V

RETURNING FROM THE north, I seemed to fall into a woeful state of listlessness. I had intended, after I split up with Tony, to go abroad somewhere, but then came those two awful deaths, and day slid into day, week into week; and then there was the box and I’d done nothing about going any further than Cumberland. There was no pressure on me to do anything, that was the trouble. I had no commitments, no responsibilities, no one to demand I pull myself together. I could drift as long as I wanted. It was an enviable position to be in, and yet I found myself wishing I could lose myself in the demands made on a wife or mother. I started to blame Susannah, unfair though I knew this to be. If she’d left me alone, I’d have recovered from my mother’s death and at last gone away to revitalise myself. I needed some proper distraction, but I was too jaded, and too confused about the contents of the box, to go in search of it.

There was a message from Rory on my answerphone when I got back. He asked where the hell I’d got to and why I hadn’t turned up for that drink we were going to have, he was pissed off with me. I’d forgotten our arrangement, not exactly a firm one anyway, and knew I ought to ring him. But I didn’t want to, even though he was the only relative with whom I still had any regular contact, and certainly the only one for whom I felt any affection. Only with Rory did I feel completely at ease. The pattern of holidays changed after I was about seven and, instead of spending most of them surrounded in my own home by my mother’s nieces and nephews, I went to Edinburgh to stay with Rory. This, I gather, was my own choice. My parents were none too happy about it, but apparently I pleaded with them and they were as indulgent over this as they were in everything. But they thought Rory was a bad influence. He was by then well known to do silly things, sometimes quite dangerous things, and they worried I would copy him. They were right, I did, or if I didn’t exactly copy him I allowed myself to be led by him and admired his daring.

This was not so very extraordinary, but at the time it was thought bad enough. Once, when we were both eight, he took me hitch-hiking. We got a bus to the outskirts of Edinburgh, I don’t remember where, and then Rory marched me on to a main road where the city boundary gave way to countryside, and we stood and thumbed a lift, or rather I did. He’d made me wear a pretty dress, which I hated, a white thing with a Peter Pan collar and a sash, thin material covered with little blue flowers, saying cars would be more likely to stop for a girl dressed like that than for any boy. No car stopped as I stood self-consciously following Rory’s instructions, but a lorry did. It was a gigantic lorry with wheels so big they towered over us as it ground to a stop and the steps into the cabin were so impossibly high the driver had to get out and come round to lift us in. He asked where we were going and why we were on our own, and Rory came out with incredibly full details to do with sick grandmothers, broken-down cars, lost money and God knows what else. He said we were going to London, where we would be met by our uncle. I hadn’t known this and didn’t even realise it was all part of the lie. The lorry driver settled us in his cabin, which seemed like a house to us, full of all kinds of funny possessions, like a potted plant with a tiny watering can beside it, and two cushions embroidered in Rangers football club colours, and a tray set as if for tea, complete with a dainty net cap over the milk jug. He was a big man, his overall sleeves rolled up to reveal muscular arms tattooed with pineapples, and, though he talked to us all the time, we couldn’t make out a word he said above the noise of the engine.

Quite quickly, it all stopped being exciting and became very boring indeed. We were glad when after about half an hour the driver pulled into a service station for petrol. He said he was going into the café, when he’d filled up, for a cup of tea and an egg sandwich and would we like to join him. Rory said we hadn’t enough money (another lie – he had a ten-pound note but had been going to wait until this man was in the café and then we were apparently going to run away and find a more comfortable car to travel in). The driver laughed and said he’d treat us and without asking he lifted me out of his cabin, so Rory was obliged to follow. We all trooped into the café and he settled us at one of the red Formica-topped tables near a steamed-up window, then he went to get drinks and food. We couldn’t leave – not that I had any plans to, though Rory did – because he kept his eye on us all the time. We saw him tell the woman behind the counter what he wanted, and then he came back and said he had to ring his wife and he’d be back in a minute. Even then, we were never out of his sight because the telephone was at the end of the room and he faced us while he rang. We saw him talking, but of course there was too much noise for us to hear that he wasn’t ringing his wife, he was ringing the police.

