We All Live Here

Chapter Eight

“But isn’t it even a bit nice? To see him again?”

“Nope.” Lila steps to the side of the path to let a woman pass. Truant lets out a low growl at the woman’s Labradoodle and Lila smiles apologetically as the woman hurries past, her expression nervous. It is a walk she and Eleanor do twice a week, Lila on the mornings that she doesn’t have the girls, and Eleanor because she never sleeps past five after twenty years making up people for the film industry.

“He hasn’t changed at all. Walked in like the last fifteen years hadn’t even happened. Like our entire adult relationship hadn’t been half a dozen birthday cards, most of which arrived on the wrong day. Honestly, El, I kept looking at him over the dinner table, and all I saw was the space I’d left for him at Mum’s funeral. I actually hate him.” Lila had watched two episodes of La Familia Esperanza when she went to bed. It’s possible that Estella slept with the hunky gun instructor, but Lila cannot remember a thing that happened.

“What did the girls think?”

“Oh, he charmed them. The usual. Pulled up his old YouTube videos—‘Captain Strang, reporting for intergalactic duty.’?” She mimics Gene’s accent. “Violet loved it. But then Violet likes anyone if she thinks they might be corruptible. Celie was less sure but he’s probably working on her as we speak. He can’t bear not to be loved. It’s pathological. If he senses an ounce of resistance he just keeps on and on until he’s found their weak spot.”

“Well, it’s only for a couple of days.”

They have reached an empty part of the woods. Lila lets Truant off the lead and watches him trot off under the leaves that are just starting to brown, glancing backward periodically to check that she’s still there, ever vigilant. “Yup. And then I won’t see him for another decade. Possibly till I get an invitation to his funeral. Which I don’t think I’ll bother going to.”

“God, remind me never to fall out with you.” Eleanor finishes her coffee and tucks the empty cup into her rucksack.

Lila takes a last swig of hers. Eleanor holds out her hand to take the cup from her and tucks it into Lila’s.

“No chance,” says Lila. “I’m going to glom on to you forever. Like fox poo. I’ll be hanging around indefinitely.”

“You make it sound like such a delightful prospect.”

Lila hooks an arm around her friend’s neck and pulls her in for a hug. “I have to have you in my life forever, El. I think I would actually die if I had all this crap coming at me and you weren’t there to stop me going mad.”

“I’m not sure my superpowers stretch that far.”

“It’s a lot, isn’t it? Bloody hell.”

“We’re at that age. It’s always a lot,” Eleanor says, with a cheerful smile. “That’s why you need to go and have some fun. To balance it all out.”

“Oh, God. Please don’t tell me to have a threesome. I don’t think I can cope with more of your sexual escapades.”

“It was so much fun. We went to a fetish party. I didn’t love the rubber gear, as it was just so hot, and I had to use industrial amounts of talc just to get it on in the first place, but such a nice bunch of people. We all went for a Vietnamese afterward. The guys would have preferred curry but we said we were worried about getting in and out of our rubber wear. I mean biryanis make me blow up like a balloon.”

“Everything you’re describing sounds like a very unpleasant fever dream. I do not want to consider curry and rubber suits in the same sentence.” Lila has started to hate these discussions. She can’t work out if they make her feel that her friend is growing away from her, or that life is passing her by. Possibly both. “Does it really not make you feel even a bit weird, El? I mean, is this really you?”

“Is it really me?” Eleanor stops and considers this. “I don’t know. I’m not sure I know who I am these days. I thought I had everything all planned out for the rest of my life, me and Eddie, a couple of kids, nice house with a picket fence. Or at least a really nice apartment in the Congestion Zone. And look what happened. Now I just try to live every day with an open heart and an open mind and see what happens.”

“Even if that involves curries and strangers in rubber suits.”

“I know it’s not to your taste, Lils, but you’ll never move on unless you start looking forward. Seriously. Dan has done a bunch of horrible things, but if you let yourself be mired in it forever you’ll have an utterly miserable time. I say that with love.”

