THIRTY-SIX

I own that I was in a bit of tizzy after that. As far as I could see, I had three immediate problems, of varying importance. The first was that Dad seemed to be AWOL, but I suspected that this was of his own volition and an Ada-related avoidance strategy; the unkind might call this cowardly, but I could sympathize with him, even if he was merely postponing the tricky conversation that was his unavoidable fate. The second was the radio silence of Max; for whatever reason she seemed to be pissed off with me, which in itself was worrying enough, but in the context of a predatory, not to say completely-off-his-trolley Tristan, it was seriously terrifying. The third was my new theory regarding the sequence of teacher-related murdering that had lately afflicted Bensham Manor School; I didn’t have everything clear in my mind, and I didn’t have any proof, but this time I knew I was right. Trouble was, I suspected that Sergeant Abelson would be tricky to persuade, and I had no doubt at all that Inspector Masson would find my hypothesis only marginally less amusing than last year’s Morecambe and Wise Christmas Special.

Max, though, was the most important problem. I phoned her house and, receiving no response, I took a deep breath and phoned her parents. The receiver was picked up by her father, Henry: Henry was a barrister. Need I say more?

‘Hello? Who is this?’ He always answered the phone like that, as if whoever had dared to ring the Christy household was clearly potentially an oik and was going to be treated like one until their bona fides had been established. I had never asked him outright, but I suspected that a few Masonic code words would have worked wondrous miracles at this point.

All I had to give him was, ‘Hello, Mr Christy. It’s Lance.’

‘Oh.’ Then, lest this should appear somewhat too rude, ‘How are you?’ Notice, none of the usual niceties, just straight in with the probing questions. But I was equal to him.

‘Is Max with you?’

‘Max?’

‘Yes.’ I decided that he wasn’t suffering from some sort of dyspraxia and therefore didn’t give him a brief description of the person in question. A silence ensued.

‘Yes,’ he conceded eventually. ‘Yes, she is.’

‘May I speak to her?’

Another silence. In my mind, at the other end of the phone line there was during this lacuna a silent charade, with lots of gesturing going on between Henry, Max and Henrietta, Max’s mother (yes, really). ‘It’s not very convenient at the moment.’

At least he didn’t tell me she was washing her hair, or was having a nap. There were times when I was first courting that I had conversations like this with a girlfriend’s parents; I didn’t much enjoy repeating the experience. I knew he was lying; he knew he was lying; he knew I knew he was lying; and I knew he knew I knew he was lying. Just thinking about it made me vertiginous. ‘Could you get her to call me when it is “convenient”?’ I tried not to sound cynical and maybe I even succeeded.

‘I’ll tell her.’ He didn’t sound any too keen.

‘Would you also tell her that I love her?’

Maybe he found that one a little difficult, a little too close to the emotional bone, because his response was reluctant. ‘Of course,’ he lied.