By the time we’d finished eating, and he’d been told our names were Jimmy (which was what Rory had always wanted to be called) and Valerie (my fancied name), and that we were orphaned twins, the police had arrived. Half an hour and our real names and address later, so had my Uncle Hector and Aunt Isabella. Hector was absolutely furious. The lorry driver and the policemen were amused, but Hector saw no humour in the situation at all. He proceeded to do a very old-fashioned thing, there and then in the café, much impressing the lorry-driving clientèle. He took hold of Rory, who admittedly was slight for his age and offered no resistance, put him over his knee, pulled down his pants, and slapped his bare bottom hard several times. I remember there was a ripple of noise throughout the café, but I don’t know whether it amounted to a collective gasp of admiration or of horror. All I was worried about was whether my turn to be humiliated would come next. It didn’t. We were both taken home and put to bed after more shouting from Hector and a lecture from a tight-lipped Isabella. She felt obliged to ring my parents, and I heard the phrase ‘anything could have happened’ over and over again, plus repeated apologies for Rory’s disgraceful behaviour. I was sent home the next day.

Rory didn’t improve as he grew older. He was referred to as ‘bolshie’ by his father and grave doubts were cast over his honesty and integrity and all the other virtues his family prided itself on possessing in abundance. Both his parents were Camerons, though in no way related, except presumably several generations back, and they held their family name in great respect, as proud to be Camerons with all they considered this implied as my own father was to be a Musgrave. Rory, by the age of sixteen, was becoming known as ‘not fit to be a Cameron’. He’d disgraced himself in all kinds of ways anathema to them. He was clever, but regularly failed exams; he was never short of pocket money, but was caught shoplifting items he could easily have bought; he got drunk, crashed his mother’s car (which of course he was not old enough to drive), dyed his hair green, had his left ear pierced, wore torn jeans and in general did all the classic wild teenager things so objectionable to his deeply conventional parents. The list of his misdemeanours grew longer and longer. My father used to smile, while shaking his head, as he passed on the latest on Rory from Isabella. He prophesied that Rory would probably turn out to be a hero when he’d finished sowing his wild oats, but in fact he never did finish sowing them. The moment he left his excellent Scottish public school, to which he’d most unsuitably been condemned by his ambitious father, who’d been there himself, he promptly embarked on a life of minor crime.

It was cars at first. He had his own car, given to him on his seventeenth birthday, a perfectly adequate second-hand Volvo, but that wasn’t good enough. Encouraged by the youths he associated with and learning from them (though that was no excuse), he stole sports cars, changed their number plates, had them resprayed, and resold them. He told me he had only intended to do it once, for himself, but he got away with it so easily he decided to do it again and then again and make money out of it. But the money wasn’t the attraction – though Hector had stopped his allowance by then, so he had to earn a living somehow and had no intention of doing any regular work – and he never pretended it was. He loved the daring of it, the excitement, the pitting of his brains against those of the police (‘no contest’ he boasted). But he had a little sense left in his head, enough to stop the lark before his luck ran out. Abruptly, he switched to trading in antiques, his own idea this time. The trading consisted of keeping an eye on local newspapers, the funeral notices and will announcements, and then targeting widowed old ladies. He would go and visit them and ask very politely if he could help them dispose of any furniture. Because he was entirely unthreatening, still slight in build and blond and with a cultured Edinburgh accent, and by then dressed for the part in a suit, and a sparkling white shirt and old school tie, he was well received. He bought bits of furniture at absurdly low prices and sold them for absurdly high ones. This was not of course criminal, just a form of cheating, if one sanctioned in the trade. He always knew the real value of what he bought and he always knew the old ladies did not. He said he made them happy by giving them his time and listening sympathetically to their woes. But this kind of thing was only the respectable front for a much more dubious enterprise which, when he hinted at it, I told him I did not wish to know about. Whatever it was, he came unstuck in his late twenties and had to leave Edinburgh hurriedly. Ever since, he’d lived in London, though never for long in the same place.

