Test Cases

20

Test Cases

    What with the Sunday morning in bed with Hattie and getting up to town for a very pleasant Sunday evening with Julian, Bruce and their friends, it wasn’t until the Monday morning that it vaguely filtered through Hill’s mind that possibly they ought to talk about Joanna’s revelation of Hattie’s parentage, but he wasn’t all that keen on bringing up the subject of the wicked Tarlingtons in case she decided to hate him again and— Well, anyway, what did it matter? So he just got on with it. There was enough of it, too: the logistics were bad enough, though at least for the foreseeable future he’d be working on the Chipping Abbas project, so he’d be able to be down there. But as for the rest of it…

    The Case of the Maths Homework was first. Well, not first. There had been some minor episodes. Such as The Case of Kenny Drinking Up All Hill’s Juice, or The Case of Hill Pouring Out Gordon’s Experiment Under the Impression It Was Foul Mould Befouling the Fridge, or The Case of Hill Suggesting Third-Strength Muesli Was Good for the Innards, or The Case of Meffie Sicking Up Because Hill Bought the Wrong Cat Food, or The Case of Who the Hell’s Been Using My Razor? One or two like that. But The Case of the Maths Homework was definitely the first really serious episode.

    It was the last day he’d have to spend in at the office for a while, so rather naturally he got home, if pretty late, pretty pleased with life in general. The sitting-room was empty: strange. It should be filled with Hattie, Kenny, Gordon and Joanna, variously on the couch or the even more battered mismatched chairs, watching telly. There was so little wardrobe space in the place that he’d bought a battered wardrobe along the lines of the one in his flat and shoved it in the sitting-room, so he hung his coat up and bunged his briefcase in there—there had been the case of What the Hell Are You Doing With My Briefcase, Gordon? The answer, just looking, hadn’t much mollified him. He went through to the kitchen. It was occupied by Hattie, sitting at the table scowling over sheets of scrawled paper.

    “Hullo!” he said with a cheery laugh, blind fool that he was. “Translating job?”

    “Shut up!” she snarled.

    Cringing, Hill shut up. He looked timidly in the fridge. Nothing. He looked timidly in—

    “Leave that oven ALONE!”

    Right, he would. He went timidly over to the large cupboard that Hattie claimed was a cupboard but that both he and, to his relief, Joanna, thought of as a pantry.—Right: The Case of the Pantry Nomenclature.—Pantry or not, it didn’t offer anything that looked like dinner. Well, jars and jars of lovely bottled stuff and jars and jars of delicious jam and jelly, but he wasn’t that thick, thanks.

    “Hattie, if you’ve been busy, I could make—”

    “It’s coming!” she snarled. “Why do ya think the oven’s on?”

    “Oh, um, good. What’s up?” he said meekly.

    “That question would of been really helpful two hours back, Hill!”

    Oh, shit! The neglected wee wifey bit? Already? Or was it merely La femme jalouse de l’oeuvre? No, both, come to think of it: they were the same thing. He looked round desperately. God, even the cats had got out of it! Should he ask where everybody was? No, discretion was the better part of— Oh, God! Had they all gone off to the cinema leaving her waiting at home to feed his fat face, getting more and more martyred as the face didn’t appear? He was about to croak out some sort of enquiry when Hattie said loudly, not to him:

    “These are all wrong!” She grabbed her walking-stick—she hadn’t been able to manage with crutches—hopped over to the passage door, flung it wide and hopped into the passage. Hill crept limply in her wake. “KENNY!” she bellowed. “These are all WRONG, you ruddy moron!”

    “They’re NOT!” came an aggrieved shout from above. Kenny thundered down to the inadequate landing and shouted, though as he was now about six feet away in a vertical direction there was no need to: “And it’s YOUR fault! I done them like you showed me!”

    “Then you weren’t listening!” shouted Hattie.

    “I WAS! You can’t teach! And I bet they are right, it’s your answers that are wrong!”

    “Kenny, you haven’t grasped the first principle—”

    “Oy,” said Hill clearly, though not particularly loudly. “Shouting isn’t going to mend it, whatever it is. –You an’ all,” he said mildly as the empurpled Kenny opened his gob again. “What did you do like Hattie showed you?”

    “Quadratic equations, and she can’t teach!” he said angrily.

    “Arguing over who can’t teach and who can’t learn won’t help,” said Hill mildly.

    “I’ve spent hours over the bloody things!” cried Kenny.

    There was a perilous hint of tears in his tone. “I see,” said Hill mildly. “Allan had difficulty with quadratic equations, too. I managed to help him: maybe I could help you?”

    “Pooh!” shouted Hattie angrily. “When was that, last century? I’ve shown him! He wasn’t concentrating!”

