The Bush Theatre bar was busy. Most of the customers were there for that evening’s production of Taking the Knee but Garibaldi’s mind was on a different kind of drama. A few hundred yards further down the Uxbridge Road and under a different kind of lights, QPR and Fulham were about to face each other in a midweek clash.
He sat at a corner table, tuning out the pretentious pre-show chat of the committed theatregoers and picking up on the banter of the pre-game fans, colours and scarves hidden to avoid being denied entry or ejected from the premises for being the wrong sort. Garibaldi was no enemy of the theatre but its smugness got to him – not so much the smugness of theatre itself, but the smugness of those who went.
Smug was not a word ever applied to QPR fans.
Garibaldi nursed his pint and tried to read his book but it was difficult to concentrate. It was nothing to do with the book. And nothing to do with where he was or with pre-match excitement.
It was all to do with Alfie.
All afternoon he’d been unable to focus on the Gallen case. Sitting at his desk, scrolling through statements and 276reports all he could think about was seeing Alfie, wondering what had led to his change of mind.
Their greeting hug was closer and tighter than usual. Garibaldi could sense something was up.
‘Seen the team?’ he said.
‘Yeah,’ said Alfie. ‘Three at the back again.’
‘Yeah, they never learn, do they? Time for a drink?’
‘Sure.’
When Garibaldi brought the drinks back to the table Alfie took his glass and raised it. ‘Cheers!’
‘Cheers.’
Alfie took a couple of gulps, licked his lips and looked around the bar.
‘I expect you want to know why I can make the game after all,’ he said, turning back.
‘Don’t feel you have to tell me. If you—’
‘I’m not sure where to start, but the thing is there’s this girl …’
Garibaldi nodded. Cherchez la femme. As he suspected.
‘Lily. She’s in this big social group and there’s been a lot of partying and, yeah, a lot of money. I guess. I didn’t realise at first how much I was getting through.’
The bank of Fuckwit Dom, no doubt.
‘At first we were just friends. You know, part of the whirl, having a good time with everyone else. And, yeah, I was probably doing too much of it. Not enough work etcetera. Then it started to get a bit more serious and we started going out together.’
Garibaldi gave another I’m-listening-and-I-understand nod.
Alfie reached for his beer and looked towards the bar before taking a couple of gulps. It was as if he was bracing himself. 277
‘Look, Dad, I’m OK. You don’t need to worry about me or anything. It’s just that I think I … I think I might have lost my way a bit.’
He’d lost his way. What Garibaldi had wanted to hear him say for months. Any minute now Alfie would say that he thought Dom was a prick and he could die a happy man.
‘The truth is the Lily thing’s over. We had a big row, a horrible row. So I obviously wasn’t going to go to this dinner party. It was her friends. The crowd. And I thought, fuck it, why was I thinking of doing it anyway, even when I was going out with her? Whatever made me think I should do that kind of thing rather than come down to see the R’s.’
Garibaldi swallowed. Christmas had come early.
‘I had no idea,’ he said.
‘No idea about what?’
‘Any of it. I mean I knew you were doing a fair bit of … socialising, but I didn’t know about your girlfriend and, obviously, I didn’t know you’d split. When you came down for that party everything seemed great …’
Though it hadn’t. He could still remember what he felt as he saw Alfie head off to the party in his DJ. Frankenstein. Great Expectations.
‘That party was the start of it,’ said Alfie. ‘I mean, it was huge. Lily’s friend Rosie’s twenty-first at this massive place in Hampstead. And when I say massive I mean … it was like something out of The Great Gatsby. And I was standing there thinking what the fuck am I doing. All these people and there were a lot of people. Monied. Entitled. Privileged. I just sort of had this moment and that’s when we had our first row. It seemed nothing at the time. I was in a group of people from Oxford, people Lily knew from school and stuff and people I’d hung out with quite a bit. Then Lily went off because her friend was upset about something to 278do with her sister and when she came back she seemed in a strange mood and I asked her what was up and she told me. And I can’t remember what happened or what I said but she snapped. “You don’t understand,” she said. “People like you just don’t understand.” I could see she was upset and I didn’t want to push it but “people like you”? I couldn’t let it go. So I asked her what she meant and she wouldn’t say. But it stayed with me and when we were back in Oxford I asked her again. And all she said was “can’t you see how different we are?” And, yeah, in that moment I could. And I could see how different I was from everyone I’d been hanging out with, how I’d sort of lost myself. I don’t know how I hadn’t realised it before and I know what you think, Dad. You think it all started when I changed school. Maybe it did. Who knows what would have happened, where I would have ended up if I’d stayed put? But the thing is I can’t change where I am. All I can do is kind of start again, make the most of what’s left. Realise I’ve made some mistakes recently. And get back to Loftus Road.’
Garibaldi felt for Alfie but he also felt for himself. This was what he had wanted for some time – to get his son back, to reclaim him.
Yet throughout Alfie’s confession his mind had been mulling over something else, a possibility that was gnawing away at him and wouldn’t stop.
Garibaldi looked at his watch. ‘Right,’ he said standing up and draining his pint, ‘we’d better get going. Look, I’m so pleased you’ve told me this. I hadn’t wanted to say anything, but I was concerned, mainly because I didn’t want to see you get hurt.’
‘I can’t say I’m not hurt,’ said Alfie. ‘But it’s good to have told you. The thing is you start doing something and you get sucked in and because you’re with a load of people who 279all think what they’re doing is perfectly normal you start to think it’s normal yourself. You just can’t see it. I should never have fallen in with that … that lot. And, as I say, it was when I was at this ridiculous party that I realised it. Maybe if Lily’s friend hadn’t been upset …’
Something suddenly clicked. A girl attacked while walking back from her sister’s twenty-first in Hampstead. The dates tallied.
‘Alfie.’ Garibaldi couldn’t stop himself. ‘This is a complete longshot but I have to ask. Is Lily’s friend’s sister called Sam?’
‘Sam? Yeah. How do you know that?’
‘And is Sam’s surname Bannister?’
‘Yeah. I was going to tell you. That’s why it was such a massive thing. It was at Harry Bannister’s house. I had no idea Lily’s friend was his daughter and I got a big shock when I found out. I mean, what a prat!’
‘And did Lily say what was upsetting her friend’s sister?’
Alfie nodded. ‘Yeah, she did. She swore me to secrecy, but you know what? “People like me”? Fuck it. I might as well tell you. She said it was all to do with the summer when she was working as a tutor in Italy. Something had happened.’
‘Did she say what?’
‘No, but she said she was worried that all kinds of shit had been going on because of it. She was worried something might happen to her.’
As they walked down the Uxbridge Road joining the hooped blue and white shirts of QPR and the white ones of Fulham, Garibaldi’s mind whirred with narratives.