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Oblivious, the eldest
girl, Hattie, was in a familiar state of repose, lying tummy down
in the oversized garden hammock, one arm trailing towards the
ground, the other clinging to a book (she was reading
The
Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time
, as usual a
choice that was not quite appropriate for her nine years). Very
little seemed to rile her and life would have been considerably
less hassle had Lorna and Lyall simply stopped at the one.

And so, as the
doorbell rang, the two younger girls were seemingly at peace again,
sitting at opposite sides of the inflatable pool, while Hattie
swung gently in the hammock, and Lorna chopped erratically at a
pile of tomatoes and onions in the kitchen. Lyall put down the wire
wool he was using to scrape the remainder of last year’s veggie
dust, and a layer of light rust, from the barbecue grill and walked
through to welcome the two guests into his home.

He led Frank, whom he
was mildly surprised to note was American, to Lorna in the kitchen,
where the guest delivered two cloth bags of assorted Waitrose
delights, ranging from Pimm’s and strawberries to gingerbread
rabbits and a selection of gaudy, almost neon cupcakes. Lyall
continued through the French doors into the garden with Lorna.

The two girls stopped
splashing, looked up and bounded over in a shower of droplets,
giving their grandma a quick, wet hug, before following the
direction of her nod into the kitchen. Hattie rolled gracefully
from her swaying haven and, without her sisters’ customary fuss and
bustle, came over for a kiss and headed off to join in the
unpacking of the goodies.

Lyall sat back down on
the patio wall and continued scrubbing. Jane settled in a deckchair
on the edge of the grass, intuition or experience making her pull
it just shy of where the eventual barbecue smoke would be drifting.
Hattie popped out, mouth bulging with icing and sponge, another
cupcake in her left hand and a large glass of Pimm’s and tonic,
with a slice of cucumber and a sprig of mint, in her right. She
handed the glass to her grandmother, spat out a crumby but genuine
thank you, and retook her place on the hammock swinging from a
metal stand further down the long lawn.

“So, how was London?
Good birthday?”

“Absolutely divine,
Lyall,” she replied, taking the cucumber from the glass and
munching on it like an unexpected but welcome snack. The fervour
with which she approached anything sensual continued to endear her
to Lyall, and he guessed it contributed to her undiminished
popularity with her escorts. “There are always job opportunities
for book doctors of your calibre, should you ever fancy a change of
scene. I still know quite a few people.”

“I appreciate the kind
thought, Jane, but I’m guessing your need to move back there is
tainting your view of our life up here, rather than me having some
pressing need to alter my scenery. I’m perfectly happy,
plus...”

He paused; they were
both all too aware of the main ties he had to the area.

“You’re right,” she
said. “I never miss the place so much as when I’m actually down
there, though. I suspect I’m just that rare breed of person who is
simply at their happiest wherever they are at that precise moment.
Years of hard work and retreats to get to this point, though,” she
continued, winking at him. She took another taste of her drink and
pulled the sunglasses that were resting on her forehead down over
her eyes, before sinking back into the deck chair.

Lyall continued to
scour the metal, which was starting to shine a little, a fine dust
of particles scattered over the top of his black T-shirt. It was a
Father’s Day gift from two years ago, with the words “You look as
nervous as a very small nun at a penguin shoot” embellished across
the front.

“So, how is the old
bugger?” Jane asked, her ritzy accent softening the tone of the
query.

“Big question. Big,
big question… Ach, all right, I think. He seems all right, and I
see him often enough. Honestly, I don’t know.”

And then a breathing
space. Jane was not a woman for whom surface answers were
sufficient, and a chance to think through and articulate what was
going on made him simultaneously want to change topic and to
confide all; the fact that she knew how to leave a silence without
it becoming inelegant helped.

As if on cue, Emily
came out, clearly sent, with a bottle of Peroni, his second of the
day and highly welcome, although he was irked by the fact that he
measured of his intake so carefully.

“How’s the comic?”
Jane asked Emily. “Did I pick the right one? To be honest, sweetie,
I only looked at the free gift and the pink front cover… and who
could resist those kittens?”

