Whoops. Clapping. He adjusted the microphone, and looked down at his hands on his guitar, but Liv, below him, waved for attention. She came up the steps, her white shift shining gold. She took off her dark glasses and smiled. The party was hushed and waiting. He handed her the microphone, and she took it in both hands, her mouth close to it.

‘We would’ve liked to be doing all this for Alex’s wedding day,’ she said. There was a feedback whine. ‘Sorry! Hello.’

‘Hello!’ said many voices.

She beamed. ‘I can’t see you very well.’ She searched the crowd and pointed. ‘Johnny – darling Johnny.’ The man next to Bea waved. ‘Christine and Mike – thank you.’

Quietly, Bea got up. She kept to the side of the lawn, trying not to run. Liv’s voice swelled and filled the garden.

‘Lolly and Marco,’ said Liv, amplified, behind her. ‘And Lee, darling. I’m so glad you could make it. Thank you, darling, thank you. I loved my beautiful son. If I could trade places with him, I would. I called him my little prince.’ Her voice rose. ‘He was so sweet, so gentle. He was too gentle for this world.’

Bea had reached the terrace. She ran into the kitchen, up the next flight of stairs to the ground floor, up again, and up again until she reached her room. She remembered Alex, in the garden at Paligny, swinging the axe as he gazed at the sky. She remembered the nightingale’s song.

25

25

Dan didn’t follow Bea. He watched the band with everyone else. The party guests bobbed about near the stage, like a mini music festival for old rich people, while the waiters cleared the tables under the cover of the music. Bea didn’t reappear. The band played ‘Blackbird’, last, and everyone cried and clapped. It said something about Dan’s life that he was having the best time he’d had in weeks, watching middle-aged white men play to a crowd of millionaires at a memorial for a guy he hadn’t even liked.

Liv was constantly in a crowd, but when there was time, she sought him out, and came up to him. She was like a wood sprite, thought Dan, who was quite drunk. Her pupils were dilated in the dark.

‘How are you, Dan?’ she asked.

He wondered how Bea could hate her mother like she did. His own mother had messed up a lot, but he could still be in the same room with her. It was Bea who had helped heal him. Bea, who was still hung up on hating her own mother, like a teenager.

‘Yeah, I’m all right, Liv, you doing OK?’

‘I’m – doing – OK,’ she said slowly, nodding, repeating the words as if they were profound. ‘Doing OK, thank you.