I look at him and wonder what it would be like to be him. To think like him, to believe in Trust and Loyalty and Honor and all sorts of other capitalized Values. “Well,” I say, when the pause has gone on an uncomfortably long time. “Thank you. Though I can understand the skepticism.” I add, “After all, journalists make careers out of that.”

He laughs, as I meant him to, but I’m not describing myself. That’s Jonathan, relentlessly holding those in power to account—for him, whoever ends up with the wealth is always at least partly to blame for the world’s injustices. For my part, I chase the threads to weave the stories. The stories that demand to be told, that make sense of the people in them.

My father is in Manchester, in a drug rehabilitation center. If you’d told him in his Saint Martin’s days that drugs would have been his downfall, he’d have laughed out loud. Back then he had the odd puff of pot, but that was it. And in truth, it wasn’t the drugs that were to blame—not at first. It was the horses. And then the dogs, then any form of sport he could put a bet on. He was an addict—he knows that, though he suspects only poor gamblers recognize that: surely the good ones never have any reason to stop? The diamond money bought an awful lot of useless slips of paper; you could have wallpapered a house with them. But then the money was all gone and he had to face what he had done—only he couldn’t, and that’s when the drugs took hold. If he doesn’t kick the habit this time, he likely won’t see another Christmas. He knows that. But Christmases don’t mean anything without kids, and he gave up the right to his daughter a long time ago.

SIXTEEN

Biscuits. I don’t have any biscuits and Callum is coming. It’s a potential disaster. Or at least, it is in the mind of a mid-thirties woman with zero childcare experience who has just woken up to the fact that she’s offered to look after a seven-year-old. I don’t want to dwell on what other disasters might be in store. I jump in the car and nip down to the village shop in short order.

Jean is on the cashier’s desk again when I come to pay. “Sweet tooth, hen?” she asks, looking askance at the three different packets of biscuits I’ve chosen.

“I’m looking after Callum today and I don’t know which he prefers.”

“That’s good of you. He’s a fine lad.”

“He is.”