Lorcan widens his eyes dramatically. ‘Woman shit.’ He laughs.
‘Yeah?’
‘Yeah. I became a dad, which wasn’t planned. At all.’
I glance at his left hand. There’s no wedding ring.
‘So who is that?’ Lorcan points to a photo on the shelf to the right of the sofa. It’s one of my favourite pictures of my dad as a boy – a close-up of his face: dark floppy hair falling over his forehead, soulful eyes and that expressive mouth, with the top lip fuller than the bottom, pressed into a determined smile.
‘That’s my dad,’ I say. ‘He died when I was a kid.’
‘So did my mum,’ Lorcan confides. ‘Well, I was seventeen. Cancer.’
We look at each other for a second, bonded by that invisible tie that exists between all children who lose their parents too young.
Lorcan sits back. ‘So what do you do, if you’re not writing?’
I hate that question. I don’t want to answer it. I want to ask Lorcan about his kid and what happened with the woman shit. And about whether he’s with anyone right now. Instead I shrug, feeling stupid. As I speak, I pour myself another glass of wine.
‘There isn’t anything else I want to do. God, that sounds so pathetic. I mean I do a bit of creative writing teaching and I know how lucky I am that Art . . . that I don’t have to earn a living . . . it’s just . . . writing’s the only thing that I’ve ever done that felt authentic. You know, “real”. The right thing. The thing I’m meant to be doing.’
How pretentious does that sound? I gulp my wine, embarrassed.
But Lorcan is nodding. ‘I get that,’ he says.
The sound of glass smashing rises above the music. I turn in time to see Morgan staring at her skirt, a glass of red wine on the floor at her feet. Miraculously the glass is only broken into two pieces, at the stem. The man next to her is swaying slightly, looking guilty. I recognize him as one of Art’s clients. He’s in his fifties, with a red face and pissed eyes.
‘Sorry,’ he’s slurring. ‘Sorry ’bout that. Oops – did I get your dress?’ He reaches forward and tries to brush wine off Morgan’s skirt.
She backs away.
‘No problem.’ Morgan’s voice is even more clipped than usual.
I glance over at Art. He rolls his eyes. ‘I’ll get a cloth.’
As Art and Morgan head for the kitchen, it crosses my mind that I should probably go over and talk to the drunk client. In a second, maybe. Instead, I sip some more wine and turn back to Lorcan. He’s watching Morgan and Art leave the room.
‘Morgan’s amazing,’ I say. ‘She’s been working the room all night.’
Lorcan shrugs. ‘She doesn’t like me. Didn’t when we met the time before, either.’
I don’t know what to say to that.
Lorcan grins. ‘Hey, I’m not everyone’s cup of tea.’
‘That’s what Art said about you earlier.’ I smile. ‘So what did you do to piss Morgan off?’
‘She thought I was a bad influence on Art,’ Lorcan says. ‘Which, to be fair, I probably was.’
‘She cares about him. They’re really close. Art and Morgan are alike in lots of ways.’
‘You think?’
‘Yes.’ I try to work out what I mean. Art and Morgan are both forceful and confident, like I imagine their dad must have been. I’d say the resemblance to Brandon Ryan is strongest in Morgan’s case. Not surprising I suppose. She’s more imperious than Art by nature and, since their father died, she’s taken over the running of one of his core businesses: Ryan Insurance Services. Now she jet sets around the world just like Brandon once did.
Lorcan runs his hand through his hair again. ‘Maybe they’re both used to getting their own way, but Morgan’s much more materialistic. She’s like a personification of the Brandon Ryan legend – all about making money. Whereas Art . . . well, he doesn’t really care about money so much.’
I stare at him. Few people who know Art well would describe him as a man who doesn’t care about money, and yet it’s true. Art has never wanted to build up riches for the sake of it or accumulate material stuff. He has a Mercedes, sure, but he rarely drives it. And we have this house – but it’s hardly crammed full of status-bestowing possessions.
‘You’re right,’ I say. ‘Sometimes I wonder why Art’s so driven when he’s not bothered about being rich.’
Art rushes through the door as I speak, a tea towel in his hand. Morgan trails behind, her lips pressed together in irritation. She smoothes her skirt down. I experience a tiny prick of guilt that I haven’t gone to help her. Still, the wine stain is barely noticeable on that dark red dress.
