Two days later, Dan parked along the street from a large, noisy comprehensive school and peered through the windscreen, feeling slightly overwhelmed as hundreds of kids poured out, all loud voices and massive bags, jostling and barging. No, not all of them, he corrected himself, because in the wake of the gobby ones, shoving and yelling, he noticed some quieter kids with their heads down, plugged into music, detaching themselves from the boiling teenage mass as it thundered along. He suspected his nephew Ethan might be part of the latter grouping. He remembered it well from his own secondary-school years.
Parked up near the postbox, he texted Ethan now, as per their arrangement. Silver Ford Focus.
Ruth Henderson’s boiler aside, this was pretty much the first useful thing he had done since his sabbatical had begun, Dan realized, leaning his right arm against the window. In fact, if he was honest with himself, it was possibly the most useful thing he’d done all year. In recent months he had felt something of a zombie, wearing the same three suits on rotation, taking the same Tube journey each morning and evening, buying the same sandwich from the same deli when it came to lunchtime. Sometimes he would be sitting there at his desk and he’d blink and find himself unable to remember what day of the week it was. What season, even. Sometimes, also, he felt as if he were the only unmoving constant in the office. Around him colleagues were getting married and having children, leaving for other jobs, taking interesting-sounding courses, planning holidays, seeking sponsorship for the marathons and charity bike-rides they’d signed up to. He, meanwhile, just . . . existed. It had been that way ever since his divorce, in hindsight. When everything went to pot in your private life, it was surprisingly easy to throw yourself into work, say yes to every job, however dull it might be, and turn that into your world instead.
The sabbatical had been due to change that, of course. All staff were encouraged to take one after ten years’ service to the company and it had been the managing director herself who had told Dan, quite forcibly, that they were expecting him to take a break. It was good for staff well-being, she said. They would pay him for the time he was off; this was an incredibly generous offer that most other members of the company had been delighted to accept. There must be something he wanted to do other than work, surely?
He wasn’t sure at first. In fact he floundered around in the empty desert of his imagination for quite some time. Dan wasn’t the most adventurous of souls, after all; his Hammersmith flat was a mere three streets away from the house where he’d grown up. But then, just before Christmas, he got chatting to Tiggy, one of the secretaries, who’d recently given in her notice, planning to head off to South America in February for the trip of a lifetime. ‘Sounds amazing,’ Dan said, hearing her describe her itinerary with breathless gusto. ‘I’d love to go there.’
‘Seriously?’ She’d peered up at him through her cat-eye glasses, then smiled with a sudden new radiance. ‘Why don’t you come too, then? My travel buddy’s just dropped out, the selfish cow, and it won’t be as much fun on my own. And aren’t you meant to be taking three months off?’
Tiggy was ten years younger than Dan, she was outspoken and sarcastic and had a pink streak in her hair; in short, she was not the sort of travelling companion he would have picked for himself. And yet . . . Was it idiotic that he had felt unable to refuse? His polite attempts at deferral were deflected by her increasingly persuasive line of reasoning: Yeah, but you said yourself it sounded amazing and you’d love to go there – this is your chance! Look, it’s all sorted – you just need to book your flights. Remember how shit it is in this country in February? Like, the worst, right? Well, forget that, because you could be on a beach instead. Drinking cocktails. Learning to surf and scuba-dive – apparently there’s a wicked place you can dive at Easter Island . . .
Nobody was more astonished than Dan when, by the end of a fifteen-minute coffee break, he’d actually said okay, he’d think about it. It was partly the fact that Tiggy was so relentless and enthusiastic, but also partly because he kept eyeing this version of himself that went off and did exciting things, like climb mountains and scuba-dive, and rather liked it. Besides, she was right about February; he’d always found it the most miserable month of the year too.
‘Blimey, you must really fancy her,’ Patrick teased the following weekend, when Dan mentioned that he was considering taking this mad, impulsive trip with a colleague he barely knew. Dan had protested – Tiggy was so not his type, the idea was laughable – but the more he thought about getting on a plane and exploring cities and jungles and ancient temples and beaches, the more he was seduced by the idea of an adventure. Why not? He had never done anything like this before. Never been the reckless type. Never even been particularly brave. Since his divorce, his life had shrunk to a narrow tunnel, all safety and routine. Earning plenty, but never spending it. The thought of breaking out of his comfort zone and striding towards a new horizon . . . well, it appealed greatly, actually. Did he dare?
