Neil left his father to the hedge.
Malcolm and Diane had arrived at two. Diane in a wool coat, lipstick fresh. Malcolm in the blazer. He'd carried a wrapped present, rectangular, sharp-cornered, and the garden shears, set by the back door without explanation. Freddie received the present with appropriate enthusiasm. A book: The World of Engineering for Young Minds. Malcolm's choice. Freddie said ‘Thank you, Grandad’ with diplomatic grace. Then Malcolm had found the hedge.
Neil found Diane in the kitchen.
She was standing by the counter, studying it. Neil's moka pot. Bought three weeks ago because the flat's instant coffee had become unbearable after months of drinking properly at Rory's kitchen table. New. Obvious.
‘This is new,’ she said.
‘I bought it.’
‘You don't drink espresso.’
‘I do now.’
‘Since when?’
‘Since the autumn.’
She turned the observation over. ‘People don't change their coffee overnight. Something prompted it.’
‘Better taste prompted it.’
‘Mmm.’ The sound Diane made when she was filing rather than responding. She looked past the counter to the bookshelf, and there it was, the Van Gogh letters, spine out, wedgedbetween Hardy and Heaney, not Neil's shelves. Art. She looked at the painting on the wall. An original. on a wall that had been blank for four years. She looked at the tubes of acrylic paint on the shelf by the fridge, bought for Freddie but present in a flat where poster paint had previously been the ceiling of artistic ambition.
‘Freddie mentions Mr Cavanaugh constantly,’ she said. Moving past the counter. Casual. Nothing casual about it.
‘He's a good teacher. Freddie enjoys art.’
‘Freddie enjoys everything. He's five.’
‘Six. Today.’
‘Six.’ She folded her arms. ‘And this Mr Cavanaugh, he's here? At the party?’
‘He's in the garden. Doing art with the children.’
‘An unusual commitment for a teacher. Coming to a pupil's home on a Saturday.’
‘Several teachers came, Mum. Miss Greaves is in the living room.’
‘Miss Greaves is Freddie's class teacher. Mr Cavanaugh teaches art.’
Diane walked past Neil to find Freddie. The conversation ended.
Rory was in the garden, cleaning up the art station. Neil had positioned them in separate zones, parents inside, Rory outside.
The zones held for forty minutes.
Then Freddie decided to show Grandma his Spider-Man painting.
‘GRANDMA. Come and SEE.’
He dragged Diane into the kitchen. Neil followed, too slow, three steps behind.
The kitchen. Rory at the sink, washing brushes. Diane entering with Freddie's hand in hers. The Spider-Man paintingpropped against the wall where Freddie had placed it with the reverence of a curator.
‘Look what Mr Cavanaugh made me. It's REAL art.’