Rory came to my mother’s funeral, which was good of him. Charlotte had never been sure whether she liked him or not, and he had always sensed this and been wary of her. It was only my devotion to him that made her tolerate his visits later on, when she had heard enough about his wicked ways to justify her unease. But he came to her funeral and was kind and tried his best to comfort me. He told me I was not to forget he was my best friend and would always be there for me. I was touched. Touched, but not fooled. Rory’s concern for me might be genuine – no, it was genuine, I’m sure – but he cared more about himself. I knew that if my needs clashed with needs of his own he would put himself first. Normal, I suppose. He was just a normal man. But ever since the funeral he had been most solicitous and had rung me often, though I knew it wasn’t just because he felt sorry for me. There was self-interest there too. Once Tony had gone, I think Rory fancied himself as my flatmate. He hadn’t suggested moving in outright, but he’d hinted at it. I’d been very careful to give out clear signals of refusal.

I could never share a flat, or even a big house, with Rory. Not because he is untidy (though he is, horrifically) or because he smokes heavily, but because of his personal life. He has never so far as I know had any relationship lasting more than a couple of weeks, and he says he has never wanted one, this causes him no grief. He moves on from one man to another, in spite of these being dangerous times, and says this suits his taste perfectly. Perhaps, but without being judgmental, it would not suit me. I couldn’t bear a constant stream of youths passing through my flat. It wouldn’t matter how discreet Rory was, and discretion was not something he was known for, I would hate the presence of strangers. It is hard enough for me to share my living space with someone I love, never mind with those I would not even get to know. Rory ought to have understood that, since he didn’t like sharing himself.

It is an odd connection between us. We like to be on our own and find it a strain to share with lovers, however devoted we are to them (not that Rory has ever shown much sign of devotion). We don’t like our homes cluttered up with others. The only-child syndrome, perhaps? Always having everything as we wanted it? But I’m sure there are as many only children who go the other way, who cannot bear to be alone and require constant companionship to make up for their years of deprivation. At any rate, Rory, like me, lived on his own but, unlike me, had never bought his own place. He said he couldn’t afford to, but I know there were many times when he had the money to do so. He went on living in rooms not his own surrounded by furniture he’d never have chosen, never properly inhabiting anywhere he lived. These were sad places. He never invited me to any of them, but once I tracked him down and turned up on his doorstep and he was obliged to let me in. It was a basement flat in Kilburn, damp, dark and with walls painted a really lurid purple. He’d made no effort to do anything at all to it and just laughed when I shuddered. He said he wouldn’t be there long, and he wasn’t. I never visited him again. It was too depressing to witness his circumstances.

Maybe he floated the idea of moving in, after Tony left, from kindness. Maybe he thought I would be lonely, considering Tony had lived with me longer than anyone ever had, well over a year. If so, he couldn’t have been more wrong. The best thing about Tony’s departure was that it allowed me to reclaim my own territory. The relief was enormous, even if it was tinged with guilt. I swear that waking up to find I was on my own remained absolute bliss for weeks afterwards – I’d wake up, stretch out in the bed, realise I was alone, and feel such relief. I don’t think I was ever meant to live with anyone, except my parents, as a child. I am too intolerant, too irritable, too fond of silence. I suppose I had survived so long (long by my standards) with Tony because I’d been away on jobs a lot that year, and because he worked late himself, often, and I had whole evenings undisturbed. It was when I hit a spell of a couple of months without any assignments, which can occasionally happen, that things began to go wrong. We loved each other (I think) but I discovered then that, put to the test, we weren’t really compatible. It wasn’t so much a case of his liking one thing and my another as of our personalities. The attraction of opposites had been an attraction, but over time, living together at close quarters, it was being so different in temperament that brought us unstuck.

It’s odd, but it takes a long time for temperament to show itself, or so I’ve always found. No one can really be certain of the temperament of another until they have lived with them for a while. Attraction is all about physical things at first, obviously – I mean, you see someone, usually before you hear them and before you know them. What I saw in Tony wasn’t what he was like. His calmness was not so evident. On the contrary, he seemed particularly sharp and alert, as though he were on the watch all the time, noting things, analysing them. And he spoke too quickly for me to consider he was a settled sort of person of quiet tastes. Then, even after he had moved in with me, it took a while for me to appreciate how extremely solemn and serious he was, about everything, and how (to me) unnaturally patient. Nothing seemed to anger or upset him. I’d drop and break something and swear furiously; Tony would drop and break something (though he hardly ever did, being much too careful) and simply pause for a moment, looking at what he’d done, before going to get a brush and pan to clear it up. It wasn’t just a case of staying calm over trivial upsets either – he was the same over important things. He once had a briefcase stolen from his car with incredibly important documents in it which he needed the next day. Did he yell and roar and go berserk? Did he hell. Turned a little pale, did a bit of hard swallowing, but there was no violent explosion of rage as there would have been with me.

