I comment on the disparity with the last property.
‘Yeah. Remember my grandad’s addictive personality? Uncle Don had it worse, and with less money to squander,’ Fin says. ‘Horses were his thing. Leith’s taken off since he bought here so his house probably shot up in value.’
‘He didn’t marry? Or have kids?’
‘No, used to say he couldn’t afford to. He was probably right.’
We’ve knocked the brass knocker on the mint-green peeling door but the occupants of Uncle Don’s former residence either aren’t home or don’t want to speak to us.
‘What did he and your dad fall out over?’ I ask, as we walk back to the main street.
‘Money. My grandad predeceased my grandma, and there was an almighty ruck between the siblings about which care home she should go into and whether she even should go into a care home. Don inevitably had a very keen eye on what he expected from my grandad’s estate and was in favour of my gran going budget. The siblings always seemed a tinder box, to be honest. I don’t remember being surprised when we stopped coming up to Edinburgh in the school holidays.’
We wander down the quayside and I ooh and aah at the interesting-looking independent shops and trendy places to eat and drink. Finlay walks with hands thrust in coat pockets, engaging with me only when he’s prompted. A drizzling rain starts, and I put my hood up.
‘Are you in a mood with me?’ I say, from under a halo of blood-red fluff, after the fifth or sixth failure of an observation to spark conversation.
‘No.’
‘You’re very quiet?’
‘Maybe, all things considered today, I’m not feeling noisy.’
‘All things considered today?’
‘Oh, I don’t know, Eve, of all the things I could mean today. I wonder?’
‘TowelGate?!’ I say.
Finlay glowers at me.
‘That’s hardly worth sulking over!’ I say.
He really cares about that? He was a model, aren’t they always waving it at anyone and everyone?
‘I’m not sulking, I’m just not in an high-spirited, chatty mood. If you had flashed me this morning, how would you feel?’
‘Er …’ I pause. ‘Embarrassed, I guess … but I’d—’
‘There you go. Embarrassed.’
‘OK. I didn’t think you’d be embarrassed.’
‘Of course you didn’t, because you don’t think I have normal emotions.’
‘I do,’ I frown.
‘You don’t. You think I’m some sort of cyborg war machine, sent from the past to attack my sister.’
‘Is that a reference to Terminator?’
‘Obviously.’
‘He was sent from the future. He was naked when he arrived though so …’
I grin and Fin slow-claps, with his leather-gloved hands.
‘Thanks.’
‘But why would you care?’
‘I’m SHY,’ Fin exclaims, ‘I’m a shy person, OK? About a lot of things. Why is that difficult for you to grasp?’
‘I didn’t realise.’
‘Evidently.’
Am I not allowed to be shy too, given last night featured a reasonably clear rejection of a fairly obvious advance?
‘Let’s talk about embarrassment, shall we,’ I say, about to vindicate but also embarrass myself, but needs must, can’t make an omelette without breaking an egg: ‘You’re acting like this is such a big deal, I didn’t even see your nob, not so much as stray pubic area …’
I pause as the question about whether I said that too loud is answered by a couple of bundled-up passersby, who are boggling. Fin is studying the middle distance in a silently furious way.
‘I saw, like, two inches of your very important VIP hip—’
‘VIP means “very important person” so that doesn’t even make sense,’ Fin mutters, and I ignore him.
‘And none of it was my fault. What about the fact that last night, we—’
I’m interrupted, mercifully, by the sound of Finlay’s phone ringing.
‘Hi, Ann?’ he says. He walks a short distance, just out of earshot, to hold the conversation.
I kick my heels until Fin rings off.
‘That was Ann, Dad’s cleaner. My dad’s been in touch with her. She couldn’t get him to be precise about where he’s staying but he says he’s been to see my Aunt Tricia.’
‘Your auntie? You never said you had an aunt up here?’
‘That’s because I don’t, really.’
‘What does that mean?’
I’m really starting to tire of Hart family riddles.
‘She fell out with my dad years ago. When Susie and I were teenagers. A couple of years before my uncle did.’
‘Your family is one long string of fallings-out, huh?’
‘Tell me about it.’
‘But your dad’s been round?’
‘Apparently so. Which means she must be still at the same house.’
‘Why do I have a horrible feeling this is going to turn into a “let’s call on the auntie who hates us” outing?’ I say.
Fin grimaces.
‘She might have softened with age. Sounds like she let my dad across the threshold. And he might’ve told her where he’s staying. So …’
I raise my shoulders and drop them.
‘Sounds like we should go see her,’ I say, pulling a face.
‘Look, I’ll level with you – yes, Auntie Trish is fairly terrifying. But I think she’d like you. She liked Susie. She’d think you also have a thing she calls “moxie”. If you wanted to be your most charming self, she might give up my dad’s whereabouts to you. Let her believe she’s got you onside, whatever she says to me.’
‘You want me to be an iridescent beast,’ I say, without thinking.
‘A what?’ Fin says.
‘Oh, sorry. A private joke I had with Susie. I had a fixation with F Scott Fitzgerald’s wife, Zelda, when we were in sixth form. I read this story about Zelda being a wayward Southern Belle socialite at a party. It said she was at her “iridescent best” and I misread it as her being an “iridescent beast”. So Susie and I used to say, whenever we were going all out to impress in a situation, that we were going to be iridescent beasts.’
Fin shakes his head in a ‘if you say so’ way.
‘Riiiight. Yes, please be an iridescent beast, Evelyn.’
34
Finlay cranes his neck over the headrest to reverse park while the car’s sensors go blip-blip-blip. The sweeping curve of Georgian crescent with its luxuriant, rain-soaked mature trees is a strikingly elegant address and I feel a commensurate foreboding about what we’re walking into. I don’t think you bullshit and bluster your way past the kind of individuals who dwell behind these glossed doors, in their giant tax brackets.
Our conversation on the way here has done nothing to allay my fears.
‘Just how bitter was the falling-out?’
‘Put it this way. Last we heard, she was having a pacemaker fitted. My dad said: “I hope her surgeon has shaky hands.”’