‘Well, that’s good, isn’t it? Getting a lucid conversation out of a drunk parent … the chance for some closure? Pretty rare.’

Ah. Of course. Evie’s dad drank. She’d said so in passing.

‘Is all this making you think of …?’ Duke starts, but Evie holds up a hand.

‘No,’ she says. ‘This isn’t about me. But for what it’s worth, I suppose if my dad did show up, I’d hear him out too. Do you want me to come for moral support?’

‘I’m okay,’ he says, and then he thinks to himself: because even you asking helps. Something stops him from saying that out loud, though. ‘I’m going to try and get some sleep now.’

‘Good plan. I’m right here at the foot of your bed if you need anything.’

He falls into a dreamless sleep almost instantly.

24

Duke

At his request, his mother comes to meet him at his hotel, so that they can talk in relative privacy. Nobody asks him who the older woman with greying hair around the temples is, but it’s probably obvious: they have the same nose, the same hands, the same feline eyes. Daphne passes by with Katerina, the DP, and then Brad, who seems to be distracted by yelling at someone down the phone. Duke doesn’t introduce her. Nobody approaches them. The atmosphere must be apparent.

‘Thank you for this,’ his mother says, as she sits down and orders a tea. Duke can’t eat. His stomach is in knots, wrapping around itself in anxiety. Evie was gone when his alarm went off this morning, a note on his coffee table wishing him luck. He’d searched online for what to do with a newly sober parent, but even as he typed it out, he struggled to believe it. He wants her to prove it to him. He’s here to look into her eyes to see if they’re as glassy and glazed over as he remembers from too many days, and too many nights, when it felt like nobody cared, like if he slipped out of the front door and never came back, somehow then she’d be happy. Why couldn’t he make her happy?

Nothing he did was enough, so he must have been the problem.

‘I know I’ve ambushed you,’ she continues, as her tea is set down in front of her. ‘Like I said – I didn’t know what else to do. I didn’t even know if this would work, but I had to try. I sort of can’t believe we were in the same restaurant …’

Duke blinks. He can’t find it in him to be pleasantly chatty, but really, why should he? ‘Yeah,’ he says. ‘Ain’t fate funny?’

His mother bites her lip, understanding his tone. She sips her tea. Duke watches her.