less hair, and false teeth that fitted badly, and the two old men together often reminded Thorne of some bizarre, over-the-hill double act.
'Maybe,' Thorne said.
His father leaned towards him. 'Always a good idea, I reckon. Get a few pints down you and even the ugly ones start to look… woss-name…the opposite of ugly?'
Victor supplied the word his friend was searching for. 'Pretty?
Attractive?'
Jim Thorne nodded. 'Even the ugly ones start to look attractive.' Thorne smiled. A bizarre double act: the straight man occasionally needing to provide a bit of help with the punchlines. He glanced across the table at Eileen, who shook her head and rolled her eyes. There wasn't too much wrong with her mood.
Victor raised his glass, as if proposing a toast. 'Beer goggles,' he said.
'The same goes for women, you know,' Eileen said. 'We can wear wine goggles.' She pointed towards Thorne's father. 'I reckon Maureen probably had a pair on the night she got together with you.' Thorne watched his father. They hadn't talked much about his mother since her death. Almost never since the Alzheimer's. He wondered how the old man would react.
Jim Thorne nodded, enjoying it. 'I think you're probably right, love,' he said. 'Bloody strong ones an' all.' He raised his glass until it covered the bottom half of his face. 'I was stone-cold sober.' Once the drink had been supped and the glass lowered, Thorne tried and failed to catch his father's eye. The old man's gaze was darting around all over the place.
The pub was old fashioned in the worst sense and half empty, probably as a result. They sat in a tiny bar the sort of room that might once have been called a snug around a rickety metal table near the door. The absence of anything like atmosphere was mostly due to the strip lighting. It buzzed above their heads, washing everything out. It made the place feel like a waiting room that smelled of beer.
Thorne knew why they'd chosen this particular pub: his father liked places that were brightly lit. He was forever wandering around his house turning all the lights on, even in the middle of the day. It might have been forgetfulness, but Thorne thought that the old man was simply trying to keep the darkness away, knowing it was creeping up on him and struggling to stay in the light, where he could see. Where he could still be seen.
'Who's for another one?' Victor asked. Eileen shook her head, slid her empty glass away from her. 'If we want to get proper Sunday lunch somewhere.'
They began to gather their things together bags, coats, hats. As Eileen, Victor and his father moved slowly, one by one towards the door, Thorne checked under the table to make sure no one had left anything behind.
He was wishing he was somewhere else. He was thinking about the case; about Rooker and Ryan and two men running for their lives through a dark wood. He was picturing Alison Kelly and Jessica Clarke; faces on his pillow and in a drawer beside his bed.
Beneath her chair, Thorne found Eileen's umbrella. He grabbed it and followed her to the door. Now he thought about it, perhaps a day out was a good idea. Feeling like a youngster being dragged around by three, slightly strange, grown-ups, might be just what he needed. They walked towards the seafront Thorne dragged his heels and stared at things he wasn't really interested in to avoid getting too far ahead of his father and the others.
Spring was a few days old but hadn't found its feet yet. It was grey-the type of day Thorne associated with the seaside. He couldn't help thinking that the picture would be complete if Eileen had a reason to put up her umbrella. This was, he knew, a little unfair on the city of Brighton. Expensive and deeply fashionable, with a thriving music scene and a reputation as the gay capital of Britain, it was hardly the typical coastal resort. Still, prejudice was prejudice, and, as far as Thorne was concerned, if you could buy rock with the name of a place running through it, he was happy to stay away.
As if to confirm his preconceptions, there were people 'sunbathing' on the beach. Several families were encamped on the pebbles, windbreaks flapping around them, the goose pimples visible from a hundred yards. Stubbornness, optimism, stupidity you could call it what you liked. It seemed to Thorne as perfect an embodiment of Englishness as he'd seen in a while.
'Look at those daft sods,' Eileen said. 'In this weather!' Thorne smiled. There were other things, of course, that were even more English.
