‘Sobbing and hysterical. Probably pissed.’
‘Perhaps she’s sad.’
Getting to her feet, Diana collects the glasses, uses a tissue to dab at a spot of spilt gin. ‘Of course, I’ll have to pay for the funeral since we’re so stinking rich and she’s still, what did she say, getting things together after leaving that man who beat her up. What was his name? Peter, Paul?’ She replays the conversation. ‘To be fair, she didn’t actually say stinking.’
Following her example, Edmund sets things in order in the morning room, checks the date before folding the paper.
‘Ash Wednesday,’ he notes, poking the log back into the grate, regretting the fact that they hadn’t had pancakes; his mother could toss pancakes so high they stuck to the ceiling.
‘What’s that?’ Diana has already left the room.
‘Nothing.’ He follows her into the kitchen. ‘When do you think the funeral will be?’
‘Don’t worry, I don’t expect you to come. Now don’t just stand there fiddling with your car keys, you go on to London. I’m fine.’ She waves her fingers at him. ‘Off you go and play with your money.’
It always rankles when she says that, but he never retaliates. After all, she’s probably right. His investments are well looked after by the grown-ups he has employed to manage his businesses, his appearances at the office not much better than a child wanting to help wash the car, and probably equally as unhelpful. Nevertheless, after kissing the dog goodbye, Edmund leaves the house and says good morning to the bronze statue of the boy in the middle of the lily pond as he does most mornings, then he crosses the lawn and heads towards the garages. The builders have finished work on the tower, and the ridiculous underground swimming pool is dug if not watered. He is pleased that the quiet morning is finally all his, undisturbed by the clatter and clang of the scaffolding and the army of strong men singing along to the radio. Usually in March, daffodils and white blackthorn against winter trees would connect him to the present, but today is all about the past. Death follows each footprint left in the wet grass. Forty-one years ago in October, he was ten. Rain and a headmaster’s study and the mute video of the Firsts playing rugby in the mud and the slanting rain beyond the window, and there was a great-aunt he barely knew confirming his mother was dead. Then five years after that, playing tennis with himself against this very stable wall and counting each hit, seventy-four, seventy-five, seventy-six, he might have even got to a hundred had it not been for the crack of a shot, that second literally split. Like the atom, he thinks, a decision was taken and then the one irreversible moment when destruction was loosed upon the world and nothing could ever be the same again. Everyone had been just a little embarrassed at the service, as if, rather than committing suicide, his father had dropped a bit of a clanger. He has never attended a funeral since.
When he reaches the stone bridge towards the end of the half-mile drive which leads from Wynhope House to the road, Edmund stops the car and, disregarding the red mud on his city shoes, slides down to the river. It has rained heavily overnight and the stream is sullen. Cupping his hands in the coloured water, he baptises himself all over again, allowing the cold flood of mourning to pour over him; it still does this, bursts the banks even after all these years.
In the time between leaving his estate behind him and arriving at his office in London, the first-class carriage transports him through a no man’s land of suburbs and sprawling new housing, neither countryside nor city, neither the weight and warmth of his encompassing history nor the ice-shining gleam of his future returns. Something grey and in the middle where everyone else lives, but he doesn’t seem to belong. In the office, he stares out over the Legoland structures around him and thinks that nothing is for ever; he watches a barge moving slowing down the Thames beneath him and thinks perhaps some things are. Mounted on the wall, the small television is permanently tuned to News 24, not so much for the disasters tumbling and flooding and exploding and terrorising the world in the background, but for the market summary which streams along the bottom of the screen and for the red and green graphs in the corner like a life-support machine, showing which way the world is heading.
Twenty-four hours gone, and Mikey writes about his dead granny in his English book as part of a ‘telling stories in the first person’ exercise. His teacher asks him if it is a true story, then says she is sorry, he must be very sad, which he isn’t but doesn’t like to say so. Valerie posts it online and watches the sympathy scroll in, a black tide arriving in waves over the screen. Over lunch, Edmund tells his accountant; he hasn’t planned to, but the news has filled him up with thoughts of dying and they spill over the edge and soak into the conversation about profit and loss. And Diana stands alone at the front door at Wynhope. She is not wearing quite enough given how cold it is for March and the bronze boy is a poor substitute for a listening ear.
Chapter Three
In the following week, between buying some new red slingback sandals for their week in the Maldives and preparing for a dinner party, the ridiculous, overwhelming sense of loss Diana experiences at unexpected moments bewilders her, swamping her without warning in a deluge of sadness, although she cannot name what she has lost, nor does she really have anyone to share her loss with. In the glasshouse, for instance, cutting lilies for the hall table, yellow pollen falls on her cream mohair jumper and she realises that moment will be stained for ever by the death of her mother. Having walked away from home long ago, she never expected this death to matter so much. It is some days later that the idea comes to her that she can invite her half-sister to stay after the funeral; the boy can come too if necessary. She shares the idea with her one and only confidante. Sally is something of a saviour; in her sixties, two facelifts down and loaded up with money from her last divorce when she took the chief executive of an oil company to the cleaners, her friend is a breath of fresh air, at least that’s how Edmund describes her.
At the kitchen table, the two of them flick through magazines and make small talk until Diana decides it’s late enough, opens a bottle of wine and shares her idea.
‘So that’s the plan. Reconciliation. What do you think? Good idea?’
‘Well, since you haven’t told me what it is you need to reconcile, it’s a bit hard to say. But, as my lovely niece would say, what’s not to like?’ says Sally. She points at the picture of the Red Sea on the front of the Sunday Supplement Travel Magazine. ‘If it goes well, you can pop along and help out the Israelis and the Palestinians.’
‘Reconciliation’s probably the wrong word,’ Diana says. ‘Apology, that’s maybe what I mean.’
Pulling out the chair next to her, Sally pats the seat. ‘Ah, so the truth will out. Come, sit, what sin did you commit, sister?’
‘Well, let’s say a sin of omission.’
‘How fascinating. I’ve often wondered when we get to the pearly gates how they’ll weigh up the bad things we’ve done and the good things we’ve failed to do. Which is worse, do you think?’
‘Seriously, I want to apologise because, when I walked out at sixteen, I knew what I was leaving her to. Perhaps I should have stayed and looked after her.’ The drizzle that falls against the window is soundless and smears the glass, the world outside as smudged and speechless as the past.
‘And look where you’ve ended up. I still suffer from kitchen envy every time I come here.’ Sally indicates the sheer beauty and technical perfection of the room in which they are sitting. ‘Well done you, you’re the one that got away.’ Emptying her glass, Sally finds her umbrella. ‘The only thing I’d say is that it can be very difficult making up. You get psyched up, throw yourself at their feet and then it all backfires. Believe me, I tried it several times with the ex. I’d say go for it, but it’s not a one-night stand, darling, it might takes months, years. And with those words of wisdom’ – Sally kisses Diana once on each cheek – ‘your priestess needs to hit the road and pray that God in the form of a policeman with a breathalyser