‘Control.’
‘What?’ I turn to Lorcan.
‘Control,’ he repeats. ‘That’s why Art’s driven. He wants total power over his environment. No boss to tell him what to do. No problem he can’t solve. No aspect of his life he isn’t in complete control over.’
I stare at him. That’s exactly how Art is.
‘And Morgan’s much the same in her own way,’ Lorcan goes on. ‘Except she’s more complicated.’
‘And very beautiful.’ I look at Morgan. She’s chatting to the people from Art’s office again, while Art, the broken wine glass now wrapped in the tea towel, steers the drunk client towards the front door.
From the back, Morgan makes an elegant outline, with her dark, glossy hair snaking over that beautifully fitted couture dress. She’s still wearing her high, thin heels. If I’d been wearing them I’d have kicked them off hours ago.
‘I don’t know about beautiful.’ Lorcan wrinkles his nose. ‘She’s certainly not sexy.’
‘No?’ Something inside me is pleased he doesn’t think Morgan is sexy.
Lorcan shakes his head. ‘No arse.’
I stare at Morgan. Her dress goes in at the waist a little, then curves out very slightly, over narrow hips, but Lorcan’s right. Her bum underneath is flat.
I pour myself some more wine. I feel relaxed now that the party’s almost over and perhaps even a little bit drunk myself.
‘So you’re into arses then?’ I giggle at my own boldness.
Lorcan grins, clearly completely unashamed. ‘Oh, yeah,’ he says.
Hen and Rob appear, saying they are already late getting back to Nat’s babysitter and I realize, with a jolt, that I haven’t thought about Beth the whole time Lorcan and I have been chatting. I give Hen a big hug, kiss Rob on the cheek, then turn back to Lorcan. He seems to understand me so instinctively that, for a second, I’m filled with an urge to tell him about Lucy O’Donnell and her claims. But then common sense kicks in and I realize how ridiculous it would be to speak about something so private to a total stranger, so I keep my mouth shut. A moment later, Art’s standing there in front of us.
‘Everyone’s going, Gen,’ he says.
He looks tired again. Like he’s done the party and now he just wants to go to bed. I get up, feeling guilty I haven’t networked with his clients as much as I should, and put my arm around his waist. He kisses my cheek.
Lorcan stands up and glugs down the remainder of his beer. ‘I should go too.’
Art shakes his head. ‘I didn’t mean . . .’
‘Hey, I’ve got to pick up Cal first thing tomorrow.’ Lorcan grins at me. ‘That’s my son,’ he explains. ‘But maybe I’ll come and visit you guys again?’
‘Sure.’ I glance at Art. He says nothing. Embarrassed, I chatter on. ‘Are you here for a while, Lorcan?’
‘Couple of months.’ Lorcan is answering me, but he’s looking expectantly at Art.
There’s a pause.
‘Great.’ Art forces a smile onto his face. ‘Like you say, we should meet up.’
Lorcan nods, then goes. I realize I have no idea where he’s living at the moment, or what he’s doing for work, or any of the small talk details of his life.
There’s a flurry of people leaving and the house is, finally, empty. Art disappears straight up to bed leaving just me and Morgan.
We look r
ound the living room. It’s not too bad, considering, though there are glasses everywhere and plates piled up on most of the available surfaces. I half-heartedly peel a slice of salami off a silk cushion. The rest will have to wait till tomorrow.
‘What time does your cleaner arrive in the morning?’ Morgan asks, stifling a yawn. ‘Not too early, I hope?’
I swallow. I’ve made no arrangement with Lilia at all, which means the clearing up will fall to me and Art.
‘Oh, we left things a bit vague,’ I say, not wanting to explain all this to Morgan.
Her make-up is still perfect and she’s still wearing those bloody shoes.
It’s a relief to reach the peace of our bedroom. Art’s asleep already: face-down, naked and sprawled across the bed. Before I pull the duvet out from under his body and get in beside him, I shove my hand under the mattress. The Tapps Funeral Services letter is still there. So is Dr Rodriguez’s card from the Fair Angel hospital.