“So I should forget everything he and my dad have done and just be delightful to them, no matter what they throw at me.”

“It’s worth thinking about.”

“Oh, God. I figure it’s about six months till you start up a self-help podcast.”

Eleanor flashes her another smile. “Ooh. That’s an idea. How to liberate yourself through tantric orgasms.”

“How to treat thigh chafing injuries when you can’t get out of your latex bodysuit.”

Eleanor fixes her with a beady eye and continues: “Why opening yourself up to new experiences will bring you happiness.”

“Why opening yourself up to shady insurance salesmen named Sean will bring you pelvic inflammatory disease.”

“You’re just a ray of sunshine, Lils,” says Eleanor, and stomps ahead on the path.

“That’s why you love me,” says Lila, and trots a little to keep up with her.

···

Sometimes, if she’s in a particularly self-punishing mood, Lila thinks of how her husband’s relationship with Marja must have formed at a point when he was supposedly being his most helpful. He had taken a three-month sabbatical from work— Get Ripped! magazine gave this to all employees of more than ten years’ standing and his had coincided with the deadline for her book. So, for what she had thought of as three precious months, every weekday afternoon, instead of having to leave her screen and race to the school gate, she had been able to sit at home and write—an unheard-of freedom—while her husband hung around with the school mums, waiting for their fractious children to trail out of the red door. Sometimes he had even taken them to the park after school—“To give you more writing time,” he had said, and she had felt almost giddy with gratitude and love. Until, of course, it had become clear that Marja must have hung out at the park on all those occasions too. And that during that three months something more than the usual staving-off of parental tedium, of the normal park-bench companionship with its shared paper handkerchiefs and cartons of juice, its childish complaints and scraped knees, had taken place. Perhaps Marja had made extra efforts to look nice, arriving in her yoga gear to show off her lithe silhouette, spritzing herself with expensive perfume before heading out to pick up Hugo. Perhaps Dan had made extra efforts too—she hadn’t noticed much at the time, except her daily word count, her panic at getting it all done.

There must have been a day on which, seated on a park bench, or watching Violet on the swings, Dan had confided in Marja that he felt unhappy, or ignored, or that he had simply fallen out of love. Perhaps they had discussed sex, or the lack of it. Marja would have turned her limpid gaze on him, placed a beautifully manicured hand of sympathy on his arm. Perhaps she portrayed herself as brave, the single mother whose partner had moved back to the Netherlands and now did almost nothing to help her. She would have smiled. Leaned into him. How admirable she must have seemed, compared to the grumpy wife in sweatpants at home who moaned because he had yet again failed to buy the dishwasher tablets on the way home.

And then, one day, a whole new boundary would have been crossed. Lila still doesn’t know exactly when that was, perhaps after his sabbatical had ended, during a “work” lunch or on one of the many evenings he had claimed to need to stay late at the office. She doesn’t know when he and Marja had begun sleeping together, or when they first expressed their love for each other. She knows only the leftover bits: the date on which he told her, with almost comical formality, that their marriage was over. The date, sometime after that, when she understood—after she’d glimpsed them sitting, foreheads touching, in a parked car on Garwood Street—why that was.

She occasionally wishes someone would acknowledge her fortitude in simply turning up to the school gates every day, at least without a flame-thrower and a small army of mercenaries. She thinks she’s done pretty well to stay standing. She thinks she might deserve a medal for making her legs walk to school every day, for standing and smiling and acting like it hasn’t all half killed her. No, from the outside, she thinks it’s possible that nobody would even notice any more.

Though she still hasn’t managed to go back to the play park. Not once.

···

Lila arrives at the school at nineteen minutes past three, the very latest she can get there before they turn them out. Violet had begged her to get her a cinnamon bun from the nice Scandinavian bakery, and she’s feeling mildly guilty that she’d been unable to resist buying one for herself as well and eating it outside the shop. Since Bill had arrived she and the girls eat sugary treats urgently and surreptitiously in the car, or outside shops, like junkies getting a fix.

