Leonard ought to phone his stepchild straightaway. He suspects he ought to phone before he speaks to Francine, just to make sure that it’s really not a dream. It still feels like a dream. Instead, he sends a text to the number Celandine has given. He is not being cowardly (tomorrow, Monday, is a working day, and he can then start finally to be a braver man) but being level-headed. It’s hard to resurrect an argument by text. Text’s far too slow for angry repartee. It’s good for brokering a truce. His message is: “THANX CELANDINE, THANX SWALLOW. AT LAST. ITS BEEN TOO LONG. MUST TALK 2 MUM 2 DAY. UNK X.”

Leonard backs into the bedroom, self-conscious and attentive with the tray. He knows the omelette must be almost cold. Francine is already sitting up, her table light on, her reading glasses perched appealingly on the tip of her nose.

“You’re looking very happy with yourself,” she says. “You need a shave, of course. But otherwise …”

His smile is loose and unconditional. He can’t contain it. “Mushroom omelette, ma’am.” He puts the tray across her lap, pulls back the curtains to reveal a brightening sky, but not enough sunlight to slant and cast across the bed. He does not stay to watch her eat or to see her find the envelope and birthday card tucked between her saucer and her cup and weighed flat with a silver spoon. He leaves the room and starts to go downstairs, not hurrying. He plumps his lips and parps a short phrase to himself, a new melodic phrase that he must jot down while he remembers it. He attempts some variations and embellishments, but silently. With every step and every note, he expects to hear his Francine crying out. Then he will go back to the room with his loose smile again. They will embrace and — almost, almost — it will be an end and — nearly, nearly — a beginning. The house is shimmering.

17

LUCY EMMERSON HAS KEPT HER PROMISES. She’s sent a music file to Leonard’s handset. Davey Davey, Do It Now, the Jo Bond song. And she has hacked her hair short, a badger cut. She looks like Maria played by Ingrid Bergman in For Whom the Bell Tolls, Leonard thinks. She’s boyish and defiant. They sit exactly where they sat before, on the wooden bench behind the Woodsman, below the first-floor room where he and Francine made love on Saturday. She’s smoking still, but these are manufactured cigarettes today. They look unwieldy and self-conscious compared to her self-rolled skinnies.

“It was such a hum, you know, to watch it all kick off on the TV,” she says. “Didn’t you just love the name we chose? SOFA. How radiant was that? I really fooled them, didn’t I? I think it made the difference. To Dad, I mean.”

“What difference?” Leonard does not mean to sound combative, but for a moment he is tempted to own up. Or is it boast? Perhaps she ought to know he’s informed on her. After all, it’s only because of his timely betrayal that the police felt confident enough to storm the house, assured that there’d be no costly quid pro quo. But who would benefit from owning up? Not Lucy. She’s more than happy to believe that her genius has worked.

“A lot of difference,” she says. “No, really. Mighty-mighty major much.” Her self-confidence is unassailable.

“Like what? I mean … I wanna know, is all.” He’s talking Texan now.

“So, for a start, like …” She hesitates, holds up a hand, and spreads her fingers to count off the differences she’s made. “No one was hurt because of him. And that’s maybe — well, probably — because he was bearing me in mind.”

“Protecting your eye and tooth.”

“My dad had hostages, but he didn’t fire a shot. Not one. Except, you know, to make a point. A warning shot … when they were chasing him. He didn’t fire a single shot at anybody. The family walked out of there unscathed.” Leonard raises an eyebrow. Unscathed is not a word he always likes to hear. “Yes, yes, I know what you’re thinking,” she continues. “Only unscathed physically. Really shaken up inside, of course. Did you hear, though? The man said they’d all been treated really well, you know, like it was almost fun, a break from work and school. The woman even put on weight, she reckons.”

“All that sitting around, I suppose.”

“All those pizzas!”

“And you? What difference has it made to you?”

“To us? To me and Dad?”

He nods. That isn’t what he means.