The next day passes in a whirl of activity. There are lots of thank you phone calls and texts and, in the end, I don’t get a second alone to make my call to Dr Rodriguez. Morgan insists we have dinner at a rather formal restaurant in Mayfair that evening. Her treat. It’s nice, though we spend most of the evening listening to Morgan reminiscing about her peripatetic childhood. Art doesn’t mind. He claims not to care about his dad, but it’s obvious to me that he’s still hungry for inside information – and Brandon Ryan was undoubtedly an extraordinary man. Morgan tells one story I can’t get out of my head: how, one Christmas, aged about six or seven, she declared that she couldn’t live without her favourite toy – a doll she’d named Maisie – and how Brandon took the doll and threw it on the living-room fire, telling her she should never become so fond of anything that she couldn’t bear to lose it.
‘Of course Daddy was right,’ Morgan says with a breezy air of resignation. ‘But it was a harsh lesson.’
She glances at Art who shakes his head. I wonder, not for the first time, why Art doesn’t speak up at times like this. It’s surely as obvious to him as it is to me that it wasn’t only Brandon’s life lessons that were harsh, but also the man himself. And yet I’ve never heard Art criticize him to Morgan, who behaves most of the time as if their father had just been a little eccentric, rather than a vicious, arrogant tyrant who ruled his home like his business empire – solely for the power and the glory.
I think back to my own father. In all my memories of him he is laughing.
‘But what Brandon did was horrible,’ I say quietly. ‘I mean, you say it was right, but what a cruel thing to do . . . to destroy a child’s favourite toy. And what a cruel outlook, too: never rely on anyone or anything.’
Morgan freezes in her seat. I can sense Art beside me, stiffening, but I keep my gaze on Morgan. Her lips tighten and her eyes darken with resentment. For a moment she looks as if she’d like to hit me, then she draws back and sneers.
‘Daddy was right to teach self-reliance,’ she spits. ‘It’s only blood family you can count on. And even then not everyone.’ She looks at Art – a challenging look, almost a question – as if he had disagreed with her rather than me.
Art meets her gaze. ‘Brandon was tough. You’re right, Morgan, he had to be.’ He pauses. ‘But you have to remember that Gen can’t possibly understand his world.’
I stare at him, irritated by the way he makes Brandon Ryan sound like a difficult subject that’s almost entirely beyond me.
Art sighs. ‘And there has to be some trust in business or there’s only chaos.’
Silence falls across the table. I still feel miffed that Art weighed in to make an excuse for me. Morgan, meanwhile, is pointedly looking across the room, ignoring him. No one speaks, but I sense that any attempt I might make to ease the atmosphere will be viewed as an interference. Maybe that’s normal for brothers and sisters – a display of some baffling private code that outsiders, even loved ones, will never completely understand.
Morgan buries herself in the dessert menu, which I know she has absolutely no intention of ordering from. Art squeezes my hand, then disappears to the toilet. When he comes back, he’s all smiles and full of a funny story about Siena and the guy from the office she got together with at our party.
I remember bursting in on them in the utility room and tell Art, who thinks it’s all very amusing. Morgan remains outside the conversation for a while, unyielding. I don’t understand why she’s upset, but I let Art handle her. He wins her round as he wins everyone round: at first with occasional glances, then smiles, then with requests for information. He listens so well and so intently to what she says that, after a while, she thaws and balance is restored. I’ve seen Art do this before and it always intrigues me, particularly because all this emotional fluency is unconscious and instinctive. So much so that, later, when I ask, I’m sure he’ll say he didn’t even notice Morgan was rattled . . .
Morgan has to fly to Geneva for a week-long conference the next morning, Sunday. After she’s gone we meet Kyle and Vicky for brunch at Banner’s with all their kids. Art takes a phone call while we’re eating, then looks distracted for the rest of the afternoon. I ask what’s wrong and he mutters something about the Prime Minister’s advisory committee. I tell him to call Sandrine – rather more waspishly than I mean to – and he snaps at me that I don’t understand how important it is.
We come out of the café to find a dusting of snow on the rooftops. Back home, the TV is full of how exceptional the weather is for March. Transport chaos is predicted for Monday but Art is certain everyone will make it in to Loxley Benson. He spends an hour or two researching ICSI. I feel guilty that he’s doing this – during the only part of the weekend he has to himself – when I feel so far from agreeing to another round of fertility treatment. Art comes off his computer full of stats and research data that he’s eager to impart, but I plead a headache and disappear upstairs to lie down.
