46

It had been agreed that I would pick Rad up on the next fine day that I was free. I couldn’t reach him by phone; I would just have to turn up. ‘How will you know I’m coming?’ I asked. I tend to prefer more concrete arrangements.

‘I won’t. If it’s fine and you don’t turn up I’ll know you were busy.’

‘How will I know you’re going to be in?’

‘I’m bound to be in. Where am I going to go? I suppose I might be on the island, fishing, but I’ll leave you a note on the door.’

That night I sent up a prayer for drought but for the next three days it rained and on the fourth the sun shone but I was teaching. I was uncharacteristically short with my students and sent one girl off in tears.

‘Stop,’ I commanded, half-way into the piece which I had set her the previous week and which she was evidently sight-reading, having set eyes on it for the first time that morning. I had half considered letting her saw and stumble her way to the bitter end as a punishment, but the sound was intolerable and I called a halt. The sawing stopped and the girl looked up, a combination of fear and relief on her face.

‘Sarah,’ I said, wearily. ‘People always look at great classical musicians and say, “How do they play like that?” as if it’s just a matter of luck. And the answer is that they’ve been practising for hours on end every day for ten, twenty, thirty years.’

Sarah smiled politely, uncomprehendingly.

‘What I’m saying is if you don’t practise – and I can tell you haven’t practised this piece at all’ – I waved away her halfhearted murmur of protest – ‘these lessons are a complete waste of time. You’ll never make any improvement in the half an hour a week we have together.’ I was warming to my theme now. ‘You’d be better off back in the physics lab or wherever it is you’re supposed to be now. You might learn one interesting fact there, which is more than you’re doing here. Do you actually enjoy playing the cello?’

‘Sometimes …’ Her foot traced a scratch in the polished floor. ‘No,’ she conceded. ‘I enjoy talking to you, though. It’s just the practising I hate.’

‘Well, I think you should consider giving up.’ I surprise myself sometimes. I don’t normally recommend this course of action to a pupil with any ability – it’s too much like making a case for my own redundancy – but I suddenly felt inspired to preach Rad’s gospel of minimalism. ‘When I’m having a clear-out at home,’ I improvised, ‘I look at things and think, “Do I need this? And if not, do I love it?” And if the answer is No, I bin it.’ It’s the same with this: you clearly don’t need to play the cello, and you’ve admitted you don’t love it. So …’

‘… Her parents rang up the head the next day to complain that I’d told their daughter to throw her fifteen hundred pound cello in the bin.’

‘And did she?’

‘Er, metaphorically speaking, yes. She’s given up. But the head asked me to be a little more restrained in my careers advice next time.’

Rad laughed. ‘I didn’t think you’d start holding me up as an example to your students.’

‘Oh, but you’ve completely converted me. You won’t believe how many pairs of shoes I’ve chucked out in the last few days.’

Rad glanced at my feet. We were walking along the broad path to the ornamental lake at Kew. He had been sitting on deck on the sun-lounger reading the paper when I arrived, his bad leg outstretched. He had dark glasses on so from a distance I couldn’t tell the direction of his gaze and had to make a long, self-conscious walk along the towpath, wondering whether I was being watched. Just as I came within about twenty yards of the boat he had, without otherwise moving, raised one hand palm outwards, and I knew he’d seen me all along.

In my zeal for clearing out my flat I had of course forgotten the inside of the car which was full of old drink cartons, sweet wrappers, crisp crumbs and broken cassette cases.

‘There was no need to go to the trouble of tidying up for me,’ Rad said, absolutely deadpan, trying to find some footspace amidst the junk.

‘I know,’ I said. ‘That’s why I didn’t.’

‘I feel rather a hypocrite now,’ Rad said, peering into the lake, looking for chub. ‘While you’ve been throwing things out I’ve just gone and bought something. Two things.’

‘What?’

‘The houseboat. And a chair. I decided having only one was a bit anti-social. And now I’ve got the new one I’ve realised how uncomfortable the old one is.’

‘How on earth did you get a chair back there?’

‘Dad and a roof-rack.’

‘The first time I ever saw your dad he was shifting furniture,’ I said, then shut up abruptly, realising that Rad might not particularly like to reminisce about his parents’ move into single beds.

