‘And the cinnamon stays where you put it.’
‘Between the cardamom and the cumin.’
‘I won’t touch it.’
‘You’ll touch it.’
‘I’ll try not to touch it. That’s the best I can offer.’
He drove to his parents’ house the following weekend. Alone. Freddie at Gemma’s, Rory at home, both of them told: _I need to do this by myself._
Gemma had said: ‘Ring me if you need extraction.’ Rory had said: ‘I’ll be here. Whatever happens.’ Both offers landing like hands on his back.
The drive was fifteen minutes that lasted an hour. The same roads he’d driven as a teenager, as a university student, as a married man, as a divorced father. The same cul-de-sac, the same pressure-washed drive. A hanging basket that Diane had filled with pansies in three colours, each colour in its designated section, because even flowers were subject to organisation.
He rang the bell. Didn’t use his key. The key was in his pocket but using it felt wrong, as though the old terms of entry no longer applied and new terms hadn’t been negotiated.
Diane opened the door. Lipstick. Cashmere. She looked at him for a beat. Her eyes were red-rimmed, not from crying now but from having cried before and composing herself.
‘Come in, love.’
_Love_. She hadn’t called him love since he was fourteen.
Baking. Scones. A mother who didn’t know what to say and decided to say it with flour.
Malcolm was in the kitchen. In the kitchen, not the armchair. Standing by the counter with a tea towel over one shoulder, which meant Diane had conscripted him into scone preparation, which meant she’d needed him in the same room. He looked older than he had at Christmas, not physically, but in posture. The shoulders less square. The blazer replaced by a cardigan. No newspaper. No shears. Hands at his sides. Empty hands on Malcolm Ashworth meant the maintenance had stopped.
‘Neil.’ One word. But the tone was different from every previous _Neil_ his father had produced. Softer at the edges.
‘Dad.’
‘Tea’s on.’
‘Thanks.’
They stood in the kitchen. Three Ashworths. The scones on a cooling rack. The kettle just boiled. The kitchen clock ticking, a sound Neil had heard his entire life, steady and neutral.
Nobody spoke for thirty seconds. Long enough to pour tea, to butter a scone, to examine the grain of the counter. Long enough for Neil to notice that his father’s face tightened and released, the small rhythmic clench that meant Malcolm was trying to produce language and the language was resisting.
‘Your mother’s told me,’ Malcolm said. Finally.
‘I know.’
‘About the... about your colleague.’
‘Yes.’
Malcolm’s hands moved on the counter. Then, abruptly:
‘And at school? Do they know? At school?’
The question was sharp. Pointed. Not the stumbling uncertainty of a man absorbing news. The quick, defensive calculation of a father whose fear had found a channel.
‘I think some colleagues know. Yes.’
‘Because the boy... Freddie. If the parents find out, if there’s talk at the gates, you know what children are like. They repeat what they hear. And if Freddie comes home and someone’s said...’
‘Said what, Dad?’