I fall asleep for half an hour, waking with a start when Lorcan calls Art’s mobile to suggest a drink in The Railway Tavern. Art’s tired and though he doesn’t say so directly, I’m sure he doesn’t really want to go. Still, he agrees to meet Lorcan.
‘What’s up?’ I say, as he gets off the phone. ‘Normally you only go out on a Sunday if there’s a big business deal at stake. Is it . . . to talk about what Lorcan did in the past?’
‘Of course it isn’t,’ Art snaps. ‘It’s just a quick drink. No big deal. Why don’t you come too, if you’re so interested?’
I shake my head, wondering if he’s just being irritable because he’s tired, or because he’s stressed about something. I’d like to see Lorcan again, but there was definitely some kind of awkwardness between him and Art. I should leave them alone to sort it out. Anyway, I feel like I haven’t had a moment to myself for days, and even though it’s Sunday afternoon I don’t want to put off my call to Dr Rodriguez any longer.
It takes me several minutes after Art leaves to pluck up the courage to dial the number for Rodriguez’s office at the Fair Angel hospital. I have no idea what I’m going to say when I speak to him but, in the end, it all comes to nothing. My call goes straight to the hospital’s main switchboard, where a temp answers. She clearly doesn’t know any of the doctors. She pores over the list in front of her, but Rodriguez isn’t named as either an attending physician or one of the weekend doctors on call. I ring off and check the Fair Angel website. I can’t find any reference to Rodriguez on that either. Has he left? Was he fired? A quick Google search turns up nothing. In the end, feeling frustrated, I try calling Lucy O’Donnell again, but her number is still unobtainable.
Art is gone for a couple of hours; then, shortly before 7.30 p.m., he and Lorcan roll in with a takeaway. Art shoots me an apologetic look. I can tell coming back here wasn’t his idea and, again, I wonder why he hasn’t just made some excuse.
Lorcan looks as laidback as he did at the party. He walks into the living room and greets me with a kiss on the cheek, like we’re old friends now too.
/> ‘How was your day?’ His accent makes his voice gentle. Yet it has an edge too, something unsettling behind the softness.
‘Good.’ I shrug, suddenly embarrassed by my lack of activity. All I’ve done since the party, it seems, is eat out. No wonder Morgan looked at me so disdainfully; I never seem to get anywhere with anything.
I fetch some beers while Art takes the curry into the kitchen to unload the cartons onto a tray.
Lorcan sits on the sofa in exactly the same place as when we talked at the party. He pulls a Swiss Army knife from his pocket and flicks out the bottle opener attachment. He opens one of the beers, pushes it towards me, then puts the knife on the table in front of him. Intrigued by its compact design, I reach over and pick it up.
‘Careful!’ Lorcan’s too late. The blade of the knife is sticking out just under the bottle opener. It slices my skin. I drop the knife onto the table and stare at my finger. A globe of blood rises up at me.
‘That’s lethal,’ I say, sucking at the wound.
‘I know, sorry.’ Lorcan coughs. ‘I wouldn’t . . . it’s just Cal, my son, gave it to me. He sharpens the knife whenever he gets a chance. Are you all right?’
‘Sure.’ I examine the cut. A fresh drop of blood is oozing up to take the place of the previous one. I press it against my thumb. ‘Only a scratch.’
Lorcan picks up the knife again. I notice how carefully he holds it as he concentrates on prising the top off the second bottle. He’s wearing dark blue jeans, slightly faded. He has taken his jacket off and his jumper is charcoal grey. Loose round the neck. There is red in the dark of his stubble. It catches in the light as a curl of hair falls over his forehead.
He glances up at me. ‘Tired?’ He smiles as he puts my bottle in front of me.
I shake my head, feeling myself blushing. ‘No, it’s nice you’re here.’
Lorcan laughs. ‘I meant were you tired from the party. You sounded fed up just now when I asked about your day.’
‘Did I?’ I squirm. ‘No, today’s been fine, I just haven’t done much.’
‘Hey, I’m not getting at you.’ He laughs again and holds up his bottle. ‘Sláinte.’
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