was a new Michelin-starred restaurant serving daring fusion dishes, too elegant to feature its name prominently, or a jazzy church.
‘It’s stunning,’ I say. ‘This was your dad’s family home?’
‘Yup. Alright, isn’t it.’
‘Alright is not the word.’
Fin’s hands are in the pockets of his coat, shoulders hunched against the wind, face very pale in the chill wind.
‘It feels so strange looking at it now. You know, the last time I’d have been stood here, my dad would’ve been pointing out this and that about the architecture, reminiscing about him and my Uncle Don smashing a downstairs window with a football during the ’66 World Cup. My mum would’ve been complaining the wind was messing her hair do up. Susie would’ve been in her plastic tiara and tutu.’
‘And what would you have been doing?’ I say.
‘Listening to my dad, I guess, or else no one would’ve been. Looking awkward, with my pipe-cleaner legs.’
I almost remark I remember you at that age, but given we’ve never broached encounters with each other back in the day – not that they really matter – it feels odd to start now. I block out the memory of the kiss, and I hope he has too. He must’ve had many, many women lunge, since.
‘It’s a gastropub with rooms,’ he says. He nods toward the cavernous bay window on the left. ‘That’s the bar.’
‘Really? It does look too massive and splendid to be someone’s house.’
‘Want a drink? It’s not impossible Iain’s ahead of us on that.’
‘Yeah, why not?’ I shrug, with the slightest shiver of nerves at the prospect his dad is in there. I’ve been given a room in a five-star hotel, with expenses, on the basis he will respond positively to me. Fin wouldn’t blame me if he didn’t, I’m sure, but I’d still feel like a freeloading fraud.
Hang on, I ask myself: once he no longer has a use for you, how are you so sure about what Finlay Hart would or would not do? No one gets a reputation by accident. I have a suddenly powerful, disorientating sense of Susie watching me trot obediently after Finlay, banging on the glass that now divides us, screaming: ‘Stop.’
29
‘If I could afford this, I’d turn it back into a home but leave this room kitted out as a pub,’ I say. It’s charming and cosy as hell in here, spartan but homely, half-melted pillar candles on wrought-iron stands and a crowded bar area selling packets of crisps and wedges of brightly iced cake with silver ball sprinkles, under glass covers.
We choose pints of the real ale on draught each and a seat in the window where we can see the sea. As the light dims outside, the lamps inside seem warmer. A scan of the room has produced no sightings of Iain Hart.
Fin himself likes to move around unnoticed, I notice, he doesn’t carry himself in a way that draws attention: subtle, almost stealthy. Being beautiful must be an inconvenience.
‘Can you believe this was ever someone’s sitting room?’ I say, casting a look around.
‘To be perfectly honest, the Hart dynasty are sufficiently crazy …’ Finlay pauses, ‘professional term, don’t quote me’ – I smile, and once again, I can tell he’s making a special effort with me, ‘that their house being so large it’s now used as commercial premises is the least of it.’
‘How were they crazy?’
‘My grandad had a shop, then a chain of successful pharmacies. He sold them, retired at forty-eight, set about drinking, gambling and womanising. He and my grandma loathed each other in that way you loathed each other in a toxic marriage in the 1950s, but never dreamt for a moment you’d leave. Or that your poison might infect the kids. When my grandad was home, he chain-smoked so many cigs, there was a nicotine patch on the ceiling above his chair.’
‘Woah!’
Finlay casts a look upwards at the ceiling. ‘My dad would be able to point to the spot.’
I try to imagine this space, like a television device ‘star wipe’ effect, dissolving into a vision of the Hart paterfamilias dragging resentfully on endless Craven As, the mother offstage banging pots and pans, little Iain and little Don playing with a train set.
Fin drinks his pint and I drink mine and I think of the utterly terrible and bizarre set of circumstances that led to me sitting here, as the sky outside turns from deep blue to paler purple. What would Susie think of me being here? For once her voice is silent.