Marja is standing with the other mums, clutching a Tupperware box of cupcakes for some bake sale for which Lila has no doubt missed the email, someone is discussing future play-dates, and Lila immediately moves to the other end of the waiting area and stares determinedly at her phone.

She has thought a lot about what Eleanor said, tried to reframe her life more positively. Every day I do this, she tells herself, I am moving one step closer to a better life. Every day I do this is one day closer to when Dan and Marja’s and my little psychodrama is going to become yesterday’s news. She has repeated this to herself over the several hours that she should have been writing. Except, she thinks suddenly, once the baby arrives, it will be coming here every day too. Marja will be pushing Dan’s baby past her every day, with all those women cooing over it. Maybe Dan will come with her on the first day, like husbands often do, full of pride and protective of their amazing partner, who was so brave, and so strong. Honestly, I’m in awe of her.

“Excuse me.”

A man is standing in front of her. He is tall and slim, with floppy, tawny hair, and sad eyes behind glasses. He has the kind of shambolic sexiness that was catnip to her before she met Dan. She blinks. She realizes he has said something that she couldn’t make out. “Sorry?”

“I wondered where you got that.” He is pointing at the bag with the cinnamon bun. “My daughter loves those things. We’re new here so I don’t really know where the good places are.”

“Oh.” She peers down at the bag. When she looks up she guesses, uncomfortably, that she has probably gone a bit pink. He has a remarkably direct gaze. “It’s Annika’s.”

“Is that your daughter?”

“No. No. The bakery. It’s called Annika’s. I don’t think there’s an actual Annika working there. They chose it because it’s a Swedish name. Just so we all know it’s Swedish. And does cinnamon buns. This one is just at the end of the high street. I’m pretty sure there’s another in Finchley, also called Annika’s…” She tails off. “So which class is your daughter in?”

He says something but it’s not Violet’s class and everything has turned into a kind of humming sound around him. She realizes almost straight away that she hasn’t properly listened to him so she just smiles and nods. And then nods again, just in case.

“When did she start?”

“Last week. She’s finding it all a little tricky so I just wanted to cheer her up.”

“Oh, I’m sorry.”

He shrugs. “It’s—uh…She’s had a lot of change in her life over the last eighteen months.” He stares at his feet.

Lila can’t think of what to say. So she thrusts the bun at him. “Take it.”

“What?”

“For your daughter. I can get another on the way back.” It’s half a mile in the other direction.

“No…no. I can’t do that.” He smiles and is briefly elevated from shambolically attractive to devastatingly gorgeous. “That’s incredibly sweet of you, though.”

“I insist.” She is now pushing the bun at him, forcing it into his hands. “Please. I shouldn’t give this to Violet anyway. We—we normally just eat fish and lentils.”

“We’ve lived off so much Deliveroo lately I probably have their equivalent of gold status.”

Why is he living off takeaway? Does that mean there’s no woman in the house? Lila curses herself for her internalized misogyny. This man looks too cool for internalized misogyny. She tries to think of something to say about Deliveroo but Violet is coming out through the doors. “Violet! Oh, God, don’t let her see it. She’ll never forgive me. I’d better—Bye. Nice to meet you…”

“Gabriel.”

“Gabriel. I’m…” She struggles to recall her name. “…Lila! Hah! So much for fish as brain food. Forgot my own name!” She lets out a strange high-pitched laugh she has never heard before, turns and walks briskly toward Violet, cursing herself. How can I be behaving like I’m fifteen when my neck is old enough to be growing an actual wattle?

“Did you get me a cinnamon bun?” says Violet, thrusting her rucksack at her.

Lila can feel the school mums around Marja giving her surreptitious glances. Yes, that’s me, talking to the new hot guy , she tells them silently. Suck on that, bitches. “I thought we could get one on the way home.”

