Dan’s ankle was thankfully much better by Monday and, as he sat eating breakfast that morning, he felt relatively cheerful as he considered the last few days. His good-deeds spreadsheet had a whole new crop of entries, acting as tiny individual validations. The flat on Whitecliffe Road was newly painted throughout and ready to be let again. It had been raining overnight but the sun was shining once more, casting golden streaks of light on the last wet drops that speckled the windows. He’d topped up the bird feeder recently, and it now provided a buffet to a whole host of feathered visitors. He watched them as he ate, appreciating the free show. Back when he’d been an office drone, he’d never had time to sit and contemplate anything other than the news on his phone, or the list of meetings he had lined up that day, before heading out the door.
A different sort of agenda lay ahead of him this week. There had been three new calls waiting for him when he checked the messages on Patrick’s business phone earlier, all from Rosemary, his most demanding tenant. Apparently her burglar alarm had started flashing at six o’clock that morning and still hadn’t stopped. It almost certainly meant that the battery was on its way out and needed replacing, but she had sounded increasingly worried with each message, and he had a feeling that the calls would keep coming until he went to deal with it. That was first on the list. Later, he needed to chase up Patrick’s accountant about the VAT bill. He cringed anew as he remembered Zoe asking, all innocence, about dodgy payments from Patrick’s account. He was pretty sure he’d managed to bluster through a response without arousing her suspicions, but nevertheless, it had felt a perilous moment before he’d eventually twigged that she was joking.
He hadn’t yet decided what to do about the direct debit due to go out to Lydia next week, but he’d managed to swipe the business card with Lydia’s details from Zoe’s fridge at least, pocketing it surreptitiously while she was making him a coffee, so he had prevented one horrendous phone call at least. The card was on the kitchen table in front of him now, like a ticking bomb, and he picked it up and turned it between his fingers, corner by corner, still unsure what – if anything – he should do. Soft, read the logo on the card, followed by a W4 address: the Turnham Green end of Chiswick, according to the map on his phone. Lydia had written her name and phone number on the card, plus a little heart.
Curious, he glanced at the website, discovering that it was a small arty boutique, apparently owned by a Jonathan Browning. Lydia’s husband or partner, maybe? Did she own the business or just work there? If the latter, then he doubted that she was being paid a huge amount of money. Maybe she was an heiress or had a massive trust fund or had married someone stinking rich, and therefore didn’t need maintenance money from Patrick, but having met her, Lydia didn’t strike him as someone who led an opulent lifestyle. The phone on which she’d shown him photos of Jemima, for instance, was not a top-of-the-range new model, he seemed to remember. He was pretty sure she hadn’t been wearing a wedding ring, either, and she definitely hadn’t mentioned any kind of partner, wealthy and shop-owning or not. Women tended to do that when they wanted to make very clear that they were not into you, in Dan’s experience.
He put his phone back down, thinking. Patrick might have betrayed Zoe emotionally, but in practical terms he had been very thorough about providing for her and the children. The life insurance he’d arranged had paid out a substantial amount on his passing; the rest of the mortgage cleared in an instant, and lump sums were granted to Zoe, Ethan, Gabe and Bea. Nothing for Jemima, his other daughter, though. Zilch. In death, as in life, she had been airbrushed from the picture. It didn’t sit comfortably with Dan. But what was he supposed to do?
To distract himself from this conscience-wrestling, he phoned Rosemary and assured her that he would go over and look at her burglar alarm. He was about to head off when there was a sudden thud at the window. Swinging round, he was just in time to see the shape of a medium-sized bird – a blackbird perhaps, or the starling he’d seen the other day – batter itself against the glass and drop from view. Oh God.
It happened sometimes, birds mistaking windows for air, but there was still something horrible about the soft, meaty thump of flesh meeting glass. He hurried over to peer through the window, but couldn’t see the bird anywhere on the ground below. Presumably it had managed to swerve dazedly around and back up into the blue, stunned but somehow aloft.
Hopefully he could do the same, he thought, leaving the room.
