Then Maple was licking my neck, nuzzling my face and I could have wept with love for her. My old Prada raincoat was burning nicely as my father walked out of the big glass doors at the back of the house and slowly crossed the field.

He nodded at the incinerator bin.

‘Having a bit of a clear-out?’

I said nothing. We both watched my raincoat burning in the incinerator bin. The baseball cap was slower to catch fire, but then I saw the golden letters of the Tokyo Giants curl, and blacken, and then they were lost in the flames.

‘Jack’s down at the house,’ he said. ‘We were just having a chat about you.’

‘Why?’

‘He said that you’re scared.’

‘Not any more, Dad.’

‘You sure?’

‘Yes.’

My father slipped an arm around Maple’s neck and kissed her forehead.

‘Maybe you should be,’ he said.

The nailing hammer was at my feet. My father watched me pick it up and go to drop it in the incinerator bin.

‘No,’ he said, taking the hammer away from my hand.

‘Dad—’

‘That shaft is made of hickory but the head is high carbon, heat-treated steel. Do you understand what that means, Tara? It means it is never going to burn, OK? It’s going to sit in the bottom of that bin until someone finds it or until you fish it out of the ashes and drop it down a drain or in a skip. Which they will also find if they look hard enough. You could burn it for a hundred years and not destroy high carbon, heat-treated steel.’ He nodded, ending the debate. ‘Leave it with me, angel face. I’ve got it. You going home now?’

‘I’m meeting Ginger at her place,’ I said. ‘She’s really worried about me.’

He smiled, the smile that said I didn’t have to worry about anything hurting me while he was in the world, and I watched my father walk into the stable with the nailing hammer in his hand.

And then I drove to see Ginger.

43

Christian

Last night I dreamed that I lay in the darkness of our old house in Camden Town, waiting for my wife.

Marlon slept peacefully by my side, Buddy snored at the foot of the bed, and as I waited for Tara to come to me, to return to our home, to sleep by my side again as she did on more than three thousand nights, I listened to the weather – the sky full of thunder, the seasons turning, a storm preparing to break – and I took the measure of my life.

And found it wanting.

As a younger man I had thought that the world would have more use for me, would be more impressed by me, would be eager to raise me up and enrich me but none of those things had happened and as the years flew by with increasing speed, I knew as I lay there in the darkness that they never would.