He began by drawing great black loops on the first sheet. “Loosening up the hands,” Mr. Gledhill had called it.

How often did he feel it now, this gorgeous, furtive seclusion? In the bath sometimes, maybe. Though Jean failed to understand his need for periodic isolation and regularly dragged him back to earth mid-soak by hammering on the locked door in search of bleach or dental floss.

He began to draw the rubber plant.

Odd to think that this was once what he wanted to do with his life. Not rubber plants, as such. But art in general. Townscapes. Bowls of fruit. Naked women. Those big white studios with the skylights and the stools. Laughable now, of course. Though at the time it possessed all the power of a world to which his father had no key.

It was not a very good drawing of a rubber plant. It was, in truth, a child’s drawing of a rubber plant. Something about the almost-but-not-quite parallel lines of the slightly tapering stalks had foxed him.

He turned over another sheet and began sketching the television.

His father was right, of course. Painting was not a sensible profession. Not if you wanted a decent salary and a trouble-free marriage. Even the successful ones, the ones you read about in the weekend papers, drank like fish and were involved in the most unseemly kind of relationships.

Drawing the television posed precisely the opposite problem. The lines were all straight. Draw any curve and you could probably find it somewhere on a rubber plant. Draw any straight line and…to be frank, several of his lines would have been more at home in the drawing of the rubber plant. Was it acceptable to use a ruler? Well, Mr. Gledhill was long dead. Perhaps if he ruled the lines faintly then drew over them to add character.

He could use the edge of the Radio Times.

His mother thought he was Rembrandt and regularly gave him cheap sketchpads which she had bought with the housekeeping, on condition that he did not tell his father. George had drawn him once, when he was asleep in an armchair after Sunday lunch. He had woken up unexpectedly, grabbed the piece of paper, examined it, torn it into pieces and thrown it on the fire.

At least he and Brian had escaped. But poor Judy. Their father dies and six months later she marries another bad-tempered, small-minded alcoholic.

Who would have to be invited to the wedding. He had forgotten that. Oh well. With any luck, the infamous Kenneth would pass rapidly into a coma, as he did the first time round, and they could dump him in the box room with a bucket.

The knobs on the television were wrong. It had been a mistake to attempt the knurling on the sides. Too many lines in too small a space. The entire cabinet, in fact, had a slightly drunken feel to it, stemming, possibly, from his poor memory of the rules of perspective and the flexibility of the Radio Times.

At which point a lesser man might have allowed negative thoughts to enter his head, given that he was spending eight thousand pounds constructing a building in which he planned to draw and paint objects far more complex than either rubber plants or televisions. But that was the point. To educate himself. To keep his mind alive. And the Gold C gliding badge was really not his thing.

He looked up and gazed through the window onto the garden. The bubble popped and he realized that, in his absence, the rain had ceased, the sun had come out and the world had been washed clean.

He removed his drawing from the pad, tore it carefully into small pieces and pushed them to the bottom of the kitchen bin. He stacked the pad and pencils out of sight on top of the dresser, put on his boots and headed outside.

21

Jean met Ursula in the coffee shop in Marks and Spencer.

Ursula snapped the little biscuit over her cappuccino to stop the crumbs falling on the table. “I’m really not meant to know about this.”

“I know,” said Jean, “but you do know about it. And I need some advice.”

She didn’t really need advice. Not from Ursula. Ursula only did Yes and No (she’d gone round the Picasso Museum saying exactly that, “Yes…No…No…Yes,” as if she was deciding which ones to get for the living room). But Jean had to talk to someone.

“Go on, then,” said Ursula, eating half her biscuit.

“David is coming to supper. George invited him. We bumped into him at Bob Green’s funeral. David couldn’t really refuse.”

“Well…” Ursula spread her hands on the table, as if she was flattening a big map.

And this was what Jean liked about Ursula. Nothing fazed her. She’d smoked a marijuana cigarette with her daughter (“I felt seasick, then threw up”). And, in actual fact, a man did try to mug them in Paris. Ursula shooed him away as if he were a bad dog, and he retreated at speed. Though, when Jean thought about it later, it was possible that he was simply begging or asking for directions.

“I don’t really see the problem,” said Ursula.

“Oh, come on,” said Jean.

“You’re not planning to be lovey-dovey with each other, are you?” Ursula ate the second half of her biscuit. “Obviously you’ll feel uncomfortable. But, frankly, if you can’t live with a bit of discomfort you really shouldn’t embark on that kind of adventure.”

Ursula was right. But Jean returned to the car feeling troubled. Of course the dinner would be fine. They’d survived far more uncomfortable dinners. That dreadful evening with the Fergusons, for example, when she found George in the toilet listening to cricket on the radio.

What Jean didn’t like was the way everything was becoming looser and messier, and moving slowly beyond her control.

She pulled up round the corner from David’s house knowing that she had to apologize to him for George’s invitation, or tell him off for accepting it, or do some third thing she couldn’t quite put her finger on.

But David had just been phoning his daughter.

His grandson was going into hospital for an operation. David wanted to go up to Manchester to help out. But Mina had got in first. So the kindest thing he could do was to keep his distance. Which Mina would doubtless chalk up as further proof of his failure as a father.

And Jean realized that everybody had a messy life. Except Ursula, maybe. And George. And if you were going to have any kind of adventure it was going to be uncomfortable now and then.

So she put her arms around David and they held each other, and she realized that this was the third thing she couldn’t quite put her finger on. This was the thing which made it all right.

22

“The Derby Hotel story,” said Katie. “It’s not actually true, is it?”

“Of course not,” said Sarah. “Though I was so sick it came out of my nose. Which I seriously do not recommend.”

“Ray’s not usually like that,” said Katie.

“Glad to hear it.”

“Come on.” Katie was a little peeved that Sarah wasn’t showing the requisite sisterly support. “You’re not usually like that either…Hang on a second.” Katie got up and went over to the toy box to resolve a dispute between Jacob and another child over a one-legged Action Man.

She came back and sat down again.

“Sorry,” said Sarah. “That was out of order.” She licked her teaspoon. “And this is probably out of order, too. But, sod it, I’m going to ask anyway…This is the real thing, right? Not just a rebound relationship?”

“Jesus, Sarah, you’re meant to be my best woman, not my mum.”

“So your mum doesn’t like him,” said Sarah.

“Nope.”

“Well, he’s not the consultant pediatrician with the Daimler.”

“Oh, I think they gave up on that long ago,” said Katie.

Sarah tried to balance her teaspoon on the rim of her mug.

“He’s a good person,” said Katie. “Jacob loves him. And I love him.” That was the wrong way round, somehow. But changing it would have made her seem defensive. “He’s also made Ed promise to show him the speech beforehand.”