‘He didn’t actually do any of the lifting: he just bullied the two shop assistants. I made sure I was wearing my sling so I wouldn’t be expected to help.’ He raised his bad arm and tried to mime a tennis serve, a pinched expression on his face. ‘I’ll never win Wimbledon now,’ he said, with a hint of self-pity.

‘A distinct possibility, was it?’

‘No. But I don’t like anything to be ruled out. Do you?’

We made our way between flowerbeds laid out like mosaics of purple and pink. Symmetry was king here: tulips all grew to the same height and pansies bloomed simultaneously. Rebel, I urged them silently. Go on: wilt, keel over.

Although it was warm in the sun there was a cold breeze and the sudden blast of hot damp air that greeted us as we entered the Palm House took me by surprise. Condensation streamed down the windows, and high above our heads jets of fine mist bloomed on metal stems. Rad looked up at the balcony running around the inside of the roof. ‘You go up if you like,’ he said. ‘I’m not sure I’ll manage the spiral staircase.’ By the time I’d climbed to the top, my shoes ringing on the treads and making the white iron banisters sing, I was dizzy and breathless. The heat and humidity were overpowering; moisture dropped from the ceiling on to my hair. Through the veils of water vapour below me I could see Rad moving amongst the plants, crouching to read their names. The only other person on the balcony was an old woman in a flowery dress, pop sox, walking boots, a horse-blanket overcoat and a bobble hat. She was making notes in a diary and muttering uninhibitedly. That’ll be me one day, I thought, suddenly. A mad old crone in American Tan pop sox and comfy shoes, visiting botanical gardens and stately homes on my own. A fat drop of water hit my cheek, and as I pulled a tissue from my coat pocket one of my gloves – a frivolous pink leather thing – which was rolled up inside, sprang out and sailed between the bars of the parapet to land with a slap not a yard from where Rad was standing. He looked up as if expecting an avalanche, and when he saw me leaning over the railing, wagging the other glove in apology he pretended to tut impatiently and picked up its partner. A moment later there was the clang of feet on the stairs and he appeared on the balcony.

‘I accept your challenge,’ he said, handing back the glove, ‘whatever it is.’

‘I doubt it,’ I said, facing him, and for a moment a little current of fake antagonism crackled between us.

‘Excuse me, excuse me,’ said a voice, and we pressed ourselves back against the warm water pipes running around the walls to let the woman in the bobble hat pass us, still muttering.

‘I’m going to end up like her,’ I whispered to Rad, once she was safely out of earshot. He looked critically at her departing figure, taking in the pop sox at half mast, and the moulting overcoat, and then looked back at me with an appraising glance.

‘Ambition’s a terrible thing,’ he said, and strode off to the far staircase before I could think of a crushing reply.

Downstairs we made our way past tamarind and ebony trees, banyan and sugar cane and an oil palm with its hairy trunk like an ape’s arm. In the basement were giant kelps, electric-blue and yellow fish and red algae like crushed velvet.

‘Have you got a garden?’ Rad asked, as we finally emerged from the tropical heat of the palm house to the chill of an English spring.

‘No, I’ve got a window box full of dead things,’ I said, pulling my coat collar over my ears.

‘I can see that gardening might be quite fun,’ he mused. ‘I mean when all other possible sources of fun have been exhausted.’

I nodded. ‘We’re not quite at that stage yet, though.’

He shook his head. ‘No, not quite.’

I could tell he was beginning to flag as we reached the Cherry Walk. His bad leg was obviously giving him trouble, and I noticed for the first time that he was walking with a limp. The sky was overcast by now. It was only a matter of time before we were rained on. We made it to King William’s Temple, which had obscene graffiti scored into the stonework and stank of cigarettes like a bus shelter, just as the first shower came. Tanya is a fridged cow, read one of the messages. Rad pulled a face at the smell and the gougings in the wall. ‘I hate this country,’ he said in disgust. This was how he had been all day – joking one minute and then withdrawn or morose the next. Much of our circuit of the gardens had passed in silence. I stood near the doorway looking through the curtain of water at the steaming gardens beyond. I couldn’t help remembering the last time we had taken refuge from the rain together, in the cottage at Half Moon Street, and didn’t dare catch his eye in case he might have been thinking of it too. ‘Come on, it’s only rain,’ I said, stepping out into the monsoon. I didn’t want to hang around like someone waiting to be kissed.