Yes, he dared. Encouraged by Tiggy (badgered by Tiggy, some would say), he dared. He’d be forty in the autumn and this could be his chance to finally do something extraordinary. And think how impressed – and maybe even jealous – Rebecca would be, if she got to hear about him gallivanting to a whole new hemisphere with another woman. A younger, cooler woman. She’d always nagged him about being too closed-off, too cautious – but you could hardly get less closed-off and cautious than travelling to the other side of the world. Right? ‘Okay,’ he told Tiggy the following Monday at work. He even sounded quite breezy about it, he reflected, thrilled by his own boldness. ‘I’ll join you.’
And so the plan had come together. A three-month tour, all carefully researched and mapped out. Obviously there were spreadsheets. He had downloaded guidebooks and travellers’ tips, he had worked as hard on his itinerary as he had done on his MBA. They established a few ground rules, too – or, rather, Tiggy had laid down the law. ‘Just to make this clear. One: no sex,’ she said, tapping a pen against her teeth.
‘Of course,’ blustered Dan, caught between wanting to agree vehemently, which might insult her, and not agreeing hard enough and possibly creeping her out. His whole face remained hot as she went through her other stipulations: two, they could go their own separate ways at any time; three, they . . . Actually he had stopped listening by then because he was still so mortified by the no-sex rule. He didn’t even fancy her, and yet now he was left feeling like some dirty old pervert.
To cut a long story short: he hadn’t gone to South America. He’d been a week away from getting on the plane, from becoming that man, when Patrick’s body was found, at which point the world had telescoped right back down to its narrow boundaries once more. ‘You should still go,’ his parents had urged him, but of course, in the shock and tumult of the aftermath, Dan hadn’t felt able to. And yet . . . well. This might sound risible, but in some ways it had been a relief to cancel the trip, now that he had an excuse not to go. A relief, because although he hadn’t said this aloud to anyone, he’d been kind of nervous about spending so much time out of the safe bubble of his usual routine. He’d been increasingly nervous about spending so much time with Tiggy as well. The more he had got to know her, the more he’d realized how different they were, personality-wise. She would probably want to go to wild parties and snort drugs off beefy Brazilian men’s chests all the time, whereas he . . . wouldn’t. He would only have been a disappointment to her, ultimately. A weight, dragging her down.
‘You what? Oh, man,’ Tiggy sighed when he rang to tell her that he was no longer going, choking on the words in his shock and grief as he explained why. ‘Shit, Dan. So sorry to hear that. And gutted for you about the trip, too. But look – leave it a month and come out when you feel like it, yeah? It would probably do you good to get right away from everything. Yeah?’
Yeah, he had replied dully, but he knew even then that he wouldn’t. His trip had already vanished like a mirage, a vivid dream that he couldn’t clutch onto. He’d had a postcard from her that morning in fact, from Valparaíso – Wish you were here! she’d written and it hardly seemed real that in another universe he would have been there too.
Anyway. Whatever. Here he was now instead, doing something practical at least: punctual and ready to commit himself to the first uncle–nephew bonding session of the new post-Patrick world. Zoe had texted him the address earlier and Dan had felt a jolt of – what? nostalgia? heartache? – as he realized where the SculptShed was located: two streets from the road where he and Rebecca had rented their first flat together, back in the good old days of optimism and love. Mind you, in hindsight, their differences had been apparent even then – she liked to stay in bed for hours at the weekend; he didn’t. She liked friends dropping round any time of day or night; he didn’t. She didn’t care how the dishwasher was stacked, while he knew for a fact that his way was more efficient. They had teased each other for these things, though, and none of them had really mattered until, years later and married, they all suddenly mattered. Mattered too much for her to want to be with him any more, apparently.
Enough about Rebecca, he told himself. He needed to stop looking back over his shoulder and face forward again. Today was all about being positive, taking another step to redress the balance and put things right. Forget his travel plans; Dan intended to devote the remaining two months of his sabbatical to filling in for his brother. He couldn’t bring him back but he could walk in his shoes when possible, blot up some of the pain caused by Patrick’s absence by being the very best replacement he could. True to form, he had already drawn up a spreadsheet over the weekend to track his progress. The Patrick plan, Dan had titled the document, and as soon as he’d printed it out he felt more in control, as if he had a purpose again.
