‘Martin, darling!’ Serena’s voice is at my shoulder. ‘There you are.’
She’s in a sleeveless caramel tracksuit, the legs of which taper flatteringly around her ankles. Her upper arms are crêpey, the skin loose. A Cartier bracelet dangles from her left wrist with excruciating nonchalance.
‘Goodness, you are smart,’ Serena says, looking me up and down. ‘What a dashing suit. You look like James Bond! Come …’ She links her arm through mine and walks me to the kitchen.
Ben is wearing chinos, old deck shoes and a faded pink polo shirt as he uncorks a bottle of wine with an elegant flourish. Pop! His face bears the puce tan that only certain Englishmen can afford from days in the garden and summers on yachts.
A plump woman who must be in her sixties is busy at the La Cornue stove, stirring a pot of something that smells of tomatoes and bay leaves. The housekeeper, I presume. She looks like my mother.
The Fitzmaurice children register as a homogenous mass of giant trainers and ripped denim, lounging on various sofas and chairs. The eldest girl, whose name I can’t remember, goes to the fridge and gets herself a Coke Zero.
‘Gimme one,’ the older boy says rudely and she throws him a can which he scrambles to catch. When he opens it, sticky black liquid fizzes over onto the tiled floor. This, I think, must be my godson. What an absolute chump.
‘Hector!’ Serena says. ‘For goodness’ sake, sweetheart, be careful. Cozzie, would it really be too much to ask for you to get a glass rather than swigging from the can like a savage?’
Serena rolls her eyes at me, as if we are sharing a joke.
‘That’s actually racist, Mum,’ Cosima says.
Hector sniggers. He has an unsqueezed whitehead on the tip of his nose and absolutely none of Ben’s visual appeal at the same age.
‘Cozzie’s at an age where she thinks everything’s racist,’ Serena tells me.
‘That’s because most stuff is,’ Cosima says. ‘Where do you think the money came from for houses like these? Slavery.’
‘It was a monastery,’ Serena snaps.
‘How many Black friends do you actually have?’
‘Enough, Cozzie,’ Ben interrupts, at just the same moment as Serena mutters, ‘Iso Malik-Edwards is Black.’
‘Some wine, Martin?’ Ben hands me a glass. ‘This is a lovely little Tignanello. We got it last year when we stayed near Siena. Tell me what you think.’
I take a sip. It tastes like any other red wine.
‘Delicious,’ I say. ‘A real intensity of flavour.’
I make a show of swirling my glass and examining the consistency of its contents before taking another swig.
‘I’m getting rich plums and leather.’
He slaps me on the back.
‘Fucking good, isn’t it?’
‘Swearing, Daddy!’ the younger girl exclaims.
‘Sorry, Cressy. All of you, say hello to my old mate, Martin.’
I still haven’t got used to Ben using my actual name rather than constantly referring to me as Little Shadow, or LS.
‘Hello, Martin,’ they intone dutifully, barely looking up from their electronic devices. Only Cosima looks at me directly, staring at my face with dark eyes.
‘Martin is a friend of your dad’s from school,’ Serena says with unnecessary emphasis, walking through the open French doors to the patio. ‘They know all each other’s secrets.’
She raises an eyebrow and I catch Ben glaring at her. Serena lights a cigarette and inhales deeply. ‘I allow myself one a week,’ she says to me, with a girlish shrug of the shoulders.
‘Like Gwyneth Paltrow,’ Cosima mutters, decanting her Coke into a glass. ‘Her hero.’ She’s wearing Doc Marten boots with orange laces which stomp noisily across the flagstones.
