frowned. This was about as deep as it got. ‘You didn’t abandon me. You just went home.’
‘I know, but …’ He shrugged helplessly. ‘You know. I could have helped a bit. Should have pre-empted this. Anyway.’ He swallowed. ‘You were always in my mind.’
My father was a big Elvis fan and, in times of stress, tended to mangle his song lyrics. Things were clearly bad. In a minute he’d be telling me about the little things he should have said or done if he’d just taken the time. ‘Little –’
‘Dad.’ I interrupted quickly.
‘Hm?’ He looked at me. Blinked in recognition. ‘Oh. Right.’ He nodded. ‘Well, anyway, I’m here now. Better late than never, I suppose. And Jennie and I wondered if I shouldn’t … or if you shouldn’t …’ He hesitated and I waited, surprised. He and Jennie? He hadn’t seen Jennie since the funeral. ‘Well, look, love,’ he said, summoning up something really quite portentous, ‘what I wondered was, whether you’d like to come and stay for a bit?’
I frowned. ‘What, at Grotty Cotty?’ Dad’s cottage was so called because it was unfeasibly chaotic: full of half-cleaned tack and saddle soap, riddled with damp and reeking of a heady combination of horses, dogs, Neatsfoot oil, socks and whisky. It was an extremely ripe bachelor pad and totally unsuitable for children – who of course loved it – but still.
‘That’s kind, Dad,’ I said, speechless. ‘But no thanks.’
‘Or I could come here?’
Now I really was concerned. Dad couldn’t leave his yard for five minutes, let alone stay the night. The mere fact that he’d dropped in for a cup of tea was quite something. Suddenly I went cold.
‘Oh God, Dad, has it all collapsed? The business? Gone tits up?’
‘No! No, it’s going well, couldn’t be better. I sold three eventers last week, one to Mark Todd’s yard. No, it’s just … well, I’m worried about you.’ He put his arm around me awkwardly.
‘Me?’
‘I’m there for you, love. If you need me.’
I nodded, thunderstruck.
‘And I love you, my darling. Always will.’
I gazed down, trying to place it. ‘ “Love Me Tender”?’
He sighed. ‘Could be. Anyway,’ he said, removing his arm, ‘if you’re sure you’re all right …’ He patted my back tentatively and we sat there in silence. ‘Um … d’you want me to get the kids some lunch?’
‘They’ve just had it,’ I said incredulously, convinced I’d already told him that. Hadn’t we just had that conversation? Literally moments ago? Now I was really alarmed. Alzheimer’s?
Dad got up and took his cup into the kitchen. He also spent ten minutes washing up a toppling tower of crockery already in the sink, which was kind but very unlike him, then he came back looking a bit wretched, and then, finally, he left. As he went down the garden path, I watched from the open doorway. He wasn’t looking where he was going and nearly collided with a statuesque middle-aged woman in a tightly belted pea-green coat, spectacles and a purposeful air.
‘Ah, hello there.’ She peered around Dad to address me on the doorstep, her smile not quite reaching her eyes.
‘Hello.’
‘I’m Trisha Newson, from Social Services.’
I gazed at her down the path. Dad had gone quite pale.
‘Um, could I have a word?’ he was muttering, drawing her away and around my little beech hedge. I stood there pondering. Giving it some thought. Suddenly it came to me. Ah yes, Mrs Harper, next door. She went to the Chiltern Hospital every month in an ambulance, about her veins.
‘Next door,’ I called to them over the hedge, as Dad frogmarched her away. ‘Mrs Harper is next door.’
They didn’t appear to hear me, though, so I shrugged and shut the door. Fireman Sam was still going strong in the kitchen and I knew that particular DVD was good for another hour or so and Clemmie knew how to put another one on after that, so I went upstairs to lie down on the bed for a bit.
That afternoon, against my better instincts, I paid a visit to Phil’s solicitor. I’d hoped Jennie might have forgotten, that it might have slipped her mind, but cometh the hour, cometh the neighbour, bustling up my path well before the appointed meeting. I’d considered being out, or hiding in the cellar and shutting all the curtains, or just point-blank refusing to go, but knowing with a sinking heart any such prevarications would provoke awkward questions, I acquiesced. I felt very much as if I were en route to the gallows,