‘That was a good idea of yours,’ he said a little later as we sat in the café, water trickling from the ends of our hair and rolling off the front of our coats. After only the first few seconds’ dash from the temple we were so thoroughly soaked that further haste was pointless. ‘We should have brought an umbrella,’ Rad said, watching me unwind the scarf from around my neck and wring it out into the plant pot beside me.

‘I’ve got a brand new one in the boot of the car,’ I said, as if this was of any interest now. ‘I’ve been saving it for a rainy day.’

He put down his coffee untasted. ‘I was going to tell you you haven’t changed,’ he said. ‘But I’ve just realised that you don’t blush any more. Do you?’

I shook my head. ‘I don’t much nowadays. I must have got all my embarrassments out of the way early.’

This was his first hint, in all our conversations since I’d first found him fishing on the island, that such a thing as a shared past even existed.

‘You seem to have more confidence.’

‘That’s funny,’ I said, stirring brown sugar crystals into my coffee. ‘Because you seem to have less. But then you had far too much before anyway.’ I smiled to let him know I was joking, which I was, almost.

‘I think when you’re young you’re an extreme version of yourself and as you get older your personality moves towards the norm. Then when you get really old it swings to the extreme again.’

‘Is this a theory you’ve formulated over the years?’

‘No, I just thought of it,’ he admitted.

‘I remember you used to be very tough on me and Frances. Trivial was a word that came up a lot.’

‘Really? In what context?’

‘Oh, you know, high heels, nail varnish, jewellery – all that girly stuff.’

‘Did I? I quite like high-heeled shoes on women now. Though they’re obviously not for walking in, are they? Just for looking at.’

I raised my eyebrows. ‘You have changed …’

‘I’m all in favour of a bit of trivia now and then. Like your earrings, for instance. The fact that you’ve gone to the trouble of putting a little gold moon in one ear and a gold star in the other – that’s nice.’

‘… On the other hand,’ I said, ‘you can still be as deliciously patronising as ever.’

‘Sorry,’ he said, shrugging his shoulders. ‘It’s years of practice.’

On the way back to the car Rad offered to cook me dinner on the houseboat. I was pleased, of course, that he wanted to extend our day together, but an image of that shelf of tinned pilchards and rice pudding rose up unbidden. I could almost taste them on my mind’s tongue, and a look of anxiety must have crossed my face because Rad said, hurriedly, ‘No, of course, you’ve probably got other plans –’ and his forehead puckered into a frown.

‘I haven’t,’ I interrupted. ‘Well, I’ve got to get back at some point to feed the cat, but not this minute. Shall I stop on the way to pick up some food?’ I added casually. ‘You didn’t have much in when I was last there.’

‘You’re worried about my cooking, aren’t you?’ said Rad. ‘You’re thinking of that tin of frankfurters.’ In the face of such percipience I could hardly deny it. ‘I told you they weren’t mine,’ he said.

‘I’m not a fussy eater,’ I explained in mitigation. ‘But my tastes have evolved a little since the days of the Greasy Dog.’

‘So have mine,’ said Rad. ‘Unfortunately my abilities haven’t. So it’ll just be a packet of spaghetti and a jar of pesto sauce, if that’s not too basic for your evolved taste.’

‘That’ll be fine.’

‘It’s Mum’s sixtieth birthday party a week on Sunday,’ said Rad suddenly as we were driving through Richmond Park on the way home. ‘Will you come?’ He was attempting to wipe the inside of the windscreen with a shred of tissue that I had unearthed from the glove compartment. Even the full might of the car heater was not equal to the clouds of vapour coming off our wet clothes, and the windows kept fogging up.

‘I’d love to,’ I said, peering at the road through a fist-sized patch of transparent glass.

‘Everyone will be there – except Frances of course. I mean Dad will be there …’ he trailed off.

‘That’s okay,’ I said evenly. ‘I’d like to see them all.’

‘I know Mum would love to see you again. And Lawrence. He gave me such a hard time when we, you know, lost contact.’

I smiled at the notion of our ‘losing contact’, and even at a distance of thirteen years I was pleased to imagine Rad having a hard time. ‘Not being Radleys was a strong bond between us,’ I said, and then, ‘Sixty. I can hardly believe it. Is she grey?’