    “I was!”

    “Of course it was last century,” said Hill very mildly indeed.

    “Uh—yeah. Hah, hah,” recognised Kenny on a weak note.

    “Never mind that. Have either of you eaten?”

    Hattie just glared but Kenny admitted sourly: “No, she said the casserole would take ages and so we might as well have ours with you and I better do my homework first.”

    “He had a glass of milk and a biscuit,” said Hattie.

    “Mm. Don’t think I’d care to tackle quadratic equations on that. I think we’d all better eat—and if the casserole isn’t done I’ll dash over to Dittersford to the pizza place. Then I’ll have a look at the quadratic equations and if you’re still stuck, Kenny, we’ll give it away—”

    “It’s his homework, he has to hand it in tomorrow!” said Hattie crossly.

    “Then we’ll both get up early and tackle them when we’re feeling fresh.”

    “Um—yeah,” agreed Kenny, eyeing his sister uneasily. “Sounds okay to me.”

    “Right, and who’s gonna drag him out of his pit at crack of dawn?”

    “Me,” said Hill on a firm note. “Now, what about this casserole?”

    “She put it in ages ago,” said Kenny cautiously.

    “It’s beans,” said Hattie grimly. “They need to be cooked for ages.”

    “Yeah, but they’ve been cooking for ages!”

    There was a short silence as they all three recognised the homonym and refused to laugh.

    “Well, check them, Hattie,” said Hill as mildly as he could. “They certainly smell delicious.”

    “Don’t humour me, thanks, I don’t need to be project-managed!” she replied bitterly, returning to the kitchen.

    Ouch! Hill met Kenny’s eye. “Um, where are the rest of them?” he said feebly.

    “Joanna’s at work, João’s changed the schedules again. Gordon’s upstairs.”

    “Is the television set broken?”

    “No,” he said with a wary eye on the kitchen door. “It’s that dish you put up. He picked up something she thought he didn’t oughta be watching.”

    Hill ran his hand through his hair. Right: The Case of Hill’s Misguided Satellite Dish, they’d already had some of that.

    “So she switched over to some putrid kiddies’ programme, BBC or something, we used to get that crap at home, too—well, the flaming Wiggles are Australian, and you wouldn’t think a pack of gays in coloured tee-shirts were gonna be desirable rôle models either, wouldja? And I’d of said if anything it’s Bananas In Pyjamas that’s full of Freudian symbolism. Mind you, calling them B1 and B2’s quite keen. Anyway, the minute she went back to the kitchen the stupid little nit switched back to it.”

    To whatever undesirable Freudian rôle model it was—right. “Got it. So he was sent to his room? Serve him right.”

    “Yeah. He’s trying to read Harry Potter again,” reported Kenny glumly.

    Ouch! Not The Case of Harry Potter Being Too Hard for Gordon again!

    “I can’t read it to him, Mr Farleigh takes us for maths!” he said quickly.

    “The headmaster? –Right. I’ll read some to him. Let’s see how those beans are doing.”

    Quickly claiming he needed to go to the toilet, Kenny disappeared. Hill took a deep breath and went back into the kitchen.

    “I can do quadratic equations!” she said bitterly.

    “I’m sure you can. Maths is miles harder to teach than languages, though. And—uh, well, he’s a bright boy, but I wouldn’t say he had the right sort of brain for maths.”

    “No, but he’s digging in his heels about doing languages next year.”

    “Then we’d better talk to his teachers.”

    “Um, both of us, you mean?”

    “Mm. Isn’t that what this is all about?”

    “N—Oh! That. Um, yes,” said Hattie, going very red and busying herself with the casserole.

    It smelled extraordinarily aromatic—nothing he could possibly have defined. And looked—well, not as black as yer ’at, no. Bloody nearly, though. Nothing like what he’d assumed a bean casserole did oughta. “Is it done?”

    Carefully Hattie spooned out one bean. It did look like a bean, under the very, very, very dark brown. She blew on it energetically. Then she bit into it cautiously. “Yeah,” she said, sagging visibly. “Done. Thank goodness! The recipe did say eight hours, but… I think I put the salt pork in too soon. You don’t put salt in with beans while you’re boiling them, I do know that much; it toughens them. But I boiled them for the right amount of time.”

    “Boiled as well?” he said limply.

    “You have to boil them first.”

    On the historic occasion of their first joint visit to a supermarket in Ditterminster—The Case of Hill Trying to Shop Extravagantly at the Supermarket, yes—Hattie had bought large quantities of dried beans, red, white and, though this was not the technical term, spotted, claiming that they were very economical and extremely good for you. Well, yes, they’d been very cheap and he could see that these had swelled up a lot, so a handful of the dried ones would go a good long way, but—

    “Hattie,” he croaked: “boiling them up first and then eight hours in the oven? Can that possibly be economical?”