“I’m not sure yet. I’ll let you know once I’ve been and visited. If he’ll let me visit him. See what he says. I tell myself he’s where he has to be. It’s not my fault. It worked out for the best. For everyone.”

“And you specifically? You could have ended up inside. Conspiracy. Wasting police time. Wasting taxpayers’ money.”

“I could have shared a cell with Dad. Back to prison for his gal. I was born inside, you know? I’m quite a lag.”

“Be serious. Admit that it was risky, at least.”

Now it’s her turn to raise an eyebrow. She mimes a yawn. “I’m seventeen! This is the sort of thing that daughters do.”

“You might have been fined. You’d not be laughing then.”

“Well, I suppose. But yes, it’s weird. They only read me the riot act. It wasn’t even scary. Mum could’ve done worse. She has done worse.”

“And that was it?”

“They issued me with an official police caution. Like a school certificate. Passed with distinction, entrance-level conspiracy. I’m going to frame it and hang it on my wall.” Her smile seems to have doubled in width since she cut her hair. “I might kidnap myself again and go for degree-level conspiracy. Disappearing is a piece of cake, and fun. Ask Celandine.”

“She’s Swallow these days.”

“Smart move. Smart girl.”

“What now?”

“Want another one of those?” Lucy clicks the side of his glass with a fingernail.

Leonard shakes his head. He’s feeling light-headed already. And uncomfortable. The yard is filling up with smokers. He’s been pointed out and recognized, he thinks. “Let’s move.”

“Okay. So what do you say now? Take to the Curb with me?” she suggests. “Let’s go and shake our fists at the limousines. For Dad.”

Leonard looks up at the sky. It’s mild and still. No hint of rain or wind today. Francine will not be home till late; she has taken the afternoon off school and is meeting her daughter, on the neutral ground of a gallery bistro. Their first encounter in the flesh since April 24 last year. Francine has taken a bunch of lilies — a womanly and mature gift, not motherly. He can almost sense their tears, their cautious bickering, their boisterous relief at being back in touch. Their house is empty, left alone to its wedges of light and shadow. The burglar alarm is set. He has no convincing reasons to go home just yet. “Why ever not?” he says; it is the second time that Lucy has occasioned him to use this phrase and take the risk. “Let’s Take to the Curb. Yup, Lucy Lucy, do it now.”

“It’s no big deal.”

“You’re right. It’s no big deal,” he says. “But we can’t all be bigdeal firebrands, can we? Still, I guess we should at least stand on the pavement and boo.”

She gets up to take his wrists and pull him from the bench.

It’s best to go on foot, even though it is more than two kilometers from the pub yard to the nearest point of contact with the curbside vigil. The first part is eerily familiar. It’s been walked before, by both of them. Here’s where they first met, just down the road from his parked van, his walking shadow clipping her heels. They have to deviate a bit, dipping down a side road, to take their final look at Alderbeech. There’s nothing on the waste ground now except the tire-marked, turmoiled earth, peg holes where the marquees were erected, and an urban construction notice, announcing that in two years’ time there will be modern landscaped maisonettes here, “Affordable Family Opportunities.”

The street itself is daytime quiet: a pair of cats disputing on a wall; a plumber’s van; a bouquet of lost balloons deflating in the clutches of a sorbus tree, now stripped of leaves. There is no longer any interest in the hostage house. The family has sold their stories, and they will even sell the house and move out west when they grow tired of all the fuss. There’s not a single moving car for the moment, even though Alderbeech is a twenty-minute walk away from the vigil and traffic could move freely if it wanted to. Starting five hundred meters to the south, the police have closed and coned most of the townways. The route between the airport and the Reconciliation Summit has become a Security Exclusion Zone. The first of the sixteen heads of state should be arriving by now and being collected off the runway by their bulletproofed limousines and the motorcycle outriders. The world is watching, alerted by the arrest of the Final Warning cell to the possibility that there could be a shooting or a bomb.