It was so good to be back.
Kate Maddox felt an urgent tug at her arm and looked down into a pair of wide blue eyes – eyes like her own, Vernon had always said. ‘His mother’s eyes and his father’s nose.’ She hoped that was all Jack had inherited from his dad. Other attributes mother and son shared were dark brown hair; Kate’s long and wavy, falling over her shoulders; and Jack’s cropped close, but in exactly the same shade of chestnut; freckles across the bridge of the nose which were only really visible in summer, and an infectious, easy laugh. Like Kate, Jack would probably be tall and slim when he grew up. She was secretly pleased that he would one day, hopefully, tower over the short-legged, bull-necked Vernon.
‘Mum, Mum, look – there’s that robot I was telling you about.’
Jack was pointing towards a shop window – Hamleys, she realised, the giant toy shop that she had once dragged her own parents around – and a white toy robot lumbering around in the window. She only had the vaguest recollection of Jack telling her about this robot, but it was clear that it had been occupying his thoughts recently. It was amazing how, in the midst of upheaval, he could still fixate on such things. Actually, it was reassuring. Although she hadn’t yet explained to the six-year-old exactly how different things were going to be from now on. She’d been putting it off.
‘Can we have a look? Please?’
‘Okay.’
She allowed herself to be led over to the window where Jack pressed his palm against the glass and watched the white and silver robot as it performed a number of tricks. ‘It’s so cool,’ he breathed.
‘Hmm.’
He gazed up at her. ‘I’d be really happy if I had one.’
She smiled at his disingenuous turn of phrase, then caught herself and frowned. ‘I think it’s probably too expensive.’
Jack squinted at the price tag. ‘It’s eighty pounds. How much is that in dollars?’
‘Too much.’
She sensed him deflate and felt a blow of guilt, then annoyance at her own guilt. £80 was too much for a toy, although she and Vernon had both bought Jack a lot of expensive gifts recently. Guilt gifts. Competitive gifts. Most of those toys were still in Boston, in Jack’s cluttered bedroom with the Red Sox bedspread and posters covering every inch of the walls.
The robot’s eyes flashed red and Jack squealed with laughter. ‘Cool. I can’t wait to tell Tyler about this.’
Tyler was Jack’s best friend. Hearing his name brought back that feeling of guilt with a vengeance. Was she a bad mother? What would Jack say and do when she told him? She looked at the robot and at Jack’s rapt expression as he watched it; and then she decided to infringe the first rule of parenthood: never back down once you’ve already said no.
‘I guess you have been a good boy recently.’
Thirty minutes later they were in McDonald’s in Leicester Square – another treat for Jack, who wasn’t normally allowed to go into such unhealthy and additive-laden places. Every other kid in the place was gazing enviously at Jack’s white robot.
Jack cradled it on his lap while he ate his veggie burger with one hand, Kate trying to be relaxed at the sight of the ketchup threatening to drip at any moment. The bloody robot was nearly as big as her son and now they were going to have to lug it round with them. What had she been thinking? She’d let her guilt get the better of her.
‘I’m going to call him Billy,’ Jack announced solemnly. ‘Billy, this is my mum.’
The robot bleeped on cue.
‘Pleased to meet you, Billy,’ Kate said, forking a piece of tomato.
‘Mum, where does the Queen live?’
‘Nearby, in Buckingham Palace.’
‘Billy and I would like to visit her.’
‘I’m sure she’d be fascinated to meet Billy, but I don’t think the Queen allows visitors.’
Jack thought about this. ‘Is it because I’m American?’
‘You’re half British.’
‘Which half ?’
‘The best half.’
‘Daddy said that most British people are stuck up and have dirty teeth, like that man over there.’
The man Jack was referring to, who did indeed have teeth that looked like they’d fall out in shock if a toothbrush ever went near them, looked angrily over, and Kate shrunk down in her plastic seat.
‘Jack, shush.’ Most British people were stuck up? That was the most hypocritical thing Vernon had ever come out with – he was the bloody snob in the family. He was the one who refused to fly economy because of the hoi polloi. He was the one who didn’t have a single acquaintance without an Ivy League education.
‘Are my teeth American?’
‘Yes.’
‘What about Billy’s?’
‘I don’t think he’s got teeth. But if he did, they’d be made in China like the rest of him.’
‘Mum, what do robots eat?’
She grabbed one of his french fries and held it up. ‘Microchips?’
They both giggled, and the man with the mossy teeth gave them an equally dirty look.
‘Come on, we ought to get going. I’m tired and I need a bath.’
‘Are we going back to the hotel?’
‘Yup.’
‘Mum.’
‘Yes?’
‘I don’t have to have a bath, do I?’
‘It depends how good you are between now and bedtime.’
They left the restaurant and joined the throng outside. With Kate holding her son’s hand, they edged their way through a crowd gathered around a juggler.
As they reached the kerb, she stuck her arm in the air as she spotted a taxi with its orange light on, but another man, a businessman with a phone stapled to his ear grabbed it first. The cab crawled away – traffic didn’t speed in this part of London, where gridlock had become something else for tourists to write home about – and she cursed under her breath. She looked around for another cab.
And saw a ghost.
‘Stephen!’
Life is full of moments like this – snap decisions, taken unconsciously, and when people ask, later, ‘Why did you do that?’ the only honest reply is, ‘I don’t know.’ The sole explanation she could think of was that, in that moment, she was flung back in time to a night when she thought she’d died and gone to Hell. When she’d walked in despair through the grounds of the Cold Research Unit and searched for her lover.
And if she’d seen him then, she would have called out his name, like she did now.
But he didn’t react.
The man on the other side of the road didn’t flinch or alter his expression. He just stood there, drinking from a Starbucks cup, staring into the middle-distance and frowning. He wore a grey pinstriped jacket and faded blue jeans. His hair needed a cut and flopped over the rim of his glasses. Staring at him, she recognised the same traces of age she’d noticed in the mirror: the crow’s feet, the lines at the side of the mouth that held a history