‘Oh, thank goodness. You’re so clever. I didn’t even think about the battery, I was convinced the alarm was flashing because someone was in my flat. A burglar, I mean.’ Rosemary gave a small self-deprecating laugh, but her demeanour was subdued. ‘I was scared.’
Over on Everlake Road, it had taken Dan a matter of minutes to remove the dying battery from Rosemary’s burglar alarm, nip out to the nearest corner shop and buy a replacement, then reattach the device to her wall. Switching it on, to be rewarded by a steady green light rather than a flashing red one, Dan felt something of a fraud to have Rosemary’s praise heaped on him when the job had been so straightforward.
‘No trouble at all,’ he told her, returning the screwdriver to Patrick’s toolbox and fastening its clasp. Then, perhaps with more rashness than was wise, he added, ‘Any more problems, let me know.’
‘Oh, I will. You are good to me, Daniel. A very kind-hearted young man.’ She beamed at him. Dressed in a Victorian-style blouse with high collars and tiny pearl buttons, plus a tweedy skirt, she resembled some sort of excellent lady detective from the 1920s. Dan found himself wondering what she’d done for a living when younger. A teacher? A no-nonsense matron?
‘It’s no trouble,’ he repeated weakly with the polite sort of smile he’d always used for aunties and friends of his mum, although he wished she hadn’t called him kind-hearted. What with keeping secrets from Zoe and his apparent inability to make a decision about Lydia, he didn’t feel at all kind right now.
‘And it’s no trouble for me to put the kettle on,’ she replied. ‘Tea or coffee?’
He relented because it seemed almost impossible not to. But also because he was starting to feel fond of her. Patrick might have found her annoying but it was obvious that Rosemary was pretty lonely, at the end of the day. Lonely and rather endearing. ‘Coffee, please,’ he said.
As he followed her through to the small, gleaming kitchen, Rosemary came to a sudden stop. A magnificently fluffy ginger tomcat was lounging on the table licking a paw with a leisurely air. ‘He’s not mine,’ Rosemary said, hurrying towards the table. ‘Come on, Desmond, what are you doing here? Off you go now. Off!’ The cat – Desmond – ignored her until she clapped her hands at him. Only then, with a contemptuous glare over one beefy shoulder, did he leap from his perch onto the windowsill, squeeze his considerable girth through the open window and saunter out onto the fire escape. ‘Naughty boy,’ Rosemary said unconvincingly.
Dan chose to pretend he hadn’t noticed the saucer of half-eaten cat food on the floor by the wall. He glossed over the fact that Rosemary had given the cat a name, and that a cushion on one of the kitchen chairs was coated in quite a lot of ginger fur. He was pretty sure Patrick’s rental agreements all stipulated that pets were not allowed, but he couldn’t summon up the energy to get into a discussion about it. Besides, he had no problem with cats. ‘These things happen,’ he assured her, thinking about Harvey, the over-friendly tabby that had repeatedly treated as an invitation any open door or window of the Wandsworth flat that he and Rebecca had shared. Harvey would stroll in as if he was a resident there too, friendly and purring, butting his soft head against your legs.
Rosemary busied herself making drinks and arranging a Jenga of sugar-sprinkled shortbread on a plate. Dan’s gaze was drawn to the photos on the fridge, mostly fashion pictures, rather unexpectedly, although there was also a photo of a middle-aged couple pinned up with a flamingo-shaped magnet. ‘Are these your children?’ he asked, peering closer.
‘No,’ she said, without turning round. ‘I don’t have children. That’s Alan, my nephew, and his wife, Maureen.’
From where Dan was sitting, he could see that Alan and Maureen were probably in their early fifties, and smartly dressed. Alan wore a large expensive-looking watch on his wrist and a smug expression. Maureen sported a bright pink-and-orange flowered dress and a tight perm, and was smirking as she sipped a cocktail through a straw. Dan knew you shouldn’t judge on appearance, but all the same, he didn’t find himself warming to the pair. ‘Nice,’ he said, as she set two coffee cups on the table and gestured at him to sit down. ‘Are they local?’
