“Do you know what I’ve lost count of?” he asked. “The number of people who’ve asked about Hugo smoking. ‘Did he smoke?’ ‘But, but, I thought he didn’t smoke?’ Which of course he didn’t, not in the last twenty years at any rate, and anyway it wouldn’t be remotely relevant if he had; this type of cancer isn’t linked to smoking. It’s just a, a, a random vicious bastard. Hugo just had bad luck; a bad roll of the dice. But we’re so desperate, aren’t we, to believe that bad luck only happens to people who deserve it. People genuinely can’t take it in that someone could die of cancer without bloody well smoking.”
The platter was overloaded; without the clingfilm holding them in place, cascades of sandwiches kept falling off. He tried to poke them back in. “I mean, Miriam for God’s sake, and she knew Hugo how long, thirty-odd years? not just some acquaintance—she’s spent the last few months gabbling away about toxins from red meat and processed foods, and people who do yoga every morning and live to be a hundred, and I don’t know what the hell she thinks she’s on about but at this point I can hardly stand being in the same room with her.”
His hands were trembling; the sandwiches wouldn’t go right, he kept fumbling them. “Here,” I said. “I’ll do those.”
He didn’t seem to hear me. “And these detectives. Do you have any idea what they’ve got planned? How much they’re going to tell the media?”
“No. I haven’t seen them.”
“Because if everything comes out, those same people, the ones with the smoking, they’re going to be absolutely convinced that Hugo died of cancer because he killed this boy. A punishment from God, or karma, or negative brainwaves from guilt, or—no, let’s be honest, they won’t even think it through that far, will they, they’ll just make some vague mindless self-satisfied assumption. And nothing in the world will change their minds. And I know it doesn’t make any difference to Hugo, but it’s so bloody frustrating—” The sandwiches tumbled back onto the table. “And these, damn these things—”
I collected them and started stacking. My father leaned back against the sink and wiped his hands down his face. I couldn’t tell whether he thought Hugo had actually done it. There was no way I was going to ask him.
“I keep telling myself it could have been so much worse,” he said. “You should remember that, too. For someone who’d had such a terrible piece of luck, Hugo was lucky. All the things the doctors warned us about: dementia, pain, seizures, incontinence, paralysis. He didn’t have to go through any of that. Or”—he pressed his fingertips into his eyes—“with the way things were going, jail.”
“He wanted to be at home,” I said. I couldn’t hold it back. “Not in that shithole.”
My dad raised his head and looked at me. His eyes were red and swollen, and someone with magenta old-lady lipstick had given him a big kiss on the cheek. “He chose to ring the detectives, you know,” he said. “It’s not like they came after him. Yes, probably he assumed he would be coming home; but he must have known there was a possibility he wouldn’t. And he did it anyway. I have to believe that he had his reasons, and he thought they were good ones.”
I couldn’t tell whether there was a message in there, or a question, carefully layered so I could ignore it if I chose. “I guess,” I said. The sandwiches looked OK. I went to the fridge for the wine.
“I don’t know whether he would have talked to me about it,” my father said, “if he’d had time. I hope that he would have.”
The fridge was jammed; I had no idea how to get anything out without the whole lot falling on top of me. “He didn’t say anything to me,” I said.
“Hey,” Susanna said, coming in with Sallie clamped onto her skirt. She was wearing a well-cut little black dress and heels, with her hair brushed sleek; she looked tall and striking and unexpectedly elegant. “That old guy in the saggy tweed jacket just lit up a pipe. Mum and Miriam are freaking out and getting into a whole thing over who should tell him to take it outside, but I figure feck it, pipe smoke isn’t even on our top hundred worries list today. As long as he has an ashtray—Sal, let go for a sec, I need