won’t recall the names of people they meet in the street.’
‘Perhaps they don’t know the difference.’
‘Oh, they know the difference, all right,’ said Aaron. ‘It simply isn’t in their interests to bother remembering. Children are merciless that way, almost entirely lacking in sentiment. I’m sure it’s one part that hasn’t changed at all. As soon as they hit ten some kind of switch turns on. They suddenly learn attitude and duplicity. It’s a survival mechanism, of course, probably an essential weapon when you’re forced to walk around the neighbourhood with no money in your pockets.’
Bryant found Aaron’s honesty encouraging. ‘Do you teach any of the children in this street?’ he asked, wondering if it was worth interviewing them. He had no fondness for modern children; their motives were sinister and obscure. They became blanker and more alien with each passing generation, probably because they saw him as impossibly decrepit.
‘We’re a working-class Catholic primary, Mr Bryant. The houses around here were constructed to provide homes for the Irish labourers who built the railways, and many of them are still lived in by their descendants. The area is split into original working-class inhabitants and new arrivals from the middle classes.’
‘And how do you tell them apart?’ asked Bryant.
‘The middle-class couples never have a granny living in the next street. They’d hate to be thought of as economic migrants, but that’s what they are, nesting in the upcoming neighbourhoods, quietly waiting to turn a profit, moaning about the lack of organic shops in the high street.’
‘Do you teach the Wiltons’ son?’
‘No, Brewer goes to a private school in Belsize Park. That family over there—’ he pointed out a West Indian couple with two Sunday-dressed children ‘—send their kids to a Church of England school with a three-year waiting list. Among the working-class Catholic families, religion still plays a part in choice of education.’
‘You surprise me,’ Bryant admitted. He made a mental note, ticking the family off against Longbright’s interview register: Randall and Kayla Ayson, children Cassidy and Madison. Randall looked fidgety and keen to leave. His children appeared hypnotized with boredom.
Paul had recognized the estate agent as soon as he entered the room, and suddenly understood how Garrett had got in on the deal for number 5 so early—he lived in the same street. No wonder he’d been annoyed by his failure to secure the house. He knew so much about the value of the property, it was almost like insider trading. ‘That fat bastard is the one who tried to warn us off the place,’ he whispered to Kallie. ‘Where do estate agents buy their shirts? There must be a special store that caters for them.’
Mr Singh was refusing to drop his argument with Garrett. ‘I heard that you are trying to purchase the waste ground in front of the builders’ merchant. Don’t tell me you’re planning to squeeze another house on to the site.’
‘I’ve never announced any intention to buy the land.’ Garrett crushed a beer can and set it down, an act of vulgarity that did not pass unnoticed by the hosts. ‘Nobody even knows who owns it.’
‘You know the old man who lives there,’ Mr Singh accused.
‘Which old man is this?’ asked Bryant. Tonight he was wearing a hearing aid, not because he needed to, but because it amplified all sounds equally, so that he was able to catch several conversations at once.
‘There’s a tramp—he uses the waste ground to sleep on sometimes,’ said a large Egyptian man who was listening in. ‘Omar Karneshi. My wife Fatima and I live at number 4.’ Bryant received another damp handshake. ‘If you buy the land, he’ll have nowhere to live.’
‘Bloody hell, why is everyone having a go at me?’ Garrett complained to his discomfited girlfriend. ‘How come I’m the bloody villain? Look, pal, no one can put in a bid for the land because the builders are planning to expand, so get off my back and give them a hard time instead.’ Lauren quickly placed a fresh beer in his hand.
Tamsin mouthed ‘Mingle and replenish!’ across the room at her husband, pointing to various low-levelled glasses. She knew they should have hired someone to do the canapés, but had been worried that it would seem pretentious in a property of this size. They would save caterers for the house in Norfolk, a Christmas party perhaps, where waitresses could glide in unnoticed from the kitchen. Tamsin would never admit it aloud, but she hated spending her weekdays surrounded by Greeks and Africans