why dreams were so important in our lives: something good had happened in the night while he was unconscious – he had achieved and expressed an intensity of relationship with his father that he had never experienced while the man had been alive. He was grateful to his extra dose of REM sleep. This, surely, was the consolation of dreams.
Barbuda looked at her mother pleadingly and said, ‘Please may I leave the table, Mummy.’
‘Oh, all right,’ Stella said and Barbuda left with alacrity. Stella reached over and poured the rest of the Rioja into Lorimer’s empty glass. She had had a lighter blonde rinse put through her hair, Lorimer thought, that’s the difference; she looked healthier and she was wearing all white, white jeans and a white sweat shirt with an appliquéd satin bird on the front. And did he detect a sheen of sunbed bronze?
Barbuda had left the room without a backward glance, a further sign that she had returned to her familiar mood of sour hostility. The Angelica name-change had finally been vetoed and the moment of solidarity that had existed between daughter and her mother’s lover appeared forgotten. As far as Lorimer could recall she had not addressed one word to him throughout the three courses of Sunday lunch – smoked salmon, roast chicken and all the trimmings and a bought-in lemon meringue pie.
Stella recharged her coffee cup, reached over and took his hand.
‘We’ve got to have a serious talk, Lorimer.’
‘I know,’ he said, telling himself there was nothing to be gained by further procrastination. He liked Stella, and in a way the mutually beneficial, respectful nature of their relationship suited him ideally. But its continuance presupposed a world without Flavia Malinverno in it, and thus it was impossible and would be best concluded in as decent and hurt-free a way as possible.
‘I’ve sold the business,’ Stella said.
‘Good God.’
‘And I’ve bought a fish farm.’ ‘A fish farm.’
‘Near Guildford. We’re moving.’
‘A fish farm near Guildford,’ Lorimer repeated gormlessly as if he were learning a new phrase in the language.
‘It’s a going concern, guaranteed income. Mainly trout and salmon. Fair amount of prawns and shrimps.’
‘But, Stella, a fish farm. You?’
‘Why should that be any worse than running a scaffolding firm?’
‘Fair point. You’ll be closer to Barbuda’s school, as well’
‘Exactly’ Stella was running her thumb over his knuckles. ‘Lorimer,’ she began slowly, ‘I want you to come with me, be my partner, and my business partner. I don’t want to get married but I like having you in my life and I want to share it with you. I know you’ve got a good job, which is why we should set it up properly, as a business venture. Bull and Black, fish farmers.’
Lorimer leant over and kissed her, hoping the smile on his face concealed the despair in his heart.
‘Don’t say anything yet,’ Stella said. ‘Just listen.’ She began to go over the figures, turnover and profit margins, the kind of salary they could pay themselves, the prospects for major expansion if they could break into certain markets.
‘Don’t say yes, no or maybe,’ Stella went on. ‘Give yourself a few days to mull it over. And everything it implies.’ She grabbed his head and gave him a serious kiss, her lithe tongue flicking in and out of his mouth like… like a fish, Lorimer balefully noted.
‘I’m excited, Lorimer, it really excites me. Out of the city, in the country….’
‘Does Barbuda know anything about these plans?’ Lorimer said, gladly accepting the offer of a celebratory post-prandial brandy.
‘Not yet. She knows I’ve sold Bull scaffolding. She’s pleased about that, she’s always been embarrassed by the scaffolding.’
Revolting little snob, Lorimer thought, saying, ‘The fish farm will go down better,’ without much confidence.
Stella hugged him fiercely at the door as he left. It was only four o’clock but already the streetlamps shone bright in the gathering murk. Lorimer’s depression was acute, but there was no way he could burst the bubble of her fishy dreams here and now. He kissed her goodbye.
He stood on the pavement by his car, reflecting a while, looking across at the high, lit cliff faces of the sprawling housing estate a few streets away, thumbtacked with satellite dishes, washing hanging limply on balconies, one of the great ghetto colonies of the city’s poor and disenfranchised which arced east, south of the river, through Walworth, Peckham, Rotherhithe and Southwark, small slum-states of deprivation and anarchy where life was lived in a manner that would be familiar to Hogg’s Savage Precursors,