“Oh, my God, Mum, you’re so annoying!” Violet throws her head back and lets out a wail of despair. “It is miles from our house. And I’m so tired !”

Lila flashes the mothers a smile. Marja has her back to her. She usually has her back to her, these days. “I tell you what,” she says. “We’ll stop at the mini-mart and get a jam doughnut.”

···

It is perhaps testament to how little male attention Lila has received over the past eighteen months that for the entire walk to the mini-mart and home again, she is feeling little electric shocks of pleasure when she remembers the exchange with Gabriel. The direct nature of his gaze. The almost shy half-smile when she thrust at him the bag with the bun. She thinks about it in the moments when Violet’s incessant chatter is briefly quelled by the doughnut, which she eats with forensic pleasure, sucking the sugar from her fingers as she walks. There was definitely a charge between them, wasn’t there? Would he have approached Lila if he hadn’t been remotely attracted to her? He could have gone to the other mums. He didn’t need to smile so much, or confide anything in her. Then she catches herself, and feels ridiculous. She is a forty-two-year-old woman obsessing like a schoolgirl. After everything she’s been through. He’s just a man who wanted a sugary bun. She maintains this stance for twenty strides. And then she is remembering how his eyes crinkled behind his glasses, his lovely mop of hair, the unexpected anticipatory pleasure of the next school run.

The circuit of pleasure and abrupt self-tellings-off comes to a halt when she reaches the front door and remembers. Gene is here, Gene, with his endless need for attention and approval, crashing back into her life without even a hint of apology for every way in which he has failed at being a father.

She closes her eyes momentarily outside the front door, takes a deep breath, puts the key into the lock, and walks in.

“The emergency plumber is here,” Bill announces, as she walks through to the kitchen. Violet passes them both and collapses in front of the television, sweeping up the remote control without looking at it, so that all further conversation takes place over the sound of overexcited American teenagers shouting at each other in school halls.

“What? Why?”

Bill is peeling a motley collection of mucky, no doubt organic swedes. She wonders, with faint trepidation, which feels ungenerous yet entirely justified, what he is preparing for supper.

“That man blocked the toilet with paper. Why he needed to use half a roll just for his morning ablutions I don’t know. But I couldn’t unblock it.”

Bill’s expression tells of the double insult involved in having to clear up Gene’s actual mess as well as his metaphorical one.

“Jesus. How much is that going to cost?” Lila sits down heavily beside the oblivious Violet. “Where is he?”

“No idea. Halfway back to Los Angeles hopefully.”

Her head shoots up.

“He said he’d be back after rehearsals.” Bill says it with the same disgust as if Gene had gone to a public stoning. “I suppose I have to include him in tonight’s dinner plans.”

“It’s just one more night, Bill,” she says.

Bill’s silence and faintly bristling back conveys what he thinks of that plan. Then he says, “I’d be grateful if you could have a word with him about the…plumbing business. I wouldn’t want to have to organize another emergency plumber tomorrow.”

···

Lila says she’s going to work for a couple of hours before supper. But when she walks into her office she sees the sofa-bed, the spare duvet rumpled on its thin mattress, and realizes resentfully that, with Bill and Gene here, she has no space in the house to herself. She heads for her bedroom, and, ridiculously weary, bypasses her bed and lies down instead on the carpet, staring up at the ceiling, listening to Bill’s murmured exchanges with the plumber on the top floor. I would like a life where I was flirting with someone over an outdoor table right now . Perhaps with a cold bottle of rosé. Not listening to a cross, elderly man negotiate with a plumber over a blocked toilet, and nothing to look forward to but some permutation of swede. She sighs heavily. Marja probably never lies on a floor feeling she doesn’t want to see a single human being ever again. Marja is probably right now lying on a sofa with Dan rubbing her feet. He was always good at pregnancy foot rubs. Or maybe she’s one of those women whose hormones go mad during the early months and right now they’re in bed having—

Lila closes her eyes and counts to ten. Then she picks up her phone. She checks the school email chain—which she rarely does—and sees the announcement of a new child in class five, Elena Mallory. She thinks for a minute, then types “Gabriel Mallory” speculatively into a search engine, and waits to see what comes up.