    She glared. “I don’t do Boston Baked Beans every day! The casserole’ll do us for two meals, and don’t try to claim that that steak you wanted to buy would’ve been cheaper!”

    Very well, he wouldn’t. “No. Sorry. Tell us what’s in it.”

    Sounding very slightly mollified, she replied: “The salt pork—I mean, that’s why I did the recipe, ’cos they had salt pork, for once. And molasses, with sliced onion and mustard.”

    “Molasses?” said Hill very, very faintly.

    “It’s cheap!”

    It’d be either that or inordinately expensive, given that this was the twenty-first century: he’d never even laid eyes on the stuff. “Jolly good,” he said feebly.

    The bean casserole was wonderful—extraordinary! The salt pork completely melted in the mouth. Even the boys ate it up eagerly. Then came a “peach cobbler”. Oh, boy!

    After that Hill offered to put the coffee on and then perhaps read Gordon a chapter of Harry Potter? Quickly Gordon voted for having it downstairs: like when Hill was a teenager!

    “Yes,” said Hill to Hattie’s dropped jaw. “Pa often used to read aloud in the evenings. After the dishes we could look at those equations, Kenny.”

    “It’s a bit late, Hill,” said Hattie cautiously.

    He looked at his watch. Jesus! “Well, just look, Kenny? We’ll polish ’em off tomorrow.”

    The chapter of Harry Potter went down so well—everybody listened with bated breath, not just Gordon—that no-one even mentioned telly. And Gordon went to bed quite happily, not objecting that he was the only one that had to go early. The Recurring Case of Gordon Being Victimised in the Matter of Bedtime—uh-huh. Hattie self-sacrificingly offered to do the dishes while Kenny and Hill looked at the equations.

    Hill’s notion that the kid didn’t have the sort of brain for maths was, alas, spot-on. Okay—tomorrow morning. And not to worry about the bus, he’d run him over to school.

    The morrow revealed—well, first it revealed that that mug of Bournevita Hill had made Kenny was a tactical error: Hattie always “made” him drink a glass of milk for breakfast. Never mind, she wasn’t up. Time went by… The kid definitely didn’t have a maths brain. Hill gave him some very simple examples. He managed those. Then they went back to the first of the homework examples… N.B.G. Hill gave in and did that one for him very slowly. “See?”

    “Um… Yeah, I think. Well, it’s clear when you do it.”

    “Mm. We’ll just go over it again. Then—uh— Shit. I’d better have a shower, I think, while you tackle the next one.”

    He came downstairs to find two sheets of scrawled paper and a very hot and bothered Kenny. “I can’t do it, Hill! And Mr Farleigh says if I can’t pass maths I won’t be able to be an architect!”

    Oh, shit. “You do need some maths for architecture, of course, but not quadratic equations,” he said temperately,

    “Yeah, but I gotta pass!” he wailed. Well, given the state of the voice it was a hoarse wail, but definitely within the category.

    Briskly Hill decided that he’d spent more than enough time on the damned things and he’d speak to Mr Farleigh. And they’d see about getting him a tutor. Someone qualified to teach.

    There was no sign of Hattie: probably she was exhausted after yesterday’s struggles with quadratic equations and Boston Baked Beans, not to mention all that hopping she was doing. He made breakfast: muesli, well thinned with cornflakes in Gordon’s case, followed by toast. And of course the obligatory glasses of milk. Still no sign of Hattie, so he loaded the boys into the Range Rover and took off.

    Farleigh seemed like a decent chap, didn’t seem to think he should have made an appointment, and after scrutinising Kenny’s efforts with the equations agreed that a tutor would be advisable and gave him a name and number.

    Hill returned to Abbot’s Halt humming, blind fool that he was.

    “You said we’d both talk to his teachers!”

    “Y— I meant in general. This was specifically about the maths and it was urgent, H—”

    “Why didn’t you wake me up?” she shouted.

    “Because I thought you needed a sleep in.”

    “Don’t make decisions for me!” she shouted.

    “I’m sorry, I won’t do it again.”

    Hattie said nothing.

    “Look, he needs a maths tutor: Farleigh agreed—“

    “And DON’T plot with those male establishment creeps behind my back!”

    “I wasn’t,” he said foolishly. “I didn’t think I was. Look, I’m sorry!”

    “Just go to work, Hill,” she said grimly.

    Hill crept off glumly to Chipping Abbas.

