children: crayons, dot-to-dots, word searches, various games to keep him amused. There was a game that involved looking at two nearly identical pictures of a dog sitting under a tree, and trying to find the seven differences between them. The first three or four were pretty obvious, even to Benji. Between us, Fran, Mum and I identified the fifth and sixth differences, but none of us could spot the seventh. After nearly half an hour of tormenting ourselves, peering at the piece of paper endlessly, we admitted defeat and looked at the answers which were upside down at the bottom of the page. The seventh difference was so tiny that we would never have spotted it, no matter how many hours we’d wasted looking: one extra line on the tree’s lowest leaf in picture two.
‘There’s a name for what you’re describing,’ Selina Gane says. ‘It’s called a mortgage button.’
‘A what?’
She sighs. ‘I need a drink. Come on.’
I follow her through to the kitchen I’ve seen so many times on the screen of my laptop. She pulls a tall stool away from the island at the centre of the room – the obligatory island, Kit called it – and indicates that I should sit there. ‘Tea or whisky?’ she asks.
‘Tea, please.’
‘I think I’m going to need both,’ she says.
I wait in silence while she sorts out the drinks. The words ‘mortgage button’ turn around slowly in my mind. I examine them from every angle, but still don’t understand them. How can something called a mortgage button exist? It sounds too unlikely.
Selina puts milk in my tea, no sugar. It’s what I would have told her to do, if she’d asked me.
She doesn’t sit, but leans against the sink with her back to the window, holding her whisky with both hands. ‘It’s an American tradition,’ she says eventually. ‘When you’ve paid off your mortgage and you own your house outright, you buy a mortgage button and fix it to the top of the newel post, dead centre – exactly where you said you saw it. You can get cheap plastic ones, wooden ones, engraved ones – even ones made of ivory, for those who want to broadcast their affluence and success to all visitors.’ Her tone suggests a low opinion of such people. ‘They look a bit like white draughts – you know, as in the game. In America it’s called checkers.’
Mum and Dad used to play draughts when I was little, before they finally gave in to Fran’s and my protests and bought a television – something every normal person in the country had done several years earlier. ‘That’s exactly what it looked like: an oversized draught.’
‘Then I’m right,’ says Selina. ‘What you saw was a mortgage button. But there’s never been one in this house.’
I can’t hear even the faintest trace of an American accent. ‘But you know what they are,’ I say, hoping it doesn’t sound too much like an accusation.
‘My friend has one.’ Selina’s eyes slide away from me. ‘She’s from New England.’ I feel as if a spotlight that was trained on me has been switched off; I’m no longer the focus of her thoughts. She chews the inside of her lip, staring at the shelf next to her – at a white mug that looks like bone china, with a design of red feathers. She reaches to pick it up, looks inside, then puts it back on the shelf. I hear a clinking sound. Whatever’s in there, she wanted to check it was still there.
The white button? Having denied its existence, would she be so obvious?
‘What aren’t you telling me?’ I ask. The same question I asked Sam Kombothekra a few days ago, the question I’ve asked Kit more than a thousand times since January. I ought to have a T-shirt made with those words printed on it.
‘Nothing. Sorry,’ she says, still looking worried. ‘I was just thinking that I’ve been neglecting my friend recently – all my friends. Too busy with work.’
I nod, pretend I’m satisfied.
‘Talking of mortgages, will you need one, to buy? Assuming I agree to sell you the house.’
I tell her I will, that I can sort it out quickly. I hope it’s true. ‘You won’t get a better offer than mine,’ I say.
‘You’re serious about this?’
‘Very.’
‘I won’t ask why you want to,’ she says. ‘If you really saw what you say you saw . . .’ She stops, shakes her head. ‘I said I won’t ask, so I won’t. If you