— It can’t be true, it can’t be true, he cried. He stood stroking her hair for a long time, in the same absorbed way he used to stroke Isobel’s when she was a child, and he reached out his other hand for Christine. — But it is true, Lydia said flatly, eventually, pulling herself away.

Then she searched for her lipstick, checked her eyes in her handbag mirror. — Am I grotesque? I look such a fright. She waved a twenty-pound note. — Here’s what I need, Alex darling. Buy me twenty Bensons.

He protested. — Lydia, cigarettes aren’t what you need. You don’t want to start that slavery again after all these years.

— You don’t know what I need, you’re the famous puritan. Anyway Jane Ogden gave me hers, I just remembered. They’re in here somewhere.

— We need a drink, Christine said.

They poured out vodka from a bottle in the freezer; in a broken voice Alex toasted their dear friend. Dearly loved, he said and couldn’t finish.

— Shut up, Alex, Christine said shakily. — You sound like a headmaster.

He couldn’t sit down, he wouldn’t, as if something were burning him up, keeping him on his feet. Lydia lit up a cigarette with hands that trembled. She complained that the vodka tasted like poison. Didn’t they have any red wine? Alex found wine for her, poured it solicitously. When she wanted to try Grace’s phone again, saying she wished Christine would talk to her, he was horrified. He insisted they couldn’t announce her father’s death just like that, over a mobile phone.

Lydia submitted bleakly. — You’re right of course.

He would drive up to Glasgow to find Grace, and tell her himself. Wasn’t he her godfather? Her unofficial godfather, it wasn’t a church thing. If he set out now he’d be there by early morning. — Zach will have her address written down somewhere, Lydia said. — I don’t know where. He’s always the one who knows.

Alex phoned Hannah, the gallery administrator, who’d gone to the hospital with Zachary in the ambulance. She said she’d call in to the gallery, the address must be somewhere in Zachary’s desk or on his phone, she’d text it to Alex in half an hour. Hannah’s voice was thick with crying. Alex asked her to contact everyone who knew, get them to keep it under wraps until he’d found Grace and told her. — Imagine if she found out on Facebook.

— Keep it under wraps, Christine murmured. — I can’t believe he really said that.