    It really helped that Red Watkins immediately spotted he was in the doghouse. And replied to his caustic enquiry as to whether it was written on his forehead: “Yeah, pretty much. You got wrong socks on, too. See, they’ll tell you, unless you’re in the d—”

    “YES!”

    Mr Watkins ceased speaking. He was still grinning, though.

    Chronologically, The Case of the Strange Woman Surprising Hill Starkers was next—though, true, it was merely an also-ran in the salutary lessons field. It was a Friday, and Hill was keeping religiously to Hattie’s bathroom timetable. –He had been driven to say weakly to Joanna: “Does she draw up timetables for everything?” but Joanna, though giving a guilty giggle, had replied: “You need them, with a family. And shouldn’t you be used to them, in project management?”

    The timetable said he did ought be out of the bathroom so, although it manifestly had not taken into account the time it took a chap to shave, he was. Having quickly developed a technique of having the rapid shower, huddling damply into the terry-cloth robe and rushing downstairs to shave in front of the elderly mirror over the fireplace in the front room, the only mirror in the place beside the one in the bathroom and Joanna’s one. And, incidentally, towel himself properly dry. He’d just done that and was standing there with one sock in his hand looking vainly for underpants in the drawer in the bottom of his wardrobe when the door opened and in she walked. A completely strange middle-aged woman. The one consolation was that she was far more took aback than he was.

    Possibly after she’d gasped, apologised disjointedly and rushed out, his going over to the door that she’d closed behind her and sticking his head out and saying: “Oy: ask Hattie where the Hell my clean underpants are, would you?” didn’t help—no. But by that time he had a strong feeling that nothing could have made it worse for her.

    –Penny. Mandarin. One of Hattie’s adult learners. The one that foisted herself on them for breakfast on Fridays and Hattie was sure she’d told him she was coming this week.

    The Case of the Next Episode of Star Wars was, however, entirely Hill’s fault. Kenny had sworn it was on, claiming to have seen the poster for it. Hattie didn’t want to see it and Joanna had to work that Saturday. Hill didn’t want to see it either, but as he was the one with transport and the boys were both looking at him hopefully, nay, expectantly… They went. It wasn’t on. Though, true, there was a poster. It was one of those big old cinemas that had been turned into three small cinemas. Cinema 1 had “sissy girls’ stuff.” Cinema 2 had something so impossibly violent that even the girl in the ticket box had just refused to sell three underage kids tickets for it. Loudly: everyone in the lobby could hear her. Cinema 3 had something slightly less violent that was apparently deemed suitable for kids. Left to himself Hill would have voted for the sissy girls’ stuff: it had a very pretty actress in it.

    “Um, no,” he said uneasily as they urged Cinema 3. “I don’t think Hattie would let you see that, old chums.”

    “She would!” shouted Gordon.

    Kenny wasn’t such a barefaced liar—or blind optimist. “It looks pretty harmless.”

    Hill sighed. “It doesn’t look pretty harmless in her terms, and she wouldn’t.”

    Gordon shouted: “You’re MEAN, ’Ill!” And burst into tears.

    “Shut up, Gordon,” said Kenny, looking round in a hunted way for sneering peers. “Um, well, there’s a festival of comic films on at the other place, only, um—”

    Gordon’s tears had miraculously dried up and he staring up hopefully at them.

    “Only what?” said Hill weakly.

    “The kids call it the flea-pit.”

    “Er—right. Don’t think that’ll matter. Is it far?”

    As it was just around the corner, they went. It was the sort of place that alternated offerings for little grey men in macs with ’orribly serious foreign films for the cognoscenti—in fact there was a large noticeboard advertising the programme of the Ditterminster Film Society in the lobby. The comic films were running continuously but the boys didn’t object to going in now, so they did that. Charlie Chaplin. The boys laughed uproariously. Then another one—ditto. Then the Keystone Cops. Same reception. Then a Buster Keaton. Shrieks of laughter and an argument over which had been better, Keaton or Chaplin. Then Charlie Chaplin again. Its hysterical reception possibly proved the point—though Hill himself usually found the great comic rather painful at the same time: too close to the bone. After that Hill thought— No, just one more, Hill! It was a feature-length Laurel and Hardy that Hill himself had never seen. Really daft: a costume piece with a swashbuckling highwayman. Everyone laughed themselves sick. He got them to their feet but another Charlie Chaplin came on: it was a different one, Hill!

    They finally staggered out blearily only five hours after they’d gone in. Presumably the flea-pit didn’t care how long you and your mac stayed after you’d paid for your ticket.

    Gordon was jumping and crying: “McDonald’s! McDonald’s!” so as Kenny admitted that Hattie did take them after the movies, he took them.

