The door groaned as it inched open, and a thin woman appeared in the gap. I recognized her instantly.
 

She had become smaller. Smaller and whiter, with her dark hair pinned close to her head and the same quick bird-eyes I remembered. Beneath the black uniform her breasts were still unnaturally round, though everything above them had narrowed and wrinkled. I had masturbated myself stupid to that face: the thin brows, the small impatient mouth, that flirty scolding look she gave me when she knew I was lying. What disturbed me was how much of it remained. The young face still visible inside the old woman’s, like a photograph faded by the sun. I was so surpised that all my words left me. She blinked gently in the silence that followed, grinning in the corner of her mouth, as if she understood everything I was thinking. Then she spoke, softly but roughened by cigarettes, with a girlish note I remembered too well:
 

“Tommy Little Sparrow.”
 

Nobody had called me that in thirty years. My pulse quickened. There was a warmth lower down too.
 

“Mrs. Fenwick,” I said, more shyly than intended.
 

She stood looking closely at me, her eyes moving over my face as her small grin faded from her mouth and I realized how tired I must look. Then she stepped back and held the door wide open.
 

“Look what the world has done to you.”
 

“Nothing it hasn’t done to you,” I said as I walked in.
 

She smiled, showing her small, even, dusty white teeth.  
 

“Charming as ever,” she said.
 

Then she took my coat, lifting it by the collar with a brisk little shake. I hesitated a moment, unsure whether to follow.It was all very different than I remembered. The dark oak walls were gone. So were the oil paintings, the rugs, the Chinese table where Helen kept calling cards in a bowl. In their place were pale limestone and walls of ivory plaster, everything so shiny and bare that Mrs Fenwick’s heels could be heard some distance ahead. I trailed behind her, watching the swinging bow of her apron, past a green velvet bench and bronze sconces shaped like folded paper. Then the corridor opened into a vast circular hall beneath a dome. I stopped just at the threshold, looking for the reception desk.
 

On the right, a staircase curved towards the upper gallery, its balustrade replaced by a sweep of aged bronze. Beneath the dome was a red marble table with black lilies and burgundy roses, branches reaching out in all directions. Beside them was a photograph of the dead man, laughing on some yacht with his hair in the wind. At once, I wish I hadn’t come.
 

“Well?” Mrs. Fenwick said.
 

She stopped to straighten the photograph. Through the windows behind her, the lake glittered between trees. A huge Rothko hung opposite a mirror of the same size. There was a curved sofa, an olive-green armchair, a round silk carpet bigger than my first flat.
 

“It’s—uh—different,” I said.
 

“They’ve done a great deal.”
 

“Is that a sarcophogus?!”
 

Mrs. Fenwick followed my gaze. Beneath the staircase stood a green-black coffin, winged horses carved at its ends. On it sat a blue balloon dog, a lamp, and a silver tray of mail.
 

“Second-century Roman,” she said. “From the Cabot collection.”
 

“Which Cabot?”
 

“Senator Winthrop Cabot’s. They acquired it from his widow when she sold the house in Newport.”
 

“Of course they did.”

​

I was beginning to recognise the house again. Only the Hallorans would look at a two-thousand-year-old coffin and see a display table. Then came a voice from somewhere down a corridor:
 

“Is it stuck?!”
 

Then another: “Just swallow it, mummy!”
 

“Good heavens, are you choking?”
 

Then a door slam, and a man speaking with the diction of an auctioneer:
 

“Mrs. Halloran, this is all terribly absurd. I remain in the possession of the document on my computer.”
 

The door opened again: “Take your fucking computer and shove it in your pisshole.” I recognised Caius’s voice at once. The door slammed one last time.
 

In the silence that followed, I could hear the faint wash of the lake against the shore. Mrs. Fenwick gave a tight little smile, as if she hoped I might pretend I hadn’t heard.
 

“What needs swallowing?” I said.
 

“Mr Quinn’s things go to the West Suite,” she said to the driver behind me, whose existence on the Earth I had completely forgotten. He passed me with my briefcase and started up the stairs.
 

“Who’s in there?” I asked.
 

She drew a small breath. “Mrs. Halloran,” she said.
 

“I gathered. Who else?”
 

“The children. And Mr. Vale.”
 

A pause.
 

“The solicitor,” she said.
 

“And what is she swallowing?”
 

Mrs. Fenwick glanced up the stairs. The driver had reached the gallery.
 

