seemed providential that Neil had put him in touch with that consultancy. If that oleaginous interviewer wanted him, perhaps he should find a way to accept his friend’s charity. He and Neil sometimes did a sort of skit when they saw each other, a pastiche of their former selves — Adam telling most of the jokes, Neil residually gauche, or acting it, for history’s sake, or for Adam’s. This was one of the reasons Adam needed him: Neil carried a trace memory or reflection of Adam at the height of his possibilities, his maximal plumage, fresh from university, thoughtless of failure, absolutely ignorant of what awaited him. An image of him at his happiest and his freest, as well as at his most… regrettable. Underneath, Adam knew, the power had already swung away from him, following the money, rather as, in old age, it ebbs to the spouse who stays healthier for longer, a basic animal hierarchy.
That was already their dispensation, whether or not he took this nepotistic job. He already owed Neil. In any case, Adam wasn’t changing the world at the department. He wasn’t changing anything. He wasn’t even a 7.
Adam turned into his street and mounted the steps to the maisonette. He heard the familiar front-door serenade of play and conflict, sibling love and rivalry too entwined to be distinguished. He found Ruby perched on the kitchen table in her nightie; Harry was performing little standing leaps in his pyjamas, his upstretched hand reaching for the phone she was dangling above him.
‘Careful,’ Adam said; then, shouting, ‘Claire!’ It was much too late for this.
‘Coming,’ she called down.
‘Get down from there! Clezz!’
‘No,’ Ruby said, squatting defensively in the corner. ‘Naughty Daddy!’ She flipped and clicked between the gadget’s applications, with a native dexterity that made Adam feel both proud and old.
‘Give it to me.’
‘Mine,’ Ruby said. She drew the prize into her torso.
‘Give it to Daddy,’ Harry said, confiscation representing, to him, a respectable draw.
‘It’s bedtime, lollipop,’ Adam said. ‘Where’s Mummy?’
‘I know how to spell shit,’ Harry said.
‘Me too,’ Ruby said.
‘Give it to me,’ Adam repeated. He yanked the phone from his daughter’s grasp with more force than she was expecting. After the shock, she began to wail.
‘Suh,’ Harry said, counting off the phonetic letters with his fingers.
Adam glanced at the miniature screen. The roulette of Ruby’s clicks had landed on Claire’s inbox. A message from Adam himself; one from Claire’s mother; Adam again; the mother of one of Harry’s friends; Neil; Adam.
‘Huh,’ Harry said, extending another elfin finger.
Adam placed the phone on the kitchen counter. Ruby was crying. He hated upsetting her, even when her behaviour and his self-respect obliged him to. He hated anyone upsetting her, but it was worse when he was responsible.
‘I want a new daddy,’ she said. ‘I do.’ She wriggled out of his embrace.
‘Ruby-loo,’ he said. ‘Come back here.’
Why Neil? He and Adam had been in touch directly to cancel. Neil and Claire never texted each other, so far as Adam knew. He picked up the phone again and opened the message with a hasty, unthinking depression of his forefinger.
No harm done. Let’s forget it
‘ii,’ Harry said.
‘I’ll ask Father Christmas for him,’ Ruby said.