    When they finally got back to Abbot’s Halt, something like eight hours after they’d left, Joanna was home after her shift and both she and Hattie were in tears. This didn’t stop both of them screaming: “Why didn’t you phone us?”

    At this point Hill could have brought up The Case of The Missing Mobile Phone. They’d had a bit of that in the car coming home and Gordon had already screamed he hadn’t touched it and Hill always blamed him for everything, so— “It was a long session.”

    “It isn’t ON!” shouted Hattie.

    “No,” agreed Joanna. “I was sure it wasn’t so when you didn’t get back I rang the cinema.”

    Hill sighed. “Very well, Joanna: the next Saturday that the boys claim there’s a film on and you’re working, I’ll phone you at the hotel and check their story.”

    “That isn’t FUNNY!” shouted Hattie. “Where have you BEEN?”

    Joanna blew her nose. “We thought you’d had an accident.”

    That was all too horridly self-evident. “Mm. Sorry. We went to a different film.”

    “For eight hours?” shouted Hattie.

    “Sort of a festival,” muttered Kenny.

    “What?”

    “Only Charlie Chaplin—old funnies. Not German film noir,” said Hill misguidedly.

    “Stop talking crap!” snapped his beloved. “Why didn’t you let us know?”

    “Well, uh, the boys said you always take them to McDonald’s after the cinema anyway—”

    “It doesn’t take eight hours, Hill!” cried Joanna.

    “Um, the place was playing the films continuously— No, sorry. Didn’t think.”

    “Anyway, he couldn’t find his mobile,” said Kenny on a defiant note.

    “Don’t they have phones in Ditterminster?” returned Hattie arctically.

    “None that we could see, so I thought we’d better just get on back,” said Hill quickly.

    That went over like a lead balloon, too. Humbly he agreed that they could all go to bed. Yes, he would make Gordon have a shower. Glumly the males retreated upstairs to the doghouse.

    “It was worth it,” offered Kenny valiantly as Gordon was pushed bodily into the bathroom.

    Hill cleared his throat. “Shut up.”

    Kenny shut up. He was grinning, though.

    The Case of The Missing Mobile Phone was resolved next day by Joanna’s having an inspiration and going down to the back of the property to search Gordon’s hut.

    “Here. Sorry,” she said feebly, handing it to Hill.

    Sunday being, surprisingly enough, an unplanned day in the Perkins cottage in Old Mill Lane, and Hill being, surprisingly enough, apparently out of the doghouse, he and Hattie were just sitting in the kitchen drinking coffee and wondering if brunch might be nice for a change.

    “Thanks,” he said limply. “He swore blind he hadn’t touched it. Before I’d even started to accuse him of it, actually.”

    Joanna sat down at the table with them, gnawing on her lip. “Mm. We—we think that’s indicative, eh, Hattie?”

    “Yes,” admitted Hattie, making a face. “When he starts screaming he’s innocent or accusing you of victimising him, ’specially before you’ve said it was him, it usually means he’s lying.”

    Hill passed his hand through his hair. “Jesus.”

    They exchanged glances. “Um, we do punish him, of course,” said Joanna, “only, um, it doesn’t seem to be working, does it, Hattie?”

    “No. Well, he hasn’t got worse, in fact we thought he was getting a bit better.”

    “Mm. Until—” Joanna broke off.

    “Until me,” said Hill heavily. “Got it.”

    Joanna looked cautiously at Hattie, ‘Um, actually, Hill, we don’t think it’s because he doesn’t like you.”

    “I thought he didn’t dislike me,” he admitted. “I think this disproves that, though, doesn’t it? There was The Case of Mucking Around With My Razor, too. Oh—and The Case of Getting Into My Briefcase.”

    “Um, yes, but that sort of proves it,” she said, looking at Hattie again.

    “We think,” said Hattie, going very pink, “that it’s partly natural curiosity and—and, well, all we could think of was ‘rôle model’, though that’s an overworked phrase, these days. Because you’re a man.”

    “Because— Oh!”

    “See, he’s never actually lived with a man,” said Joanna. “His dad—his and Diana’s—he took off before he was born. Well, Jase was around, but when we thought about it we realised that he’s so much older than him that he must of gone off to university when Gordon was only about two.”

    “Jase is their oldest brother, Hill,” Hattie reminded him. “He’s at Stanford, now.”

    “Oh! Of course! Doing his Ph.D., right?’

    “No, he’s done it,” said Joanna. “He’s teaching there now. Um, he’s sixteen years older than Gordon. Um, Mum was only sixteen when she had him.”

    “I see. And, uh, well, don’t want to pry, but there were no live-in boyfriends after Gordon’s dad took off?”

    “Huh!” snorted Hattie.

