cagily pushing his mobile back in his pocket. Pat made his way over to Max and spoke in a quiet voice.
‘Listen, Max. Do me a favour, will you? Lay off the talk about last night? You’re right, I did disappear. But I don’t want anybody to know - least of all Mimi. I’ve already tried to cover it. Let’s leave it at that, shall we?’
Max looked at Pat and frowned.
‘It’s nothing to do with me, but you need to be a bit more guarded with all that phone activity you know. You’re about as subtle as a flying brick.’
Pat had the grace to look a bit embarrassed.
‘I’d better go and talk to Mimi, I guess. Make amends. You and I can have a chat later - I’d love to know what you make of this Abbie business. It stinks, doesn’t it? Trouble is, I’m not quite sure what of.’
‘Me neither. Has anybody spoken to the parents, do you know?’
‘I’ve got to go and see them tomorrow - boss’s orders. We all know that he’s useless on these occasions. Mimi’s going to be pissed about that too. She had this idea of us going out for lunch, or something. I’d better go and break the news and do something to appease her or I’m dead. I’ll speak to you later.’
With shoulders hunched in a pose of true dejection, Pat wandered off in the direction of the fishpond where Max could just make out Mimi’s back. Not for the first time, he questioned what the hell his friend was doing. It was obvious to everybody that he wasn’t happy, but Ellie had been right to stop him talking about Pat’s route home from the rugby club. She either knew, or guessed, that Pat hadn’t gone straight home, which probably meant that Georgia had to figure in this somewhere. What was his friend doing? Max almost felt sorry for Mimi.
His thoughts were interrupted as he saw Sean and Gary step out from the glass doors to the atrium dining room, talking quietly to each other. He saw Gary clap Sean on his shoulder and heard him laugh, and then he disappeared back into the house.
Knowing that Sean couldn’t see him easily, he gave a low whistle to attract his attention and Sean made his way across the grass. To Max, Sean had always had the natural swagger of a confident man. Ellie had once said that he strutted like an Italian, and Max knew just what she meant - loose limbed and in no doubt of his charms. Some of his usual self-assurance seemed to be missing tonight, though.
‘I’m glad you called round, Sean. It was good to have you here. We should have invited you, but we weren’t sure how you would cope with an evening with Charles, and with the Pat and Mimi thing it was already going to be awkward enough. I’m not sure how you’d have felt if we’d asked Bella, either.’
Sean’s voice was low.
‘I wouldn’t have expected an invite, Max. I’m the builder. And Bella wouldn’t have come anyway. You know that.’
There was a moment’s silence while Max contemplated the difficulties of living with somebody like Bella.
‘How are the plans going?’ Max asked, wanting to get round to the real reason for talking to Sean. ‘I’d love to get all of this sorted and under way before the end of the summer holiday. It’s much easier while I’m off school. You know how it is when I’m at work - not much time to do my own thing.’
Sean put his hands in the pockets of his jeans and looked thoughtful for a moment.
‘So we’ve got six weeks to get it all done and dusted, yes? Not that it should take anything like that much time once the money’s in place. As soon as it’s in the bank, we can move towards completion on the first phase of the deal.’
‘I’m off until early September, so I can be wherever you want me to be, whenever you want. I’ll need a bit of warning so I can work out an excuse for going out, though.’ Max gave a low groan. ‘Shit. I’d forgotten. Ellie’s booked a holiday for us. I’ve had nothing to do with it, but she announced it yesterday.’
Sean looked up sharply.
‘Really? Where are you going? How long are you going to be away?’
‘Hey - it’s okay, you know. Nothing to panic about. We can work around it. We’re not going for three weeks, and then there’s a