At first, Tony’s temperament made him the ideal person for me to live with. He balanced my constant state of near agitation and I found this so soothing. It was like having my mother with me again: he could cope with me as Charlotte had always done. But then his studied (except that it was natural) steadiness began to annoy me in ways hers never had. I wanted him to shout at me when I was being impossible, I wanted him not to be so bloody, nobly understanding. And sexually I wasn’t sure I was happy with him any more. He was a good lover, if being a good lover means being both tender and passionate and always thinking of my pleasure as well as his own – what more could a woman want? – but I was no longer excited. I persuaded myself, or tried to, that this didn’t matter, that sex always gets less exciting with familiarity, but I didn’t really believe it. I thought there should still be some spark there whenever I saw him. If I loved him, as I thought I did, where had it gone? In its place there grew irritation with how he was, his habits.

It made me want to move away, though it was Tony who literally had to do the moving since it was my flat. I thought he never would. He didn’t seem to see what had happened, how I had reached the stage of trying to be out if he was in and vice-versa. He said things like, ‘We don’t seem to manage to spend much time together these days,’ as though it was something we both regretted instead of something I’d conspired to achieve. Then he put what he called ‘my moods’ down to my father’s sudden death and my mother’s illness, and made endless allowances. I had to be brutal and ask him to go. It was as though I’d shot him. His face drained of colour and his expression was incredulous, but he said nothing at all. He just went, with no pleading, and for that I was grateful.

But there was no doubt that the solitude I’d wanted and was so relieved to reclaim was dangerous once I came back from that Cumbrian jaunt. Rory’s voice on my answerphone was surprisingly welcome and on impulse I rang him straight away, before I could think about it and wonder if I could be bothered. What I hadn’t anticipated was that the moment he heard me he would say he was coming straight round and then hang up. I was so annoyed – it hadn’t been what I’d wanted at all – but once he’d arrived I found myself quite glad to see him. Someone, for once, was better than no one, and Rory was better than anyone. ‘You look awful,’ he said, and laughed. ‘So what wild adventures have you been having, cousin mine?’ I made him coffee and, because there was no way I could avoid it and make any sense, I told him about the memory box, just the bare facts. He loved it. He demanded to see the eleven objects immediately and I was obliged to get them all out and line them up again, all except of course for the discarded feathers.

‘What a joke,’ Rory said, and I was cross and said there was nothing funny about this. ‘Don’t be silly,’ he said, ‘of course it’s a joke, a laugh. You’re getting everything out of proportion. For God’s sake, Susannah leaves you a box of junk and it gets forgotten for thirty-odd years and then when you open it you start looking for symbolic meanings – it’s stupid, you know it is, and what’s wrong with you, where’s the cold-eyed realist, Catherine? Chuck the lot out. She probably didn’t even know what she was doing, she was so ill.’

‘She knew,’ I said. ‘It was all carefully done. You should have seen the wrappings. And everything was numbered and arranged. It was all thought out.’

Rory lit a cigarette, without asking permission, and studied me. ‘Such misery, dearie,’ he said. ‘I didn’t know you cared about Susannah anyway. I always thought it was great, the way you were never a tragedy queen about your real mother dying, the way you never brought it up or traded on it, the way you didn’t go in for any poor-little-me stuff. What’s happened to change that? Why is this dead woman suddenly getting to you? Have you become a born-again Christian or something? Has the Lord spoken to you about your beloved biological Mama you’ve denied all these years?’

‘It isn’t funny.’

‘I know it isn’t. That’s what astounds me – you think it’s so bloody serious when it should be funny. The whole thing is ridiculous. You should treat it as farce not get all worried and mournful.’

‘It doesn’t feel like a farce. Things left by dead people are creepy.’

‘Yeah, dead creepy, geddit?’ And he laughed, hooted.

‘Don’t, Rory.’

‘Well, for fuck’s sake.’ Then he peered at me. ‘Oh, come on, Cath, you’re not crying, oh my good gawd.’