    “Well, no, the minute they find out you’ve got a load of kids they run like the wind,” explained Joanna.

    “Mm. No male rôle models, then. Yes: I take your point about natural curiosity,” he said, smiling at them.

    “Yes,” they said, very relieved.

    Hill scratched his jaw. “Plus a bit of natural resentment and jealousy?”—They nodded silently.—“Right. Well, we’ve got the motives sorted out. Dunno that that’s gonna solve the lying thing.”

    Joanna bit her lip. “No. Like I said, punishing him doesn’t seem to work, really.”

    “Mm… Well, it’s early days yet.”

    “Yes,” agreed Hattie, looking very relieved. “We think he’ll settle down.”

    “Uh-huh. Possibly I should have a word with him, though. We don’t want him to think it’s acceptable behaviour, do we?”

    “No.” She took a deep breath. “We—we think we oughta be here, Hill. We don’t want him to get the impression that we’re not all in agreement about him misbehaving. Um, well, there’s the risk of him turning one of us into an ogre or an angel, you see.”

    “Right; got it. Discipline him together, then. Where is he?”

    “Now?” said Joanna faintly.

    “No time like the present.”

    “I suppose we might as well get it over with,” she conceded. “Him and Kenny have gone round to the shop to get some more bathroom cleaner: they used it all up yesterday morning. They’re pretty heavy-handed with it. Um, they don’t do a terribly good job but Hattie and me didn’t want them to get the impression that some things are women’s work.”

    “Of course. And putting the rubbish out?” said Hill with a little smile.

    The two young women exchanged a desperate glance and Hattie revealed: “Kenny appointed himself to do that, Hill. Mum always made him when he lived at home. We—we didn’t know whether it was better to let him or not.”

    Hill broke down in a helpless spluttering fit. Finally gasping: “What were your thought processes, may I ask? That turning down his offer might turn him gay?”

    “Look, shut up!” cried Hattie, turning puce.

    Shaking, he replied: “Well, brunch? You game to cook that black pudding you let me buy in Ditterminster?”

    “Um, actually I don’t know how,” she said in a tiny voice. “I think it’s an English thing.”

    “Well, uh—think you just chop it into juicy hunks and fry them up. –Joanna?”

    “Mum never bought it. She wasn’t much of a cook. She did teach me how to do a genuine gumbo, though. Um, sorry. Um, we could ring Lorraine, she often used to have it.”

    “I don’t think we ought to ring London just for black pudding,” said Hattie feebly.

    “Pooh!” said Hill with a laugh, picking up the phone. It still had Lorraine’s number programmed into it, so in two seconds they were having a lovely chat and then he was able to pass the phone on to Hattie. “Well?” he said, grinning, as she hung up after agreeing it would be lovely if Lorraine could come down next Sunday and then having to accept his, Hill’s, offer to collect her from the station, as there was a big orange cross on that day on the timetable on the wall behind them, indicating Joanna would be working.

    “You were right: chop it up and fry it, only don’t overcook it. With eggs or tomatoes or bacon.” She began to heave herself up.

    Joanna sprang up guiltily. “Sorry, Hattie, I was forgetting about your foot! If it’s only a fry-up I can do it!”

    Hill got up quickly. “Let me help.” This was agreed, and they got on with it…

    “Ooh! Bacon!” cried Gordon.

    Hill had set the table and was refilling the coffee-pot. “Yes. And black pudding for those as like it: we’ve decided to have brunch. Got the shopping? Good show.” He screwed the top of the pot on carefully and sat down at the table. “Come here, Gordon.”

    Kenny had gone over to the stove and was duly expressing revulsion at the sight of the frying black pudding—good, all the more for them. Gordon came up to Hill looking wary.

    “See this?” he said, holding up the phone. “Guess where we found it?”

    “Dunno!” he snapped.

    “Don’t lie, Gordon. We found it in your hut.”

    Kenny swung round from the stove. “The lying little sod!”

    “Mm.” Hill put a firm hand on the skinny little shoulder before the kid could take off for the hills. “Listen to me, Gordon. I don’t mind you looking at any of my stuff so long as you ask first: get it? But don’t take it without asking: in the first place that’s very rude, and in the second place, I need to know where it all is.”

    “Very rude?” cried Kenny. “I’d call it stealing!”

    “NO!” he shouted.

    ”Most people would call it stealing, Gordon,” said Joanna firmly.

    “Yes,” agreed Hill, “but as I say, if you want to look at anything, just ask.”

    “I never took it!” he cried.

    “You did, Gordon,” said Hattie grimly.

    “Yes, you did; don’t bother to lie, you’re making yourself look very silly,” said Hill in a bored tone, releasing him.

