‘Indubitably.’
She snorts.
‘He and Mum are shagging, I’m pretty sure.’
Interesting, I think. I slide out a chair and position it to face her. When I sit, I assess her face. She is pretty but not in an obvious way like Serena. Cosima’s eyebrows are thick, her lips chapped. There is a crease above her nose and a dimple in her chin. Taken as a whole, she has a striking quality. Her colouring is Ben’s and there is something else about her that I recognise; some innate quality. I’m not sure what it is yet, but it will come to me.
‘Yes, I had the same thought,’ I say.
‘Awkward,’ she replies, but she doesn’t seem particularly bothered by it.
‘So …’ I gesture towards her Marxist tome. ‘You’re in favour of a redistribution of wealth?’
Cosima nods.
‘And the abolition of private property?’
She seems uncertain.
‘Perhaps you haven’t got to that bit yet,’ I say. ‘I can’t imagine you’d want to give all this up.’ I wave at the kitchen, the garden, the sweetpeas and the vast unfolding of all the rooms beyond. ‘All these ripe fruits of colonialism, capitalism and inherited wealth …’
‘Ohhhkaaayy,’ she mutters.
‘… just waiting to be plucked from the branch – by you.’
I point at her.
‘You don’t know anything about me,’ she says, nostrils flaring.
‘I know your parents. Where you come from.’
She sits up then. Her dark eyes glitter.
‘I despise it. All of it.’
I lean back in my chair, contemplating her with newfound interest. What a strange thing that this cuckoo should have emerged from Ben and Serena’s feathered nest.
‘Well now,’ I say. ‘There’s something we have in common.’
She laughs. It’s a clean laugh, like the rustle of a beaded curtain.
‘I knew it,’ she says.
‘Knew what?’
‘You’re Martin Gilmour.’
‘Well, yes,’ I say. ‘That much is obvious.’
‘My father’s best friend from school, or at least that’s what you thought you were. He made you think that. Dad’s good at that, isn’t he? At making you think you’re the most important person in the world until you do something that disappoints him or he’s got no more use for you, then he ditches you. Kicks you to the kerb.’
She makes a flicking motion with her fingers. Outside, the faraway rumble of a tractor. It’s so bloody quiet in the countryside. No proper noises to hide behind.
‘And I know what happened at Cambridge,’ Cosima says, sitting forward now, her elbows propped on her knees. ‘I know about Vicky Dillane. The car crash. The fact you took the rap for it. You fessed up years later, didn’t you? But they put pressure on the police to make it disappear.’
There is a tinnitus hum in my inner ear. To hear Vicky’s name in someone else’s mouth after so long is like a jab in the ribs: momentarily winding.
‘How on earth …?’
