To any outsider this would have sounded deeply weird—I could hear Frank in my head, God, they’re rock ’n’ roll, how do you stand the pace? But everyone nodded, even, after a moment, Rafe. I had already noticed that the house was their safe zone: whenever things got tense, one of them would steer the conversation onto something that needed fixing or rearranging, and everyone would settle down again. We were going to be in big trouble once the house was all sorted out and we didn’t have grouting or floor stains to use as our Happy Place.
It worked, too. Old sheets thrown over the furniture and cold bright air flooding through the open windows, crap clothes and hard work and the smell of paint, ragtime playing in the background, the naughty buzz of ditching college and the house swelling like an approving cat under the attention: it was exactly what we needed. By the time we finished the room, Rafe was starting to look sheepish instead of belligerent, Abby and Justin had relaxed enough to have a long comfortable argument about whether Scott Joplin sucked, and we were all in a much better mood.
“First dibs on the shower,” I said.
“Let Rafe have it,” said Abby. “To each according to his need.” Rafe made a face at her. We were sprawled on the dust sheets, admiring our work and trying to get up the energy to move.
“Once this dries,” Daniel said, “we’ll need to decide what, if anything, we’re putting on the walls.”
“I saw these really old tin signs,” said Abby, “up in the top spare room—”
“I am not living in a 1980s pub,” said Rafe. He had sobered up along the way, or else the paint fumes had got the rest of us high enough that we didn’t notice. “Aren’t there paintings, or something normal ?”
“The ones that are left are all horrible,” Daniel said. He was leaning back against the edge of the sofa, with spatters of white paint in his hair and on his old plaid shirt, looking happier and more at ease than he had in days. “Landscape with Stag and Hounds, that kind of thing, and not particularly well done, either. Some great-great-aunt with artistic pretensions, I think.”
“You’ve got no soul,” Abby told him. “Things with sentimental value aren’t supposed to have artistic merit as well. They’re supposed to be crap. Otherwise, it’s just showing off.”
“Let’s use those old newspapers,” I said. I was flat on my back in the middle of the floor, waving my legs in the air to examine the new paint splashes on Lexie’s work dungarees. “The ancient ones, with the article about the Dionne quintuplets and the ad for the thing that makes you gain weight. We can stick them all over the walls and varnish over them, like the photos on Justin’s door.”
“That’s in my bedroom,” Justin said. “A sitting room should have elegance. Grandeur. Not ads.”
“You know,” Rafe said, out of the blue, propping himself up on one elbow, “I do realize that I owe all of you an apology. I shouldn’t have vanished, especially not without letting you know where I was. My only excuse, and it’s not much of one, is that I was deeply pissed off about that guy getting off scot-free. I’m sorry.”
He was at his most charming, and Rafe could be very charming when he felt like it. Daniel gave him a grave little nod. “You’re an idiot,” I said, “but we love you anyway.”
“You’re OK,” Abby said, stretching up to get her cigarettes off the card table. “I’m not crazy about the idea of that guy running around loose, either.”
“You know what I wonder?” Rafe said. “I wonder if Ned hired him to frighten us off.”
There was an instant of absolute silence, Abby’s hand stopped with a smoke halfway out of the pack, Justin frozen in the middle of sitting up.
Daniel snorted. “I seriously doubt that Ned has the intellect for anything that complex,” he said acidly.
I had opened my mouth to ask, Who’s Ned? but I had shut it again, fast; not just because I was obviously supposed to know this, but because I did. I could have kicked myself for not seeing it earlier. Frank has always thrown diminutives at people he doesn’t like—Danny Boy, our Sammy—and like an idiot I had never considered the possibility that he might have picked the wrong one. They were talking about Slow Eddie. Slow Eddie, who had been wandering around the late-night laneways looking for someone, who had claimed he’d never met Lexie, was N. I was sure Frank could hear my heart punching the mike.
“Probably not,” Rafe said, lying back on his elbows and contemplating the walls. “When we’re done here, we should really invite him over for dinner.”
“Over my dead body,” said Abby. Her voice was tightening up. “You didn’t have to deal with him. We did.”
“And mine,” said Justin. “The man’s a Philistine. He drank Heineken all night, of course, and then he kept belching and naturally he thought that was hilarious, every single time. And all that droning about fitted kitchens and tax breaks and Section Whatever-it-is. Once was enough, thank you very much.”
“You people have no heart,” Rafe told them. “Ned loves this house. He told the judge so. I think we owe him a chance to see that the old family seat is in good hands. Give me a smoke.”
“The only thing Ned loves,” Daniel said, very sharply, “is the thought of six fully fitted executive apartments on extensive grounds with potential for further development. And over my dead body will he ever get a chance to see that.”