    Shouting: “I’m NOT SILLY!” Gordon ran out. Nobody panicked: they could hear his footsteps pounding up the stairs.

    “He did steal it,” said Kenny sourly.

    “Well, he took it, certainly. God knows what was going on in his head, though,” said Hill with a sigh. “Maybe he persuaded himself that he wasn’t going to keep it.”

    “Hill, he knows right from wrong, don’t let him kid ya!”

    “Um, he’s not as cunning as Shelby, Kenny,” put in Joanna uncertainly.

    “Keep up the disapproval, anyway, Kenny!” said Hill, grinning at him. “The more he sees what you think of him, the sooner he’ll come to his senses.”

    “Maybe,” he said, trying not to smirk. “Do we have to have this black sausage muck?”

    Hattie came to with a jump. “No. It looks revolting, doesn’t it?”

    “All the more for me!” said Hill grinning. He took the coffee-pot over to the stove. “That looks done to me, Joanna. Yum!”

    Gordon came in, scuffing at the floor and looking very sulky, when they were on their second round—certain people having discovered it wasn’t as revolting as it looked.

    “This is brunch: halfway between breakfast and lunch, Gordon. Want some?” said Hattie mildly.

    “YES!” he shouted. “I live ’ere!”

    “Then don’t shout, and sit down. Hill and Joanna and me are having black pudding, but I don’t think you’ll like it.”

    “I will,” he said grimly.

    “Let him try it, that’ll put him off,” advised Kenny. “Can I’ve some more bacon?”

    “No!” cried Gordon.

    Hill got up. “There’s plenty.” He went over to the stove and got on with it. “There,” he said, placing a piled plate in front of Gordon.

    ‘Ta.” He poked the piece of black pudding gingerly with his knife.

    “It’s a kind of sausage,” said Hill kindly. “Stronger than the usual sausage.” He fetched the pan. “Bacon,” he said, giving Kenny some. “Sorry, Joanna, Gordon’s got the last tomato.”

    “They were awfully dear: we shouldn’t have wasted them on a fry-up, really,” said Hattie guiltily.

    “Tomato’s still tomato, though,” replied Hill with a grin.

     “Mm. And it is vegetable oil,” she conceded.

    “Then can I’ve a piece of fried bread?” said Kenny immediately.

    “Ooh, me too!” cried Gordon.

    ”Gordon, you’ve got mounds there,” said his sister limply. She was, however, looking at Hill hopefully.

    He was about to ask Hattie if that was okay when he released that she was also looking at him hopefully! “Uh—okay, slices of fried bread all round, then,” he said, tottering back to the stove.

    Brunch ended around twelve-thirty with everyone topping off their slices of fried bread with well-sugared fried banana. Oh, well: as Hattie said, it was only vegetable oil, and it was Sunday! Plus and, reflected Hill, sipping his fourth cup of coffee, it wasn’t every day that followed The Disastrous Case of the Next Episode of Star Wars and The Unfortunately Resolved Case of The Missing Mobile Phone. If ever a fry-up had been needed it was today!

    Colonel Haworth collapsed in agonised splutters.

    Hill held the phone away from his ear and made a face at it. “Yeah, hah, hah,” he said when the noise seemed to have died down.

    “Domesticity!” gasped Colin.

    “You should talk! Who was that who answered your phone?”

    “Only Terri—my au pair: told you about her,” he reminded him smugly.

    “And I’m Saddam Hussein in his regimental pyjamas!”

    “Er—no, really, old man. Cooks like an angel,” he reminded him.

    “Yes, of course,” said Hill weakly. Well, it’d be better if one of those bitches that Colin had done fairly regularly over the past few years was living with him, or it would if they hadn’t all been impossible bitches, but if he was eating decently, that was a real plus. “Hattie’s a great cook, too, but she’s a bit hampered at the moment. –Don’t laugh, you birk! No, she’s got a gammy leg.” He gave him a full report of the great Heathrow saga.

    “Mm. Kids aren’t easy,” said Colin on a dry note.

    “No. Well, it seems to be working out fairly well so far, though there are times I wish the poor little bastards at Jericho.”

    “Understandable.”

    Hill waited but he didn’t ask him what the legal position was with either of the boys. “Um, well, I suppose you’re busy with your blessed crafts centre, but would you fancy coming over?”

    Colin was very busy, and this weekend was out, but he’d sort out his schedule and definitely ring him soon: he was dying to meet Hattie!

    “Right! See you soon.”

    But it apparently didn’t work like that. Hattie looked at him in naked horror. “What?”

    “He is a close friend,” said Hill, reddening. “I have mentioned him, Hattie.”

    “But you didn’t even ask me if I wanted to meet him!” she cried.

