the kitchen, everyone was getting up to join them.
She poured more water into the large earthenware jug. Hank appeared in the kitchen with the glass one from the table. ‘Great minds,’ he said. Dorothy asked how he was getting on and he said fine and leaned against the sink bench, the water radiant in his hands through the blue glass, and, ‘You?’ And she said yes. Yes. Hank poured a glass of water and held it out to her and as she reached for it she looked through the open doors at Dennis being led around the courtyard by Ruth. Hank’s fingertips brushed hers as they released the glass and she turned in surprise, jolted.
In the heat of the day Ruth stayed indoors to protect her face. ‘The light here is unbelievable. For sure it’s stronger than when we were kids. I mean like, what fucking ozone layer?’ Hank wanted to record Dorothy and Andrew. He showed them examples of his work in a black-leather portfolio; in the glaring afternoon of the garden the photos seemed stagy and stiff, and the people in them looked as though that was probably not how they imagined themselves. Andrew said, ‘Not for me. I’d crack the lens.’
‘You’re a good-looking couple,’ Hank said. ‘Something for the future grandkids? Get a record before your teeth fall out.’
Andrew barked a laugh and headed back into the house, calling over his shoulder, ‘Long gone, buddy, long gone.’ Not strictly true; his teeth were mostly bridge but they were still in his head, they didn’t come out at night, thank God.
‘Where in the States are you from?’ Dorothy asked.
Hank shrugged, and turned the heavy pages of his portfolio to the very back. ‘Connecticut. There’s the house.’ A wooden mansion, with numerous windows, that must have been enormous, but he’d taken the photograph from far away or with a clever lens so that it looked like a model, a trick of perspective enhanced by the child he had placed in the front of the frame, looming hugely, his hand out as though to pat the roof. On the facing page was a picture of the same boy, wearing a striped T-shirt, a woman with long blonde hair, a golden retriever, and a younger version of Hank.
‘Wow,’ said Dorothy. ‘Your family.’
He nodded. ‘Yep. Actually, my son’s in London now, studying. I’m going to see him in the winter. He’s a great kid. You’ve got girls, right?’
‘And a boy, yes.’ It had always amazed her when people spoke of their children in this detached way – London, I’m going to see him – but now she knew that was what happened as they got older, just as her children now were all adult-sized and the family had changed shape, become a model of six people on the same scale. In fact the children looked bigger than the adults even though they weren’t, their features yet to settle, hair abundant, full of life. ‘How did you and Ruth meet?’
‘In a French dentist’s, believe it or not. We were both on summer holidays and we got talking in the waiting room. So I’m in Paris and my wisdom teeth are giving me hell, so a friend gets me an appointment with her dentist, and I’m sitting there in the worst kind of pain, you know it feels like someone is fucking me in the ear, and then there’s some changeover with the receptionist and the new one doesn’t speak English, et cetera et cetera, and thank God this woman comes to my rescue.’
‘Why was she there?’
‘Teeth whitening.’
‘No, in Paris.’
‘Oh. I don’t know. Antiquing? The twins are in school, right, boarding? Anyway, I was in there for hours, they only got one tooth, told me I was going to have to come back the next day and go to some kind of terrifying overnight dental hospital, have a general et cetera, so I head downstairs, there’s a bar. It’s Paris, right? I’m going to drown my sorrows, a little preliminary numbing, and there, also drinking, white wine naturally, is your sister. And you know this year we thought we may as well do it again, only head south.’
‘Is photography your full-time job?’
‘I’m always a sort of editor at large for some website or other. They keep me in train fares and cappuccinos.’ It was a practised line.
Perhaps it wasn’t so strange that he and Ruth had found each other, two people on holiday from their lives. She was burning to ask if Ben, the