Architect Gabriel Mallory wins award for “revolutionary” halfway house. Judges praise his “humane and socially forward thinking design.”

She stares at the picture of him holding his award. Of course he’s an award-winning architect. Of course he is. She rolls onto her stomach and idly googles Gabriel Mallory Wife . Nothing comes up, not under his name anyway. There’s a bunch of other Gabriel Mallorys—men with wraparound Oakley sunglasses and surfboards, bearded IT developers, small boys in the arms of proud blonde mothers. She types Gabriel Mallory Divorce and then, when nothing comes up, Gabriel Mallory Wife Tragic Death .

“What are you doing?”

Lila jumps.

Violet is standing in front of her, staring down at Lila’s phone.

“Jesus, Violet. You can’t sneak in on me like that.”

“Your boobs look really squishy when you lie on your front.”

“Thank you.”

Lila wrestles her way to a seated position. She looks down at her breasts, wondering if they are notably more squishy than anyone else’s.

“Oh. Also Bill says supper is ready and Gene has come back and Bill says he smells like a drunk. And I’m not eating supper because it’s got turnips in it so can I order a pizza?”

···

For a few years, when the children were small, Lila and her mother would go to the supermarket together once a week. Francesca would accompany her ostensibly to provide back-up, a spare pair of hands to calm a screaming child, or pick up items ejected by chubby little fists from the trolley. They would sometimes have a cup of coffee afterward, if the frozen goods would last that long.

The habit continued long after the children had started school, even though there was no logical reason for them to shop at the same time. Francesca was relentlessly cheerful, treating the weekly supermarket trip like an amazing opportunity to discover new and exotic things. Lila would be pushing her way resolutely along the breakfast cereals, wondering which the girls were less likely to fight over, weighing up the terrifying amounts of sugar against the likelihood of them actually eating any of it, and would hear Francesca exclaiming from twenty yards away: “Lils! Look at this! How do you think you pronounce ’nduja ? Oh, lychees! I haven’t had a lychee since I was a girl! I must get a whole bowlful for Bill.” Once, when Lila was feeling particularly sour after a sleepless night or a fight with Dan, Francesca had repeatedly urged her to cheer up, to look on the bright side, to look at the wealth of amazing things in front of her and consider how lucky they were, until Lila had snapped at her, asking her why she didn’t just leave her alone. I’m not like you, Mum. I don’t feel bloody cheerful all the time.

Francesca had gazed at her quizzically, her curly gray hair bouncing on her shoulders, and then said cheerfully: “Fine! I will!” And as Lila watched, she had taken a sudden run with her trolley, then lifted both feet onto the back of it, so that she was sailing on wheels toward the far end of the aisle as shoppers moved abruptly, and grumpily, out of her way. As she went, she had turned to Lila and theatrically lifted an arm. “I’m going! I’m leaving you alone!”

Lila had stood there, stunned, as her mother had sailed around the corner, not sure whether to be embarrassed by her or impressed that she genuinely didn’t care what anyone else in the shop thought. She had turned back to the supermarket variety of Chocolate Weetos, and a few minutes later there was a whoop and Francesca was whizzing back toward her on the trolley. “Yum Yums!” she exclaimed, jumping off just as the trolley collided with the dried pasta. “It is biologically IMPOSSIBLE to be grumpy after you’ve eaten a Yum Yum. Here.”

Lila had stood eating the sugary, doughy finger, while her mother watched her with the intent anticipation of a scientist who knows they are about to be proven right. “See?” she had said, when Lila was left licking her fingers, a rueful smile on her lips. “See? Aren’t they the most glorious bringers of joy? I knew resistance would be futile.”

