‘Well, there you are then. Ridiculous.’
‘I know. I’m just warning you she’s narked. They were going to borrow a camp bed for you.’
‘Jesus.’
‘Edward, I know.’
‘And I couldn’t get any work done there, could I?’
‘No, Edward. I understand.’
‘And they’d drive me bananas inside a day.’
‘They’re already driving you bananas. Head.’
‘What?’
‘Head,’ she repeats, and her hand falls onto his hair to guide his stoop under the car’s roof.
Charlotte’s car smells of her perfume and warmed plastic and crackers. His hand, sweeping the seat around his thighs, finds some sharp flat crumbs and a cellophane wrapper. ‘This is the same old heap, isn’t it? The Citroën?’ he asks as Charlotte inserts the ignition key.
‘Don’t be rude, Edward. It’s a reliable car, and it’s friendly.’
‘Done sixty in it yet?’
‘Would you like to walk? That can be arranged.’
‘No, but it’s about time this thing was put out of its misery. It must have half a million miles on the clock by now.’
‘Exactly. It’s reliable. And I can’t afford a new one.’
‘But –’
‘Shut up, Edward. Zip it.’ The car begins to turn.
‘Hold it,’ he shouts, putting up a hand. ‘One last thing before we set off.’
‘What?’ she snaps, braking.
‘Does this place seem familiar to you at all?’
‘What? This hotel?’
‘Yes. I thought we might have been here once, when we were kids.’
‘When?’
‘You would have been around seven. I seem to see a picnic and a big building with a garden in front of it. I thought it might be this one.’
‘Afraid not.’
‘You sure? Have a look.’
‘I’ve had a look.’
‘Have another. Just a quick one. A quick little peek.’
The car moves off at walking pace. ‘Nope,’ she states.
‘Not in the slightest bit familiar?’
‘Never seen it before.’
‘Positive?’
‘Bleeding hell, Edward. Positive.’
‘A false creation, proceeding from the heat-oppressèd brain.’
‘What?’
‘Shakespeare.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘It’s OK. Doesn’t matter.’
‘Don’t be a smart-arse, Edward. Don’t criticise my car and don’t be a smart-arse.’
‘OK. Fair enough. Onward,’ he declares, smacking the dashboard. He opens the window and puts his face into the rushing air.
‘Big kid,’ Charlotte mutters, patting his knee playfully, but she sees nothing playful in the expression that is fixed on her brother’s face: rather, there is anger in the furrows above his eyes, as if she has let him down by not giving him the answer he wanted. She gives him her news about the children, about Lucy’s prize for gymnastics and Sarah’s school trip to Wales. Simon might be in line for promotion, she tells him; her job at head office might be axed, though, and then she’d be back at the Gloucester branch. Edward smiles, nods his head, frowns concernedly, but he is thinking of something else. He seems to have decided that today will not be easy, but she can never tell any more what he’s thinking. It used to be like looking into a darkened cage, looking into his face. In his room, at his desk, he would put down the big lens and wince at her under the glaring light, straining to see. Now he has closed his eyes; he has the appearance of looking inward, making up his mind about something. ‘Try to be patient with Mum,’ she says, and he nods and puts his face back into the rushing air.
In the garden, sitting in the high-backed chair, he is as grim as a judge. Grasping the arms of the chair he tells her: ‘I might go. I might not go. There’s no point getting into a state when she hasn’t even got the job yet.’
‘But I worry, Edward.’
‘As do we all, Ma.’
‘How you’ll cope, I mean.’
‘It’s Italy, not the Siberian tundra. It’s really quite civilised. I’ll cope there the same way I cope here, if I go.’
‘I don’t know, Edward. I saw a story in the paper. Some American boy was kidnapped.’
‘Where, Mum? Where was this?’ Edward demands, almost shouting.
‘In the papers.’
‘Yes, I gathered that. But where in Italy?’
‘Somewhere, Edward. I don’t know. It was awful. Cut off his ear, they did.’
‘Believe me, I am not going to be kidnapped.’
‘Rome, I think it was. Or Naples.’
‘Naples,’ their father confirms.
‘Miles and miles and miles away, Mum. Another country. And I bet your American boy was the heir to a fortune. Not a random impecunious foreigner.’
‘I don’t know, Edward, but it was horrible.’
‘What a catch I’d be. One disabled translator. Any reasonable sum accepted. No cheques. Will consider part exchange. It’s not going to happen, is it? Be sensible, Mum.’
‘He’s right, Mary,’ says their father.
Their mother makes a gesture of woebegone appeal to her husband, miming his name. Looking wearily at Edward, she tallies the beads of her necklace. ‘But it’s a big step,’ she says, passing him another sandwich. ‘You have to think carefully.’
‘Believe it or not, Mum, that’s what I’m doing.’
‘It can so easily go wrong.’
‘Oh Jesus,’ Edward moans, putting the sandwich down before he has taken a bite. ‘Here we go. This is the intro to Ethel, isn’t it? Ethel going bonkers in Winnipeg.’
‘You shouldn’t make fun, Edward. She had a shocking time, she did. Thought she’d be all right, but she needed her friends and her family more than she thought.’
‘Enough, please,’ Edward interrupts. ‘So Ethel went to Canada and became an abandoned wife with a brood of uncontrollable brats and a vicious addiction to sleeping tablets. From this you deduce not that an excitable young woman would be ill-advised, on the basis of a two-week romance, to follow a feckless womanising boozer to a godforsaken dump in the middle of a zillion acres of wheat, but that separation from the home soil brings inevitable ruin to any Brit. It doesn’t follow, Mum, so spare me the heart-rending tale of hapless Ethel and her Canadian purgatory. She is not germane to the case,’ he pronounces, using his words to push her away, and so she never says what she means to say, and what Edward knows she means to say, which is simply that she will miss him if he goes away, and is afraid that she might never see him again. ‘So, Mum, what’s been happening, then?’ he asks when he has finished the sandwich, but there isn’t much to say, because of course nothing much has been happening. They are nearing their seventies; they