If he could complete at least one task that Patrick would have done for his family and business every single day, he would help ease the burden all round, he’d figured. It was now almost the end of March, and he wasn’t due back at work again until early June. Just think what he could achieve in that time! And maybe by then they might all have navigated their way collectively into the second phase of the bereavement at least, the shock and devastation having begun to lift.
The spreadsheet was now pinned up on Dan’s fridge – he was trying not to think about how it resembled all the sticker-based reward charts that Patrick and Zoe had used with the kids to encourage good behaviour. He tried also to block out Patrick’s voice in his head, teasing him for his methodology. Life isn’t a spreadsheet, Dan! You can’t fit people into boxes and charts. To which Dan found himself replying, Each to his own. He had never before come across a spreadsheet that had let him down.
At the top of the page he’d listed all the best things about his brother that he wanted to emulate – a great dad, a loving husband, a successful businessman, and so on. Then, in neat, typed columns below, he had thought up a number of ways in which he could try to fill in the gaps Patrick had left. So far these included:
Time with Ethan – lifts to and from his SculptShed group every week. They could chat each way, man-and-boy stuff that Ethan couldn’t tell Zoe about. Maybe stop for a sneaky burger on the way back sometimes, to cement the bonding. Ethan could confide in him, lean on him as a substitute father figure. Or so Dan hoped.
Time with Gabe – Dan was less clear on what this might entail, although he sensed his younger nephew would prefer it to be something exciting and possibly dangerous. Or football-related. They could watch the occasional Fulham match together, like Gabe had with Patrick. Go mountain-biking, maybe, or find some other adrenalin-charged activity?
Time with Bea – he had even fewer ideas how he might fulfil this category, but he’d assured Zoe that he was up for it, whatever his small niece might want to do. If she needed chaperoning to dance lessons or an afternoon doing arts and crafts together or . . . He bit his lip, already out of suggestions. See: this was why he needed to put in the effort, he told himself. Get to know his own relatives again, like a proper uncle.
Also on the list: being there for Zoe. This was similarly hard to quantify, but he would endeavour to help out whenever needed, although he would have to take care in his approach. He cringed, remembering how she had given him the side-eye on Sunday when he offered to mow the lawn. ‘I can use a lawnmower, Dan, I’m not completely clueless,’ she’d scoffed in reply. ‘Besides, the grass hasn’t really got going yet this spring, it’s been so cold. And aren’t you meant to let lawns grow a bit longer anyway, these days, for wildlife reasons?’
He’d had to back off, message received that his suggestion had been clumsy, but then she’d added, ‘You can do the hoovering, though, if you’re desperate to save me from the rising tide of chores’, thus pointedly notifying him of his gendered ideas of help. Had he been patronizing? he wondered glumly to himself, heaving the battered red Henry around the living-room floor moments later. He prided himself on being modern and switched on, in terms of equality, but he’d immediately leapt straight to old-fashioned ideas about men’s jobs and women’s jobs, and Zoe had rightfully called him out for it. He would keep working on that though. Maybe he could—
He jumped as the car door opened in the next moment and there was Ethan, hunching awkwardly to peer inside. ‘Hi,’ he said.
‘Hello, mate, had a good day? Hop in,’ Dan said, starting the engine as Ethan detached a weighty-looking backpack from his shoulders and clambered into the passenger seat.
They set off into the school-run traffic, which was fulsome and slow-moving. A weak, irritating drizzle freckled the windscreen as they headed towards the A3. ‘So how was your day?’ Dan asked. I care, he wanted his nephew to hear. I’m interested. I care so much I have typed up an entire list of ways I’m going to atone for your dad’s death and I’ve pinned it up on my fridge, okay? No, he probably shouldn’t say that out loud, but all the same, he was determined to show that he was in it for the long haul. ‘What lessons did you have today then?’
‘Crap ones,’ Ethan replied, looking completely uninterested.