Lila stares at the two elderly men now sitting at each end of her table, studiously ignoring each other as they pick their way through a plate of spiced swede fritters, and wonders how a woman capable of squeezing such epic levels of happiness out of any situation could possibly have ended up with either of these two. Bill’s mouth has compressed into a thin line of irritation, and he speaks only to offer the water jug, or ask Lila whether the fritters contain enough salt. He does not address Gene, as if by simply ignoring him Gene might spontaneously combust and disappear.

Gene is clearly a little drunk. His movements have a certain deliberateness to them, and periodically he nods, his eyebrows shooting up, as if he is engaged in some silent conversation with someone nobody else can see. Violet, who has been told she cannot have a pizza, pushes the swede around her plate with a sullen air, occasionally shooting furious glances at Lila, as if she is responsible for this culinary betrayal.

“So, how were rehearsals, Gene?” Lila says. She notices that her voice has a kind of cool breeziness when she speaks to him, a tone one would adopt with a neighbor one felt obliged to make conversation with when trapped on a train platform.

“Oh. Good. Great. Director’s very happy.”

“What is it you’re rehearsing?”

Gene blinks, chewing meditatively for a minute. “Just…a Swedish director. Not sure it’s anyone you would have heard of.”

“Director? Or writer?”

“What?”

“You said it was a Swedish director.”

“No. He’s English.”

Lila gazes at her food for a minute. “What’s the play?”

“Say, do you have any ketchup? I could do with a little sauce over here.”

Bill looks up from his plate.

“They’re spicy fritters. There’s a natural yogurt dressing. They don’t need ketchup.”

Gene blinks slowly at him. “Well, I like ketchup.”

“They’re not made to go with tomato. Certainly not processed tomato with a load of sugar.”

“Maybe I like processed tomato with a load of sugar.”

Lila gazes at the two of them. Nobody moves. Then, with a sigh, she gets up and walks to the larder. She locates the ketchup at the back of the cupboard, somewhere among the three-year-old tins of coconut milk, and brings it over, handing it to Gene. Bill looks at her as if she has committed an act of treachery. “If he wants ketchup he can have ketchup, Bill.”

“Don’t mind me. I’m just the fool who has spent an hour carefully combining ingredients to replicate a certain delicate balance of flavors. Why should I care if he wants to splatter industrial goop all over them?”

“Can I have some industrial goop?” says Violet, eagerly taking the bottle and squeezing ketchup all over hers.

Bill sits very still.

Lila leans forward. “They’re delicious, Bill,” she says. “Thank you.”

The doorbell rings at a quarter past eight, just as Lila is clearing the dishes from the table, and Bill is already standing at the sink, his back a rigid reproach to the last hour. Gene gets up, as he is nearest to the hall, and she hears a murmured conversation, followed by a raised voice. Lila puts the plates on the side and walks out to see what is happening.

“I said I was going to come to you . Later.”

A woman is hauling a suitcase up the front steps, followed by two cardboard boxes, which she dumps with satisfied emphasis on the tiled floor.

“Well, I had the car so I thought this way I could make sure it actually happened.” She looks up as Lila stands in the doorway.

“Oh, hello, Lila. How are you?”

Lila squints, trying to work out why this woman is familiar. “ Jane ?” Her father’s first English girlfriend—or the first Lila knew about—after her mother: Jane, a massage therapist with long wavy blonde hair, who had been with Gene on and off in the UK and US for maybe fifteen years, who had offered to treat Lila’s bruised knees with arnica and whose whole house had smelt of patchouli. She had treated Gene’s behavior as if it was entirely to be expected from a man of his talent, and wore a permanent serene smile. She was the most level person Lila had ever met. This woman’s hair is long and gray but still thick, her hands strong and capable. She still wears no makeup and her arms are sinewy and strong. Her broad feet are encased in a pair of comfortable red sandals like those a child might wear.