“I believe,” she said matter-of-factly, choosing her words, “a piece of paper.”
 

We stood a moment.
 

“Not the will?” I said.
 

“Mr Quinn, wouldn’t you rather settle in first? I’ll show you to your room and have some tea brought up. They may have finished by the time you come down.”
 

“I should say hello first.”
 

“They’re rather occupied, Mr Quinn.”
 

I started down the hall. Her heels came briskly after me in protest. The corridor ran farther than I had realised, its pale walls broken by closed doors. At the end, a line of light showed beneath a pair of dark wooden doors. As I drew nearer, I could hear the man speaking again. Then a cough and the scrape of a chair. I knocked. The man stopped speaking.
 

After a pause, someone said, “Come in.”
 

I opened the door.
 

The room was darker than the hall. Broad panels of glossy wood rose to the cornice, divided by fine seams. At the far end, Helen sat behind a desk, the lake blue behind her. She wore black, except for a silk scarf of violent yellow knotted at her throat. Her eyes were wet. She held a glass of water just below her mouth. On the blotter, there was sheet of paper with its lower half missing. As I entered, she took a small sip and swallowed twice, the second time with her eyes closed. For a moment her anger seemed to falter, as though she couldn’t quite place me.
 

“Tom?”

Her voice was rough. She cleared her throat, looking past me to Mrs. Fenwick.
 

“Hello, Helen,” I said.
 

Immedietely I recognised Caius, sitting on the sofa. By the window stood a woman I knew must be Hyacinth. Neither spoke. Beside the fireplace, a man in a beautifully cut suit was holding a leather folder. Helen swallowed again, setting her glass on a coaster. The man by the fireplace tucked his folder under one arm and came forward with his hand extended.
 

“Christopher Vale.”
 

“Tom Quinn.”
 

“Yes. We’ve been discussing your book.”
 

“Kitchen fucking Quinn,” said Caius.
 

“Nice to see you too,” I said.
 

Though he was only forty-six and three years older than me, he had gone silver at the temples. His face had the pale, sharp-edged look of someone who lived mainly in air-conditioned rooms. The pleased tilt of his head was unchanged. So was the thin coil of his lips with which, as a boy, he had listened to nannies explain why small children mustn’t be locked up in cupboards.
 

“My God,” said Caius, shaking his head. He rose and came towards me with his arms open. “You survived,” he said.
 

“So did you.”
 

“Yes, yes.” He patted my back. “But there was never much doubt about me.”
 

He returned to the sofa and sat crossing his legs.
 

“Sit down, Tom”, said Helen.
 

I took the leather armchair nearest the door.
 

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to walk into the middle of anything.”
 

“Would you give us a moment, Fenwick?”
 

Mrs. Fenwick withdrew, the door closing.
 

“Your timing is extraordinary,” said Helen.
 

“Well I was told to come today.”
 

“How was the journey?” she asked.
 

“Fine, fine. Very comfortable. I do like a Jaguar.” I rubbed the leather armrest as I said this, for reasons I cannot explain.
 

“And your pancreas?”
 

“My what?”
 

“You said you had a pancreatic problem.”
 

“Oh, yes! No, it’s fine now. Thank God for Pepto.” I laughed awkwardly. No one else did. Vale adjusted his folder. In the silence, I heard the small click of Helen’s glass against her teeth.
 

“I’m sorry about Cormac,” I said. “He was a formidable man. I—uh—I’d hoped to see him again.”
 

“Yes, well. You didn’t miss much.”
 

She put down the glass. I looked at the torn paper, then away from it.
 

“What were you saying about the book?” I asked the solicitor, taking care not to sound too interested.
 

Helen glanced at him. “Perhaps this can wait,” she said.
 

“I think Mr. Quinn ought to understand the position.”
 

Vale drew a chair a little away from the desk and sat down. He placed the folder squarely on his knees.
 

“Mr. Quinn,” he said with patient seriousness. “Cormac made provision for your work to continue after his death. Your fee, access to the papers, the expenses of staying here.”
 

“Yes, he told me.”
 

“There is a further provision concerning the family’s cooperation.”
 

I looked at Helen. She had settled back in Cormac’s chair.
 

“What sort of cooperation?” I asked.
 

“Interviews. Documents. Reasonable assistance with your research.”
 

“Which we would have given him,” said Helen.
 