‘Hmm,’ said Dan, wondering if he should comment on his nephew’s language, but unwilling to start wielding joyless authority so early on. He wanted to be the cool, friendly uncle rather than priggish twerp, after all. He braked at a pedestrian crossing and they watched as an elderly man swung himself across on a pair of crutches, seemingly risking his balance by putting up a hand in thanks. ‘So what are the non-crap lessons then? Are there any non-crap lessons?’ Dan asked, raising his own hand at the old man in return – no rush – then glancing back at Ethan, who shrugged. To be fair, he’d probably have given the same response at that age. Daniel shows promise but never quite manages to apply himself – that had been the recurrent theme of his school reports. Come to think of it, that had pretty much been the recurrent theme of his entire life. ‘How’s your week going, then?’ he asked, rather lamely, to which Ethan lifted a shoulder and mumbled, ‘All right,’ without divulging any other details.
Right. This wasn’t going to be as easy as he’d hoped. After a full day at school and in the unfamiliar surroundings of his uncle’s car, perhaps it wasn’t surprising that Ethan didn’t seem ready for any instant bonding or confiding.
‘I’ll put some music on,’ Dan said as the silence stretched thickly between them. He switched on the radio, feeling like a failure as Five Live obligingly filled the void with sports commentary. ‘Are you interested in athletics? Find a music channel, if you want,’ he added, changing gear as he approached a roundabout.
For a moment he thought Ethan was going to ignore him, but then the boy took his phone out of his blazer pocket. ‘Or I could link my phone to your Bluetooth – play something from that?’ he suggested.
‘What? Yeah, sure, whatever. You can educate me.’ He felt a burst of intrigue as Ethan fiddled around, linking the devices together. What would he choose to play? Some bratty teen-pop? He couldn’t imagine it somehow. Death metal? Unlikely.
In the next moment, however, thunderous piano chords burst from the speakers, fast and furious. ‘Beethoven,’ Ethan said, turning up the volume a little.
Okay, so he hadn’t been expecting that. Dan was an ignoramus when it came to classical music; he preferred something with a chorus that you could sing along to, a beat you could hammer out on a steering wheel when stuck in traffic. All the same, he was able to feel the urgency of the music, the tempo so frenetic you could hardly imagine how anyone’s fingers could gallop across the keys so quickly. The air swelled with a crescendo. ‘Wow,’ he said. ‘You’re into this then, I take it? Do you play yourself?’
‘No,’ said Ethan. ‘I just like it.’
They drove along, listening to the rippling movement of the piece, Ethan with his eyes shut, Dan thinking back to the box of paperwork he’d picked up from Zoe, promising to sort it out. She’d given him Patrick’s work phone too, which was full of unanswered messages and unlistened-to phone calls. ‘Would you mind? It’s just been one thing after another,’ she had said apologetically, but Dan had been only too willing to take it off her hands, not least because it was another task that he could add to his secret plan, up on the fridge.
Clearly he was not going to be undertaking any building work or dishing out quotes to people who had requested it, but he was pretty sure he could deal with Patrick’s tenants for the time being. How hard could it be, after all? Chances were, he wouldn’t hear much from them anyway, he’d figured. So far, he had at least been able to delete the increasingly desperate calls from Mrs Henderson regarding her boiler, but there were others that needed attention: the family in Shepherd’s Bush whose back door had been kicked in by a would-be burglar and now wouldn’t lock properly; a man giving notice on his flat in Acton; and an elderly-sounding woman (‘It’s Rosemary, darling’) who’d said she’d heard a mouse several times now and could he pop round? Dan had phoned them all back, feeling a stab of alarm when he realized that darling Rosemary’s number was stored on his brother’s phone as ‘Pain In Arse’. Having booked an emergency locksmith to go out to the Shepherd’s Bush flat as soon as possible, he was also faced with the slightly more onerous task of dropping round to the so-called Pain In Arse tomorrow morning.
‘Hey, did your dad ever mention one of his tenants called Rosemary?’ he asked Ethan now, curious. He had to raise his voice to be heard over the music, which seemed to be whirling up into an all-guns-blazing ending.
‘Rosemary? Yeah, all the time. Moaniest old cow he’d ever met,’ Ethan replied. ‘Um. Uncle Dan? We’ve missed the turning. We should have gone left then.’
‘Whoops – sorry. Not concentrating,’ he said, swinging round at the next junction and doubling back. He’d been heading for his old address on automatic pilot, he realized; the memories of all those journeys mapped into his brain on a deep cellular level, clicking straight back in again, as if he’d never been away. You could take the bloke out of Wandsworth . . . as they said.
