The lily his mother had placed on Rose’s stone had been glazed already by the light, and might have been sculpted there. River wished—he didn’t know what he wished. He felt an unanchored yearning; a desire that things weren’t like this. But he couldn’t wish his grandparents alive. He couldn’t face watching them die again.
He felt a tug on his sleeve: his mother. A taxi had arrived.
“And that’s him, is it?”
It did not surprise him that Isobel should so easily recognise a man she’d never met.
“That’s Jackson, yes.”
“I thought he was supposed to be some kind of master spy.”
“I’m not sure anyone’s ever decided what kind of spy he is.”
“A badly dressed one, that’s clear. Does he realise it’s a funeral?”
“I’m pretty certain it was mentioned on the invite.”
Catherine was with Lamb. She seemed grey, a creature of the weather. Funerals had that effect, unless there was something else going on.
“We should make our way inside,” he said. Just saying the words shifted something inside him: this was really happening, a memory he’d never lose. Today he was burying his grandfather.
They walked back the long way round, and passed the waiting grave once more. River had the feeling it should have had more to say for itself; should have been an empty, yawning terror. But it was only a hole in the ground, and that somehow made it worse.
Louisa had passed a man in a car up the road, perfectly placed to clock attendees, but if he was anyone to worry about the Dogs would have sorted him out. Though they were Dogs without a walker at the moment—she’d heard from Emma Flyte at the weekend. Louisa had been in the shower, and the call had gone to voicemail. Emma sounded pissed but against a quiet background.
A pause, a swallow.
Another pause.
Louisa had already gathered that much.
She wished she’d been there, to see Emma give Taverner the finger. Who was here, of course, duty-mourning. There were others she half-recognised too, faces glimpsed back in the day, riding the lifts to the Park’s top floors. If things had been different, River Cartwright would have been down the front; chief mourner and heir apparent. As it was he was loitering under a tree, with a woman Louisa supposed was his mother. He’d slip in soon, and make his way to the front, but it wasn’t like the great and good would be lining up to offer their sorrows. The way things might have been. A funeral a pretty obvious occasion to flip through that book of swatches.
But enough of other people’s problems. What should she do about Lucas Harper?
She hadn’t been, of course. Well, she had been, but that wasn’t what it had been about; she had loved him, he had loved her, they’d have shared their lives, or made the attempt, if he hadn’t died. So where did that leave her? Not in Clare Harper’s debt, that was certain. Addison. Whatever. So why was it niggling at her, this feeling that she’d turned her back when she should have offered a hand? Min’s boys had been a fuzzy image on the periphery of their relationship, part of his life she had no access to. She hadn’t hassled him to make introductions; had assumed that that would happen sooner or later, mentally filing it as an ordeal her future self would handle. And here she was: her future self. Niggled at by responsibilities a younger Louisa had avoided.
But Min’s son had left home, that was all, taking his savings with him. A bad idea, but at seventeen a lot of bad ideas had a certain attraction. Louisa could think of a few she’d had herself; Clare too, probably. But there was no doubt Clare was suffering. Louisa thought of the way she’d startled every time the coffee shop door opened. It was natural, to become paranoid at such times. She’d spend her nights awake, blurry with fear. It would be like grief.
