‘What was her name?’ the girl asks, after a while.
The ice in the downstairs neighbour’s tumbler has melted entirely. He swirls the warming water around, then looks back through the dark glass, as if willing the bottle of whisky – Japanese, small batch – to come to him. It won’t. But it would somehow feel like a betrayal to stand up now, to scrape back his chair and open the screen door. To let them know that someone has heard.
‘Eleanora,’ comes the voice of the guy upstairs. ‘Ellie.’
her brother-in-law
Harry has been part of this family since before he could grow facial hair. He still can’t grow much – and besides, his boss looks down on beards. So, he sits, scratching his bare chin through another strained silence. It’s rare that the Cowan siblings are all at the same table. When were they together last? His own wedding. Someone else’s funeral. The mood at the table is funereal now, as if Kitty were actually dead, instead of sitting on the other side of this circular table, sucking all the air out of the room.
‘Don’t say stuff like that.’ Cee sits at her mother’s side like an unhappy heir, speaking curtly into her mother’s ear.
‘What?’ Kitty says. ‘We were all thinking it, Cecilia.’
Harry would never dream of contradicting his mother-in-law, but he can almost guarantee that no one else at the table was thinking what she had just said about the Eastern European waiter. Kitty wouldn’t have chosen a pub. She’d have chosen somewhere with white tablecloths and waiters who button their shirts up to the top. But the place had been selected as neutral territory by Clara and her new boyfriend, who has the privilege of meeting the family for the first time today. Harry is relievedby the prospect of an ally. He’s scared of the Cowans. Even his own wife, with her tight fists and her even tighter ponytail, terrifies him at times. Augie is sitting on the other side of Harry with his head down and his hands in his pockets, as if willing himself into non-existence. Cee’s mother sits stiff-backed in an equally stiff-backed wooden chair, curling her lip, scanning the place for something to complain about.
‘They really should clean the tables,’ Kitty says, raising one sharp finger. ‘It’s the bare minimum.’
‘Mum,’ says Cee, rubbing her tight forehead. ‘You can’t click at people.’
‘I’m notclicking at people,’ Kitty huffs. ‘I’m clicking at the waiter.’
Harry smooths his napkin into his lap, despite the fact that they haven’t even ordered food yet. Cee refolds her own napkin on the table, then checks the thin gold watch on her wrist.
‘She’s late,’ Cee declares.
‘Clara’s always late,’ Harry says.
‘She’s bringing an Italian,’ Kitty says. ‘They’re not exactly known for their promptness.’
‘He’s not Italian,’ Cee says, making that face again. ‘Is he?’
‘They just went to Rome, Kitty,’ Harry says.
‘Dirty place,’ Kitty says.
Cee rolls her eyes. ‘It’s Naples you didn’t like.’
‘It’s all dirty,’ Kitty says.
‘Quite right, Kitty,’ Harry says.
‘Stop sucking up,’ says Cee.
‘Where on earth are they?’ Kitty says.
‘I liked Naples,’ Augie adds, quietly.
‘Sweetheart,’ Kitty says, turning to Augie. ‘I forgot you were here.’
Augie shrinks back into his oversized jumper. Kitty doesn’t get a chance to dig in further, because the heavy wooden doors are swinging open and Clara is entering with all the usual fuss, dragging her boyfriend behind her.
‘You’re late,’ Cee says, tolerating a kiss on the cheek. ‘We don’t all run on your schedule.’
‘If we ran onyourschedule, we’d be here before the pub opened,’ Clara replies.
Before they’d arrived, Kitty had been wondering aloud what it is that Sebastian is supposed to do, and where he went to school to learn to do it. When Cee had explained that he’s an actor, Kitty had rolled her eyes. Another one, she’d said, like she’d ever been allowed to meet the last one. If Martin was here, Harry knows that he’d ask Seb when he’s going to get a proper job, after a handshake firm enough to crumple his knuckles. Harry has been there. He’s had the interrogation. Now he works for Martin. Or, for people who work for Martin.
‘Neck tattoos,’ Kitty says, mock-quietly to Cee, with lips so pursed that she looks like she’s having the juice squeezed out of her. She takes in Seb’s thick jacket, his heavy stubble. ‘He looks like a gang member.’
