Nikki could remember it too – the chubby little boy in a Mickey Mouse T-shirt, reading his comics in the library. It seemed impossible to Nikki that anyone born in the nineties could be a fully grown adult now, someone with a house, a driving licence, let alone a production deal in the hundreds of millions. How strange to think that Ned, a friend of Kurt’s father since the very earliest days of Home – although of course they rarely met since Ron’s dementia had really taken hold – had literally known this young man his entire life.
She wondered what it must do to your sense of reality to be one of the Coxes. To be Ron Cox, someone whose films everyone who was a child or teenager between about 1979 and 1993 grew up quoting and re-enacting. To be Marianne, perhaps the funniest, most beautiful comedy actress of her generation, to go in the space of a very few years from being one of the most bankable female stars of the late eighties to being the full-time mother of six on an isolated two-hundred-and-fifty-acre New Mexico ranch. To be one of those children.
‘Go on, make us all feel ancient – how old are you?’ laughed Kyra.
‘I’m a 1996 vintage, ma’am. Twenty-five years old,’ he said sheepishly.
‘And is it actually today, your birthday?’ enquired Georgia Crane, in her strangely LA-inflected British public school accent.
Kurt Cox shook his head.
‘Not quite. It was a few days ago – the twenty-fifth of October,’ he said, as Annie made a big performance of cutting into the cake, before waving at the waitress to finish her botched job.
‘Well done for remembering, Annie – and Kurt, very many happy returns to you, young man, from all of us!’ said Ned. ‘Next year, drop Nikki here a line and we’ll book you a weekend at Home for your celebrations – the club of your choice! Right, Nikki? Make a note in your calendar so we don’t forget: October twenty-fifth.’
Nikki nodded blankly and picked up her phone, hand shaking slightly, although really, she did not need to write it down. That date was not one she was ever going to struggle to remember, or one that she would ever be able to forget.
Adam
He’d been set up to fail, of course. Disaster had always been a foregone conclusion. At no point, as Ned was explaining the task he needed Adam to perform that night – Annie in her usual clown make-up and weird gold dress, pulling faces of faux commiseration in the background – had there been any real pretence on anyone’s part that this was anything other than his punishment for turning up late. Although if he’d made it to the island on time he would still have had to do it, this job; it just would have been his punishment for some other misdemeanour, real or perceived.
It was going to be strange for Ned, after this weekend, not having his little brother around to palm off all the shittiest jobs on.
‘Listen,’ he’d told Adam. ‘I wouldn’t ask you if it wasn’t important. You’ve met them all before, you know what they’re like. All I need you to do is pop over to The Causeway Inn, have a couple of drinks, crack a few jokes, answer a few questions. I would do it myself, but you know . . .’
Adam did know.
Ned would be having dinner with the chosen few, showing them his island, soaking up their admiration, dispensing largesse. Adam, meanwhile, would be hosting an emergency last-minute summit, dealing with the latest round of complaints and protests from their neighbours on the mainland.
‘Sure thing, Ned,’ he told his brother. ‘Leave it to me.’
All the usual suspects would be there, no doubt. Not just local nutters either, like the man with the porridge in his beard who had stood most afternoons for months outside the front gates of Highland Home, waving a rain-spattered sign about newts. These people actually had some influence, some even had a bit of money. The angry man who put together the village newsletter. The grumpy landlord of the other pub with the brassy, busty barmaid who always wore those low-cut T-shirts. A load of old codgers from the parish council. The same people who had tried to kill off every planning application they’d made, from their very first attempts to tart up The Causeway Inn onward. Ramblers. Birdwatchers. The sort of people who called Noise Prevention every time a lorry drove through the village and the Civil Aviation Authority every time a helicopter flew overhead, and had photocopied signs reading ‘Home Go Home’ in their front windows. None of whom were at all happy about the prospect of a three-day party to which they were not invited. Some of whom had been threatening a sit-in on the causeway the following morning just as guests were due to start arriving. None of whom – the ungrateful bastards – were appeased by the fact that the value of property in Littlesea had shot up twenty-five per cent since Home had acquired the island. All of whom would be immediately annoyed that instead of Ned himself they were getting his little brother.