We put down on the lawn at eleven forty-seven.
Snow going up in a wall off the rotors. I got out first. Then Rory. Then Linus, Saskia, Mirren.
Four children. Four things he had spent eight years arranging not to know.
The front door came open and his mother was out of it first — and the moment she saw them the glass went out of her hand and broke across the step.
Good, I thought. Let them.
And I got them round me and said: “Ready?”
And we walked up that lawn hand in hand.
And there he was. Older. Heavier. Same confidence I used to mistake for something else.
And beside him a woman in a red dress with a ring on, smiling, until
she saw the children.
And his face went.
His eyes went Rory, Linus, Saskia, Mirren, and back along them again, and the colour came out of him like somebody had pulled a plug.
