George arrived at his father’s flat later that night for their regular weekly meal. It was always the same. A Chinese takeaway that George picked up from the same establishment, Xiao Bao’s, every week. They often sat in silence as they ate and normally watched the TV quiz show Countdown which Raymond had recorded for them. But of late they had spent the entire evening in silence, without the TV on. Which they did again on this particular night. George hadn’t noticed anything out of the ordinary. He hadn’t picked up that his father seemed out of sorts. Wasn’t himself. George just sat there thinking about the case.
When he’d eaten he would wait until his father had finished, clear up their plates and the takeaway containers, then do the washing up. He would wash the plastic containers as well as the plates. Raymond liked to keep them for storing odds and ends in. Like screws, nuts and bolts and other necessary detritus he deemed essential for a satisfactory existence. Raymond had been something of a hoarder in the past, before an intervention by his son. An inveterate collector of basically anything he could see a potential future use for, which was fundamentally anything, plastic containers had been one of the main culprits in his collection. So they had come to an agreement, after the cull of Raymond’s hoard a couple of years before, about the keeping of plastic containers. George would wash them every week after dinner. Initially, George proposed that if the cupboard still had the three empty containers from the previous week in it, the new, clean, containers would be put straight into the recycling. But there had been some negotiation about this, as Raymond had pointed out that there might come a time when he needed, say, six, seven or even eight containers, all at the same time. George’s approach would mean that he’d only ever have a maximum of three at his disposal. So, they compromised: a stockpile of ten was permitted; anything above that would trigger the recycling. There had been a tricky moment one week, when George realised there were more containers in the cupboard than there should have been, from the week before. It turned out his father had been getting them out of the recycling, once Cross had left and putting them back in the cupboard. This had led to what Cross later described to Ottey as an ‘intervention’. He could see that Raymond’s hoarding instincts were rising to the surface once again and he had to nip them in the bud. It was an awkward conversation he said, which led her to think, perhaps uncharitably, that weren’t most of his conversations with people awkward? She tried to explain that an intervention normally involved more than just the one person intervening, but he wouldn’t have it.
There was a reason, on Raymond’s part, for this silence during these weekly visits. George was never one to initiate conversation in a social situation such as this. So Raymond normally fulfilled that role when it was just the two of them. But currently Raymond was in something of an emotional downward spiral which he couldn’t seem to climb out of. That George’s mother Christine had recently re-entered his son’s life wasn’t a problem for Raymond. If anything, he was glad of it. Glad to have another person in George’s tiny social circle, who cared for him and would look out for him. It was the unearthing of the past which had affected Raymond. George’s discovery of his mother’s real reason for leaving them had rendered Raymond emotionally conflicted. Over the years he’d kept this from George, letting him believe that she’d left for her own reasons, whatever those were. He felt awful guilt about that now. The fact that George had had to find it out for himself, when it would have been a lot easier and certainly more honest just to have told him about it, made it all the worse for Raymond.
He’d always known that George would find out one day. It was in his nature to find things out. Raymond had imagined that when it did happen, he himself would feel an immense sense of relief. Because the truth would finally be out in the open. But it hadn’t turned out that way. He’d been left with an appallingly empty feeling. It was as if he’d led his entire life living a lie, both with his son and the memory of his partner Ron. He had failed them both and this left him feeling abjectly remorseful. It was a nauseating realisation which he just didn’t seem able to shake off. His silence wasn’t out of embarrassment, but he felt he just didn’t know what to say to his son at the moment. This was despite the fact that things seemed to have worked out well. His son had accepted it all without a moment’s hesitation. What disappointed Raymond, disgusted him almost, was the fact that even when Christine had left it for him to tell George, he still couldn’t do it. She’d had the grace not to out him to his son, but leave it for him. However, when George had asked, he’d just shrugged it off. It was the shabby behaviour of a coward and he couldn’t move beyond it. When it came down to it, he hadn’t had the courage. How much courage exactly was needed? he kept asking himself. But it had left him feeling that he didn’t like himself much and certainly had no self-respect.
George had no knowledge that his father was sitting opposite him thinking these things and feeling this way. It also didn’t occur to him to tell him that the victim in the case he was working was Stephen’s brother. Something Raymond would undoubtedly have liked to know. He just did the washing up and counted the takeaway containers in the cupboard. Six. Well below the ‘statutory’ limit. He put that night’s clean containers in the cupboard and left.