The last word caught in her throat. She turned aside and coughed into her closed hand, then reached for the water. Vale allowed a brief pause, then continued:
 

“A portion of each beneficiary’s inheritance is to be held until the manuscript is completed. Their entitlement to it depends on fulfilling those obligations.”
 

I waited.
 

“Their inheritance?” I said. “Tied to the biography?”
 

“Part of it.”
 

There seemed to be another part of the explanation that would make this even more extraordinary.
 

“And if they refuse?” I asked, trying to sound revolted.
 

“The money goes elsewhere,” said Caius. “Do keep up, Kitchen.”
 

“To the foundation,” Vale said. “If the trustees determine that the conditions have not been met.”
 

I looked at Helen, then at Caius. Neither appeared surprised. They had known this before I walked in. They had been discussing what to do about me.
 

“I—uh—I don’t know what to say. Cormac told me nothing of this.”
 

“And who decides whether we’ve cooperated?” asked the woman at the window, turning suddenly to face me.
 

I had avoided looking at her directly. Her dark hair—once worn in a plait whose end she sucked on when thinking—was cut to her jaw, exposing her neck. She had grown into the long bones of her face. Her skin was still porcelain-pale, though fine lines framed her eyes, small and shiny like a pair of green marbles. Her lips were full and pink, curling at me now with mischevous disdain. At her throat hung a long gold serpent’s head.  She let me look at her, then raised her eyebrows a fraction.
 

“That is up to Mr Quinn to judge and communicate to the trustees,” said Vale.
 

“And what if Tom doesn’t believe our answers?” Hyacinth continued, still looking at me.
 

“You are only required to assist him. You are not required to persuade him.”
 

“Yes, thank you. I think that’s enough for now.” Helen pulled gently at her scarf. “Tom must be tired. And I should like a little rest myself. It’s been rather a long day.”
 

“Of course,” I said, getting up.
 

“You’re in the West Suite, are you?”
 

“Yes ma’am.” The dreaded word was out before I could stop it. Caius pressed a knuckle to his mouth.
 

“Go and make yourself comfortable,” said Helen. “We’ll see you at dinner.”
 

“I’ll take him,” said Hyacinth.
 

Helen looked at her for a long cautionary moment, before arranging her face in a smile. I murmured something about leaving them in peace, which nobody answered, then followed Hyacinth out. She waited until we had put some distance between ourselves and the office, then she said:

 

“Ma’am?” She burst out in a quiet laugh.
 

“Please don’t.”
 

“You’ve made Caius’s day.”
 

She glanced at me, smiling at my visible dread.
 

“You used to be much harder to embarrass,” she said.
 

“And you used to be much harder to read.”
 

“And what is it you read in me, Tommy?”
 

I smiled, shrugging in a flirty way. “You’ll find out soon enough.”
 

At the stairs she let me draw level with her. Her sleeve brushed mine. I moved over, giving her room, and she looked at the space I had made. We started up.
 

“I really didn’t know about the money,” I said.
 

“I know. Theatrical old bastard. Couldn’t leave without an encore.”
 

“I’m sorry about him. Really, I am.” I wasn’t.
 

“I suppose it’s for the best.”
 

“You don’t mean that.”
 

At the top of the stairs, she turned to look at me.
 

“He was in terrible pain, Tommy. Some days he couldn’t even bear the bedsheet.”
 

 “You know I read somewhere that lung cancer is the worst form of cancer?”
 

“Is there a best form of cancer?”
 

“I meant the pain.”
 

“It was all very unpleasant, yes.” A pause as we turned through a corridor. “And by the end you couldn’t sit with him for five minutes without being asked about your principles. Made us all feel like shit.”
 

“He had a moral reckoning?” I asked, surprised.
 

She nodded. “The priest came practically every day.”
 

“What did they talk about?”
 

“Don’t know. He’d shut the door.”
 

Hyacinth led me through a tall doorway into the west wing. Broad windows overlooking the lake ran along our left. Opposite them, tall pale doors sat flush within ivory panels, each fitted with a long bronze handle. Another silk runner stretched towards an open bedroom at the far end. Halfway along stood an oxblood cabinet—one of those glossy, rounded, high-design things—with several photographs crowded at one end. Above it hung a Monet in pinks and soft greens. Beside the second window, an olive velvet chair had been turned towards the lake. Someone had left a cardigan over its back and a coffee cup on the sill. It was the first place in the house where I could imagine sitting without being asked to move.
 

