Sam was silent, basting his sausages, turning to butter the slabs of bread, cracking an egg into the pan. Cat watched him without appearing to watch, saw a very young man who was hoping to pass as older, a competent, easy-going person trying to work out where to go in life and worrying too much that it wasn’t as straightforward as he had expected. He had been messed about by a girl who should have behaved better but who, also, had not found things going as smoothly as she thought they should, a clever, ambitious, potentially excellent doctor who had met Sam far too soon. Cat had liked Rosie, inevitably been angry about the way she had treated Sam but at the same time understood it and did not want to blame her.

Sam. He laid sausages and egg carefully onto the buttered bread, salted it all too much, put it onto a breadboard not a plate. Cat smiled. She had been thinking how like his uncle he was, and that was partly true, but Simon was a careful and fastidious cook who ate well, and would never have let the fat spurt out over his immaculate kitchen or larded his bread with so much butter.

‘He’s messed up, hasn’t he?’

‘Don’t talk with your mouth full. In what way? Certainly not career wise.’

‘I don’t mean that and you know it.’

She drank her coffee and waited.

‘Women. I mean, what is he like? Commitment-phobe.’

‘I suppose so. He loves his own life, his own space, his little world, and nothing wrong with that, but he’s never learned how to give a bit, how to share, how to understand that by letting someone into his life, himself, he would actually be able to have what he’s already got plus a whole lot more. He doesn’t see what he’s missing, and after all these years, I really can’t find any way of getting through to him or changing him – no, that’s wrong, you can’t change people and you shouldn’t try but you can help them modify their behaviour. I’ve definitely failed there.’

‘He’s too old and set in his ways.’

‘Thanks. He is my age. Exactly.’

‘Yes, but you change, you take up challenges, you do new stuff, you’ll never get stuck in a rut. You married K. You joined Concierge. What’s Uncle Simon going to do when he’s old? What will he be like?’

Cat poured herself more coffee. ‘God knows. Right, I’ve got to finish a difficult letter and do a bit of admin before we get Felix, and after him, Wookie.’

‘The Wookster! I was really afraid we wouldn’t get him back, you know, and after Mephisto that would have been the worst thing, like the family was falling apart.’

Forty-Nine

Black Cat, Spenser Street. Fats alone. You can’t miss him.

Serrailler replied at once.