‘You’re still going to stand by him?’ I spat. It was meaner than I intended, because while I was getting mad, I wasn’t actually mad at Lucy. She and I should have been united, at least, on this, but she’d clearly decided she wanted to bury her head in the sand, outsource her anger to a scapegoat (me), instead of dealing with the actual pain of the breakdown of her marriage.

Audrey pulled one of her standing-from-the-table routines to shut us up. Everyone made to leave. But I wasn’t done. I was furious. Crawford was curiously watching our family; we must have been talking more loudly than I’d realised. I wondered if he knew we were Cunninghams: read, automatic suspects. He had known that Michael was expected to join us, so I supposed he did.

‘I can’t believe I’m the one who has to say this, but are we really going to storm out of every meal? Can’t we just stick together for half a minute? This is a reunion. Shouldn’t we start, like, reunioning, or whatever?’ I don’t know why I said it. Maybe seeing the dead man had affected me after all, and I was seeing in Sofia’s exit the ostracism I’d felt for the last three years. Maybe I’d decided who I’d spill it for. Maybe I’d eaten too much bacon.

If a man on fire couldn’t melt snow, my mother’s fury, as she addressed me directly for the first time that weekend, sure could have.

‘The reunion starts when my son arrives.’

MY WIFE

CHAPTER 9

I don’t want to talk about it.

MY FATHER

CHAPTER 10

I suppose it’s time I told you how my dad died.

I was six. We saw it on the news before the station called to tell us. In the movies they always show up at the door and there’s a subdued type of knock – you know the one – where you know what kind of bad news is behind the door before you open it, and the policemen aren’t wearing their hats. I know it’s stupid, but I do remember the phone ringing and thinking it was a solemn ring. It was the same trill I’d heard a thousand times before, but in that moment it felt a millisecond slower, a decibel louder.

Dad was always out at night; it came with the territory. I have affectionate memories of him, I truly do, but what I think of most when I think about him is the spaces he left. It was easier to tell where my dad had been than to see where he was. The empty armchair in the living room. The plate in the oven. Stubble in the bathroom sink. Three empty holsters in a six-pack in the fridge. My father was footprints, residue.