29

Izzy says goodnight to everyone, as she always does, at eleven thirty, but she hangs around, waiting. She takes her shoes off and hums as she wipes areas of the restaurant she hardly gets to: behind the till, the wooden rack the knives and forks sit in.

Gabe comes at midnight, exactly when she said.

‘It’s so hot out,’ she says as she opens the door to him, still in his anorak. Outside is warmer than the air-conditioned restaurant. The paving slabs are body temperature underneath her bare feet. Like the height of summer. Like being abroad.

There’s an amber alert for next week. The unseasonable early heatwave is due to continue. People are being advised to walk their dogs only late at night or early in the morning. The beaches are heaving every day, people covering the sand like ants.

‘I feel the cold,’ he says.

They sit opposite each other at the bar.

‘Any food going spare?’ Gabe says, his tone jovial.

She looks at his slim arms, and her stomach flips over.

‘Alex used to bring home the most amazing leftovers,’ he adds.

‘I’ll see what I can do. Hang on.’

‘Does Nick talk about work much?’ Gabe says.

The question comes out of nowhere, and Izzy pauses on her way to the kitchen.

‘Not much,’ she says carefully.

‘Interesting, that you chose to marry a policeman,’ Gabe says, his tone light.

Izzy opens the fridge and begins pulling things out, her face hot.

‘How’re the job interviews?’ she says to him. ‘And the flyers?’

He laughs, a faint, disbelieving puff of air escaping his mouth. ‘They’re not interested in hiring somebody whose skillset consists of beating people up and making noodles in a kettle.’

Izzy looks away, embarrassed. This imposter isn’t her father. He can’t be. She wishes they could wind the clock back, somehow. That he hadn’t become this man.

He pauses, seemingly gathering his thoughts while looking around him. His eyes dart to the beams above them, unchanged, and the kitchen behind them, reconfigured and refitted. He runs his fingers over the bar – the same bar her mother had, but painted white – and reaches up for a glass.

‘This is huge,’ he says.

‘Huge wine glasses are trendy now.’

‘It’ll work itself out,’ he says, running his fingers around the rim until it sings, a mournful sound in the silent night.

She wonders if he, too, sees her mother everywhere here, despite the changes she’s made. He fiddles with a pot on the bar – he made it, years ago, a tall, thin vase they used to keep breadsticks in but which now houses a bunch of fresh lilies. He taps the top, then smiles at her knowingly.

‘I’m sure,’ she says, ignoring the fact that she has kept his pot. Ignoring what it means.

‘Someone just needs to be brave and hire me,’ he says.

She looks at his slim wrists, his white hair; only a handful of hairs remain black, hidden amongst the grey and the white, like the parts of her father from before. To avoid responding to him – to avoid telling him that even she, his daughter, has her phone in her pocket, poised ready to dial Nick quickly, if necessary – she walks into the kitchen and rifles through the fridge.

‘Would you like a spare cheesecake?’ she says to him.

‘Sure.’

‘It’s a blue cheese cheesecake,’ she says, coming back out to the bar. ‘Full-fat Shropshire blue.’

She tips it on to a plate and adds an artful smear of balsamic vinegar. Her father raises his eyebrows.

‘Blue cheese cheesecake?’ he says. He plucks a menu up off the bar and glances at it. He runs his finger underneath each word like a child.

‘It’s a thing, these days,’ she says, taking the menu. ‘Don’t read, just try.’

He spears a piece but pauses, fork hovering near his mouth. ‘We ordered the week’s meals every Monday. Inside,’ he says shyly.

‘What kind of things did you eat?’ she says, leaning her elbows on the bar.

‘Things that could be cooked in batches … kedgeree. Stews. By the time I’d been in there four weeks, I’d eaten every single meal on offer.’

‘Wow.’

‘We had weird things sometimes, too. Chicken and coleslaw was a popular one.’

‘I’d quite like that,’ Izzy says, and he laughs.

‘People got inventive with kettles. My old cellmate from Belmarsh, Raj, cooked curries in his. He put cling film over the kettle and doctored it so it would keep boiling. He used a tin of mackerel and these Bid Fest spices. Tea tasted awful ever since.’

‘Bid Fest?’ Izzy says.

‘Oh, every Friday we were allowed to order things in. Like an internet shop, except they cost a fortune. A packet of mints would be two quid. They called it Bid Fest.’

‘How did you get money?’

‘We worked. Stitching up prison uniforms … cutting people’s hair – though only those of us that could be trusted with razors, obviously,’ he says with a tiny smile. ‘Cooking. Gardening. Building things, sometimes. My best year was when I was doing the bricklaying. Could be outside more and think. But I earned seven quid a day. It’s a different economy, and I got so used to it. Can hardly remember what’s normal now. Anyway …’ he breaks eye contact and looks down at the bar, then eats the piece of cheesecake.

‘Could you do bricklaying now?’ she says.

‘Maybe. I’ve got six months.’

‘Until what?’

‘Until Jobseeker’s is discontinued.’

Izzy frowns, thinking of the snippet she overheard him say when he thought she wasn’t still on the phone to him. ‘Isn’t it eight weeks?’

‘No. Six months,’ he says, frowning at her. And then his face changes. ‘My point being,’ he says loudly, ‘that you could spend a day’s earnings on three packets of mints.’

‘How unfair.’

He must have said six months. She must be mistaken. ‘Do you have any more interviews coming up?’ she says. ‘There must be bricklayers needed.’

‘You run this place completely differently to your mother,’ he says softly, looking up. ‘God, this is delicious.’

‘Thank you.’

