The word ‘almost’ carries more weight than I want to bear. Maybe he’s better this way – a changed man. Constance stands and waves as I navigate the driveway, staying in my mirrors until I reach the main gate.
During the drive through Dartford and Greenwich, I calculate the extra numbers involved if I invite the McCarthy clan. It can’t just be my father. My uncles and aunts and cousins will expect invitations. I take the Blackwall Tunnel beneath the Thames and turn east toward Canning Town. Hope Island is visible from a mile away – a forest of cranes and newly constructed buildings, rising above the old wharves and rows of tenements and soot-blackened warehouses. It’s not actually an island but an isthmus that hangs from the northern bank of the Thames like a teardrop earring.
The site office is a prefabricated building with muddy metal stairs and rows of hardhats and high-vis vests hanging on hooks. I sign a register and am escorted by a foreman in a red vest, whose heavy leather work-boots are permanently curled at the toes and stained with dirt. He drives a golf cart, pointing out various projects as we weave between machinery and piles of metal formwork, girders and pipes. Some of the office blocks have already been bought or leased by major companies or arts organisations, who are advertising their new premises on billboards.
We reach one of the finished buildings, which has tape crisscrossing the large plate-glass windows on the lower floor. The surrounding garden is being landscaped with sandstone blocks and rolls of turf. Somebody wolf-whistles and a dozen workmen turn to look at me.
Really? I want to ask. Is that still a thing?
I know what my mother would say, ‘Enjoy the attention, Philomena, because one day they stop whistling.’
‘Top floor,’ says the foreman, pointing to a lift.
I should have known the slum-dog millionaire would take the penthouse. I press the top button. The doors close and I’m shot upwards at stomach-dropping speed. When they open again, I’m looking at an empty reception desk and chairs still wrapped in plastic. I follow the sound of voices until I reach an office. A receptionist is seated outside.
‘He won’t be long.’
She shows me to a conference room that has a long table and a dozen chairs, with notepads and jugs of water and glasses set out for a meeting. The walls are covered with artists’ impressions of the finished development; and at the end of the room, a large table has a scaled model of Hope Island. The detail is astonishing, showing all the buildings and open spaces, right down to tiny plastic figures of joggers and cyclists on the river path, and diners sitting at outdoor cafés.
I pick up and replace a tree that has fallen over.
‘You always did like playing with dolls’ houses,’ says my father. He’s standing in the doorway. ‘Remember you had that wooden one. It took up half of your bedroom.’
‘You spoiled me.’
‘I can see that.’
He steps closer. I’m unsure if I should hug him. Avoiding the decision, I walk to the far side of the boardroom table, where floor-to-ceiling windows provide spectacular views along the Thames. We’re almost at the same height as a passenger jet making its final approach to London City Airport. I can see two pilots in the cockpit. Further west, the towers of Canary Wharf are silhouetted against the afternoon sun, and directly across the river, the O2 Arena looks like a half-buried naval mine.
‘What do you think?’ he asks.
‘Does it matter?’
‘I lie awake at night wondering if this is the right thing.’
‘Why?’
He points below us. ‘You see all those apartment buildings, next to the water.’
I nod.
‘That’s the Royal Docks. The Luftwaffe tried to bomb it out of existence during the war. I grew up less than ’alf a mile from ’ere. We had this two-up, two-down terrace with an outside privy and a lane at the back for the nightsoil cart. I shared a bed with Daragh for most of my childhood. Finbar and Clifton slept in an annexe that Dad built.’
I’ve heard this story before, his creation myth.
‘Sometimes I look at all these new developments and think that we’re burying the past.’
‘You said they were slums.’
‘Yeah, but they were our slums.’ His fingers touch the glass. ‘The people I grew up with can’t afford to live in the places I build. I’m helping push proper Londoners out of London.’
‘What does Daragh say?’
‘He thinks I’m soft in the head. He says that we didn’t change London. It changed by itself. People have always complained about development. They whinged about the South Bank and the Barbican and Canary Wharf.’
‘Why don’t you build more social housing? You could give something back.’
‘The wealthy don’t want to live next to the poor.’
‘That’s not an excuse.’
‘I know.’
Below us, a crane swings a girder across the skeletal framework of a building, lowering into the outstretched arms of a dozen men, who are making sure it slots into place.
‘The flat in Wandsworth will be ready by Tuesday. There won’t be a name on the lease.’ We walk back to his office where the keys are waiting on his desk.
I thank him. Pausing. Faltering.
‘The other day – at your birthday party – you recognised the name Darren Goodall.’
Dismissively. ‘He was all over the news.’
‘Is that the only reason?’
He makes a clucking noise.
‘If he was bent, would you tell me?’
‘No.’
I want to argue. He smiles sadly. ‘It’s safer that way.’
‘I need another favour,’ I say.
His eyebrows almost meet.
‘It’s not for me,’ I say. ‘Mum is going to lose the salon. She owes money to the landlord.’
‘How much?’
‘Seven thousand pounds.’
He takes a chequebook from the same drawer.
‘She won’t take it from you,’ I say, and immediately recognise the hurt in his eyes.
‘How then?’ he asks.
‘We have to think of another way.’
‘I could have it delivered in a brown paper bag.’
I almost say, ‘Could you?’ but realise that he’s joking.
‘That’s not how things are done these days,’ he says.
‘Perhaps you could wire it from your Swiss bank account.’
Now I’m the one who’s joking, but not entirely.
‘I’ll work something out,’ he says.
‘Is that a promise?’
He holds up his little finger and I flash back to being four years old and making pinkie-promises in our back garden where he would squeeze himself into my Wendy house and drink pretend tea made from grass clippings and water from the hose.
He’s such a charming old bugger. He’s like one of those animals that looks harmless, even cuddly – a polar bear, or an elephant seal, or an owl – but behind those big intelligent eyes and wide, welcoming face, there will always be the mind of a predator.
20
Henry has three days off and we’ve driven north to visit his parents in Hertfordshire. Henry’s father is an Anglican vicar, who is married to the perfect vicar’s wife, and they both regard Roxanne as the perfect daughter-in-law who gave them the perfect grandchild. I, therefore, am chopped liver.