‘What?’ Martha frowns.
‘My laptop! Where is it?’
‘I don’t know, I wasn’t up here?—’
‘I didn’t do anything!’ Fin says quickly.
‘Then whowasup here? Who did this?’
‘Honestly, I have no idea…’ Martha shrinks back as he storms around the room, checking shelves and desk drawers in the feeble hope that it might just have been ‘moved’.
Joel pushes past his kids and flies down the stairs. Where the hell is it? Not in the bathroom, he’s been in there, unless some joker dropped it into the cistern? As he’s less than keen to see the state of his kids’ rooms right now, he swings into his own room, the room he shares with Shelley, who should be here right now.Here to help and support anddosomething more useful than get pissed with Lena and Pearl?—
‘Dad?’ He’s conscious of his daughter hovering next to him, giving him a curious look. It strikes Joel that someone else looked at him that way today: that preposterous dancing Christmas tree woman in the street.
‘What?’ he shouts.
‘That thing there…’ Martha seems to recoil, and at the same time Joel becomes aware that not only is the bed unmade, duvet and pillows and even the sheet tossed around as if in a storm – but that someone isinthe bed. A small young male with dark curly hair. A child, for Christ’s sake.
As Ajay stirs, feeling much better now after his sleep, Joel feels as if he might faint. Not because there’s a kid here – a kid he semi-recognises but God knows what his name is – but because Martha is staring right at him and, with a wave of horror, he realises what it must be.
‘Daaaad,’ she says slowly. ‘What’s that on your neck?’
29
‘Theo, come here, darling!’
Frida’s shrill tone cuts through the early afternoon stillness as Pearl and Niall head back towards Shore Cottage. Then: ‘Theo, please stop that for a moment, sweetheart. Isn’t this beautiful? You must come and look at this view!’
Pearl catches Niall’s glance. ‘He’s six.’ He chuckles. ‘I don’t think he’s interested in views…’
‘She might as well say, “Come and see this fascinating tax return, darling”,’ Pearl adds. But then her expression drops as Stan barks sharply and she sees what’s happening in front of the house. ‘Theo!’ she cries out as Niall runs ahead.
‘No, you can’t do that to Stan,’ he says firmly. When Pearl catches up he is already disentangling a length of frayed old rope that’s been wound in a complicated fashion around the dog’s collar and forelegs.
‘What were you doing, Theo?’ she exclaims.
‘I made a harness.’ He grins proudly.
‘Yes, but he doesn’t need a harness.’ Niall stuffs the rope into a jacket pocket.
‘Yes, but I want to ride him?—’
‘Yes, but Stan doesn’t want to be ridden,’ Niall says firmly.
‘Yes, but Iwantto ride him?—’
‘Yes, but he’s a dog’ – Pearl has jumped right into the yes-but game – ‘not a pony.’
‘Come over here and see how the water ripples in the sunshine, Theo!’ his mother trills, to no effect.
‘I want him to be a pony.’ Theo’s dark eyes beam fury.
‘He’s not, though,’ Niall says lightly. ‘Sorry, but it’s biologically impossible.’
‘And Theo, it’s not kind to do that to Stan.’ Pearl bobs down to his height. He has the look of a sculpted cherub: plump-cheeked and pouting, face so pale as to be almost translucent, crowned by light blond curls. She pictures him in a museum, on a plinth, with a little label on it:Irritating child, mid-2020s, marble.
His bottom lip protrudes. ‘But he likes it.’