He doesn’t want to speak about his job seeking, that much is clear. His gaze drifts behind her and she realizes he is looking for more food. She finds him a roast, cobbles together a few potatoes and a slab of beef. She puts it into the microwave. He eats as fast as a dog, barely pausing for breath, clearing the plate in less than ten minutes. She looks at his ribcage, just visible above his grey T-shirt, and feels her innards twist.

He has mopped up the gravy with a piece of granary bread that Chris made that morning. He makes brilliant bread; she is sure it is because of his huge hands, his muscular arms, and because he puts heart into it, unlike Izzy.

‘Do you make a profit?’ he says.

‘Of course it turns a profit,’ she says. ‘I thought Mum had it all in hand but she used to spend too much on ingredients. And nobody ever had three courses. Or much wine. She needed to get her ancillaries up.’ She feels pleasure bloom across her chest when her father’s eyebrows rise. He’s impressed. She’s impressed him.

‘I see. Anyway. It’s very pretty. Much prettier than when she –’

‘People want to Instagram everything these days,’ Izzy says, gesturing to a bell jar with a candle inside, to the fairy lights strung up above the bar.

‘They what?’

She smiles up at him. ‘Never mind,’ she says.

He’s quiet for a second. She hands him a soufflé that folded in on itself in the oven. It has sat on the side, waiting to go in the bin. ‘It’s chocolate,’ she says. ‘It looks rubbish but it’s edible.’

‘Do you love it like she did?’

‘What?’

‘Cooking. Dining. Food, I suppose.’

Izzy’s skin prickles with his insight. He knows. Without knowing her at all, he knows. He knows about the heavy, dragging feeling she gets in her stomach at the start of the working week. He knows how she sometimes thinks, halfway through a shift, that she could happily bin all of the food she’s prepared, and just walk out. He knows.

‘No,’ she says. ‘Her parents wanted me to reopen it … to carry it on.’

Her father blinks, looking at her. ‘Granny and Granddad?’

‘Yes. They wanted …’ She pauses, trying to be fair to them. ‘They wanted it open again. As though … I don’t know. It was as though it kept her alive. Her name, I guess, too. Her name on the sign.’

Izzy wishes she remembered the moment it happened, but the truth is, there wasn’t one. Izzy had offered up her expertise on how long was left on her mother’s lease, on who the accountant was, on where she had ordered the food from. And suddenly, as a woman without anything else to do, she was running the restaurant, unofficially and then officially, without truly noticing when one became the other. There was no moment. There was simply Izzy answering everybody’s questions, realizing she could make a nice risotto and spot when a profit margin wasn’t quite right. It had been a welcome distraction, at first.

Nobody had ever asked her. But that was how it was at her grandparents’. When Izzy asked to turn off the television coverage of the US Open Golf, her granddad simply said, ‘Why?’ She couldn’t justify it, so instead, she said, ‘Never mind.’ What Izzy wanted – ballet, Pip, travel, all-day breakfasts in a can – didn’t matter.

Tears gather in her throat as she remembers those bleak years. Everything good – Gabe’s happiness at heading off to tennis, his painting, her mother’s delight over an apple pie – was rationed. Life became monochrome. There wasn’t even a speck of joy. Not a single Indian takeaway, a morning cup of coffee in the sun, a read of Glamour magazine in the hairdresser’s. Instead, life was dreary Sundays spent watching Only Fools and Horses and the Grand Prix, drinking weak tea and reading classics on loan from the library. Life was functional, lukewarm showers that dribbled, completing puzzles alone in the conservatory, perfunctory phone calls with her aunts and uncles, and a job she came to hate. Her morning coffees were an attempt to ward it off, but they didn’t work, not really.

She can’t tell Gabe that. It would break his heart.

‘I see,’ Gabe says, nodding quickly. He stabs the soufflé with a fork. The remaining air evaporates and it folds fully in on itself. ‘I’m sorry. You could … you could start over. You know. Do what you want.’ He catches her eye. ‘Whatever that is.’

Izzy can’t think about that. About the paths not taken. Ballet school. Seeing the world. Pip. It’s too much.

‘I visited our old house today,’ she says.

His face brightens. He finishes the soufflé and puts his fork down. ‘Rainsdown?’

‘Yes.’

‘I have a question.’

‘Okay.’

‘What exactly was the taxi driver’s evidence?’

‘That Mum went inside.’

‘Was she asked to describe the house?’ Gabe is silent, thinking. His jaw clenches. ‘Ye-es,’ he says. ‘She knew about our lamp.’

Izzy’s heart sinks. ‘Right. The thing is …’

‘Why were you at the house?’

‘Because I’m looking into the case against you.’

His expression darkens and his brow lowers. His eyes dart around the restaurant, looking glittery. ‘Are you not yet ready to stop looking into me? To look into who really was responsible?’

He picks up his fork and she sees his fingers blanch.

‘It would be easy for her to make out a lamp through the windows,’ he explains. ‘She would have seen the glow from it, and could have imagined the rest. I don’t think she was lying about seeing Mum go into the house. But she could have been mistaken.’

‘Really?’

‘I wish you’d see,’ he says, the fork still gripped, jaw still set. He releases the fork angrily, and it clatters to the plate.

‘Are you mad at me?’ she says, figuring she may as well ask the direct question.

He rests his head in his hands for five seconds, ten, then says, ‘Yeah, you know, sometimes I am.’

‘Why?’

‘Because of what we had.’

She sees his eyes are wet. She looks down, saying nothing. He doesn’t seem angry with her now. Just sad. He’d never hurt her.

‘I’m sorry,’ she says.

‘We were a pretty special father and daughter. Weren’t we?’

‘We were,’ she says softly.

‘First day missing,’ Gabe says. ‘That’s next. To discuss.’

She takes a deep breath. They are getting to the worst bits. And she knows he has no explanation. ‘Okay,’ she says. ‘Okay.’