I wasn’t, not really, but there were tears ready to roll if I didn’t control them. I allowed Rory to give me a cuddle and then he said that we both needed something stronger than coffee, and jumped up to open a bottle of wine. When we both had a glass in hand, and I was more composed, he wandered about touching the objects that had been in the box. I hated him doing that. He is always a great toucher, a fidget, incapable of just looking at anything. He has to pick things up, turn them over, examine minutely anything he is interested in. He picked up the shell. ‘Don’t touch that!’ I snapped, but he ignored me and put it to his ear. ‘Receiving, receiving,’ he chanted. ‘I’m ready for the message – loud and clear – here it comes – “I am from the ssssea!”’ He laughed and took it in both hands, running his fingers critically over every bump and ridge. ‘It’s not such an extraordinary shell,’ he said, quiet now. ‘Not from any British beach, but there are plenty of these in the South Seas and even the Caribbean. I’ve found them there, shit loads on Anguilla when I was there.’

‘Susannah never went to the Caribbean or the South Seas,’ I said. ‘She hardly went abroad at all. People didn’t, then.’

‘How do you know?’

‘My dad told me.’

‘But what about before she met him?’

‘She met him young. She hadn’t had time to go anywhere.’

‘Well, maybe not. You should check with my mum. But anyway, even if she didn’t go somewhere to bring back this shell for herself, someone else must have done. They gave it to her as a souvenir, that’s all. It hasn’t any other meaning – a pretty holiday memento she passed on to you.’

‘Depends who gave it to her.’

‘Now that really is looking for messages,’ he protested. ‘This will tire my poor little brain out. You are actually suggesting, my sweet cousin, that the point of this shell being left to you was that it was given to Susannah by someone she wanted you to track down? Don’t be so silly. It-is-only-a-shell. She liked it. She hoped you would like it. End of story.’

I was suddenly sure he was right, but instead of being relieved I was disappointed. Just a shell. A shell from some part of the world to which she had never been but had always yearned to go. Maybe leaving it to me signalled her yearning, maybe she hoped I would be able to go where she had not been able to go. Well, I had. I hadn’t been to the South Seas or to the Caribbean but I had travelled far and wide, as she had not, and I intended to visit many more countries. If she wanted, she could come with me in spirit and we’d find other shells like this and bring them back to join this one. I smiled to think of this sentimental fancy, and Rory, mistaking my own self-mockery for a new cheerfulness, which he credited himself with bringing about, said, ‘That’s better, that’s a good little girlie, now.’

He picked up the mirror next. ‘Nice mirror,’ he said. ‘Queen Anne, I think. I’ll give you fifty quid for it.’

‘So that means it must be worth at least two hundred pounds.’

‘Cheeky.’ He scrutinised the silver work on the handle and said, ‘I wonder where she got it from. There’s a mark here I’ve seen on some of my mother’s silver – look, see that curly C, round the stem of the ivy? It probably belonged to our grandmother. It’s probably a family heirloom and as much mine as yours.’

‘It was left to me, thank you.’

‘But maybe Susannah had no right to it. Anyway, you’ve always denied you’re a Cameron. You’ve always boasted about being a Musgrave: all your precious dad, with nothing of Susannah and the Camerons in you.’

‘Maybe, but I do have Cameron genes whether I want to acknowledge them or not.’

‘And you have their mirror.’

‘So? You’re not suggesting Susannah stole it, I hope?’

‘No. But if you don’t want it I should have it.’

‘Should?’

‘Just teasing.’ He was still holding the mirror when he sat down beside me and held it out in front of him so that it reflected both our faces. ‘Remember?’ he said, the teasing tone gone, ‘Granny screaming, when she saw me looking in the wardrobe mirror, that she thought my reflection was Susannah?’

I remembered. We were both staying with her. Rory had just turned five so I was a bit younger. We’d been dressing up, Rory as a girl and me as a boy. He’d put on a pink, frilly frock of mine which I hated and he adored, and he had a pink ribbon holding back his blond curls. We hadn’t been able to tie a bow properly in spite of laborious attempts and it hung down his back. His hair was still quite long then and very thick and he was thrilled because he made such a convincing girl. But seeing him in the mirror gave my grandmother such a fright – she nearly had a heart attack, believing him for a moment to be her own dead daughter. His likeness to Susannah as a child, already remarked on, was apparently uncanny. He had the same colouring, the same shape of face, the same eyes. My grandmother told Rory never, ever, to dress up as a girl again and give her such a shock. He took heed, but only to the extent of never letting her see him do it again. In fact, every time we were together for years and years after that the first thing we always did was dress up as the opposite sex. It went on until we were about eleven, when suddenly I was the one who refused to dress up at all and spoiled the game.

