two glancing blows each. Behind her, amongst the shuddering, steaming pans, Lorimer could see his grandmother chopping onions. She waved the knife at him, then pushed up her spectacles to knuckle away tears.
‘See how I cry for joy to seeing you, Milo,’ she said.
‘Hello, Gran. Lovely to see you, too.’
His mother already had the lamb and sausages out on the work top, weighing the leg admiringly with her coarse rosy hands.
‘He’s a big joint that, Milo. Is they pork?’
‘Yes, Mum.’
His mother turned to her mother and they spoke quickly in their language. By now Grandmother had dried her eyes and shuffled forward for her kisses.
‘I say to her, ain’t you looking smart, Milo. Ain’t he smart, Mama.’
‘He’s a handsome. He’s a rich. Not like them milkcow out there.’
‘Go and see your papa,’ his mother said. ‘He’ll be pleased to see you. In his parlour.’
Lorimer had to ask Mercy to move so he could open the door, as she was kneeling in front of it playing a computer game. As she slowly shifted Drava took the opportunity to sidle up to him and ask in a petulant, graceless voice if she could borrow forty pounds. Lorimer gave her two twenties but she had seen the slim wad in his wallet.
‘Couldn’t make it sixty, could you, Milo?’
‘I need the money, Drava, it’s the weekend.’
‘It’s my weekend too. Go on.’
He gave her another note and received a nod of acknowledgement, no word of thanks.
‘You handing out, Milo?’ Komelia called. ‘We’d like a new telly, thanks.’
‘Tumble drier, please, while you’re at it,’ Monika added. They both laughed shrilly, genuinely, as if, Lorimer thought, they could not take him seriously, that the person he had become was a subterfuge, one of Milo’s curious games.
He had a short panic attack in the hall, practised his restorative breathing again. The television was also hollering from his father’s ‘parlour’ down the corridor. Six adults and a child lived in this house (‘Six females in one house,’ his older brother Slobodan had said, ‘it’s too much for a man. That’s why I had to get out, Milo, like you. My masculinity was suffocating’). He paused at the door – a sports programme, loud Australian voices on satellite (had he paid for that?) thundered beyond. He bowed his head, swearing to himself that he would not break down, and pushed the door open quietly.
His father seemed to be watching the screen (on which the green-blazered experts loudly debated); certainly his armchair had been placed squarely in front of it. He sat there motionless, in shirt and tie, trousers sharply creased, palms flat on the chair-arms, his unchanging smile framed by his trimmed white beard, his specs slightly askew, his thick, springy grey hair damp and flattened on his scalp.
Lorimer stepped forward and turned the volume low. ‘Hello, Dad,’ he said. His father’s unreflecting, uncomprehending eyes stared at him, blinking once or twice. Lorimer reached forward and straightened the spectacles on his nose. He was always amazed at how dapper he looked; he had no idea how they did it, his mother and sisters; how they ministered to every need, bathed and shaved and pampered him, walked him about the house, parked him in his parlour, attended (with huge discretion) to his bodily functions. He did not know and he did not want to know, content to see this smiling homunculus the odd weekend in three or four, ostensibly happy and well cared for, distracted by daylong television, tucked up in bed at night and gently roused in the morning. Sometimes his father’s eyes would follow you as you moved, sometimes not. Lorimer stepped to one side and Bogdan Blocj’s head turned as if to contemplate his youngest son, tall and smart in his expensive blue suit.
‘I’ll put the volume back up, Dad,’ he said. ‘It’s cricket, I think. You like cricket, don’t you, Dad.’ His mother claimed he heard and understood everything, she could see it in his eyes, she said. But Bogdan Blocj hadn’t spoken a single word to anyone in over ten years.
‘I’ll let you get on then, Dad, take care.’
Lorimer stepped out of the parlour to find his brother Slobodan standing there in the hall, swaying slightly, his gut tight against his stretched sweat shirt, a smell of beer off him, his long silvered hair lank, the loose switch of his ponytail lying on his shoulder like a flung tie.
‘Heyyyy, Milo.’ He opened his arms and hugged him. ‘Little bro. City gent.’
‘Hi, Lobby’ he corrected himself. ‘Slobodan.’
‘How’s