Jessica fell back onto the pillow. ‘You’re drunk.’
Joe stood up, trying to hide his disappointment. ‘Probably.’ He turned the desk light off and heard her turn over in bed. ‘How’s Ferdinand?’
She didn’t say anything.
‘We can take him to the vet tomorrow, if you like.’ What did he want? He wanted to tell her about meeting a hairdresser called Lenny today. What was wrong with him? Jessica was the one person he wanted to tell and he couldn’t, because she was his daughter. ‘Night, Jess.’ He stood there waiting for her to say something.
Then, at last, ‘Night, Dad.’
He left the room, shutting the door behind him, and crossed the hallway.
In the master bedroom, Linda was going full tilt up a virtual hill thinking about the muddy footprints Paul Nieman had left in the hallway when he came in with the beer, and how much she’d wanted to clean the carpet. Then she pictured the scene again with herself naked, scrubbing at the mud in a pair of black marigolds, and Paul standing over her, angry.
‘Shit, Joe,’ she said, catching sight of him in the vanity-unit mirror. ‘What are you creeping up on me for?’
He shrugged and watched as she flicked the dials on the handlebars until it looked like a cartoonist was running her in slow motion.
‘Jessica’s writing a book.’
‘Seven miles. I just did seven miles,’ she said, breathless and preoccupied.
‘On how not to die – with a Mr Browne – Jessica says he lives at the end of the Close, but I’ve never seen him. Who is he?’
‘I don’t know, Joe, and I didn’t know she was writing a book.’ Linda got off the bike and picked up the dressing gown from the bed. ‘Mr Browne?’
‘She said she met him at Youth CND.’
‘I think I met him once.’
‘He was giving a talk.’
‘He seemed okay.’ Linda paused. ‘And anyway, she needs to be around other people more.’
‘She’s fifteen years old, Linda!’
‘That’s what I’m talking about – she never goes out.’ Linda threw the dressing gown back down on the bed. ‘Did you see her tonight, Joe? She doesn’t speak – she doesn’t eat… the way she talked to me in front of everybody.’
Joe ignored this. ‘She’s got things she needs to work through.’
‘Like what – the end of the world?’
‘Well, that’s one of them.’
‘Jessica never leaves her room – she needs professional help, Joe.’
‘For what?’
‘For just about fucking everything.’
‘What – like the time she had to see that educational psychologist – what was her name?’
‘Penelope – but she told us to call her Penny.’
‘She spent eight sessions with Jessica – alone – filling her mind with fuck knows what, only to tell us Jessica had a fear of dolls.’
‘I don’t want to start talking about Penny again – you refused the further counselling she recommended.’ The nausea she’d experienced earlier while stood over the mandarin cheesecake rose up again.
‘For fuck’s sake, Linda, this is our daughter we’re talking about … where are you going?’ he said, watching her. The T-shirt she was wearing had dark sweat patches on it.
‘The bathroom.’
‘It’s nearly one thirty in the morning.’
The door slammed shut, and a minute later he heard retching sounds. ‘Linda?’
‘It’s okay.’
‘Are you sick?’
‘It’s the solids.’
‘The what?’
‘The solids – dinner tonight. I’m not used to it.’
He listened at the door, but didn’t hear any other sounds, and after a while he went back into the hallway towards the other bathroom, stopping by the window like he used to when they first moved in. That was two years ago, and everything had been so new then that the contractors hadn’t even got round to putting tarmac on the roads and pavements. It was a new world they hadn’t finished building yet, and he would stand at the hall window in the early hours of the morning, half expecting to see virgin forest carpeting the horizon.
Now all he could see was the glow of Gatwick and, in the distance, beyond the Surrey Hills, the monochrome aurora borealis that hung over London. How had he ever felt himself capable of imagining that the world – his world – was still unfinished?
He went into the bathroom, looked into the macramé basket hanging from the ceiling and failed to work out what he was doing there, then went back to the bedroom and undressed in the semi-dark because Linda was already in bed, and the light on her side was off.
He took off everything apart from his vest, then got into bed and lay looking up at the ceiling where it had been pricked by Artex.
‘Your mum was having her hair cut today,’ he said, turning his head to face Linda, who had her eyes closed.
‘I don’t want to talk about my mother,’ she said, her breath smelling faintly of vomit. Then, after a while, ‘And I don’t know why she has that hairdresser – she can’t afford her.’
‘Well, it’s difficult for her to get out and about.’
The chains on the blinds started to rattle as the extractor fan in the en suite cut out, blowing a draught through the bedroom. Joe felt himself drifting off. ‘The soup you made tonight was good.’
‘Gazpacho, it was gazpacho,’ she said, ‘and before you say anything, it was meant to be cold.’
‘Why’s that, then?’
She didn’t answer, and Joe was almost asleep when Linda said, ‘She used to be in the army.’
‘You never said.’
‘Not my mother – the hairdresser. She was in the Falklands or something.’
He didn’t say anything, and after a while leant over to switch off the light on his side of the bed.
When he woke up it was still dark, and he didn’t know what time it was because the alarm clock was on the other side of the bed. Linda was lying on her back with her head turned away from him and her left hand curled into a fist.
He drifted off to sleep again.
The dark was still deep when Dominique left the house at five a.m. Mick’s flight from Florida – his last flight – was due to land in half an hour.
The road from Littlehaven to Gatwick was all new bypass, cutting across land with small strips of forest that deer used to graze in. She remembered pointing out the deer to Delta when she was small, but now there were no deer left to point out to Steph. They’d hit a deer once, in the red Renault, and Mick had wanted to stop and pull the animal off the road, but she hadn’t let him; she’d told him to keep driving. Then it started raining and they had to pull over anyway because the ton of running deer that had hit the windscreen