“Anyway, what about you,” she said.
 

“Nothing significant to report.”
 

“Don’t play mysterious with me, Tommy. How’s your life? Are you married?”
 

“Paroled long ago.”
 

She stepped through the open doorway at the end and turned, both hands extended in demonstration. She had the mannerisms of a dar and deviou swan.
 

“Do you like it?” she said, looking at me with a childish expression.
 

The room extended further right than I had expected. An enormous bed stood against the far wall, its curved headboard enclosing rows of white pillows. The upholstery was pale blue, with a faint sheen that shifted as I moved. Someone had fitted the duvet so perfectly that getting into the bed seemed sure to provoke stress. My briefcase had been placed on a cream leather bench at its foot. A white carpet covered most of the oak floor. To the right of the bed was a warmly lit dressing room, where my coat hung on a rail.
 

“The bathroom’s  just through the closet. You’ll find robes in two weights, depending on how warm you want to be. The drawers have everything—razors, toothbrushes, spare contact lenses. Fenwick will have checked your prescription.”

​

She pointed towards the bed.
 

“If you want the bath drawn, use the white button. The other one opens the curtains. I always get them wrong. There’s a steam shower, too, and champagne in the little fridge under the towels. You have chilled hydrogel masks in there as well.”
 

I looked about the room in sheer stupefaction. For a second, I thought of my mother.
 

“Don’t you like it?” she asked, a bit annoyed.
 

“No, it’s wonde—I mean it’s fine, just that I was expecting something—”
 

She looked at me, waiting.
 

“Just seems a bit much, is all.”
 

She glanced around, as though checking what I could possibly mean.
 

“Well if you’re going to put up with us for a month, we ought to make some part of it nice.”
 

She sat on the bench beside my briefcase. I had expected her to leave once she had shown me to my room, but now I found myself searching again for a place to sit.
 

“Sit down, Tommy.” She patted the space next to her.
 

I went and took the chair by the window.
 

“Is—uh—is your room near here?” I asked and immedietely regretted it.
 

“Across the passage.”
 

“Oh.”
 

“Is that all right?” she said.
 

“Why wouldn’t it be?” I could not understand why this conversation was stirring up so much bloodflow.
 

She laughed a high-pitched, feminine giggle.
 

“Oh Tommy, you’re so lovely.”
 

“No need to insult me, thank you.”
 

“But you are. You are. You have no idea.”
 

I raked a hand through my hair.
 

“Remember that time by the shed when we kissed?”
 

I pretended forgetting, but I knew exactly what she was talking about.
 

“Oh come on, you must remember it. When you put your hand in my underwear and I put my hand in yours?”
 

“Hyacinth, please,” I said, exasperated. “We were ten. Maybe even younger.”
 

“So you do remember.” A pause. “I’ve never felt anything like it since. That wild, unthinking happiness of knowing pleasure for the first time. I think about it when I’m having sex."
 

“Good for you.”
 

“You know I wanted to marry you.”
 

“Course you did. I was the first boy you knew who wasn’t your brother.”
 

“No. You were different, Tommy. You were curious. And kind. And frightfully good at lying. There was this robust, real-boy confidence to you. You had a character.”
 

“Yes, the old charm of the gutter rat.”
 

“Oh, learn how to take a compliment, Tom. It’s good manners.”
 

“Not much use for those in Croydon.”
 

She bit back a smile. I became aware of the way I was sitting and crossed my legs, which seemed to amuse her.
 

“Can you imagine if we’d married?” she said.
 

“No, thank you.”
 

“I think we would’ve been happy.”
 

“Do you now?”
 

“Driving together to Tesco. Doing our taxes. Fucking to Tim Buckley with a quilt up on the curtain rod—”
 

“Rain outside,” I said.
 

She shut her eyes and tipped her head back in delight. I rolled my eyes.
 

“Stop it, Hy, I’m going to be sick. You’d have loved me till the boiler broke.”
 

She burst out laughing.
 

“And I have a very tidy flat,” I said. “Curtains and all. So this little picturesque poverty kink of yours rests upon a generous miunderstanding.”
 

A long pause in which neither of said anything.
 

“Tell you what,” I added in a more congenial tone. “Let’s wait until the book comes out, when I’m rich and famous. Otherwise, I’d spend your money and resent you for emasculating me.”
 

