8

Kat

Kat holds her inscrutable poker face. What’s the point in Flora trying to enforce a code of silence, then looking like she’s stuck her finger into a plug socket when she hears a triggering word? She needs to get a grip. Lauren’s noticed: her searching gaze immediately tipped to Flora, where it remains.

‘Well, I’m glad you did those tests, Dad.’ Kat kicks the conversation back to his health. ‘Knowledge is power, right?’

But, of course, this jars too – and Flora flinches again – since knowledge has never been equally divvied between them. For Lauren, 11 August 1999 sits in a penumbra of shadow, and there it must stay.

‘All I know is that at my age it’s like a bloody sniper’s alley.’ Charlie checks his watch once more. Puzzling. This is a man who can be a week late for lunch. ‘Which means …’ A solemn pause. Outside, the wind builds like a drum roll. ‘… I’ve decided to live out the rest of my life exactly as I please.’

‘No shit,’ Kat splutters. ‘Who the hell were you trying to please before?’

‘Kat,’ warns Flora, levering herself out of her armchair – necklace swinging, noosed around her neck – and weaving towards the champagne. Kat vaguely wonders when her naturally beautiful sister, who needs no adornment, started to wear ageing ropes of pearls, a thought shredded by Bertha, who starts to shriek from the conservatory, adding to the lunatic air. Lauren’s eyes magnify into inkblots. Three nights, Kat thinks. Christ.

‘Which brings me to the other reason I wanted you all here.’ Charlie nods at Kat, as if acknowledging their earlier conversation.

‘Oh?’ Flora frowns, clearly not liking their father’s collusive nod, a suggestion of a chat she’s not been party to. Rolling her champagne glass against her cheek, she lets out a small random laugh.

‘Well, as you know, the old McKees – our trusty poet tenants – have deserted us after fifteen years. Despite their negligible rent, they claim Rock Point is too much,’ he says, put out by this. ‘So, we have an empty house again. Burning a hole in my pocket.’ Tenting his fingertips, his gaze roves over them gently.

How those famous gun-grey eyes used to spark. Kat can still see him pacing back and forth from the easel, brush in hand, ceaselessly in motion, unstoppable, as if he had hot coals in his Dunlops. Where did that creative zeal go? That egotistical burning molten core she’d so resented. With an unexpected swell in her chest, Kat realizes how much she misses it. Her father’s alley-cat heat. His messianic indomitability.

He hasn’t produced a major work for years now. None of his paintings has sold for more than Girls and Birdcage, now in a private collection in London. It still hurts Kat that he flogged it. ‘Oh, it’s flawed,’ he will say, when pressed, a tiny muscle quivering under his eye.

Before they split last year, Kofi dared suggest Kat’s drive was ignited by the sale of their portrait, the realization that everything had its price, and some people were so rich they could buy a bit of you. The sale also proved her father – a master of compartmentalization – was capable of detaching from anything. ‘So, you’re putting Rock Point on the market?’ she asks, speaking her thoughts aloud.

‘No,’ he says slowly, heavily, with the air of someone who has considered this and cannot face it. ‘No, I’m not.’

‘Kat! How could he? It’s been in the family for ever,’ Flora says, as if Rock Point were Downton Abbey rather than a villa bought in the early sixties with profits from their grandfather’s booming electro-domestics company. ‘And it should be kept for the next generation.’ She rolls her powder-blue eyes upwards, drawing attention to Raff, the children that Kat and Lauren haven’t organized yet.

Kat opens her mouth to argue that the cleanest way of closing their family’s darkest chapter – and to end the headache of owning a house so far away, perched on a bit of rock, battered by biblical storms – would be to sell. Then she zips it again. On some unconscious level, perhaps Dad doesn’t want to close that murky chapter. Or he cannot. And would she trust him not to peddle the house for half its value just because he likes the cut of someone’s coat? He’s always been cavalier with money, oscillating between stinginess and excessive generosity, disinterest and obsession. She can only imagine the accounts on this place, if he’s kept any at all. He stubbornly refuses her fiscal advice, even though she’s the only member of the family with a numerical, analytical brain. She founded Spring, a digital health platform – ‘Wellness is the only true wealth’ – five years ago, and it’s now valued at over ten million, employing eight members of staff (twelve including the interns). She works seven days a week. She’s proved herself. Made it. Dad hasn’t noticed.

