I follow him through to their sunshine-yellow kitchen with its frothy white blinds – tart’s knickers, my mum used to call that style – and watch Mr Hart fill a kettle, get a polka-dotted cup from the cupboard.
‘Has everything been OK with you?’ I say.
‘Not too bad,’ he says. ‘Some aches and pains, you know, but that’s age, isn’t it. I’m still managing the garden. Eric still comes over once a month for the heavy lifting.’
‘Oh, yes!’ I step forward and peer out the window at a garden that’s every bit as manicured and brochure-perfect as I remember. ‘It looks wonderful.’
‘How are things at college?’ he says. ‘Not too worried about your exams?’
Aside from the lack of understanding about Susie being gone, he’s not said anything overtly odd until now and I try not to look startled. I’m pretty sure Justin’s told me that with dementia, following the person into the delusion is preferable to fighting it and upsetting them.
‘No, no. I’ve done my revision,’ I say. ‘Feeling confident.’
Extra confident given I got my three As and 2 Bs, sixteen years ago.
As Mr Hart’s finishing dunking the tea bag and is about to hand the cup to me, the doorbell goes again.
He trots off to answer it and I hear male voices in the storm porch in a conversation that becomes, in pitch, if not a quarrel, then certainly more fraught than a chat.
One line becomes distinct:
‘Look, I’ve told you. You’ve got the wrong house.’
Finlay Hart looks as overjoyed to see me, hovering behind his father, as I am to see his moody visage in the darkening evening.
‘Can you tell this young man who I am, please, Eve?’ Mr Hart says. ‘He’s convinced he’s some relation. I’ve never seen him before in my life. Oh, hang on, your tea will be getting cold.’
He disappears back to the kitchen and Fin steps inside and closes the door behind him.
‘What are you doing here?’ he says, in a low, forbidding voice.
‘I came to see how he is.’
‘And what do you think?’ Fin says, though there’s no genuine inquiry in it.
‘He seems OK, I think? Not distressed, anyway.’
‘Well, he’s …’ Finlay stops as the door moves.
‘Here you go,’ Mr Hart says, reappearing with the Tetley’s, which I accept. He seems momentarily taken aback that Fin is now in the door and says to me: ‘Ah, I see – do you know this man?’
‘Uhm, yes,’ I think, sipping. The whole ‘busking it and playing along’ thing feels like it’s unravelling quite fast.
‘A boyfriend?’ he says, looking from one to the other.
‘… Yes,’ I say, gritting my teeth as I glance at Finlay, whose jaw flexes in cold fury. What else would he have me do? No, he barged his way in, call the police!
I realise Mr Hart is waiting expectantly for an introduction. ‘Finlay,’ I add.
‘Oh my goodness,’ Mr Hart says, and Fin and I stare at each other, as we know what’s coming. ‘My son’s called Finlay. Fin, more often.’
We stand in silence and I sense that Finlay, above and beyond his deep irritation at my unexpectedly being here, is embarrassed. My seeing his father like this is a privacy invasion and he feels exposed. Fin is about the iron-clad façade, the KEEP OUT sign he has hung on himself. This is weakness and vulnerability, if only by proxy.
‘Tell you what, I’ve got some nice biscuits, with fruit in them,’ Mr Hart says. ‘I’m going to find those, then let’s chat about what you’ve been up to. Go on, take a seat through there and I’ll join you.’
I carry my cup of tea to the sitting room, Fin right behind me, near-closing the cream gloss painted door with its floral enamel handle behind us. The Harts’ home belongs to an era where the wife made all the interiors choices. It always blew my mind they had a sitting room they watched television in, here, and a posh front room next door with a dining table with a runner tablecloth and candelabra, where they received guests. (Not scrubs like me, I mean dinner parties.)
‘You shouldn’t be here,’ Fin says, in a loud whisper. ‘He doesn’t need the disorientation of strangers from Susie’s life turning up on his doorstep.’
‘He knows who I am! He greeted me as Eve!’
‘He thinks Susie is seventeen years old. He has no real idea who you are.’
‘You’re here, and he has no idea who you are?’ I say.
‘I’m his son,’ Fin says, eyebrows shooting up. ‘I have a right. You have no right.’
‘You wouldn’t be in the door if it wasn’t for me.’
‘Here we go, they’re pieces of crystallised ginger, I think,’ Mr Hart says, pushing the door open, bearing a plate, which he sets down on the coffee table. ‘Delicious. Would you like a cuppa, young man?’ he says to Fin. ‘I do apologise. I’ve forgotten you.’
Indeed.
‘… Yes thanks,’ Fin says, after a pause, where he no doubt realised it’d be a useful prop to extend his stay. ‘Milk, no sugar, thanks.’
‘Have you been into Susie’s house?’ Fin says, after his father leaves. ‘I thought it looked like someone had tidied up.’
‘Yes,’ I say, sitting up straighter, spooked, thinking thank God for Ed. Thank God for him being the kind of person who spotted that we needed to attend to that straight away.
Finlay Hart was clearly at Susie’s with the locksmith as soon as he’d got out of the airport transfer from Heathrow.
‘Did you take personal effects from her room?’
My skin prickles.
‘A box of personal mementoes, nothing of financial value whatsoever.’
‘Can I decide if they’re of value? What things, specifically?’
I have no idea whether I should dissemble and I don’t quite dare stonewall him.
‘A box of letters and diaries.’
‘Right. Can I have that back, please?’
‘No, they’re private.’ I had not, for a single moment, thought her brother would either know these things existed or identify their absence, and I’ve been caught fully on the hop.
‘They were private, to Susie? They’re not yours.’
‘I’m keeping them private for her.’
‘But not private from yourself.’
‘Yes, actually. I’m not going to read them.’
Fin does a double-take.
‘You’ve got something you say I can’t have, that you’re not going to look at?’
‘Yes. It’s about protecting Susie.’
‘Er, OK, noble as that is, you don’t get to appoint yourself guardian of her possessions without asking me.’
‘Why do you want her diaries?’ I say. ‘You were hardly close.’
‘I don’t have to justify my motives. How do you justify doing a smash and grab?’
‘As her best friend, who knows the last thing she’d want is her brother’ – I vainly try to be more diplomatic, ‘or anyone, reading her old diaries.’
‘It’s not for you to decide.’
Pretending to get along with Finlay Hart, I’ve decided, is a jig that is up.