“Thank you, Grandma. I
love its little bag and the tiara,” Emily shouted back, without the
need for the usual prompt to remember her manners, as she headed
back into the house.

“I think he’s okay,”
Lyall finally continued. “I mean, I know he’s better than he was,
but that flat’s just wrong – what the hell is he still doing there?
And I’m guessing he’s spending more time in it than out of it. I
just don’t know what to do. I try not to preach, but it’s so bloody
hard.”

“He’s an exasperating
man, Lyall. And you’re right, it’s hard not to nag, and it’s not
something you can help him with unless he needs it… knows he needs
it and asks for it… but it’s difficult for an outsider like me to
witness what he’s doing, so I can only imagine how you feel. Does
he see the girls much?”

“It’s been a few
months. Four, maybe five. Lorna… long story short – maybe I told
her too much about his drinking, about his weird behaviour, and she
won’t let him near the place at the moment. Perhaps she’s right. I
just don’t know.”

He knew exactly how
many weeks it had been.

It was a Sunday
afternoon in early February and Lyall had caught the bus over to
his dad’s. It was a short walk from the stop to the home,
presumably for the convenience of the aged inmates (and while
Alasdair referred to “retirement apartments”, a home is exactly
what it was). However, from Lyall’s observations – and he tried not
to see too much of this vision of a potential future he’d rather
not contemplate – most of them rarely left the building.

He’d stopped knocking
after Alasdair had sold the old place and moved into Gran’s. Lyall
and his family had scored slightly over £100,000 from the
transaction, his father telling him that he’d rather he see him
spend his inheritance now, while he hung on to the sheltered flat
as a longer-term investment for the time being; with property
prices continuing to rise slowly but steadily, it might well
provide a handy little wedge further down the line. So, having been
hit by the familiar stale but not unpleasant whiff of the elderly
as he walked in through the main door, Lyall turned the key he’d
first got when he began dropping off weekly groceries for his
grandmother, eight years ago.

The one-bedroomed flat
was pleasant enough, although as a permanently temporary resident,
Alasdair had done nothing with or to it in the six years he’d been
there. It was not exactly a shrine to his mother, yet it was
distinctively an old woman’s flat in décor. The only significant
contribution Alasdair had made was the tangle of bikes and piles of
bucolic magazines that Lyall had to thread his way through,
stirring up a midge-like cloud of dust flecks.

The mood was
melancholy, dark, although Lyall was aware that this was probably
more a manifestation of the heavy shoulder slump he invariably felt
on walking into the place than anything to do with a lack of light,
and on this occasion, he hesitated a little and didn’t yell out his
normal warning greeting.

The glowing screen
visible from the lounge door as he entered showed a naked girl…
woman really (although at 37, and with daughters, anything under 20
had become absolutely sacrosanct for Lyall). Her hair was scraped
into two perky dark blonde bunches, and she was widely and
incongruously splayed on an antique red velvet chaise longue,
buzzing vigorously with a mammoth black dildo, the sculptured head
of which kept disappearing into her silky folds. Lyall found
himself momentarily paralysed by the change of timbre in the
vibrator’s hum as it retreated and re-emerged. The fact that she
was pink and shaved smooth added to an illusion of childhood, and
Lyall could see now that she was clearly playing to a market, with
freckles dotted on to her pouting face; he then saw, from an
awkward side angle, the punter for whom she was performing.

Humped in the swivel
chair in which he currently spent most of his waking hours sat his
father, blue and red checked flannel dressing gown cord dangling
down so that the garment hung loosely on either side, a vodka
bottle minus all but two fingers of spirit on the table by the
laptop.

The curtains were
closed and, with the table at the far end of the small room
littered with empty beer cans, the flat had the musty smell of an
old pub after a busy weekend. The only light radiated from the
screen on which the girl-woman sighed and panted and egged Alasdair
on as he bowed in to towards her a little. He looked old; unshaven
and bristly, exuding a desperation that reminded Lyall starkly of
his grandmother’s last few days on this planet, when he’d visited
her in the nursing home that had replaced this as her final
dwelling.