‘The tenants kept this place like a museum. Everything as Mother left it,’ he continues, cupping his knee with his hand. ‘Which is what Ma wanted. But she couldn’t take it with her. So a skip calls.’ Fingers piano-playing the air, he gestures around the fire-lit room. ‘I want rid. All of it. Birdcages. That highly disturbing stuffed fish.’

‘Not Ugly Humphrey!’ Flora squeaks, and they all turn to stare at it, gurning in its dusty glass case on the wall. Who named it Ugly Humphrey? Kat can’t remember now.

‘I want a fresh start, Flo. And that means Rock Point being dragged kicking and screaming into the twenty-first century. Paying for itself with a proper rent – you know, a luxury let, like the reality shows on Netflix,’ he adds blithely, making Kat wonder if he’s done any serious research at all. ‘I plan to split my remaining time on Planet Earth between London and Paris and defer to a smart letting agent.’

Bertha shrieks loudly from the back of the house.

‘Oh, her days are numbered too,’ says Charlie. ‘I’m trying to find a new parrot parent, obviously. If you know anyone …’

Flora leans back into the window seat, with a faint ripping sound.

‘I invite you to take anything you fancy from the house this weekend.’ Distracted, he peers out of the window. ‘Rummage around. Rescue what you want.’

A quicksand silence. Well. Certainly not the inheritance Kat’s mother had in mind. She feels unexpectedly wrenched by the dismantling of their childhood summer haunt. The invitation to stick their hands right into the past and yank bits out. Resisting the urge to self-soothe with a Twitter scroll, Kat sneaks a glimpse at her phone. Eight missed work calls. It never stops.

‘Kat, put that damn phone away for once.’ The table lamps start to flicker, threatening to plunge them into darkness. ‘I’m also going through my old sketches upstairs. They’ll pay for the roof, septic tank, all that malarkey.’

Lauren is staring at him in disbelief. ‘You’ve left sketches here, Dad? In the studio?’

Something unreadable travels across their father’s face. And the funny undertow Kat’s sensed since she arrived tugs harder, a sort of mistuning, like the crackle of a public radio when it picks up a private channel. ‘Odds and sods,’ he murmurs.

Rain starts to finger-tap at the windows. And Kat remembers the sound exactly, the soft, slightly metallic timbre of it, nothing like London rain, the way it made her feel warm and safe behind the stone walls. Rock Point hosted her happiest childhood memories – but also her worst. Unable to collate her feelings effectively, she springs up. ‘I’ll grab a shower before we eat.’

‘Well, if you’re quick,’ says Charlie, checking his watch again. ‘You’ll need to run the water for ten minutes before you get a second-degree burn. The water system is all fire and ice. Mostly ice.’

‘Good.’ She takes a cold shower every day. It quiets the chattering in her head. ‘Speaking of which, who’s swimming in the morning?’

Lauren sinks back on the footstool with a shy smile, like a pupil in a classroom who doesn’t want to be picked out by the teacher.

‘But you’ve got no subcutaneous fat!’ Flora refills her glass. ‘You’ll freeze like an Ice Pop! I bet you run in and straight out again.’

‘Er, when have I run away from anything?’ Kat says, annoyed.

‘His name begins with K, ends with I.’ Flora is always less conflict averse after a drink.

‘Well, my reply begins with an F …’ Her six-month relationship with Kofi was a glitch, a system crash, a joyous chemical delusion. No dating site would ever have matched them. ‘Not everyone lives in a rom-com like you and Scott.’

This disarms Flora, who mistakes it for a compliment. ‘Gosh, you’re right,’ she says, after a beat, looking horrified. ‘I’m so sorry. I never should have –’

‘Well, I’d just like to say,’ Charlie cuts in, and stands up slowly, with an odd smile. ‘It’s never too late to fall into a rom-com.’

‘What? That’s possibly the least Charlie Finch thing you’ve ever said, Dad.’ Kat studies him uneasily. ‘I’m worried about your hair shafts now.’

‘So, the announcement …’ Charlie takes a breath, visibly bracing. Out at sea, a clap of thunder like a starter pistol. ‘… I’m getting married in Las Vegas next month.’

They shout over each other.

‘What?’

‘Who?’

‘I’ve met someone.’ Charlie holds up his hands, flapping back their questions. ‘Rather, three months ago I met this someone again. I haven’t seen her for twenty years. It’s been a … a whirlwind. A joy. And she’s just …’ he shakes his head, boyishly awestruck ‘… lit up my life.’

On cue, an arc of car headlights sweeps across the living room. ‘I think you’ll remember her,’ he calls over his shoulder, rushing to let in his new fiancée and a violent blast of the gathering storm.