‘Underneath,’ said Rad. He looked out of the window at the traffic crawling away through the park. ‘Is it me, or are there more cars around nowadays? The rush hour seems to go on all day.’

‘It’s getting worse,’ I agreed.

‘Makes me proud that I haven’t got a car.’

‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘Much better idea to get a lift from someone who has – that way you can feel superior without having to get the bus.’

He gave me a look that said smartarse, and started to pick through my selection of classical cassettes that were jammed into the cubby hole in the dashboard.

‘Who’s the greatest composer?’

‘Mozart,’ I said, without a second’s hesitation. ‘Who’s the greatest philosopher?’

‘Hume,’ he said. ‘But then I never finished the course.’

I couldn’t help laughing at this. ‘What did you do when you left?’

‘I can’t remember. I think I had a bit of a breakdown. I just about got through that autumn term after Birdie’s death, sort of sleepwalking, but then at Christmas I went slightly mad. I was so obsessed by the idea of death I couldn’t see the point in anything – eating, working, getting out of bed, getting into bed. Mum sent me off to see this psychotherapist in Battersea. She just sat there with her hands folded and occasionally replied to one of my questions with another question, and after about three months of this twice a week I worked out what it had cost and thought, Christ, I could have gone round the world for that and got more answers, so I packed it in. Then once the idea of travel had occurred to me I started to think about VSO and within six months I was in India.’

‘You’d have thought they would try to screen out people who are just running away.’

‘I wasn’t just running away. Anyway, I reckon about ninety per cent of the volunteers I met out there saw the whole thing as a sort of equivalent to joining the Foreign Legion.’

‘How long were you there for?’

‘Two years. Then I came back and got a job with this Arid Lands project and after a few years in the office the posting came up in Senegal.’

‘And now here you are.’

‘Yes. Here I am,’ he said, not sounding terribly convinced.

On the houseboat Rad lit the Calor Gas stove and hung our coats in front of it over the back of a rickety drying frame. He looked at my jeans which, like his, were soaking from knee to ankle, and then vanished into the spare cabin and reappeared carrying a couple of towels. ‘Do you want a shower while I slave over this jar of pesto? It’s the only way to get warm in this place. You can borrow a pair of my trousers while these dry off if you like.’ He pushed the cabin door open and pointed to the piles of clean laundry. ‘Help yourself.’

This is a bit kinky, I thought, selecting a pair of brown corduroys, ironed by Lexi with a crease down the front, and a faded denim shirt. In the bathroom I inspected Rad’s toiletries for any signs of female habitation: shampoo, soap, deodorant, toothpaste, shaving foam and a Bic razor. So far so good. Outside I could hear him clattering saucepans, and the whine of the tap running. The shower was so low on the wall only a dwarf could have washed his hair without stooping, and even infinitesimal adjustments to the dial could not deliver water at a temperature between freezing and boiling. I squealed as Rad turned off the kitchen tap and scalding water erupted from the shower head.

‘Sorry,’ he called. ‘I forgot to mention that the dial is stuffed. You need the touch of a brain surgeon.’

There was no room in there to get dressed, and besides every surface was awash by the time I’d finished, so I was forced to emerge, wrapped in a towel, red-shouldered and flustered, and make my way to the spare cabin, dropping and retrieving items of clothing along the way. Rad, who was sitting on the bench seat with his leg up, reading and drinking red wine, watched my undignified progress with amusement. ‘I’m afraid a bit of water went on the floor,’ I said, underplaying the facts rather.

‘Never mind,’ he said. ‘Help yourself to wine.’ And then, ‘Godalmighty, what were you doing in here?’ as he stepped into the bathroom with a splash.

I poured wine into an empty glass – one of those indestructible types they give away in petrol promotions. I still had a few like that back home; they outlived all the decent ones – practically bounced when dropped. On the cooker the saucepan lid started to rattle, so I stood a sheaf of spaghetti in the bubbling water and watched it collapse against the side of the pan. On the dresser was a jar of green pesto and a hunk of parmesan which looked as though it might have spent a couple of weeks in a mousetrap. There was no cheese grater, of course, so I was reduced to hacking chunks off the block with a blunt fruit knife.

