‘Obrigado,’ he says to Neuza.
‘O prazer é meu,’ she says, stroking his close-cropped hair.
Manon takes Neuza to one side and asks if she might look in on Maureen Dent, send someone in to clean the flat.
‘My niece, she do it. Eight pound for hour.’
‘Fine,’ says Manon, frowning, wondering how long she can bankroll the Dent family. ‘Add it to my bill. Could he stay with you when … y’know, at the end?’
Neuza makes a mournful grimace as if she’s smelt something unappetising. ‘Is no possible. Is lovely boy but my hasband, he no take in Fly. He not such a good man.’
‘OK, right, well, I’ll think of something. For now, we’ll keep going with the food tab and the cleaning and looking in on them, OK?’
‘Sem problemas,’ she says, and from her warm pat on her shoulder and her competent expression, Manon understands this to mean, ‘No problem’.
At home again in the evening, in bed, she listens to the shouts of revellers across the river. A lorry rumbles down some arterial route and its vibrations make the light bulb rattle in its metal shade beside her head like the buzz of an insect. The phone lies on her stomach. She is worrying about Fly. She dials Alan’s number.
‘Hello,’ he says.
‘Are you in bed?’ she asks.
‘I sure am. How was your day?’
‘I went to visit Fly Dent in London. He … he’s only ten. His mum’s not got long.’
‘Poor boy,’ says Alan.
‘He wants to stay with me, once she goes into a hospice. He’s frightened of being taken into care and I don’t blame him. Don’t think care would do him any good, to be honest.’
‘Doesn’t he need to stay near to his school? Thought you said he was doing well.’
‘Well, yes, but he needs to be safe.’
In the silence, she realises she wants Alan to persuade her – to do the right thing, to cast practicalities aside and take Fly in, out of goodness, unalloyed. It matters where his compass lies, to which side of hers.
‘It’s not like I don’t have the resources to look after him,’ she is saying, without conviction. ‘I’ve got a job, a flat. I’ve got money.’
‘It’d be a lot of disruption, for both of you,’ says Alan. ‘It’s not as if he’s your responsibility – not really. This is what the state is for.’
‘I s’pose,’ she says. ‘But don’t you have to take people on sometimes? Don’t you have to step up?’
‘In theory,’ he says.
Perhaps, she thinks, grasping for hope, he is protecting their own trajectory – a chance, not to be scuppered by a ten-year-old lodger. Talk about passion killer. He doesn’t want to share her (maybe).
‘I went out with someone with a son once,’ he says. ‘Didn’t last long.’
‘That probably wasn’t the son’s fault,’ she says, before she’s had time to think. She wants to divert the conversation away from this dark turn. ‘See, that’s the good thing about Internet dating – you can specify “no kids”.’
‘You’ve done Internet dating?’
‘Hasn’t everyone?’
‘Seems a bit desperate,’ he says.
I am desperate, she thinks. Or I was. Why lie?
‘Didn’t you want to meet someone?’ she asks him.
‘Just rather do it naturally,’ he says.
‘What’s natural? Getting smashed and falling on someone in a bar?’
‘No, what’s natural is being questioned by the gorgeous Officer Dibble about a dead body,’ he says, sounding conciliatory.
She smiles into the warmer silence.
Then he says, ‘Did you tell the truth about your age then?’
She sits up. ‘What’s wrong with my age?’
‘Well, thirty-nine – danger zone.’
‘I’m sorry?’
‘I didn’t mean … sorry,’ he says. ‘That was a stupid thing to say.’
‘What about your sperm, hobbling about on Zimmer frames?’
‘Calm down.’
‘Woah! Calm down?’ she says. ‘I want to know. What do you mean by danger zone? Where are we heading? I mean, do we actually want the same things?’
He sighs, as if he’s completely exhausted with her. ‘I can’t do this any more, Manon. I’m sorry.’
She lies there. Stunned. Is that it then? All finished before it even began? What has she done, with her hot head so quick to take offence?
She reaches out to turn on the police radio, hoping Control can take her back to a place of safety. Its low murmurings burble out towards her and she closes her eyes. She turns in the bed, curls into a foetal position, her hands clasped between her knees.
She thinks there will always be a gap. A sad loss of a thing that cannot be had; a will-o’-the-wisp, yearned for but never grasped. A woman who cannot be delayed for long enough. Sudden Death Syndrome, the coroner recorded at her mother’s inquest, as if the word ‘syndrome’ made it comprehensible.
One minute you are loved, and then you are not.
Friday
Manon