Alasdair’s left hand
was placed at the edge of the desk, those long gnarly fingers laid
on the wooden surface, while the right moved slowly and coaxingly
over his semi-covered groin. His mouth slightly open, he spat small
white flecks as his incoherent mumbles echoed the girl’s
encouragement with an enthusiasm that lapsed, in the few long
seconds while Lyall watched, into semi-despondency.

He walked out of the
flat and closed the door feeling profoundly sad, aware that his
name was being called in the background, but no desire had ever
beat so strongly within him as the need to get the fuck out of that
place.

She did, of
course, know precisely why Alasdair wasn’t about to darken her
grandchildren’s doorstep for a while yet. Considering what her
daughter had just told her about the unfortunate scene Lyall had
walked in on, she just felt sorry for both father and son. And when
she added this to the collection of stories Lorna had shared over
the years, the repercussions of what looked like a desperately
lonely descent into the bottle, she could not in truth say she
wouldn’t have done the same at that stage of motherhood.

She understood the
depth of that maternal instinct to insulate your children from the
nastinesses of the world. She was also aware, though, that her
daughter had always seen life in more black-and-white terms,
whereas for Jane the boundaries were invariably and increasingly
prone to merging. Added to this, she knew, there were more
dimensions to Alasdair, to anyone, than simply what you saw, and
she had the advantage of a certain distance, which perhaps allowed
her to be kinder.

Their first meeting
had, she supposed, been a highly staged one 12 years previously,
and slightly fraught for their children, then much younger adults.
They were both there clutching hands and waiting as she walked into
the Mediterranean-influenced restaurant in London’s Upper Street,
which, she’d been assured, catered superbly for her daughter’s
newly discovered vegetarianism.

There was a bustling
little shop area as she walked in, which turned into a larger
eating room down the centre of which ran two long wooden tables,
space for maybe 14 people on each, and with more discrete tables
for two and four lining the edges. Brass lampshades punctuated the
centre of the ceiling. The place was mainly painted white, but made
colourful by organic elements everywhere, the rich purples, reds,
greens and yellows of fruits, vegetables and grains temptingly
mixed in various combinations in bowl upon wooden bowl. Where the
salads ended the cakes began, glossy and tempting. The place was
not packed but already semi-buzzing by 7pm on a Thursday evening.
The food smelt delectable and she was hungry.

Lyall was, on the
surface at least, as laidback as ever, if a little more attentive –
concerned about her drink, her lack of spoon, and his father’s
increasingly late arrival – whereas her daughter had simply been
quiet, like she always got when something felt important to her.
The little she’d gleaned about Lorna’s future father-in-law she
intuitively liked the sound of, although the anecdotes came out in
fits and spurts, which, she had to confess, possibly made him seem
more compelling.

When she pieced
together the facts, he was a journalist, Scottish, had divorced
Lyall’s mother as a result of what seemed simply to be a
straightforward drifting apart, when the boy was just eight, and
she knew both that he’d insisted on having joint custody and that
there was no hint of it having been contested. Having spoken at
length via Skype to Lexi, whom she wasn’t due to meet in person
until the wedding in late September, she liked her a lot, and had
picked up no trace of animosity towards her ex. In reality, Lexi
spoke of him much more kindly than Jane would ever have spoken
about Lorna’s dad. It fact, her Edinburgh uptightness softened
along with her eyes when his name came up. These were all good
portents.

Lyall, she had picked
up, had spent much of his childhood crossing between homes in the
Scottish capital, before studying English at UCL, his first taking
him straight on to a job as an editorial assistant down the road
from where they now sat chatting about the menu, the smells
surrounding them, increasingly keen to sample the food.

They were just
reaching that tricky stage of waiting where the small talk has
fizzled out and there’s no point sinking your teeth into anything
deeper, when he pitched up. Back then, not so long ago really,
Alasdair cut a tall, solid presence, a self-assured man in his
mid-50s dressed in a dark jacket, flamboyantly frilled white shirt
and a green tartan kilt; the latter item of clothing took Jane
completely by surprise, but not as much as the mesmerising effect
his general demeanour had on her. At that moment, she had no idea
what she’d been expecting, but this amiable and charismatic figure
had most certainly not been it.