George had deposited his father back at the apartment then disappeared, saying he had an errand to run. Patricia was waiting for Philip in the kitchen, arms folded, boot-faced, expecting an explanation, but he chose not to offer one and instead silently took himself off for a bath that he managed to make last for more than an hour. By the time he surfaced, his skin even more prune-like than usual, she had gone out herself. He let out an enormous sigh of relief and spent the next hour alternating between reading a book and plotting how he could make contact with the Reynolds family without alerting Maggie.
It was almost seven when Patricia returned, with George, bearing salad vegetables, cold cuts and a freshly baked loaf. She didn’t ask him whether he was hungry, but proceeded to make him a prosciutto salad and plonked the plate down on the table in front of him.
‘I’m not hungry,’ he said.
‘Oh, so you’re talking to me now, are you?’
Philip stared up at his wife as resentment flooded through him. How dare she speak to him as though he was one of her underlings?
‘I think you owe me an explanation for this afternoon,’ she added.
There was, as far as he was concerned, nothing to explain: he had had a couple of drinks with his son and the other two, had taken Johnnie back to his boat because he was in no fit state to take himself, and then he had enjoyed a quiet coffee on his own. Where was the harm in that?
Of course, there was more to it, but he was certainly not inclined to tell Patricia about him wanting to help Jade’s family. He smarted, however, as he recalled Maggie’s reaction to his request. On the one hand he could appreciate her reluctance to introduce him to Jade’s parents when only a few hours had passed, but on the other he feared waiting any longer was foolish. There was so much he could do to help them now, because those first few hours were also the most crucial. It felt short-sighted and, well, a bit cruel of Maggie to deny him the opportunity.
Thankfully, he could be confident that George, currently observing both of his parents from his position on the sofa, would not tell Patricia about the conversation with Maggie because Philip had asked him not to on their way back to Orquídea. George had agreed because he recognized how incendiary it would be for his mother.
George was sitting with his arms folded across his chest. Philip adjusted his own posture to mirror it. There was something defiant about the pose that made him feel bolder facing down the heat of his wife’s stare.
Had she always dominated him? It pained him to think that she had, and yet Philip could recall the early days of their relationship when he was the one who led the discussions and made the decisions on behalf of his family. It was he, in fact, who decided they should set up home in Crystal Palace after they married in 1971. He had got to know the area well when he had been lodging in nearby Sydenham while studying for his degree in Art History at the Courtauld Institute of Art on the Strand. Patricia was from north of the river, born and raised in Whetstone, but she never questioned his choice for them to move south.
It was only after she’d joined the police that the balance of power between them began to shift. It did not happen overnight, but rather by stealth, until the disagreements between them became so bad it was easier for him to give in to her demands than continue to butt heads. He also wanted to protect the children, who were becoming distressed by their rowing; George’s teacher at primary school called them in to say he’d begun picking on younger boys as a means of venting his frustration and he was falling behind with his learning.
Philip was less able to pinpoint when Patricia’s assertiveness began to make him feel emasculated. Was it when his friends started to mock him for allowing her to nag him as she did? When she banned him from playing golf at the weekends because she found his absence irritating? He couldn’t remember when it stopped bothering him though. It simply became the norm.
A few more minutes ticked by in silence. Philip could see Patricia’s lips begin to twitch, her burning desire to say something overriding her determination to wait for him to reply. He began counting in his head: he’d reached nine when she cracked.
‘So, where were you?’
Philip crossed his arms tighter across his chest before responding.
‘I escorted Johnnie back to his boat because he was too drunk to walk unaccompanied. Then I stopped for coffee to clear my head,’ he said evenly.
‘You should’ve called to let me know where you were.’
‘Why?’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘I said, why?’
‘Dad . . .’ Such was the caution in George’s tone that it came out as ‘Daaaaad’.
Philip smiled benignly at his son.
‘George, I’m asking a simple question of your mother, it’s fine.’
‘You’re asking me why you should’ve called me? Because it’s courtesy,’ Patricia spluttered. ‘I’m your wife.’
‘Yes, you are, but I am not answerable to you, any more than you are to me. If I decide to have a coffee on my own, I do not need to seek your permission to do so.’
‘I never said that you did.’
He had expected her to be furious but her reaction was one of bewilderment, as though she couldn’t understand why he was daring to talk back to her. He uncrossed his arms and got to his feet.
‘Good, that’s settled then.’
‘Why are you being like this?’ she asked him, her voice quivering.
‘Because I’m tired, Pat,’ he said, without a trace of rancour. ‘I’m tired of being nagged and berated and forced to please everyone but myself. I toe the line because I feel I have no other choice.’ He took a deep breath. ‘Katy was the same.’
Patricia went ghostly pale.
‘Dad—’ George cautioned again, this time more abruptly.
‘No, I shan’t shut up, George, not this time. I should have said this many years before now. Patricia, I should never have allowed you to bully our daughter like you did and I deeply regret that. She wasn’t happy, we both knew that, but instead of giving her our blessing to go to Durham, you attached conditions to it because it didn’t suit you for her to leave London. You shouldn’t have withheld my mother’s inheritance from her.’
‘She would’ve just frittered it away if I hadn’t,’ said Patricia.
‘Your preoccupation with the money running out made Katy think she should stay with Declan because he could give her a financially secure future, even though we all knew the relationship had run its course. Our darling girl was so conflicted and you ignored it.’
‘No I didn’t,’ his wife protested. ‘I don’t believe the relationship was on its last legs either. She jumped at the chance to bring Declan on holiday with us.’
‘Because you told her the holiday wouldn’t happen otherwise! She was seventeen and far too young to settle down,’ said Philip exasperatedly. ‘She’d made up her mind to call things off, which would’ve been the sensible thing to do at her age, but you bullied her into changing it. Then we lost her for good.’
Patricia jolted in her chair as if it had electrocuted her.
‘There is nothing I can do to change that now, no matter how desperately I wish I could. But I can change us, how we are,’ continued Philip. From the corner of his eye he could see George staring at him in shock; his son had never witnessed him speaking like this before. ‘No longer do you get to tell me what to do, Patricia. I won’t put up with it.’
He walked out of the apartment, slamming the door behind him, his stunned family rooted to their seats in his wake.