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Back The Favor Save as PDF
Chapters (78)
  1. Title Page
  2. Dedication
  3. Prologue
  4. One
  5. Two
  6. Three
  7. Four
  8. Five
  9. Six
  10. Seven
  11. Eight
  12. Nine
  13. Ten
  14. Eleven
  15. Twelve
  16. Thirteen
  17. Fourteen
  18. Fifteen
  19. Sixteen
  20. Seventeen
  21. Eighteen
  22. Nineteen
  23. Twenty
  24. Twenty-One
  25. Twenty-Two
  26. Twenty-Three
  27. Twenty-Four
  28. Twenty-Five
  29. Twenty-Six
  30. Twenty-Seven
  31. Twenty-Eight
  32. Twenty-Nine
  33. Thirty
  34. Thirty-One
  35. Thirty-Two
  36. Thirty-Three
  37. Thirty-Four
  38. Thirty-Five
  39. Thirty-Six
  40. Thirty-Seven
  41. Thirty-Eight
  42. Thirty-Nine
  43. Forty
  44. Forty-One
  45. Forty-Two
  46. Forty-Three
  47. Forty-Four
  48. Forty-Five
  49. Forty-Six
  50. Forty-Seven
  51. Forty-Eight
  52. Forty-Nine
  53. Fifty
  54. Fifty-One
  55. Fifty-Two
  56. Fifty-Three
  57. Fifty-Four
  58. Fifty-Five
  59. Fifty-Six
  60. Fifty-Seven
  61. Fifty-Eight
  62. Fifty-Nine
  63. Sixty
  64. Sixty-One
  65. Sixty-Two
  66. Sixty-Three
  67. Sixty-Four
  68. Sixty-Five
  69. Sixty-Six
  70. Sixty-Seven
  71. Sixty-Eight
  72. Sixty-Nine
  73. Seventy
  74. Acknowledgments
  75. About the Author
  76. Remarkable Praise for Nicci French
  77. Also by Nicci French
  78. About the Publisher

Dermot took a piece of paper from his pocket and unfolded it. As he held it up, it shook. He started to read from it inaudibly and someone shouted from the back for him to speak up. He was visibly disconcerted by this. He started from the beginning, slightly more loudly, but even so Jude wasn’t able to follow everything he was saying. It was more like the spectacle of someone being nervous and grief-stricken at the same time. The result wasn’t an outpouring of emotion but the opposite. It was a dutiful school essay about when his brother had been born and where he had gone to school and what jobs he had done. As a doctor, Jude recognized a person who was still experiencing the shock of loss and was stuck in it. There was nothing about what Liam had been like, nothing about what Dermot was feeling, nothing that acknowledged the shock of what had happened. In a way, it was more moving than the easy, theatrical sincerity of Vin or Danny because Dermot was standing in front of them and they were watching him suffer. His face, so like Liam’s face, wore expressions that didn’t quite fit—as if he wasn’t in control of it.

Dermot’s talk didn’t come to a conclusion. There was no summing-up, no final expression of emotion. It just ended and when it ended Dermot looked at the people and then looked back at his piece of paper as if it was something he was seeing for the first time.

“That’s it,” he said, his voice quavering. “That’s all.” He looked around.

Jude felt a sudden anxiety. She was reminded of being in a play and seeing an actor forgetting his lines. But now there was nobody to give him a prompt and he didn’t seem to know what to do, how to get offstage.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know what more to say. He was my older brother. I always thought he’d be there to look after me or something.” He wiped his eyes with his sleeve and started to say something else, but then Danny stepped up on the stage and she hugged him and whispered something reassuring and he allowed himself to be led down. There was a murmur of sympathy from the audience.