“Heavens, is it going to be that bad?”
 

“Only the good parts.”
 

She opened her mouth, smiled instead, then said:
 

 “You’re so sure of yourself, Tommy. Even if you can’t afford to be. It takes something—” she paused, searching for the word “—undefinable to be cocky with so little.”
 

“I’m touched.”
 

“It’s a rare quality. Very attractive.”
 

From somewhere in the passage came the soft sound of a door closing. She glanced towards ours, which was open.
 

“Would you mind?” she said.
 

I rose and closed the door.
 

“What about you?” I asked, this time standing, leaning back against the desk. “Did you ever marry?”
 

She shook her head, pressing her lips together.
 

“Never met someone who could persuade me into slavery. And I think I would’ve liked it.”
 

“Well, there is someone at least?”
 

“Are you interested?”
 

“Just making conversation.”
 

“You are interested. Why, if I dont know an interested look on a man's face.”
 

“What’s he like?” I said.
 

She sighed a long, burdened sigh. “He’s very . . . physical. He likes working. He likes to buy things, shoot things. He likes fucking very much.”
 

“You poor thing. However do you bear it?”
 

“Oh, I bear it quite well. The trouble is that—with these kind of men—they want every woman in the world: Anne Boleyn, Virgin Mary, Cleopatra, Hillary Clinton.”
 

“I don’t see a problem for you.”
 

“No—I suppose not.”
 

Then she rose abruptly and came to stand before me. Her hands hovered at her sides, then clasped loosely at her waist. For a moment she seemed uncertain what to do with them.
 

“You know, I used to wonder what you were doing. After you left, I mean. You never called.”

​

“Neither did you.”

​

“Yes, but I’m lazy. You’d have had a reason. I nearly came to see you once,” she said. “When your book came out.”
 

“Why didn’t you?”
 

“I got as far as buying it.”
 

“And then decided against?” I said, smiling.
 

She laughed, then touched my shoulder.
 

“I didn’t know if you would’ve liked me to.”
 

She was playing with a thread on my jacket now.
 

“Since when has that stopped you?” I said.
 

“Oh, I’ve become very considerate.”
 

“Hy.”
 

“What?”
 

She kept her eyes on the thread. I wanted to take her hand. Instead, I said:
 

“I would have liked you to come.”
 

Her hand stood where it was a moment longer. Then she looked past me, towards the window.
 

“You used to watch me all the time from here.”
 

“Why are you being so nice to me, Hy?” I said, taking her hand.
 

“Would you rather I wasn’t?”
 

“I’m wondering if you were told to be.”
 

Her face changed.
 

“Do you really think Mummy sent me here to warm up your bed?”
 

I thought for a moment.

​

“No. I—I’m sorry,” I said.

​

“Don’t worry. Under the circumstances, I’d be just as suspicious.”

​

This was so reasonable that I felt worse.

​

“But you could allow me to disprove your suspicions.”

​

I wanted to believe her. Worse, I wanted her to know I did. I held her gaze, searching in those small green eyes, until I grew frightened of what I might say—or do—if I stayed another moment. With a murmured excuse, I crossed to the bench and opened my briefcase, grateful for the familiar clasps, the papers, that saving necessity of looking for something.

​

“Are you unpacking to avoid me?” she said.

​

“I’m looking for my charger.”

​

“Tommy.”

​

“What?”

​

“I read your book.”

​

“Which book?” I said, still searching my luggage.

​

“You only wrote one.”

​

“Yes.”

​

“It was great. Though I forget it’s name. Anyway, I have to go now. Get a bit of rest before dinner. It’s been rather a long day. See you at seven.”

​

“Yes, see you.”

​

She left.

 

I hurried to the window. My heart was beating absurdly fast. I put both hands on the sill and stood there, hot in the face, trying to take a full breath without having to sigh. Now that she was gone, I could think of several ways I could have kept her. I glanced at the door. It would have been easy enough to open it, call her name, find something to ask her. The possibility stirred me up so much that I turned back to the glass. I could still feel the soft weight of her hand. I straightened my cuffs, then undid them.

​

Below, the lawn fell away between trees to a little stone landing, where a rope lay coiled by the water. I stared at it for some time. Gradually, as I played the whole discussion in my head, my regret at her leaving gave way to a sweeter feeling. How smoothly I had worked her, after all. Every word in its place, every pause perfectly timed. I could not help myself. I played it back again, savoring each turn like a man rolling a good wine on his tongue, over and over, half-drunk on my own cleverness.