SculptShed – when they eventually arrived – looked pretty unimposing from the outside, resembling a characterless industrial unit with big metal shutters, set in a no-through road not far from the High Street. Nonetheless, Dan could hear hiphop music breezing out from an open window, the screech of what sounded like an angle-grinder, as well as shouts of laughter, and couldn’t help feeling intrigued. ‘Do I need to come in and make sure you’re—’ he started asking, but Ethan edged away, shaking his head and saying, ‘No, it’s cool. I’m fine from here, thanks.’
In other words: on your bike now, old person; don’t go showing me up in front of my arty mates. Understood. ‘I’ll meet you back at the car afterwards,’ Dan replied, walking away.
He had ninety minutes to kill now, and nothing to do. This was the problem with taking a three-month sabbatical to go travelling and then never actually going because your brother had died; the days tended to mock you with their emptiness. He’d worked out last night that, had things been different, he and Tiggy would have been on their way to Argentina by this point, which had prompted a sorrowful few minutes forlornly imagining another version of himself hiking to see the Perito Moreno Glacier or eating an amazing steak in Buenos Aires. Never mind.
‘Dan’s midlife crisis,’ Patrick had teased him in the pub that last night, when Dan had shown him pictures of the salt flats in Bolivia that he was looking forward to seeing, and described his plan for hiking the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu.
‘Jealous, much?’ Dan had retaliated, only to see a glimmer of what looked like resentment on his brother’s face. Yeah, Patrick was jealous. For once, Dan was doing something that Patrick had never done. For once, having the family and business and nice house looked kind of pedestrian and safe in comparison to Dan’s big old adventure right there on the horizon. Not that Patrick would ever have admitted as much, of course.
‘What, jealous of you? No chance,’ he’d scoffed instead.
Whatever. It was academic now anyway, because Dan had never even made it to Heathrow, and Patrick had sidestepped the whole jealousy issue by dying like that. He always had to go one better, didn’t he? Always had to have the last word. Dan stared down at the pavement as he walked blindly along, because he would have given anything to have Patrick back for some brotherly mick-taking in the pub again, even if the conversation had descended into something altogether darker by the end of the night. But there was no chance of that ever happening again. What a waste.
Without being aware of it, Dan had walked to the street where he and Rebecca had once lived together all those years ago, and he gave a start as he realized where his feet had taken him. Ground-floor flat, 21 Windermere Road. Good times.
He remembered what a dump it had been initially – a cheap dump, with a horrible avocado-green loo and sink in the bathroom and the smell of mildew in the tiny kitchen. The cushions on the brown corduroy sofa had been torn and were prone to leaking sad little clouds of stuffing, while the bedroom carpet sported what looked like a massive bloodstain in the middle. But over time it had become a cosy nest – their nest, which they repainted and decorated and made homely. Rebecca’s red mirror-work Indian throw had transformed the sofa, and a rug from Camden Market had hidden the dodgy stains of the bedroom carpet. The kitchen was brightened up with framed pop-art prints and cacti on the windowsill; they bought retro lampshades and cushions, and stuck a big map of the world above the mantelpiece, with colourful drawing pins pushed into all the places they wanted to explore.
Standing in front of the house now, he half-expected to see a spectral version of himself shimmering there, striding up the path and letting himself in. The happy old Dan who smiled at strangers, who was in love with his beautiful girlfriend, who had big plans for the future and no idea that in years to come she’d get an eye-popping promotion at work and move into a new circle of confident, charismatic friends. By then they’d taken the plunge and bought a fancier place in Clapham, and he quickly began to feel left behind. As if he disappointed her. ‘Can’t you try a bit harder?’ she’d asked him once, exasperated, when he’d accompanied her to a glamorous work do at Gibson Hall and found his small-talk to be lacking. He’d felt shy, out of his depth, while she cruised through the crowds with ease, pulling away from him in more ways than one.
The irritating drizzle had now turned into a more determined pattering shower. As the raindrops began soaking his hair and sliding beneath his collar, Dan swerved away from the building, heading back along the wet pavement and ducking into the nearest pub. Their former local – except that it had been transformed since its old-man-and-his-dog days of tobacco-coloured walls and sticky carpets. Nowadays it was a smart gastropub with tasteful claret paintwork and flagstone flooring. Everything changed while you looked the other way, he thought, walking up to the bar and ordering a coffee.
