Page 17 of The Impossible Fortune

A small hand pushes the door fully open.

‘Grandad!’ says Kendrick. ‘It’s me. What shall we do?’

Kendrick. The single greatest human being on the planet, sure. But a human being that requires a huge amount of energy at all times.

‘Why are you on the floor? What are you looking for?’

There will be no duvet for Ron today. No gentle nursing back to health. Sometimes you simply have no choice but to drag yourself out of a muddy ditch and walk four miles on battered legs.

Ron summons every ounce of every pound of every stone of spirit in his body, sits up and smiles at his grandson.

‘I told Ibrahim that if you put your ear on the bathroom floor you could hear trains. He didn’t believe me.’

‘And could you?’

‘Yeah,’ says Ron. ‘Uncle Ibrahim was wrong.’

Kendrick looks at Ibrahim.

‘Unlucky, Uncle Ibrahim. Okay, if you’re finished in here, we should probably play Lego.’

Ron gets to his feet. An act that takes so much force of will he doesn’t even stop to wonder why on earth Jason and Kendrick might be visiting his flat on a Friday morning.

10

‘I’m afraid I’m buying a flapjack,’ says Joyce to Elizabeth. ‘And there’s nothing you can do to stop me.’

It’s funny how relationships change, Joyce thinks, as she walks into Anything with a Pulse, now Fairhaven’s fifth largest vegan café. Once she would have been full of questions. ‘What are we going to ask him, Elizabeth?’ ‘Why do you have a gun in your bag, Elizabeth?’ ‘Would you like a fruit pastille, Elizabeth?’ But today she’d stayed quiet, knowing there was no use rushing her friend. It was something to do with Nick Silver, and Joyce would be told precisely what at the point when she needed to be told and not a moment before. And, to be honest, the silence suited her this morning: she was quite surprised at the ferocity of her hangover. You shouldn’t still be allowed to get hangovers at eighty years old, there should be some sort of law. She wishes she had Ron’s constitution; Joyce bets he’s not suffering like she is this morning.

Once Joyce would also not have simply announced that she was buying a flapjack. Wouldn’t have dreamed of it. She would have floated it as an idea, looking for Elizabeth’s permission. When Elizabeth has a job to do, she doesn’t like being distracted. There’s a schedule in her head that you are not privy to, but that she won’t allow you to tamper with. Elizabeth will not have factored a flapjackbreak into today’s mission, Joyce is sure of it, but, nonetheless, a flapjack break is happening.

Joyce has come to realize that, just occasionally, you need to let Elizabeth know who’s boss.

‘An almond and date, and a cherry Bakewell,’ she says to the boy behind the counter. The almond and date is hers; the cherry Bakewell is for Elizabeth. Elizabeth hasn’t asked for it: she would baulk at the idea that she might get hungry later in the morning. Indeed, she would say something like ‘Do you think I got hungry walking dissidents across the Czechoslovakian border for nine hours in 1968, Joyce?’ but Joyce now has the courage of her conviction that Elizabeth is not always right.

Joyce glances over her shoulder and sees Elizabeth in the shop doorway, looking at her watch. The annoyance on her face makes Joyce happy, because it’s exactly the look of annoyance that Elizabeth would have given before Stephen died. Her friend is still there.

Joyce pays by tapping her mobile phone on a small handset. Somehow that takes money out of her bank account and gives it to Anything with a Pulse. Ron still refuses to pay with anything other than cash, and now the only places in Fairhaven where he can actually buy anything are the bookmakers and the pubs. Which is fine by Ron.

Elizabeth strides away with purpose the moment Joyce reaches her, as if to say, ‘We have two minutes of flapjack time to make up for now, Joyce.’ Joyce happily trots along behind her. You just have to understand each other’s rhythms, don’t you? Time to let Elizabeth take charge for a bit.

‘Do you have an address?’ Joyce asks.

‘8b Templar Street,’ says Elizabeth, still not looking round. ‘It’s just off the front.’

‘And that’s where Nick Silver is?’ Joyce notices Elizabeth’s pace drop slightly, and she allows Joyce alongside. The flapjack break is forgotten, as she knew it would be.

‘It is,’ says Elizabeth. ‘He asked me to meet him there.’

‘And did he ask me to meet him too?’ Joyce asks.

‘We come as a team,’ says Elizabeth.

‘And is he in some sort of trouble?’ asks Joyce, having to step around a seagull that is refusing to move.

‘Someone wants to kill him,’ says Elizabeth.

‘Someone wants to kill him?’ Joyce asks. ‘When did you find that out?’