​

Of course I hadn’t forgotten the purpose of my visit. If anything, I was even more conscious of it now. What Vale had told me had changed everything. These people could not send me home. Their money had been tied to me. What I couldn’t understand was why in the world Cormac—spitting blood out on his deathbed—would take the trouble of tying the book up in his will. He had hardly made it sound so important on the phone. I was happy, I’ll admit, to hold this guillotine over their heads. But it also meant I had to watch them closely. Whatever kindness came my way would have two possible meanings.

​

Regarding my history with Hyacinth, I did not have to reach far for it. I could see her now, in front of me in the window glass, ten years old, the end of her plait in her mouth. We stuck together the way dogs stick together, because the house was enormous and cold, and we had to stay out of the grown-ups’ way, out from the all the endless clinking of the trays, that chiming of silver and crystal which seemed to me then the very sound of money in the dark.

​

Summers they kicked us out at nine, and fished us back in at six, and in between we were free as only the unwanted can be. She was the only one in that whole blasted clan to ever really look at me. Not at the air beside my ear, not through me to the wallpaper, but straight at me, with her whole face, the way an animal looks: nostrils, mouth, everything. And then her gaze dropped like a hawk’s to whatever was in my hand, and I could see the mischief rising in her. She was a small, prying creature, forever sniffing out whatever she shouldn’t touch. And that’s how it began. With an apricot from the glasshouse. I gave it to her, and she sank her big teeth in, and the juice went running down her wrist, down the inside of her arm. From that moment I was hers. Her thief, her slave, and God help me, her dog.

​

I led and she followed. Then she led and I followed. There was no seam. I knew where the gardener’s boy kept his cigarettes. She knew which doors in the east wing could be opened. Then we’d crawl through the drains under the drive and come out the other side black to the elbows, blinking like moles. Beyond the estate hedge, the vineyards began, and below them was a small village. Nobody there had heard of us. Just a man eating bread on a doorstep, a one-eyed dog, a fat woman pegging out the sheets, snapping and cracking in the wind. Hy wanted to look into everything: chicken coops, empty bottles, Renault 4s. We stole matches and roasted apples in the road, then ate them with our fingers black and our mouths burning. Once we got lost following a stream beyond the village. She swore it would take us to the sea. I knew better, but I just wanted to be with her.
 

We got away with most things. Lying came to me like breathing. I could lie to Helen, to the nannies, to Cormac with his big paw on my shoulder. My pulse never so much as stirred. She, however, had no talent for it. Everything she thought went straight up her throat and into her face, and she would stand there pink and guilty, a lit lamp in a dark room, while I took the blame and said it was me—I had done it, I was sorry. I told myself I did it to protect her, but I was hardly so generous, even as a boy. I did it for the look she gave me afterward, and for that look I would have broken everything in the house.

​

It’s not like I was ever punished. The Hallorans were too well bred to scold a servant’s child. Helen would crouch down, smelling of lilies and gin, and tell me it was only a vase, Tommy, only a thing, as Hyacinth watched from behind her mother and shaped a thank-you with her lips. After, she would find me in the grass behind the glasshouse, and we would sit in silence, with our backs against the warm brick. She would lay her hand between us on the ground, just an inch shy of mine, though we never held hands.

​

That was before the shed. After the shed there was no inch left. There was no tenderness in it. We were two small scientists with two small specimens between us, and we went at it with a professional curiosity, breathing through our mouths. Her hand was cold. Mine was shaking. Her cardigan was buttoned one hole out, so that one side hung lower than the other. Her knee had a scab on it, and she picked at it with her free hand the whole time. The days of the week were stitched to her underpants, and it was Tuesday, but they said Friday. There was a smell of creosote, wet sacking, and a rotten sweetness of a tomato crate gone bad. Everytime I see a spoiled tomato, I think of the feminine sex. Afterward, she went out coatless in the rain, and I stood in the dark with the rakes and the twine. She was the first person ever to touch me and I was the first person ever to touch her. But I suspect the gardener’s boy touched her too, and not just once.

