♦
Dominic assumed that Angela had found the message, her distance, her muted distress, but they drifted into a dog-legging conversation about a friend from college who lived in a squat in Finsbury Park, and the German student next door who was murdered, and the German club at school, and he realised that she hadn’t found the message, had she? Something else was wrong, the way she was running on autopilot, radio silence and the cockpit windows frosting over. He was off the hook. His vow of, what? three days ago? Getting Angela back on track, making the family work, being a proper father and husband. He wasn’t sure he had the energy now. He looked around the table. Richard and Louisa rebonded, Melissa absent in one way, Angela in another, some kind of sibling huddle at the far end, Benjy deep in his book. How rarely people were together. Gaps in the chain of Christmas lights. But Daisy and the kiss…Perhaps they had already done the right thing by not making a song and dance about it, all part of life’s rich pageant and so on. He tried and failed to catch her eye. A sudden stupid sadness, the worry that he had lost all of them, the urge to go and pick Benjy up and tell him how much he loved him. But you couldn’t do that, could you, in the middle of a meal, just go and hug someone and tell them that you loved them.
Where’s Melissa? asked Richard.
Louisa angled herself so that no one could hear and said quietly, I got a call from school.
About?
Melissa and her friends bullied a girl who then tried to commit suicide. Saying it to Richard made it sound worse, if that were possible.
The girl. Is she all right?
It seems so.
What did they do to her?
Louisa stalled. They never talked about Melissa and sex. That delicate boundary.
You can tell me.
She felt implicated by her own transgressions.
I’ll keep my distance. I promise.
They took a photo of this girl, Michelle, at a party, having sex with some boy, then they sent it to everyone.
Charlie Lessiter. Those boys who force-fed him laxatives. Swallow, Fatty, swallow! Holding him in a headlock. You’re worried they’ll expel her?
I worry that this is not just a phase.
Children can be vicious. He wanted to talk to Michelle, find out how serious it was. Because killing yourself was easy if you meant it. He wanted to be the doctor, wanted to be the lawyer. He didn’t like this blurry view from the outfield.
She thinks she can slip out of it like she always does. A bit of charm here, a few lies there.
Perhaps I shouldn’t keep my distance.
Meaning?
Perhaps I should talk to her. The other man, the one who’d found her smoking in the woodshed forty-eight hours ago, he seemed like a stranger now. I won’t wear hobnailed boots this time.
Two sweetcorn chowders, a slightly disappointing goat’s cheese tart, two Stilton ploughmans…Alex and Daisy were sitting on either side of Benjy, conspicuously looking after him, showing their parents how to be parents. Benjy was reading Guinness World Records. Look, this man lifted 21.9 kg using his nipples.
Benjy, seriously, why would I possibly want to look?
Alex observes his father. It seems both impossible and completely obvious. They didn’t love each other, did they, Mum and Dad, didn’t like each other half the time. A little flash of sympathy for Dad, then he thinks of the dirtiness, the lying, the disrespect. He wants to tell someone, but who? Daisy has enough on her plate. He could tell Richard, perhaps, but there’s something unmanly about handing over the responsibility. He has to confront Dad. If he doesn’t then the knowledge is going to eat away at him, but every time he pictures this encounter his heart hammers and his palms sweat. Though it would resolve something, wouldn’t it? Something that has haunted him since the night in Crouch End.
Guess the record for the most underpants worn at the same time.
Benjy, just eat that potato.
One hundred and thirty-seven.
Benjy…
I’m a bit full actually.
Of what?
Nothing.
We had some ice cream.
Daisy looks at Mum who seems a little better now, more awake, more focused, stringing actual sentences together with Dad. That echo of Gran. Made her blood run cold. Though when she thinks about it maybe Mum deserves a bit of suffering. All the shit she’s given her over the past year. Schadenfreude. Is that a dreadful thing to think? Well, if she’s leaving the church then thinking dreadful things without feeling guilty has to be one of the compensations.
Banana split, treacle pudding, cappuccino…Richard picks up the bill.
♦
Daisy was waiting at the zebra crossing when she saw Melissa sitting on the stone wall across the road at the pre-arranged taxi rendezvous point. She bodyswerved rapidly towards The Shop of Crap and stood beside an aluminium dustbin full of brooms. No, wait. She was tired of feeling cowardly, feeling vulnerable. Fuck what Melissa thought, fuck what Mum and Dad thought. She turned and looked back across the road, Melissa still unaware of her presence. Spiteful and shallow. Like they always said about bullies. Underneath they’re frightened. Because she had her own bluebird tattoo now, didn’t she? And there were things she’d learnt in the church that remained true in spite of everything. Putting on the Armour of Christ, kneeling in the street, that drunk woman spraying them with a can of lager. If you believed with all your heart then none of it mattered. What doesn’t kill me only makes me stronger.
Gay. What a wet fucking word it was.
She waited for a Post Office van to pull up then walked over the road. Melissa seeing her now and something extraordinary happening. The glossy thoroughbred look, the slow-motion hair, it counted for nothing. It was this confidence, wasn’t it, the Armour of Christ. Melissa was shrinking just as she had shrunk in Melissa’s presence four days ago. Daisy sat down beside her.
What? said Melissa nervously.
Daisy closed her eyes. She could let this moment run forever.
♦
Once again, Dominic was deputed to sit up front and converse with the taxi driver. Young white guy in his twenties, polyester tracksuit top, tiny diamond earring, driving a little too fast, but not fast enough for Dominic to complain.
Five days and the landscape was fading already. The gash of gold and the green distance. How pleased we are to have our eyes opened but how easily we close them again. The barn owl on the telegraph pole. It was picturesque, then it wasn’t picturesque, then it was background.
Daisy stared through the window trying to discern a future that wasn’t clear yet. These were not her people, this was not her family.
The mobile was sitting right there in Mum’s bag. Melissa wanted to just grab it, have an all-out bitch fight, but Daisy would have loved that.
Louisa was remembering those family holidays in Tenby. Auntie May’s boarding house, though she wasn’t technically an aunt, of course. Deckchairs and slot machines, sharing a double bed with her brothers, the day Dougie smashed a crab with a rock and the time it took to die. There was an island out in the bay. She can’t remember the name now. There was a monastery on it and there were boat trips, but they never took one. It came back to her in dreams sometimes. Of course Richard should meet Carl and Dougie. Why had she been so frightened of this?