She pushes a box toward Gene and straightens, flicking her long hair back and brushing her hands as if delighted to rid herself of the burden. “Can’t tell you how long I’ve had those in my attic. I did check the suitcase before I came and amazingly nothing has gone moldy or been eaten by moths. I think it was the lavender I put in with them.”

“What—what’s going on?”

“Gene called and said he’s living here now. So I thought it was a good time to persuade him to take the things he’d left at my house for…oh, twenty-three years? It’ll be a miracle if you fit any of those clothes, Gene. Though I guess you could sell the Grateful Dead T-shirts at Camden Market if you get stuck.”

“I’m sorry?” says Lila, who is struggling to understand. “Living where?”

“I didn’t say living,” says Gene, who seems to have sobered up.

“Yes, you did,” says Jane. “You told me you were living with your daughter. You said it yesterday when you called. It was the first thing you said. Also, there may be a couple more boxes up there. I couldn’t get to them this evening.”

“No—no! Hang on,” says Lila. “He’s just staying here. One more night.”

Jane looks steadily at Gene. Her eyes contain something that Lila is not entirely happy about. “I see,” says Jane. “Staying.”

Gene turns to Lila, his smile full wattage, and places a hand on her shoulder. “I was going to ask you, sweetheart, whether I could make it a few more days. There’s been a problem with the hotel and I just—”

She hears the distant oh, no from the kitchen before Gene has even finished the question.

“Just while I’m in rehearsals,” says Gene, still beaming.

Lila looks from one to the other, feeling somehow out-maneuvered.

It is Jane who breaks the silence. “This is something you two probably need to sort out by yourselves,” she says cheerfully. “And I have a client at eight thirty, so I need to get off. Lila, it’s absolutely lovely to see you again. I’ve often wondered how you were. Lovely house. Gene, it was…Well, good luck.” She pats his arm, gives a little wave to Lila and leaves.

Lila and Gene stand in the hallway.

“I hit a little bit of bother,” Gene begins, “in the finance department.”

Lila rolls her eyes to the heavens.

“It’s short term. Very short term. Just till I get paid. But it’s kinda tricky to get a hotel right now as I lost my credit card and don’t seem to have enough cash to put down a deposit on a place.”

Lila’s jaw seems to have locked. She can feel every one of her teeth.

“So sweetheart, if you could let me stay until I get paid I’d be really grateful. Just a short-term thing. So I can spend time with you and the girls.”

When Lila doesn’t respond, he continues: “I’d be out of your way. I can just sleep up there and work around you all. Maybe help look after Celia and—”

“Celie. It’s Celie. As in The Color Purple . And Violet.”

“We don’t need any help,” comes the voice from the kitchen.

Lila doesn’t move.

“It’s that or I’m sleeping on the streets,” he says, throwing down his trump card with the confidence—or desperation—of someone who knows that to throw a seventy-something man onto the streets takes the kind of mental willpower or coldness that Lila is unlikely to possess.

“You can’t stay with Jane?”

“Her partner doesn’t like me.”

“Surprise,” says the voice from the kitchen.

“And you have no other friends?”

“I’d rather be with family.”

“Oh, now they’re family,” comes the voice.

“Will you knock it off, Bill?” says Gene. “This is between me and my daughter.”

“You relinquished the right to call her your daughter years ago.”

“Well, you sure as hell don’t have the right.”

Lila hears footsteps. Bill appears in the kitchen doorway, a tea-towel over his shoulder. “You have no right to ask anything of Lila, no right at all.”

“Hey, fella, butt out. If my daughter wants to give me a bed for the night that’s no damn business of yours. You’re only squatting here yourself, as far as I can see.”

“Squatting here? I’ve been part of this family for thirty-five years. Certainly three times the amount you ever were.”

“You know nothing about me!” Gene is jabbing Bill in the chest now, with a long, thick finger. Bill, shocked, takes a step backward.

