Brian smiled in the dark. ‘One night in the University Library, amongst the Philosophy stacks…
‘In the library?’ Brianne was horrified. ‘That’s where Mum worked! That is gross!’
Brian said, ‘Couldn’t do it now, bloody CCTV cameras everywhere.’
Brian Junior asked, ‘When was this?’
‘It was around about the time of the Columbia disaster.’
‘So, you’ve been having an affair with Titania since 2003?’
‘The disaster hit me hard, son. I was in a very vulnerable state. Your mother didn’t seem to understand my distress. But Titania was there, equally upset. It was Columbia that brought us together. We found solace in each other.’
Brian Junior said, ‘Yeah, but it didn’t take you eight years to get over a failed shuttle re-entry, did it?’
Brian turned to look at his son. ‘OK,’ he said, ‘I admit it. There was passion there, and physics. I was the unstoppable force, and Titania was the immovable object.’
The driver of a dangerously close Scandinavian articulated lorry sounded his klaxon. Brian braked so hard that Poppy immediately thought of whiplash and a possible claim for damages.
When they were calm again, Brian Junior said, ‘So, first we discover that you’re an adulterer, and now we realise that you are intellectually bankrupt. The analogy you used, your supposed gravitational force, could only have issued from the mouth of an intellectual pygmy. Your pop-science analogy is misapplied and your faulty logic is as dangerous as your driving. Millions have died because of so-called scientists like you.’
‘Go, Bri,’ said Brianne.
The ensuing argument developed quickly and raged back and forth, reaching towering peaks of misunderstanding, until eventually father and son found themselves on a scientific plateau, discussing six-dimensional space.
Poppy was bored. To pass the interminable time (they were only at the junction for East Midlands Airport, for God’s sake) she allowed herself a fantasy, imagining herself as Brian’s child bride. Standing at the altar, she would look spectacular in her white lace next to his bulky, bearded self. She would make him sell the house, with Eva in it, finish with prune-face Titania and buy a loft apartment in the middle of town. She would charm his faculty into realising his ambition of a full professorship. She would insist that he fork out £3 50 to have his hair and beard trimmed by Nicky Clarke. After fitting him out with a casual academic uniform (corduroy trousers, suede brogues, soft tweed jacket, horn-rimmed spectacles), she would act as his agent, get him television work, and they would eventually move in celebrity circles. She had always wanted to meet Katie Price and the Dalai Lama. She would insist on Brian having a vasectomy. She would charge him for sex, and later – when he was frail, or starting to lose his marbles – she would put him into a home. Although there was always the possibility of a mercy killing. She would wear deep black at the trial, and a modest little hat. She would clutch a white linen handkerchief and occasionally dab her eyes. When the foreman of the jury pronounced, ‘Not Guilty,’ she would faint very prettily in the dock. By the time they reached the Ikea turn-off, she had married, reconstructed and buried Brian.
He drove on, oblivious to his fate.
Poppy came out of her reverie to interrupt Brian Junior, who was droning on about something she could not and did not want to understand.
‘It’s obvious to me that your father was deeply in love with Titania. She must have been beautiful then. Was she, Brian?’
Brian hesitated. ‘Not beautiful, not even pretty. And I wouldn’t have called her handsome either. But she understood my passion for my subject. If I arrived home late, Eva showed no curiosity in what I’d been doing. She would barely look up from her sodding embroidery.
Yes, if the world was about to end, there she’d be… stitch, stitch, stitch.’
Brianne said, sadly, ‘All those lies, Dad, for all those years.
Poppy shifted round in her seat to face Brian. Her Shantung silk skirt fell away. Brian caught a glimpse of her pale-green French knickers.
They travelled a mile in silence.
Brian said, ‘Time for music.’
He pushed a button on the CD player and the Nelson Riddle Orchestra filled the car. This was torture for his children, but it became worse when Brian and Poppy started to sing along with Sinatra to ‘Strangers In The Night’. Brian sang with a pseudo-American accent, and Poppy’s falsetto was painfully out of tune.
The twins put their fingers down their throats and clapped their noise-cancelling headphones firmly on to their ears. By the time the car passed the sign for the Leeds turn-off, Brian and Poppy were serenading each other with ‘I’ve Got You Under My Skin’.
As soon as Brian had dropped them outside Sentinel Towers, the twins headed towards the lift, to put their Christmas presents from their family on eBay – the second-hand iPad is were laughably out of date and irrelevant to their needs. The iPads lay at the bottom of a black plastic bag together with the scarf Ruby had knitted for Brian Junior and the Tony Blair autobiography, inscribed on the title page: ‘To Brianne, Happy Christmas from Grandma Yvonne’.
But Poppy lingered and tried to convey by the use of her eyes that Brian was the most fascinating man she’d ever known and that she could not bear to drag herself away from him.
At 3.30 a.m. Brian Junior heard Poppy’s door open and her shower start.
She was singing, ‘I’ve got me under my skin.’
It enraged Brian Junior. He thumped on the wall with his fist and frightened himself by thinking, ‘I could actually kill her.’
He knew from his research on the deep web that it was possible to ‘disappear’ someone and never be caught.
44
Nurse Spears ordered Eva to remove her nightgown. She wanted to examine her body for bedsores.
Eva covered her nakedness as much as she could with the duvet.
Nurse Spears said, ‘I’ve known people die from bed-sores, Mrs Beaver. If unattended, they can lead to infection, ulceration – and, eventually, amputation.’ She lifted Eva’s ankles and stared at her heels critically. She then moved to Eva’s buttocks, and finished by checking her elbows. She seemed almost disappointed to find no angry sores. ‘You’ve obviously been using a good barrier cream.’
‘No,’ said Eva, ‘but I know about bedsores, I just keep moving and changing position.’
When Eva was dressed, the nurse took her blood pressure and frowned at the result, even though it was in the normal range. She stuck a thermometer in Eva’s ear and, again, frowned at what she saw. She put the thermometer away and asked, ‘How are your bowels?’
Eva said politely, ‘Mine are fine, how are yours?’
‘I’m delighted that you are able to be so light-hearted, Mrs Beaver, considering your circumstances. I understand, from your mother downstairs, that your husband is living with another woman in the garden extension.’
‘It’s a shed.’
‘Your mother also tells me that when you need to use the bathroom facilities, you construct what you call a “White Pathway”, which you seem to think is an extension of your bed. Is this true?’
‘Yes, it’s true. It is an extension of the bed. If I fired a bullet at your skull and it blew it apart, Nurse Spears, would the bullet that did so be a property of itself or the gun?’ She half remembered this from overhearing a conversation one morning at breakfast, between Brian and Brian Junior about quantum physics, which had only ended when the marmalade jar had slipped through Brian’s hands and fallen on to the floor.
Nurse Spears was writing on Eva’s notes.
Eva said, ‘I’d like to see what you’ve written.’
The nurse said, moving the notes out of Eva’s reach, ‘I’m afraid your notes are confidential.’
Eva said, ‘You’re mistaken, Nurse Spears. The law allows patients to read their notes.’