How can anyone live like this? I asked myself as I nearly took off the end of my finger for the second time. Making do with stuff you’d find in a badly equipped caravan. All this ad hockery was perfectly acceptable for a fortnight’s holiday, but Rad had been here over four months and now owned the place. You could have too much of this minimalism, I decided.

Once I’d disposed of the cheese and given the spaghetti a stir I removed my coat, now steaming, from the drying frame and replaced it with my wet jeans and jumper. Then I settled down on the bench with my wine and picked up Rad’s book, an ancient Penguin edition of Three Men in a Boat priced three and six, and opened it at the first page. ‘There were four of us – George, and William Samuel Harris, and myself, and Montmorency …’ A bookmark fell out on to the table. It was my card: the one I had sent some three months ago now and which he had never followed up. Sorry we didn’t have a chance to talk properly the other evening. As I went to slip it back between the pages, about half-way through, where I guessed it had been lying, I saw that on the back, all around the address, he had doodled the name Jex over and over again, dozens of times, in large and small handwriting. I felt my scalp prickle, and then the bathroom door opened and I dropped the book guiltily and stood up.

‘It’s nearly done,’ I said, pointing at the pan. He burst out laughing when he saw my outfit. And I suppose in his oversized shirt and trousers, with everything rolled up several times at ankles, cuffs and waistband, I did look rather like one of those home-made guys that you see slumped outside tube stations on Bonfire Night. While he was in his cabin changing I cast around to try and check my appearance, finally turning up a chipped mirror tile on the inside of a cupboard door at about chest height. Clearly the boat’s last owner hadn’t been one to preen.

The pasta was cooked by now so I hunted vainly for a colander, but found only a buckled tea strainer with a ten-pence-sized hole in the middle, and was forced to make do with the saucepan lid. Rad appeared in dry jeans and a white shirt, rubbing his wet hair with a towel, to find me picking strands of spaghetti out of the sink. We were so hungry by this time that if it had been faintly scented with Fairy Liquid we wouldn’t have noticed. Rad sat on the bench seat with his bad leg up and I sat opposite on the new chair – a handsome but rather hard Victorian carver. Rad had found a night-light which he stood in a jam jar and placed on the table between us. ‘There,’ he said, ‘I hope all this luxury isn’t making you uncomfortable.’

‘If I’d known I was going to have a candlelit supper I’d have worn my jewels,’ I said, rolling up the trailing cuff of my borrowed shirt for the hundredth time.

Pudding consisted of an apple and a bar of fruit and nut which we shared with coffee. I was glad to see that the chocolates I’d bought him on my previous visit didn’t put in an appearance. It would be hard to admire the sort of self-control which could make a box of truffles last nearly a week.

‘They’ll be wanting you back at work soon, won’t they?’ I asked as we washed up. ‘You must have been off for a few months now.’

‘They’ve been very good about it,’ Rad said. ‘They just want me fit and well.’ From the clipped way he spoke I sensed that he didn’t care to pursue this, though I couldn’t for the life of me imagine why. ‘What about your job?’ he asked. ‘You haven’t told me anything about it.’

‘There’s not much to tell. I rehearse, I perform, I quite often travel. I teach, too, but not very well because I’m away so much. I have no social life whatsoever because my evenings are taken up with concerts. When I do get a morning or an afternoon free there’s no one to share it with because all normal people are at work. Still, I’m not complaining. I know I’m lucky to make a living from my hobby.’

‘It must be very important to you, your career – you’ve been playing since you were how old?’

‘Nine. I suppose it is. I mean I’m not fit to do anything else.’

‘Competition must be pretty fierce at the top.’

‘I don’t know. I’m not at the top – I’m B-list material through and through.’

‘I’m sure you’re not.’

‘No, honestly. I thought I might make it as a soloist when I left the Royal College because I’d won a few competitions. But it just didn’t happen. I was lucky to get a job with a provincial orchestra – and even luckier when this one in London came up. It’s not like other careers where you work your way up slowly to a position of eminence. Here, if you miss the boat that’s it.’ Story of my life, really, I thought.

‘How can you say you’ve missed the boat? You play with one of the best orchestras in the country. In the world for all I know.’

‘I said I’m not complaining. I just don’t want you to have the wrong idea about how famous or successful I am. Because I’m neither.’