‘They’re in Richmond,’ she said, offering him the shortbread.
‘Ah, that’s handy.’ Handy for Dan too, if Rosemary could start ringing up smug Alan rather than him every time she was worried about her burglar alarm or squeaky floorboards. But maybe her nephew was the type who’d sooner jerk a fat thumb in another person’s direction and pass the buck. Landlord’s job, ain’t it? he imagined the man in the photo saying.
‘Well, yes, I suppose so, although they’re very busy. Always very busy. I’ve said to them: The door’s always open! I do love a visitor – but they have so many friends and Alan’s got all these business trips and . . .’ Her voice faltered for the first time and Dan felt sorry for her. Also kind of vindicated for reading the photos correctly.
‘That’s a shame,’ he said, so that she didn’t have to finish the sentence. Clearly smug Alan and smirking Maureen couldn’t be bothered to make time for Alan’s lonely old aunt. His own relative! And yet . . . Dan grimaced. And yet wouldn’t he be doing the exact same thing if he took Lydia at her word and blanked her and Jemima? They were his relatives too, like it or not. Jemima was his niece.
His expression must have changed because Rosemary squinted at him across the table. ‘Everything all right, dear?’
He hesitated. ‘Not really,’ he admitted.
‘You can tell me,’ she said and for a moment he was almost tempted to blurt out the whole tale: that bad-tempered last night in Hammersmith, Patrick’s shocking death, his own determination to make everything right, the discovery of Lydia . . .
‘Well . . .’ He shook his head. ‘It’s a long story. Family stuff, you know.’
‘I see,’ she said, her eyes softening. They were very blue, he noticed; the blue of Wedgwood plates. Despite everything, he felt himself unbending. Maybe she would be a good person to talk to: someone objective. Wise, even. And who else could he tell his secrets to?
‘Well,’ he said again, still undecided. Then the window rattled and there was Desmond barging his bulky way back inside again, as if refusing to put up with his banishment for a second longer. Manoeuvring onto the windowsill, he dropped to the kitchen floor and walked straight over to the food bowl with an unmistakable swagger of ownership.
‘Oh! Desmond.’ Rosemary’s face became suffused with guilt as the cat began daintily licking the jelly from the chunks of meat. ‘Now you mustn’t think he’s mine,’ she gabbled, not quite able to meet Dan’s eye. ‘I did put a bit of food out for him this morning, because he was wailing so plaintively I thought my heart would break, but—’
‘It’s fine,’ said Dan. Cats were total bullshitters in his opinion. Wailing plaintively, indeed, he thought. This one had spotted a sucker, all right. ‘Honestly, I don’t mind. As long as he’s not ripping up the furniture or anything.’
‘Goodness, no. Absolutely not. I would forbid any behaviour like that in an instant,’ Rosemary assured him. Her lower lip wobbled momentarily, then she reached across the table and patted Dan’s hand. ‘Thank you, darling. It’s just nice to have someone to love, isn’t it? Something, I should say.’ She gazed fondly at the cat. ‘I’ve been leaving my window open so that he can come and go, and I’m always pleased to see him,’ she added in a rush of confession.
Dan found himself thinking hard as she went over to make a fuss of the creature. Life was short – too short to be a wanker to people. Whatever Lydia might have said, he wanted to do the right thing. He didn’t want to be like Alan, the ignorant nephew who was content to forget about his lonely aunt. He didn’t want to be like Patrick, either, and whitewash inconvenient relatives out of his life with excuses or money.
‘You were about to tell me something, I think,’ Rosemary said, straightening up once more. That blue gaze of hers was so direct, it was hard to look away. ‘Let me guess – is it girl trouble? Somebody breaking your heart?’
But Dan, having made his decision, was keen to get going. Cramming a last piece of shortbread into his mouth, he rose to his feet. ‘It’s not girl trouble,’ he confirmed. Well, it kind of was, he supposed, but the story was far too complicated to wade into now. ‘I think I’ve just worked it out for myself anyway. Thanks all the same.’
And then he said goodbye and left, blinking a little as he stepped outside into the light.