The pub was quiet and Dan was able to sit by the window, gazing out at the buses trundling down the High Street, the school-uniform-clad teenagers on their bikes apparently unbothered by the rain, shoppers with umbrellas, people walking along staring at their phones. He pulled out his own phone for something to do and opened Facebook for the first time in weeks. There were several photos posted by Tiggy – most of which seemed to be variations on a theme: her sandwiched between two bronzed, buff and oiled men on a beach – and he snorted faintly with a mixture of affection and regret. There were still loads of unopened condolence messages about Patrick that he hadn’t been able to face reading properly or replying to, including . . . oh God. He actually flinched as he saw her name there. Including one from Rebecca herself. Speak of the devil and she will appear. Before he could think better of it, he clicked on the message: Devastated to hear the news about Patrick, she had typed a fortnight ago. He was always so full of life. Thinking about you and the family.
His jaw tightened and he had to put the phone down quickly, because a flood of emotions threatened to overwhelm him. So many feelings. Too many feelings. Don’t think about it, he ordered himself. Don’t think about her. He’d become so adept at blocking out painful thoughts in the last month, like a blanket thrown over a birdcage; he hadn’t so much as peeked beneath it. But today . . .
Maybe it was having just been back to Windermere Road, feeling the past put its hand on his shoulder, but it wasn’t so easy today. Suddenly he found himself clicking through to Rebecca’s page, needing to know what she was doing with her life. They had split up three years ago, and although Dan had steadfastly avoided finding out too much about her since then, he’d been unable to miss the headline fact of her remarriage last summer to some broad-shouldered alpha male called Rory. At the time Dan had only been able to bear a few glances at the photos, but Rory looked the sort of man who flew helicopters for fun and saved children’s lives in between sealing massive global deals during office hours. He definitely would have one of those massive expensive watches, if he could find one big enough to go around his thick strong wrist, of course. ‘It’s okay, I don’t care – I’m over her too,’ Dan had declared to anyone who would listen during an eight-pint bender on her wedding day, shortly before everything got really messy and blurry.
He glanced at the screen again now and saw that her most recent update was a cryptic one. Big day tomorrow! Cross your fingers for me. Ugh, he thought, closing the app immediately. She was probably having an interview for CEO of the world this time, for even more money and status. Amazing celebratory holidays with Rory and all their high-flying friends. His face burned as he felt rejected all over again. He certainly wouldn’t be crossing anything for her, he thought.
Outside, the shower had already eased off and the pavement glinted damply as the sun sent tentative rays slicing through the pigeon-grey clouds. A bus had to brake hard at a distracted cyclist, issuing a disapproving honk, while a cluster of women with prams walked along together, all wearing Lycra and enormous colourful trainers, their ponytails swinging behind them in unison.
Then Dan realized that Patrick’s work phone was ringing from his jacket pocket and scrabbled to pull it out. Pain In Arse, read the screen, and he let out a muffled groan. Sometimes he couldn’t help thinking the universe had it in for him.
‘So how did you get on? What were you making today?’
Coffee finished, a demanding tenant temporarily placated and all thoughts of Rebecca firmly stashed back in a mental folder marked Do Not Disturb, Dan and Ethan were heading back towards Kew. As before, though, the conversation, like the traffic, was not exactly flowing freely, although another furious concerto currently thundered from the speakers.
‘It’s a group project,’ Ethan said, all shrugs and mumbles.
‘Of . . . ?’ Come on, kid, give me something to work with here, Dan thought, trying not to sigh as he turned up the fan heater. Ethan had seemed so pleased on Friday when Dan had offered him a lift. What had changed since then?
‘It’s a person. Made of metal,’ Ethan replied, as if long sentences were beyond him. Even his body language seemed closed-off, unwilling, Dan thought, glancing across: the boy’s knees were turned towards the door, away from Dan, as if he didn’t want to look at his uncle. Had something happened at the club? Was someone picking on him, maybe, or giving him a hard time?
‘Everything all right?’ he asked as they joined the South Circular, along with half the vehicles in the capital, by the look of things. It was a stupid question, he realized, as soon as the words were out of his mouth. Of course Ethan wasn’t all right. When would Dan remember to stop relying on such inappropriate and banal conversational prompts? ‘Listen, I know no one will ever take the place of your dad,’ he said, ‘but you can talk to me, okay? Think of me as . . . I dunno, as a substitute for him, yeah?’
