She leaned across and held onto his arm. “Had she been playing around, dear?”

Dan nodded.

“I had my suspicions, I have to say.”

“Yes. I reckon you would have done.” Dan leaned forward on the sofa and looked at his mother. “Are you happy here, Mum?”

“What, here in the flat, do you mean?”

“Yes.”

“No, I’m bloody miserable, if you will pardon my French.”

“Well, I wondered if you might like to come to live with me and the girls in Clapham.”

“Oh, no, dear, I could never impose myself on you like that.”

“Mum, you would not be imposing yourself. Right now, I don’t think there is anyone we would rather have in the house.”

“Do you really mean that, Dan?”

“Yes, I really mean it. As you know, the girls are going back to Alleyn’s, so if we sell this place, it would certainly help me with the finances.” He took a drink of beer from his can. “At least please think about it, Mum.”

His mother smiled at him. “I don’t need to think about it, dear. I can’t think of anything I would rather do.”

“Good.” He raised his can towards her. “Let’s toast ourselves an early Happy New Year then, shall we?” He clinked his can against her glass. “Cheers, Mum.”

“Chin-chin, love.”

Battersea Gran picked up the remote for her television and turned it up to almost full volume. The roar of the crowd in Edinburgh filled the room. “Now let’s see if we can spot Josh,” she yelled across the three-foot gap between herself and her son.

29

What? No Tarquin today?” Dan asked as he placed his pint of beer down on the table in the King’s Head pub.

“Not today,” Nick Jessop replied, folding up the business supplement of The Sunday Times and discarding it onto the pile of newspapers that lay beside him on the bench. “Laura has taken him off to some fancy-dress party this afternoon. It was quite incongruous to see a pirate with a pacifier in his mouth.” He took a gulp of beer. “So what have you done with your family today?”

Dan took off his leather jacket and hung it on the back of the chair before sitting down. “They’re all out of the house. Battersea Gran headed off to church on the bus this morning, and then rang to say that she’s going to have lunch with a friend. And the girls have gone round to see Jackie.”

“Ah. So contact has been reestablished.”

“Not really. It’s mostly through the lawyers. One good thing, though, is that I had a phone call from her lawyer on Friday, saying that I could stay in the house for as long as the girls were in full-time education. That should give me time to build up enough capital to buy a flat somewhere.”