‘I remember,’ I said, ‘but I’m sure you don’t look like Susannah now, even if you dressed up as a woman.’

‘Shall I?’

‘No, you shall not.’

‘You are so mean.’ He held the mirror closer, fascinated by his own face. ‘I’m sure I still do look like her.’

‘No, your face is too plump.’

‘Plump? Don’t be gross.’ He peered anxiously at himself and felt his cheeks. ‘That’s bone,’ he said, ‘good, strong bone structure, not fat. Plump, indeed – the idea. I’ve just filled out rather charmingly. And anyway, Susannah only became thin-faced when she was ill. I’ve seen the photographs. Up to the last six months her face looked like mine does now, lovely. It’s the hair makes the real difference. If I had a wig, one of those pre-Raphaelite jobs, I’d look just like her still.’

‘Why would you want to?’

‘Well, she was beautiful. Everyone said so.’

‘But she’s dead.’

He put the mirror down and turned to look at me. ‘There you are,’ he said, smirking, ‘you’ve just realised. Yes, she’s dead. She’s been dead thirty-one years, sweetest, so why are you fretting over an old box?’

I ignored that. ‘Why do you think she put a mirror in it?’ I asked him.

‘Oh, for Christ’s sake …’

‘Please, humour me, Rory. Please.’

‘All right. Because it’s valuable. And because it is a family heirloom.’

‘Not because she wanted me to take a close look at myself, as she looked at herself, and see the resemblance between us, search for it?’

‘Have you any whisky?’

‘No.’

‘More wine, then, it’ll have to be more wine. You’re driving me to serious over-indulgence. Stop it.’

‘You over-indulge all the time, Rory. You’re so unhealthy – all this smoking and drinking, and you never take any exercise.’

‘I look healthier than you, dear – I haven’t got great black circles under my eyes, thank you.’

‘I haven’t been sleeping well.’

‘I’m not surprised. You’re driving yourself mad. Trouble is, with Tony gone and as you don’t seem to have much work on, you’ve got nothing else to do but brood over this wretched box. And you were all upset anyway. It came at the worst possible time.’

‘I know. I’m going to go away soon. I meant to, as soon as the house was sold.’

‘Where will you go?’

‘Don’t know yet.’

‘Who with?’

‘Nobody. By myself, of course.’

‘I could go with you, if you like. I fancy a bit of sun.’

‘I didn’t say I was going somewhere sunny.’

‘Then I’m not coming with you.’

‘You haven’t been invited. Why should I want you?’

‘Because it isn’t good for you to be on your own at the moment, and I’m your best friend.’

‘Like hell you are.’

But he was, he is. I’ve never been good at friendships. I don’t put enough into keeping them going. At school, I had plenty of friends but I was never really close to any of them; I didn’t go in for best friend pairing off. If I wasn’t on my own, I preferred a group. And then after school I didn’t make the effort to keep up with anyone. Same at St Martin’s. If anyone I’d been friends with there contacted me afterwards I always responded (I think), but I never made the first move myself, and people naturally notice that and get tired of it. So my only close friends came to be lovers and when affairs ended so did the close friendships, inevitably. I don’t suppose, for example, that Tony will think of me now as a friend. And with my parents dead (because they were definitely friends as well as parents) that does indeed leave Rory. It was quite like old times, our bickering, and I enjoyed it. ‘Come on, then, best friend,’ I said, ‘I’ll take you out for a meal and we can do some more bonding.’