    “No, because he's one of my oldest friends and I assumed we were a couple and you’d want to meet my friends! Jesus, I’ve met your friends: we had that lovely dinner with Julian and Bruce, didn’t we? What’s the difference?” His voice had got rather loud, so he stopped.

    “Colin won’t want to meet me,” said Hattie in a stifled voice.

    “Hattie, he does want to meet you! He’s heard the whole saga!”

    “What saga?” she said, staring at him.

    Hill had gone very red. “Um, you and me. Right back to the bloody war-gaming crap. And the story of the failed coffee-pot and Mars Bars. Not to mention the sheer panic after that time I bumped into his cousin John’s wife and her blonde cousins at the hospital and you refused to believe it was nothing but a coincidence and I’d never met them before in my life!”

    “Don’t shout,” said Hattie in a small voice.

    “I didn’t mean to. Sorry.”

    “I—I can’t possibly meet him if he knows all that.”

    “He won’t mention it, I can promise you. Why are you refusing to share my life, Hattie? I’ve socialized with your friends, in fact I like your friends very much; couldn’t you at least make an effort to see if you might like mine?”

    Hattie gave him a bitter look. “Mine aren’t colonels and things that talk with plums in their mouths!”

    Hill’s jaw had sagged. “Thanks very much! Who was it accused me of class prejudice?”

    “He’ll look down his nose at me!” she shouted.

    Oh—Christ. He ran his hand through his hair. “I promise you he won’t. Colin isn’t like that at all. Loves people, and generally people love him. Those that aren’t suffering from blind prejudice,” he added in spite of himself.

    Hattie was now very flushed. She was silent for a moment. Then she said: “Well, what was his last girlfriend like?”

    Which of the many? Hadn’t he been doing that bitch Aimée Mainwaring at some stage? Terence Haworth had had some story to that effect. Well, old Mainwaring was over seventy, true. Um, then there was that red-haired cow, Willi Duff-Ross, one of his cousins—red hair did run in Colin’s mother’s family but Hill wouldn’t have believed for an instant she was a natural red-head, except that Colin had verified it empirically. Um, but hadn’t there been someone else at round about the same time? Never mind, they were all bitches. “An upper-class bitch who never came to see him once when he was in hospital, that satisfy you?”

    “Not once?” said Hattie faintly, goggling at him.

    Well, no, he knew that for a fact, ’cos his bloody cousin Cynthia Moreton had reported that Willi was in Nassau that summer.

    “No,” he said tiredly. “It’s difficult to pay sick-visits in London when one’s living the high life in Nassau.”

    “But did she know he was sick?”

    Hill ran his hand through his hair. “By my calculations she took off about a month after he was wounded, so, yes. Mind you, she wasn’t the only one. –Not the only girlfriend, and not the only one to ignore him once he couldn’t do them any good, got it?” he said angrily.

    “Yes. They sound horrid,” said Hattie in a small voice.

    “They are. Can we stop talking about Colin’s ex-girlfriends?”

    “Mm.”

    Hill took a deep breath. “Colin’s parents are still in the land of the living but they’ve never been interested in him: pair of do-gooders—he’s a retired vicar. They were furious when he went into the Army, even though most of the males on both sides of the family have traditionally served in the armed forces. They did come up to London to see him when he had to have his head cut open but once he was on the mend they didn’t bother. The South American rainforests or the current preoccupation—missing weapons of mass destruction, very probably—took precedence.”

    “Those issues are important… Took precedence over seeing their son that was nearly killed?” croaked Hattie.

    “Yes. They’re like that. They did offer to take him in but rather understandably Colin wasn’t keen.”

    She nodded dazedly. “Has he got any brothers and sisters?”

    “Yes, one of each. They’re both very fond of him. Michael lives up in the wilds of Yorkshire, but he came down and stayed in London when Colin was very bad. Viola’s a bit of a hen, but very fond of him: she was up and down to the hospital pretty regularly.”

    “Good.”

    That sounded better, so he risked reminding her: “Colin’s very keen to meet you.”

    Hattie bit her lip. “All right. Did you say he’s living in a cottage?”

    “Mm: bit like this one: two up and two down,” he said cheerfully, not mentioning that Colin’s cousin John Haworth, though admittedly he lived in a cottage himself, owned quite a lot of property in the area.

    She brightened. “Oh, good!”

    “His little au pair seems to be looking after him very well, but what about offering him a couple of pots of jam, mm? Some of your rosehip jelly? He adores anything rose-flavoured.”

    “Okay, if you think he’d like it,” said Hattie uncertainly.

    Hill was pretty sure he would but in any case he assured her he’d love it. Christ! He felt completely drained.