'It's getting bloody cold, if you ask me.' Eileen pulled her coat tight to her chest. 'Ten or twelve degrees at most, I should think. Colder, with the wind-chill factor.'
The wind-chill factor. A concept oddly beloved of forecasters in recent years. Thorne wondered where it had come from, and if they used it in places where the wind-chill might actually be a factor.
'Well, here in Spitzbergen it's minus forty degrees, but with the wind-chill factor, it's officially cold enough to freeze the bollocks off a zoo-full of brass monkeys.'
They moved on, Thorne listening to his father witter on about how many years, how many workmen and how many thousand gallons of gold paint it had taken to complete the Royal Pavilion, until they reached the restaurant. Eileen put on her poshest voice to ask the waiter for a table. When they sat down, Thorne, who had already decided that he was going to pay for lunch, checked the prices. They all went for the three-course Sunday afternoon special. It wouldn't break the bank.
'This is nice,' Victor said.
Eileen nodded. 'I normally cook a big lunch for everyone on a Sunday, but Trevor and his wife are away and Bob's off playing golf, so I decided not to bother. Besides, it's a treat to go out, isn't it?' Thorne grunted, thinking that, at less than a tenner a head, 'treat' might be putting it a bit strongly. 'Shame we won't see Trevor and Bob,' he said. Trevor was Eileen's son, and Thorne guessed that he probably hadn't gone anywhere. Lunch with barmy Uncle Jim wasn't exactly a tantalising prospect. It almost certainly explained husband Bob's game of golf, hastily arranged once he'd found out that the dotty brother-in-law and dotty brother-in-law's mate were coming down for the weekend.
'I know,' Eileen said. 'They both said how much they were looking forward to seeing you.'
Thorne suddenly felt enormously sorry for Eileen. For having to lie. For the shit she had to put up with from his father. For doing all that she did and getting nothing in return. Thorne couldn't remember if he'd ever really thanked her for anything. 'Maybe next time,' he said.
Eileen nodded towards Thorne's father. He was staring at the table, tapping the blunt' end of a knife against his teeth. 'I think your dad's having a good time,' she said.
Victor reached across for the water jug. 'He's having a brilliant time, definitely.'
'Did we thank you for bringing him down?' she asked. Victor beamed. 'It's fine, really. It's fun for us both to go on a bit of a jaunt.'
'Thank you anyway, though. I couldn't get up to fetch him down and he wouldn't have been able to get here without you. you know, keeping him company.'
'He's no trouble, honestly.'
Thorne knew that both of these people loved his father, that they sacrificed a great deal for him, but it still set his teeth on edge to hear them talk about him as if he were not there.
'He's trouble when he wants to be,' Eileen said. Victor laughed and poured Jim Thorne a glass of water. Thorne tuned out the conversation and looked away, searching to see if there was any sign of their first course. He felt a hand on his arm and saw that it belonged to his father.
'You look like you've got a lot on your mind, son,' the old man said. Thorne nodded. In his mind a young girl's arms were thrashing, as she whirled across a playground, as she danced around a kitchen, as she tumbled through the air from the roof of a multi-storey car park. Jim Thorne leaned in close and whispered, 'Sometimes, I think you've got it worse than I have.' He jabbed a finger into the side of his head. The hair at his temple was white, whereas his son's was grey.
'You want to try this, Tom. Can't recommend it highly enough. However bad you feel, however much it hurts to think about something, half an hour later and you can't remember fuck all. Just like that, whoosh, it's gone. Excellent. Goldfish brain.' Thorne stared at his dad for a few seconds. He couldn't think of a single thing to say. He was rescued by a waitress who materialised at their table with four bowls of watery-looking soup.
'Four and three, forty-three.'
When Eileen had suggested bingo, Thorne had felt almost suicidal, and the enthusiasm of Victor and his father had done nothing to change his mood. They walked past what little was left of the West Pier, now all but
