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‘Ginger?’
‘Possibly.’
‘Kale?’
‘I think your mum has a bag in the crisper drawer.’
‘OK if Drew makes us a couple of hangover smoothies?’
‘They’re your tastebuds.’
‘Shuh-weet,’ Tilly says, and disappears outside.
Drew’s sunglasses, with wide pink lenses, are shaped like a pair of flamingos. Joseph can’t see her eyes but he knows she’s watching him. He recalls the way her coffee cup had rattled against her teeth yesterday morning in the Grind House. And her close observation of him last night. She looks as uncomfortable now as she’d looked then. And trying hard not to show it.
‘We need a magic bullet,’ she says. ‘Do you have one?’
‘A magic what?’
Drew takes off her sunglasses. Today, he sees, she’s back to full make-up. Her eyes only meet his own for a moment. ‘Sounds like a vibrator, I know. But it’s actually a smoothie maker.’
Joseph indicates the corner cupboard by the toaster. ‘I don’t know if it’s the same brand, but look in there.’
Drew checks the cupboard and lifts a large grey appliance on to the worktop. Then she goes to the fridge and digs out the blueberries, kale and fresh ginger. ‘Bananas?’
Joseph points, Drew nods. She looks through the bifold doors, to where Tilly is crossing the lawn with two sun loungers. As she slides past him to the smoothie maker, she leans forward and says, deep into his ear, ‘I know what you did for Max, and I think it’s really brave.’
The calm that follows is like the ocean just after a depth charge has exploded. Despite the enormous energy wave racing upwards, the surface looks tranquil, flat.
Drew reaches the end of the worktop and turns to face him.
Joseph can’t breathe. That pressure wave races closer. Then, from the bifold doors, his stepdaughter says, ‘You think what’s really brave?’
Finally, the ocean turns white. Moments later, a mountain of water climbs heavenward. Hundreds of tons of spray.
Straightening, Joseph watches Tilly step into the kitchen. Her gaze moves from Drew to him and back, her expression amused-quizzical. ‘Drewster?’
Drew grins, but she’s no poker player. She grabs a banana and begins to peel it, turning to Joseph for help.
‘We were talking about kale,’ he says. ‘I was explaining how I avoid most forms of roughage in my diet.’
‘Avoiding roughage is brave?’
‘It is if you’re his colon,’ Drew replies, finally recovering her composure.
Tilly wrinkles her nose like she’s still not quite in on the joke. ‘Right now, I’m a little too hungover to think about colons.’
If Joseph’s jaw clenches any harder his teeth will shatter. Avoiding Tilly’s gaze, he makes his excuses. In the downstairs cloakroom, he locks the door and yanks the pull cord light. From the kitchen he hears the smoothie maker begin to blitz.
In the mirror over the basin, Joseph stares at his reflection. He can’t think about Drew’s comment, not yet. Nor its awful implications. Instead, he fishes the wallet from his back pocket, cringing once again at its flesh-like feel. On the bottom edge is a logo he vaguely recognizes – a plump six-pointed star inside a white circle.
He doesn’t want to examine the contents, doesn’t want proof, irrefutable, that Max has lied to him. What troubles him even more is the prospect of learning the dead man’s identity – and details of the life his son has destroyed.
Joseph flips open the wallet. Inside he sees six credit card slots, two slip pockets and a full-width pocket for banknotes. Embossed into the leather on the right-hand fold isMONTBLANC.
That’swhy he’d recognized the logo. On his fortieth birthday, Claire had given him a Montblanc fountain pen. Its cap had featured the same plump white star.
The wallet’s frontmost card looks like a driver’s licence. Joseph eases it half an inch from its slot. He’s not ready to look at the face of Max’s victim, but he does want to learn his name, which he discovers is Angus Oliver Roth.