‘Well, I can’t,’ Abbott roared, and at the same time he stood. The noise of his chair as it scraped back was almost deafening in a room struck dumb by the sudden shock of his outburst. Tess’s chin tilted. Her eyes blazed. Phil rose up. Brave Phil, prepared to stand his ground against a guy he knew could beat him senseless with one hand tied behind his back.

And thank God for small mercies, because Abbott, even drunk as he was, was aware that while things were bad they’d get even worse if he stayed, and so instead he blundered his way out of the dining room, heard Tess saying to Phil, ‘No, let him go,’ behind him as he stopped and retrieved his jacket and rucksack from pegs in the hallway, saw the children on the stairs wearing pyjamas, regarding him silently with a mixture of shock and curiosity, and then turned and piled out of the house down the steps, almost losing his footing and tripping over himself. He slung the rucksack onto his back as he made his way to the Tube and then back to Finchley and to The Sportsman, where the place was like he’d never left it, drinking up, past last orders, Nigel throwing him out, into the all-night off-licence, where he bought more. What happened after that would be for him to try to work out later, because by now he was in blackout, which was not, as some people think, a state of unconsciousness but operating without thought or memory, a state of being that can terrify a non-drinker enough to make them give up for good but to the hardened boozer is just another occupational hazard, something to discuss in AA, which perhaps Abbott would at some point in the future, when he’d talk about the time that he disgraced himself at the home of the love of his life and then later, without knowing how he got there, woke up in Derby.

Because that’s exactly what he did.

Alex Abbott got drunk, and when he woke up, he was in Derby.

Part Two

PART TWO

Chapter 14

CHAPTER 14

Lance’s real name was Edward, but given that he’d made his home in Malibu and carefully contrived an image as a good-looking, shaggy-haired surfer, inspired in equal measures by the cast of Point Break and the actor Owen Wilson, he had changed it to Lance.

Very few people knew that Lance’s real name was Edward, least of all his girlfriend. Not that she would have cared, because in the world of Montana Norton, not only was artifice everywhere, but it was also encouraged. Her philosophy in life was to ‘be yourself’ and ‘follow your truth’ – just as long as ‘yourself’ was a controlled and carefully cultivated white-teeth, tanned, surgery-enhanced version of yourself.

Just as long as the truth was in fact a lie.