“Oh, I know plenty about you!” Bill whips the tea-towel from his shoulder and flicks it hard at Gene. It connects with his chin with an audible snapping sound. Gene’s mouth drops open and his hand goes to his face. In the kitchen Truant, clearly sensing some kind of conflict, zips through to the hall and sets up a furious barking, nipping at the men’s heels.

“Did you just whip me in the mouth, fella? Oh, man. I’m gonna whup your stiff old ass.”

The two old men are pushing at each other now, Bill flailing the tea-towel at Gene’s face, as Lila tries to grab the dog to stop it biting someone.

“Whup my ass? You’re too drunk to stand up for more than fifteen minutes at a time.”

“Oh, now you’re going to get it!”

Their fists are up, their bodies shifting from side to side. Lila, her head buzzing, throws herself between them and pushes them apart. “Will you two get a grip?” she yells. “For goodness’ sake.”

“He started it!”

Lila blocks an admittedly feeble punch from Gene, who bobs and weaves on the other side of her, like a boxer on the deck of a swaying boat.

“Yes, and as with the last thirty-five years, I’ll be the one finishing it.”

“Bill!” Lila shoves him backward.

“Mum!”

There is a brief silence. And then a voice says, “Mum?”

Violet is standing in the doorway to the living room, her face uncharacteristically uncertain. Lila gives them a final shove apart, glares at them, as if to ensure that they know she means business, then stoops, pulling Violet toward her, pasting a broad smile onto her face. Violet’s gaze flickers from one man to the other.

“It’s okay, lovey. They’re just play-fighting.”

Violet’s voice is tremulous: “They don’t look like they’re play-fighting.”

The silence lasts just a fraction longer than is useful.

Then Gene switches on his smile. “Sure we are, sweetheart! Me and Bill go back a long way, don’t we, Bill? Always joking.”

It takes Bill a moment longer to recover his composure. He straightens his tie, which has been pulled from his collar in the commotion. “Always joking,” he says, with a smile that doesn’t stretch quite as far as his eyes. “Nothing to worry about, Violet. It’s just a little joke between Gene and me.”

“Yeah. A joke,” says Gene.

“Because Gene actually loves it when I do this.” Bill flicks out the tea-towel again. It catches Gene’s nose. Lila watches as Gene’s expression grows faintly glassy. And then he recovers his smile.

“Sure. We’re just a bundle of laughs. And Bill loves it when I do this!” He reaches out and pulls Bill’s tie from his pullover, waggling it so that Bill’s head retreats into his collar and he blinks several times.

“Hah-hah-hah,” says Bill.

“Hah-hah-hah,” says Gene.

“Oh, he’s a veritable riot,” says Bill.

“And now they are definitely stopping their play-fight. We’ve all had quite enough fun for this evening,” says Lila. “Wouldn’t you two agree? Quite enough play-fighting?”

Gene is the first to speak. He smiles broadly, takes a step toward his granddaughter. “Sure. See, Violet? Everyone here is friends. Say, why don’t the two of us watch an episode of Star Squadron Zero ? You’re gonna love the one with the Martian uprising.”

Violet scans the three adults’ faces and seems to relax a little. She looks up at Lila, as if checking that this is okay, and Lila smiles encouragingly, suddenly reminded that Violet, for all her bluster, is still a little girl, dealing with a lot of upheaval.

“Of course. You two sit on the sofa and watch Star Squadron Zero . I’ll help Bill in the kitchen.”

“One more night,” she mouths at Gene, as she passes, and tries not to notice the look of bemused horror on his face.

“You should tell him he has to leave immediately,” mutters Bill, when she has settled Violet and Gene with the iPad. She can hear the tinny theme tune of the show, Gene’s humming beneath it.

“One more night,” says Lila, and tries not to feel despondent when Bill folds his tea-towel slowly and meticulously on the draining board and heads pointedly up to his room.