“I won’t.” Marcelline appears at the door of the staff room. “But that’s… good, isn’t it? It’s been…?”
“A year. And twenty days.”
“Well, that’s quite a long time. And your mother is a very vibrant woman, very warm. It doesn’t surprise me really that someone would have made a play for her. What’s he like?”
“He’s nice. I think.”
“Think?”
“Yes. I mean, I was the one who told my mum to write to him in the first place, because he sounded so lovely in the card he sent her. He used to work with my dad, thirty years ago. Saw the story about Dad in the papers and got in touch.”
“That’s sweet.”
She tells Marcelline about the Zippo in the pink box, and the wine bar in Mayfair and the dead fiancée, and then she shows her Nick’s photograph on LinkedIn.
“He looks lovely,” Marcelline says approvingly. “Tall?”
“Six foot two–ish?”
“Wow, the full package.” Then Ash sees her flinch when she remembers that Paddy was not a tall man. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to…”
Ash smiles. “It’s fine. Who doesn’t like a tall man?”
“So, are you feeling OK about it? I know how close you were to your dad.”
“I’m feeling happy that my mum’s happy, you know. She’s such a good person and I like seeing her happy. But I’m also worried. I mean… what if he’s not what he seems? What if he’s after her money?”
“Er, you said he owns a wine bar in Mayfair.”
“Well, he co-owns it. And it’s in a bit of financial trouble at the moment, according to Mum.”
Marcelline sighs. “I’m sure it’s fine.”
“Yup,” says Ash. “I’m sure it is. It’s just… weird.”
“Of course it is.”
And as she speaks, Ash’s gaze is caught by something to her left, on the desk where Marcelline does all her paperwork.
It’s a pink box, filled with pens and pencils. It’s exactly the same as the pink box that Ash has on her own desk in her room, the box that Nick had sent Dad’s Zippo lighter in.
“Where did you get that?” she asks, pointing.
Marcelline glances at it and then back at Ash. “That pink box?”
“Yeah.”
“God, I don’t know. I think it was a gift box—it was…” She snaps her fingers. “Soaps? Maybe? A couple of years ago. Such a pretty box, I kept it. Why?”
Ash shrugs. “Nothing,” she says. “No reason.”
TWELVE
Alistair finally comes home on Monday evening. He appears to have had a haircut and is clean-shaven. Martha narrows her eyes at him as she watches him walk through the front door with his overnight suitcase, his overcoat, his work bag, the smell of outdoors on him, the smell of trains and unknown places.
She sucks down hard on the urge to yell at him. Instead, she stares at him passive-aggressively and says “Hi” with a chip of ice in her tone.
“Martha,” says Al, removing his bag from his shoulder, unlooping his cashmere scarf, “darling. I am so, so, so sorry.”