 

I went back to my briefcase. Under the charger were the papers Vale had sent in October, tucked into a blue folder whose corners had gone soft. I put the papers on the desk and switched on the lamp. For a few minutes, I wondered whether Hyacinth was in her room, stretched across the bed in a dark green silk thing, heels still on, languid in that plush hotel duvet, turning me over in her mind as much as I was turning her in mine. I pictured the robe slipping, gathering inside her thighs, then made a tremendous effort to stop and concentrate on the papers.

​

Cormac’s secretary had written to me in October. The subject line read: ‘Office of Mr Cormac — Request for a Private Telephone Conversation.’ She suggested two times the next day and asked which one would suit me. I consulted my calendar, though I knew it was empty. A pale grid of long, unremarkable days. Then I went out for milk, fully resolved to let the message sit until morning. I had read somewhere that the Romans considered haste a form of weakness, that there is a certain dignity in making people wait. I got as far as the checkout queue, where I ended up replying from my phone, among the tabloids and the little gum packs.

​

He rang the next day, as I was rinsing out the coffee pot. I dried my hands on my shirt and took the phone into the sitting room, where the TV was on mute. A woman stood outside a flooded house, holding a microphone to her chin, her mouth working. Behind her, an old man stood knee-deep in water, while a cat watched from an upstairs window. I watched her talk while Cormac asked how I was.

​

“Fine,” I said. “Not much to report. The usual.”

​

“What’s the usual,” he said in a voice thick with phlegm.

​

“Writing, reading. Most of the time.”

​

“What in Hell’s name are you writing, man? Of all the writers I know, you’re the first one who hasn’t actually written a book.”

​

He laughed, hard and pleased with himself, then coughed—a long, wet, rummaging cough—and I held the phone away from my ear until it was over.

​

“That’s not true,” I said, struggling to sound indifferent. “I’ve published a novel.”

​

“A novel,” said Cormac. “Ah yes, I remember. Someone gave me a copy once.” A long pause. Then he said: “I used it to prop up a table at the yacht club.”

​

More laughing and coughing.

​

“Well, I’m glad my book was of use to your table,” I said, my ears going hot. “It was very well reviewed.”

​

“I’m sure it was. Don’t mind me. You know how I am about these things.”

​

I didn’t say anything.

​

“Anyway. Listen to me, Tom. I’m dying.”

​

“Yes, I’d heard something.”

​

“Everyone’s heard. Blasted telephone won’t stop. Get well, Cormac. How are you feeling, Cormac. Praying for you, Cormac! I’m rotting from the inside like a corpse and they have the nerve to ply me with banalities. Touché to you. You never were one for the pleasantries.”

​

“No,” I said. “I thought you might want to be left alone.”

​

“It’s exactly what I want. But I want something else too.” Another pause. “A book written."
 

“A book,” I said. “What sort of book?”
 

“The sort that tells the truth. It’s my last wish. You can’t refuse me, Tom.”
 

He drew a breath that sounded like a drawer being forced.
 

“Look—I’ve had a dozen of the other sort offered. Blazered, side-combed fucks who’d write me up as a Rilke-loving philanthropist. Chapter one, the poor boy from Cork. Chapter ten, the foundation—with a photograph of me handing a cheque the size of a door to some kid in a wheelchair. I’d sooner be buried in a bin bag. No, I want the real thing out. The drama and the money and the sins, and the sins especially, because those are the only part of me that was ever any good.”
 

He stopped to breathe, and I listened to him do it.
 

“I’ve told it so many times the other way, that I can’t remember what bloody hell my life was about. I want somebody to come in with a hot torch and look under it all.”
 

“Why me?” I said.
 

“Because you hate us,” he said, cheerfully.
 

“I don’t ha—"
 

“Look. Perhaps you have your reasons, and perhaps they’re good ones. But it’s why I want you. You have no reason to flatter us. But you’re not a cruel man, Tom. You’ll be fair where it counts.”

​

“Will I?”

​

“Oh, I have no doubt. You’ll sleep in our beds, eat our turbot, drink our wine. By the third week, you’ll find you can’t quite bring yourself to put the knife in all the way.”

​

He chuckled again, then ran out of road and turned into the cough again. This time I put the phone on the arm of the sofa and let it rattle there until it was quiet. When I picked it up he was saying my name.

​

“I’m here,” I said.

​

“You’ll have access to everything. The papers, the house, the family. Helen will see to your fee. It will be very generous. I’m told I’m a generous man.”

