we have a shared purpose, at least. I fiddle with the radio, or the air con, and Finlay makes the occasional banal remark regards the traffic, and all in all, the satnav probably says as much as either of us.
‘I feel ridiculous at having dragged you all this way for a two-minute chat with my dad,’ Finlay says abruptly, as we pass Leicester, and I know what he also means is: you saw all that dirty washing, and for what?
I recall how much he hated me being in the family home, that week before Susie’s funeral. Trips to nice restaurants were making a virtue of necessity.
‘Honestly, it’s fine,’ I say. ‘I don’t have tons of amazing uses for my holiday allocation from City Nights anyway. Change is as good as a rest, as they say.’
‘I don’t think when they said “change” the meaning was so elastic as to encompass getting a full-bore blast of my dysfunctional family,’ he says, with a grimace.
Oh, he’s still dwelling on the aunt encounter the way I am, too. That has to rate as one of the strangest fifteen minutes of my life.
‘Think you’ll stay at … what’s it called? City Nights?’ Fin says.
‘I will for now, I have a mortgage and a cat to raise. It’s more whether City Nights will stay at me. There aren’t many ways to make a living from typing snappy things these days, are there?’
‘What would you like to do? What’s your dream job? Writing, presumably?’
‘Yeah, you know those Long Reads in the NYT, or like they used to have in Vanity Fair? Thousands of words, really brilliantly written, and the journalist got months to research the subject. You know, like old Hollywood scandals involving the Pickfair Mansion, or some true crime investigation thing. The sort that ends up getting turned into a book. Like the one about the Golden State Killer.’
‘You’ve got a sunny nature, eh?’ Finlay says.
‘Well, there are Cure songs about me,’ I say and then regret it.
Fin looks gratified, but pinkens slightly. I wonder if he wishes he’d not told me that. I wonder what he’s said and done out of spontaneity. I wonder where all that do you ever wish you could drop the act conversation came from.
‘Seriously, yes, I do know what you mean,’ he says. ‘About the writing. That sounds really good. So how do you get into that, then?’
‘I have no idea,’ I say. ‘Plus you’d need a time machine for a golden age of print media and proper budgets.’
‘I have uses for that time machine,’ Fin says. ‘Does it seat two?’
‘I’m not sure I’d trust what you’d do with it,’ I say, and smile, to defuse any insult.
‘I’m not sure I trust what I’d do with it.’
A meaningful silence ensues. I feel I have to break it, especially given this is likely the last time I’ll ever see Susie’s brother.
‘We’d both head back a few months and tell Susie to look the other bloody way though, right?’ I say, bluntly, the pain of this thought making me graceless.
‘Yes,’ Finlay says, throwing me a glance. ‘We both would.’
After another brief silence he says: ‘Thank you.’
‘What for?’
‘Assuming I didn’t want my sister to die.’
‘That’s … obvious, isn’t it?’
‘The relative of mine we met, prior to my father, would beg to differ,’ Fin says, as he adjusts his grip on the steering wheel, and narrows his eyes at the road. He made such a good model in that picture because of his ability to turn into a hardened blank. You never know what he’s thinking.
‘She accused you of neglect but she wouldn’t think you’d want Susie to …?’ It’s such a grotesque idea, I can’t finish the sentence.
‘Yes, the bar’s really that low,’ Fin says, voice thick. ‘I thought this was the basis of our conversation afterwards. The Spanish flu killed lots of people.’ He takes his sightline off the road to give a wry smirk as he says this.
I begin to heat at my words in emotion being repeated back to me, out of context.
‘That was your analogy, I didn’t mean you were literally capable of murder! I’ve never thought for a moment you wished harm to Susie,’ I say, glad this at least is true, if not the ‘Finlay Hart’s a killer’ insinuations, made in coffee shops, only half in jest, and only a few short weeks ago. I was privately likening him to an assassin on the drive up here. ‘That’s mad.’