‘It’s strange to think that all the years we knew you you were quietly working away at something which you turned out to be brilliant at. I don’t think any of us ever even heard you play.’

‘I remember Nicky was quite surprised to find out that I played the cello,’ I said, looking up at Rad through my fringe. ‘“I can’t imagine her getting anything between her legs,” I think he said – to your great amusement.’

Rad, who had been washing up the pasta saucepan, stopped and then started again slightly faster. I couldn’t quite see his face because he had his back to me and it had grown dark by now, the only light coming from the candle and the blue and orange glow of the gas stove.

‘Don’t tell me I’ve succeeded in embarrassing you?’ I said.

He gave an awkward laugh. ‘I don’t remember that conversation, but I’ll take your word for it because it sounds like vintage Nicky, and it’s obviously seared itself on your memory.’

‘Well, I’m afraid it reinforced that totally false impression you have in your teens that one way or another everyone has an opinion about you. It’s such a relief when you get older and realise that no one has given the matter a moment’s thought.’

‘You exaggerate,’ he said.

‘Not at all. When I got to thirty I suddenly decided that I was never going to worry what people thought of me again. You’ll have missed out on this peak experience because you never did care what anyone thought of you.’

He acknowledged the truth of this with a smile. ‘I meant you exaggerate when you say no one has an opinion about you. I do for instance.’

‘Oh yes?’ I said in as neutral a tone as I could manage.

‘But I wouldn’t dream of telling you what it is because you’ve completely convinced me that you’re not the least bit interested in other people’s opinions.’

The wet tea-towel gave a crack as I flicked it at him, catching him just above the elbow. He laughed, infuriatingly, and took a step back. ‘Yes, I can see indifference written all over your face.’ Crack. He dodged and the draught extinguished the night-light, leaving us with only the glow from the heater to see by. ‘You wouldn’t use violence against a helpless cripple, would you?’

Crack. This time he caught the end and we stood there in the dark with the tea-towel taut between us. ‘All I was going to say was that you’ve improved with age,’ said Rad.

‘Like a cheese?’

He ignored this. ‘Although you’re still very bad at taking compliments.’ The tea-towel slackened and I took it back.

‘Well, I don’t get the practice,’ I said, folding and refolding it. ‘And if you don’t mind my saying, I’m not sure you’re so hot at giving them: “improved with age” sounds as though I was a bit defective when I was young.’

‘That’s because you take a masochist’s pleasure in disparaging yourself.’

‘You’re very confident in your pronouncements on my character. After such a short re-acquaintance.’

‘I haven’t had much else to think about these last few days.’

‘You want to get out more.’

‘I intend to. That was what today was all about, if you remember.’

‘Was the experiment a success?’

‘So far. The day isn’t over yet.’

I looked at my watch: 11 p.m. ‘It nearly is,’ I said.

‘Then these last few minutes are going to be critical. It could still go either way.’

‘We’d better tread carefully then.’

‘No. Being careful would be disastrous. A careful person would pick up her coat and handbag and go home to her tidy little flat to water the pot plants and feed the cat. Recklessness is what’s called for here.’ He took a step towards me and I thought for a second he was going to kiss me, but instead he started to unbutton my shirt.

‘What are you doing?’

‘It’s my shirt. I’m just taking what’s mine.’

Later, as we lay in the tiny cabin, looking at the moon through a gap in Rad’s shirts, I said, ‘Did you sleep with Birdie?’ and then immediately felt ashamed. Even at a distance of nearly fourteen years I could still feel jealous of someone as dead as Mozart and Hume.

He rolled on to his side and leaned up on one elbow to look at me. ‘No, of course I didn’t. She was your sister – I’m not completely depraved.’ There was a pause, then he added, more quietly, ‘I could have done, though,’ and I loved that little flash of male vanity almost as much as the denial itself.

‘I only asked because when you came that day to tell me what had happened, you said you’d banged on the pub door calling, “My girlfriend’s in the lake.”’

‘Did I? God, it must be a curse having your memory,’ said Rad, looking at me with a combination of bewilderment and pity. ‘I was probably just trying to get someone’s attention. It wasn’t exactly the moment to start explaining the complicated nature of our relationship.’

‘Sorry.’