Dan had to overtake a van in the next moment, so couldn’t be entirely sure, but he thought Ethan might have muttered, ‘Puts the “tit” in “substitute”’ or something along those lines.
Startled, Dan looked over at him again. ‘What’s wrong?’ he asked. ‘Just say it, whatever it is.’
There was a loaded pause. ‘It’s about when Dad died,’ the boy eventually mumbled, looking down at his own hands.
Ah. Shit. They were going there, were they? ‘What about it?’ Dan asked, feeling as if he had stepped onto a tightrope. Don’t look down. Keep breathing. Baby steps.
‘I heard Mum saying . . . Well, nobody’s really explained what happened,’ Ethan said, the words tumbling out in a rush. His usually pale face flushed and a hard edge appeared in his voice. ‘And I heard Mum say that she blamed you, basically. For Dad dying. She said it was your fault. And I just wondered . . . I mean, was it? Is there something I don’t know?’ His hands curled into fists. ‘Because I need to know,’ he finished gruffly.
Dan’s mouth was dry suddenly. If Patrick could see his boy here now, fierce and brave, asking this really tough question of his uncle, he would be so proud of him, Dan thought with a pang. But in the meantime, what was he supposed to say in reply? Moreover, why did they have to launch into such a difficult conversation on the heaving South Circular, where he was stop-starting along in first gear? ‘It was an accident,’ he began. ‘Your dad . . .’ Then he hesitated, wary of saying too much. ‘What did your mum tell you about that night?’
‘That he fell into the river and drowned.’
‘Yes.’ Up floated Patrick’s body from Dan’s nightmares: pale and bloated, eyes half-eaten by the fish, weed streaking his dark hair. He hadn’t actually seen Patrick on the mortuary slab himself, it had been poor Zoe who had gone to identify the body, but his imagination had filled in the gaps with vivid enough detail. ‘That’s what happened. Unfortunately.’
‘So . . . why does she think it was your fault?’ Ethan’s knee was jiggling with the stress of the conversation, his voice low but tense. Fists still clenched on the knees of his school trousers, as if poised to start raining vengeful blows at any moment. ‘I mean, you didn’t push him in, did you?’
‘No! Christ, is that what you’ve been thinking? No! Absolutely not. I didn’t push him in. I wasn’t even there.’
Ethan’s shoulders went limp as he exhaled audibly. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘Sorry. But why does Mum think—’
‘Because . . .’ Now they were getting to the nitty-gritty. ‘Because he was supposed to be staying at my place that evening, not walking home on his own.’
Ethan took a moment to digest this. Uncle not a murderer. No need for filial vengeance. Stand down. Wait, though – another question. ‘So why didn’t he? Stay at your place, I mean.’
And here it was: the very point Dan’s conscience had been grappling with again and again, endlessly, every bloody day, since Patrick had disappeared. ‘Because . . .’ Bile rose in his throat and he forced himself to remember the scene – the two of them stumbling out of the pub, worse for wear, Dan angrily striding ahead, telling Patrick he should go home because he wasn’t welcome; he didn’t want to see him. How his brother had shrugged and walked away, leaving Dan bristling all over with impotent rage. Typical! Patrick couldn’t even argue properly, just when Dan really needed to have it out with him.
His fingers tightened on the steering wheel as he tried to find adequate words in reply to Ethan’s question. ‘We had an argument,’ he mumbled eventually, the same weak line he’d bleated to Zoe, to his parents, to everyone else who’d asked. ‘You know the way that brothers do? Things got said in the heat of the moment.’ He risked a look at Ethan, whose expression was tight and pinched, hard to read. He didn’t look won over by his uncle’s defence, that was for sure, although the ‘brothers’ bit would surely have struck a chord. ‘Look, I wish to God I could change things, rewind that evening and do it all differently, but I can’t,’ he said, the words bursting out with unexpected earnestness. ‘But it was nobody’s fault. Just one of those terrible, unlucky things that happens.’
The music had reached a crescendo, fittingly enough. Ethan said nothing. Dan was pretty sure he didn’t care about luck, or whose fault it was; he only cared that he no longer had a dad, that his world had been shattered one dreadful February night. I will make this better, Dan vowed to his nephew in his head. I promise you. I will never stop trying to make this better for you, for the rest of my life and yours.