I’m in the living room brushing Phoenix’s fur from the sofa – my mum has a million dogs yet there is never a hair to be found in her immaculate cottage. I peer through the living-room window. Oh, God, she’s talking to Henry. She’s become all flustered and high-pitched. Marielle is nowhere to be seen. I’m going to have to rescue him – he’ll be there all day otherwise.
Leaving the front door on the latch, I step outside. Mum is practically leaning over the Morgans’ wall to talk to Henry. Her sunglasses are pushed back onto her still-dark curls and she is wearing a pretty floral blouse and white capri pants. Henry has a watering can in his hand, which hangs uselessly by his side, and he’s nodding politely as Mum natters away.
‘Oh, there she is,’ Mum cries, when she sees me. ‘You never said you had new neighbours, Lena.’
My toes retract in my sandals and Henry gives me a half-smile. It’s the first time we’ve met since I think he might have seen me with Rufus’s boom mic in the garden.
‘Aren’t you going to help me with my case?’ She directs this at me, but Henry jumps to attention, swiftly moves out of the gate and is taking it from her while she’s laughing and saying, ‘Oh, I didn’t mean you, but thank you.’ I go to take the case from Henry but he insists and follows me inside the house, Mum keeping up a running commentary on the trains and the walk from the station in the heat. I’d offered to pick her up from Temple Meads but she’d refused.
Henry stands awkwardly in my hallway, still clutching the handle of my mum’s yellow suitcase. It feels strange having him here.
‘You must stay for a cup of tea,’ insists Mum. ‘Just leave the case there. Lena will take it upstairs for me in a bit, won’t you, sweetheart?’ She doesn’t wait for me to answer as she frogmarches Henry down the hallway and into the kitchen. I wonder what he makes of it compared to his. The cream cabinets are chipped, and the walls need repainting. I had a nose on Rightmove when the developers put next door up for sale and the kitchen had looked spectacular with its glass extension, expensive mink-coloured units, marble work surfaces and pale oak floors. Poor Henry looks completely bamboozled by my mother as he sits at my old oak table while she rushes around after him making tea – as if this is her house, not mine. He laughs at some of the things she says as she chatters on to him, takes the tea and sips it. He’s wearing chino shorts, a short-sleeved shirt, blue-and-white boat shoes, and looks the picture of respectability and class. Everything my mum admires in a person.
I notice the boom microphone and tape deck propped up in the corner and my heart drops. Henry doesn’t appearto have spotted them, thank goodness. His attention is taken up with Mum.
‘So, Henry,’ she says, pulling out a chair so she’s sitting next to him, ‘what brings you to Bristol? You don’t sound like you’re from the West Country.’
‘His grandson is here, Mum,’ I say, moving past them to open the patio doors. It’s stifling in the kitchen and there is no air, even with the doors open, but I’m also hoping to obscure Rufus’s recording equipment. I can smell Henry’s aftershave, something expensive and musky.
‘Oh, how lovely. How old?’ Mum asks Henry, ignoring me.
‘I … um, a few weeks, I think,’ he says, with a frown, while I pour myself a glass of water.
Mum shuffles in her seat. ‘Where are you from?’
‘All over. I grew up in Hampshire. Moved to London. We lived in Scotland for a bit.’ He sips his tea. Mum has put too much milk in it, but Henry doesn’t complain.
She looks as if she’s about to ask another question when her eyes go to the tape deck and microphone. ‘What on earth is all that?’
Henry follows her line of sight, and frowns.
Damn it.
‘Oh, that’s Rufus’s college equipment.’
‘Why the huge microphone?’ Mum asks. ‘What is he planning to do with that?’
‘He’s just gathering background sound for his project …’ I surreptitiously glance at Henry. His face is expressionless.
Mum laughs and turns to Henry. ‘My grandson thinks he’s Steven Scorsese,’ she says.
‘Steven Spielberg, Mum,’ I say. ‘Or Martin Scorsese.’
Henry looks up at me, mug in hand. ‘I’ve seen you and your son in the garden with it,’ he says mildly, with no apparent edge to his tone, but my stomach flips anyway.
‘It’s very old equipment. It doesn’t pick up much. We managed to get an owl hooting but that’s about all.’ I laugh, but it sounds forced.
Henry puts down his mug with a small smile. ‘Thanks so much for the tea. I’d better get back or Marielle will wonder where I am.’ He stands up. ‘It was lovely to meet you, er …’ He glances at my mum.
‘Bess. Are you sure? You’ve not finished your tea.’
‘I’d love to stay longer but I promised I’d take Marielle to the garden centre.’ He smiles charmingly at Mum.
She leaps up to trot after him and doesn’t come back in for another ten minutes. I dread to think what other information she’s prying from him. Mum has been known to extract all sorts from strangers, anything from their sex lives to whom they’ve fallen out with.
When she comes back she looks a little ruffled. ‘Such lovely people!’
‘You met Marielle too?’