‘It’s all right.’

‘Do you remember what I said when you told me?’

‘Abigail, I’m afraid I don’t remember anything much of that conversation. It’s nothing personal – it’s just been erased.’

‘Good.’

He kissed me on the forehead. ‘Have you ever been to visit her grave?’

‘Only two or three times. I was always afraid of bumping into Val. I’m a coward, you see. Someone visits though, because each time I went, there were already fresh flowers there.’

‘Val doesn’t bear a grudge. I met her again at the inquest when I was giving evidence. She said to me afterwards, “Don’t let this ruin your life.” That helped me more than all the counselling and therapy.’

‘You also said that Birdie already knew Half Moon Street.’

‘Yes, she’d been there with Val.’

‘Dad and Val used to meet there. He took me there once when I was little, and he told me he had happy memories of the place, but we never went there with my mother.’

‘Perhaps Birdie was, you know, conceived there,’ said Rad, thinking aloud, then he shut up quickly, realising that he was implicating my father in an image I might prefer not to contemplate. ‘Well, probably not,’ he said, and put his arm around me. ‘Will you be able to sleep like that?’ he asked, as I fitted myself into the crook of his elbow.

It only seemed like seconds later that Rad was shaking me. I’d been deep in a dream about, of all things, the Last Night of the Proms, and it was a while before I could shake off the feeling that I was still swaying in the audience at the Royal Albert Hall.

‘Can you smell anything?’

I sniffed. ‘Smoke.’

He clambered over me to the door and opened it. In the fraction of a second before he slammed it again I could hear the low roar of fire.

‘Oh shit, the boat’s on fire,’ he said, leaping to the end of the bed and sliding the window open. ‘I forgot to turn off the gas heater and that bloody clothes drier must have fallen on top of it.’ I was hardly listening: it had only just dawned on me that the windows opened out on to the river, not the bank. Stupefied, I watched him pull on a pair of boxer shorts and a T-shirt. ‘Come on, we can’t hang around. The gas canister might explode. It’s only about a six-foot drop to the water. I’ll go first and catch you.’

I shook my head. The rest of me was paralysed with fear. ‘I can’t jump into water,’ I said. ‘Can’t do it. Can’t we make a dash for it?’

‘You must be joking. It’s like a furnace out there.’ I reached for the door handle but he seized my wrist. ‘Don’t touch that door!’ he yelled, and I cringed back on the bed. ‘Look it’s only a few yards to the bank. I promise I won’t let you drown.’ A look passed between us that acknowledged more than we could ever have said about that terrible night at Half Moon Street. ‘I don’t want to leave you alone in here,’ he said then, ‘but I’ve got to go first so I’m there to catch you. Do you promise you’ll follow?’

I nodded, and he pulled himself up to the window, which was only about eighteen inches square, and wriggled out, head first. I heard the splash, then silence for a moment and then Rad’s voice, urgent outside the window: ‘Abigail, where are you?’ I dragged on the knickers and shirt I’d been wearing earlier, my fingers fumbling with the buttons. Even at such an extremity I couldn’t face the thought of being dragged naked from the river, dead or alive. It hadn’t occurred to me until I saw Rad dive out that there was no way I would be able to get my feet over the sill first and lower myself down. I climbed on to the end of the bed and peered through the window. Rad’s pale face looked up at me from the inky water. ‘Hurry up,’ he called. I leaned out, balancing on my stomach on the metal lip of the window. As I hesitated I heard the crack of breaking glass from the main cabin, and out of the corner of my eye saw flames surging over the roof of the boat, and then I closed my eyes and launched myself into the darkness.

The shock of the cold water closing over my head drove all the breath from my lungs and my gorge rose and I tasted death at the back of my throat, and then I felt Rad’s arms around me and cold air on my face.

‘I’ve got you. Don’t struggle or you’ll pull me under,’ he said, and when I felt how firmly he was holding me, and saw how close we were to the bank I stopped thrashing and let myself be rescued.

When we were finally dripping and shivering on the grass Rad did the strangest thing. He put his arms round me and hugged me fiercely, and I realised he was crying. ‘Thank you,’ he kept saying, and for a moment I thought he was addressing the God he’d never believed in. But he wasn’t; he was talking to me. As far as he was concerned, I had saved him.