I used to wonder if my lack of interest in close friendships was because my parents were too much my friends when I was young, and then later on, when there were things happening in my life that erected a kind of barrier between us, I had Rory. I might not see him often, and I might not always know how to reach him even, but the connection between us was so strong it could be resumed immediately. I’ve always felt comfortable with Rory, completely at ease. Maybe it amounts to a sort of conceit, but I think I know him in a way no one else does, or not to my knowledge. The Rory I know is not the person others see. He projects an image, quite deliberately, of someone flippant and careless, he proclaims his sexuality defiantly and even crudely, and though I have never understood why, I think I understand very well that this is a complicated challenge he’s issuing. He dares people to be repelled by him, by his own stridently camp representation of himself, and when they are he imagines he’s tested them and found them wanting and has nothing more to do with them. In a weird way I do much the same thing – I, too, like to project an image that tries people’s patience and I’m not satisfied until they’ve put up with my fierceness and hostility and general surliness and still want to know me. Just as Rory can stop acting a part, so can I. But there was something else, something Tony was near to realising. I think we were attracted to each other once, Rory and I. I think that on the very brink of adolescence, when we were eleven or twelve, there was an attraction between us which I may have mistaken for love (because I certainly hadn’t realised then that my cousin was gay). Nothing ever happened. It didn’t go anywhere. But when I say Rory is my best and only true friend to the exclusion of all others there is that element mixed up in it.

The best thing about Rory is that I don’t have to be careful, I don’t have to try in any kind of way. He’s known me all my life and I feel more comfortable with him than I ever have with any lover, which says something (though I don’t quite like to wonder what exactly). Familiarity in his case hasn’t bred contempt, but instead security. He knows me through and through, maybe the way a brother would have done if I’d had one. I can be rude and bad-tempered and offhand, and he isn’t offended. He lets me try to reform him in all kinds of ways and doesn’t hold my attempts against me, except to warn me not to try to be his mother when I push him too far. As if. My feelings about his mother, about his father too, are pretty much in agreement with his own. Hector is overbearing, humourless and disgustingly racist and homophobic; Isabella is prudish, cold and utterly self-centred. I would never try to be either of them. I don’t know how such people could have produced Rory (and frankly neither do they). There is no trace of either of them in their son. Our grandmother always swore there had been a mix-up somewhere and really he was Susannah’s – Isabella did not seem to find this offensive. She was always plaintively wondering aloud where Rory had come from (and in time she got some pretty crude answers from him).

‘So how’s Tony?’ Rory asked, once we were settled in the restaurant.

‘You know perfectly well I don’t hear from him, so shut up.’

‘Poor Anthony.’

‘Oh yes? I can’t think why he’s thought of as “poor”.’

‘You were horrible to him and he loved you so.’

‘I wasn’t.’

‘You were. Vicious and nasty.’ He was laughing and making faces between mouthfuls of bread, but I knew he meant it. ‘The dear man adored you and you led him on and then you dumped him. Poor Tony.’

‘It wasn’t like that. We were just wrong for each other in the end, that’s all, and I had to say so.’

‘In the beginning, more like, that’s what I’d say.’

‘Then you’d say wrong, Mr Smart-arse. Don’t be so stupid. Why would I have had him to live with me if I couldn’t stand him in the first place? You make these stupid remarks without thinking what you’re saying.’

‘I know what I’m saying. What I’m saying is that you knew damned well he wasn’t right for you, but you were attracted to him because he was like your father and you couldn’t resist him.’

‘I’m not speaking to you any more. You appal me.’

‘You amuse me.’

‘How sick.’

‘Any mention of your dad and you go all frigid and furious.’

‘Anyone would if the kind of silly comments you make were made to them.’

‘It wasn’t a silly comment. Tony looks like your dad. So did what’s-his-face, Ian thingy, the one before, and that foreign fellow before him. You only go for men who look like your dad and then when you find out they aren’t like him, you chuck them out.’

‘Did I ask for this?’

‘No.’

‘And you’re drunk.’

Suddenly, he leaned across the table, and taking hold of my hand, even though I tried to snatch it away, he pressed it hard and spoke differently, in an embarrassingly urgent, sincere way. ‘I’m not drunk,’ he said, ‘I’m worried about you. You’re messing up your life like I’ve messed up mine. What are you going to do? Thirty-something, career on hold so far as I can see, no lover never mind no husband or darling kiddies, a poor little rich orphan going potty over the ridiculous contents of a box …’

I got up, flung some money on the table – we hadn’t actually eaten anything except bread so far – and left the restaurant.