‘Perhaps my father isn’t dead at all,’ said Patrick, leaning towards her; ‘that really would be a shock. Maybe it was just a cry for help, what do you think?’

‘I’d better go check with our director,’ she said, retreating. ‘Excuse me just one moment.’ She opened a door concealed in one of the panels and slipped behind it.

Patrick leaned against the counter, breathless with rage, among the black and white marble diamonds of the lobby floor. Just like the floor of that hall in Eaton Square. He had only been as high as the old lady’s hand. She had clutched her cane, her prominent blue veins flowing down her fingers into a sapphire ring. Blood arrested and clarified. The old lady talked to his mother about their committee, while Patrick got lost in the feeling that he was making the resemblance happen. Now there were days when everything resembled everything else, and the smallest excuse for comparison made one object consume another in a bulimic feast.

What the fuck was going on? Why were his father’s remains so hard to find? He had no trouble in discovering them in himself, it was only Frank E. MacDonald that was experiencing this difficulty. While Patrick cackled hysterically at this thought, a bald homosexual with a moustache, and a strong sense of the restrained flair he brought with him into the mortuary business, emerged from the panelled door and clicked his way across the black and white diamonds of the lobby floor. Without apology, he told Patrick to step right this way and led him back into the elevator. He pressed the button for the second floor, less near to heaven than Mr Newton, but without the sound of a cocktail party. In the silence of that discreetly lit corridor, the director mincing ahead of him, Patrick began to realize that he had wasted his defences on an impostor and, exhausted by the farce of Mr Newton’s wake, he was now dangerously vulnerable to the impact of his father’s corpse.

‘This is the room,’ said the director, playing with his cuff. ‘I’ll leave you to be alone with him,’ he purred.

Patrick glanced into the small, richly carpeted room. Fucking hell. What was his father doing in a coffin? He nodded to the director and waited outside the room, feeling a wave of madness rise up inside him. What did it mean that he was about to see his father’s corpse? What was it meant to mean? He hovered in the doorway. His father’s head was lying towards him and he could not yet see the face, just the grey curls of his hair. They had covered the body with tissue paper. It lay in the coffin, like a present someone had put down halfway through unwrapping.

‘It’s Dad!’ muttered Patrick incredulously, clasping his hands together and turning to an imaginary friend. ‘You shouldn’t have!’