​

I said nothing. On the screen, a plastic laundry bin sailed through the doorway behind the reporter, followed by a saucepan. A pink brassiere caught on her microphone cable; she detached it without interrupting her report. I thought about my mother at the sink, her hands red to the wrist. I thought of her ironing Caius’s shirts, then ironing mine more tenderly. I thought of Lily asleep in the bed next to mine, one foot out of the covers. I thought of the green door under the west terrace. I thought the cottage on a winter evening, the three of us watching E.T. with my mother falling asleep ten minutes in, and the lights of the big house up the hill coming on one window at a time. I thought, quite clearly, that I would write the book. That I would hate every minute of it, but that it would be very good.

​

“I’ll think about it,” I said.

​

“No you won’t.”

​

“When would I start?” I said.

​

“After the funeral.”

​

He gave one more ugly little bark, and I suddenly knew it was among the last jokes he would tell. It moved me in a way I disliked, and I felt obliged to contribute to his humor. Coolly, I said:

​

“Any idea when that might be?”

​

Three weeks later I got the letter from Helen.

 

The lamp had drawn a yellow circle on the blue folder. I had not moved. Thirty-four pages. Whereas. Hereinafter. The Testator, being of sound mind. Nobody reads these things, by the third page you would sign away your kidneys.

​

I sat there with my pen cocked and thought about the book: how does one begin? How does one crack the egg of life ? I was born in the shadow of a house. God, no. Too pompous. Try again. The first thing I stole from the Hallorans was an apricot. There was juice in it, the sun coming through a garden wall, but it still stood there with its hat in its hands, too polite, a choirboy pleased with his first little sin. Wait. Wait. Cormac Halloran died on a Tuesday. Yes!  That one. That was the nail, and I drove it into the side of my skull and let it hang there like a post-it. Tuesday! Not a Friday with its showy tragedy, not a Sunday either—no bells, no great black wing passing over the earth. Tuesday—the day of depression and letters from creditors, the day God had clearly set aside for absolutely nothing of significance to happen.

​

With that sentence burning in my skull I let my eye go crawling down page thirty-one, through the swamp of definitions and schedules, the wormy little clauses chewing their own tails. Ther was a column of black grit at the bottom of the page. I leaned in. The lamp hummed.

 

14(c). For the purposes of Schedule 2, the Conditional Entitlements shall be treated as having failed if the Biographer’s death occurs anytime during the Residence Period, as well as Writing Period, unless the Trustees are satisfied that such death resulted solely from natural causes. In making that determination, the Trustees shall have regard to any findings of the competent authorities and to the written opinion of the medical practitioner designated by the Testator, who shall be independent of the Beneficiaries. Upon failure of the Conditional Entitlements under this paragraph, the property subject thereto shall be held for the Foundation absolutely.

 

I read it again. Then I went hunting for Schedule 2, annoyed at the necessity of turning over so many pages only to discover the consequences of my own death.

​

The scedule ran four pages. There were companies, holdings, accounts, things owned by other things which in turn belonged to something registered on an island. Money breeding in the dark. I knew some of the names, they were on buildings. They were on the envelopes my mother used to bring in on a tray.

​

I went back to fourteen, paragraph c, and laid my finger beneath the words. So it was that he had put them in charge of keeping me alive. For perhaps ten seconds I enjoyed this. Then I wondered why he had done it. I tried giving it a simple answer. Lawyers think of everything. Ships sinking, banks failing, God dropping a chimney pot on your head. It was their business to imagine all sorts of unpleasantness, be prepared for them. I looked again. There were provisions for illness, incapacity, the postponement of the interviews. I put the papers down. In the event of the Biographer’s death. Death. Whyever would I die? I picked up my telephone and found Vale’s number. He answered on the fourth ring.
 

“Mr Quinn?”

​

“Hello? Mr. Vale?”

​

“Yes, this is he speaking.”

​

“I’ve been—uh—reading.”

​

“Reading?” His voice was pleasant, encouraging. “What have you been reading, Mr. Quinn?”

​

“Clause fourteen,” I said. “Paragraph c?”

​

A short silence. I heard a faint sound, perhaps the movement of his chair.

​

“Is that something you generally put in?” I said.

​

Another pause. I had expected him to reach for a copy, ask me to remind him of the wording. Instead, he said, in the same pleasant auctioneering voice:

​

“Yes, Mr. Quinn. It’s our job to think of everything. No need to trouble yourself.”