I can’t speak. I just sit there while he goes on, talking about how he’d like to follow Phil’s example and make his peace. But all I can think of is the Phil who sent Stuart to the house in Addison Gardens. He’d only just turned seventeen and looked younger. He was working for a landlord, banging on doors for rent. Collecting cash from people like him. People who were too poor to have bank accounts. And he hated it. It was when he started drinking. “Dutch courage,” he called it, and I didn’t like it. It made him too loud, like Tony. Looking back now, I can see he was a frightened kid but I keep asking myself if there’d been a side to him I hadn’t known. Had he been sending people to break into houses? I was only eight years old. I wouldn’t have known, would I? My son, Cal, is almost the same age I was then and what does he truly know about me?
But Phil cared about people. About me. He’d never have left me on my own to go robbing. He was home with me every night. Well, nearly every night.
My head wanders further on. I know it won’t lead anywhere good. I try to stop it but it keeps slipping out of my grasp. So I close my eyes.
Make it go away, Cal would say. Everything is so much simpler when you’re a kid, isn’t it?
“I don’t believe it,” I say, and Stuart stops talking and leans toward me. I think for a second that he’s going to take my hand and I freeze.
“My brother wasn’t like that,” I say, tucking my hands under my thighs.
“No, he wasn’t,” Stuart says. “But there were people who were.”
Twenty
SUNDAY, AUGUST 18, 2019
Seven days earlier
Charlie
He was working every hour of the day to raise money—going back to former contacts and old schemes—but he was getting nowhere.
He looked round at the space that seemed to close in on him daily. And being cooped up in the caravan with the curtains drawn and the television on mute was clearly getting on Pauline’s nerves too. But it had to be done.
The last time he’d been in trouble, they’d had four reception rooms and a home gym to distract her. But there were no distractions now. She’d given herself a manicure and a pedicure, plucked what remained of her eyebrows, and shaved her legs. The only thing left to do was to keep up a continuous loop of nagging and whining. Charlie wanted to scream but he gave her a foot massage as demanded, stroking the moisturizer into her cracked heels. He thought he’d managed to placate her until she suddenly realized she was about to miss her next appointment at the hairdresser’s.
“My hair needs doing. Today!” Pauline screeched at him as he tried to dodge her flailing nails. “This is like being in prison. I should never have married you. You’re a complete failure. In every department.”
“Pauline,” he ventured. “Darling . . . it’s only for a few more days and then you can go to the salon hourly if you want.”
“I will. But it won’t be in your honor. . . . I have other friends who’ll appreciate it.”
His mouth soured at the thought of his wife’s friends but now was not the moment. He’d deal with them all in good time.
“Of course you do, my darling. The thing is,” he explained patiently, “I have to ring some people. Boring but essential. You know that.”
“Well, your phone calls don’t seem to be doing the trick,” she snorted. “What the hell is going on?”
“Just a minor blip. You have been marvelously patient and I’ll sort it out. Perhaps I should work in one of the outbuildings for a bit.”
“Yes, do that. I’m getting a headache.”
“Of course, there’s no electricity—”
“Just go! You can come back when it gets dark to plug in your laptop and phone.”
* * *
—
A wave of exhaustion washed over him when he entered the dark shed and he put his head against the rough surface of the nearest wall.
He couldn’t work there. Maybe he should set up camp in the house. The bloody house. The noose round his neck.
What he needed to do was to get out of there. And find a drink.
The pub was the place to be when things were tricky at home. Drink oiled the wheels, loosening inhibitions, and striking up a conversation with a stranger was welcomed—expected, even.
Lunchtime was best. Men were more likely to be drinking on their own—no better halves to distract them or put an oar in.
He took a deep happy breath as he pushed in through the door of the Neptune.
The pub was heaving with sticky flesh. The temperature outside was rising and the bar was thrumming with thirsty customers. It was a young crowd, trade, workmen on weekly wages. Charlie slipped off the Old Harrovian tie he’d knotted expertly that morning and put it in his pocket. It was too bloody hot for neckwear.