seemed almost repelled by the advance. Instead he half-hugged him, and broke the hug by pretending he was straightening the pillow and rearranging the sheets.
‘Where’s Zoe?’ Peter said.
‘Oh! She’s coming tomorrow.’
‘I want to see my Zoe. Lovely girl. I want to see her.’
‘Sure thing, Dad. She’ll be along tomorrow.’
‘He asked for you today.’ Jake told Zoe that evening.
‘By name? He can’t be that bad if he asked for me by name.’
Jake had told her all about Peter’s delusions that he was back in the Italian mountains. ‘He’s time-tripping. He’s in and out.’
‘Why do you think he’s back there in particular?’ Jake shook his head. ‘Probably the most stressful time of his life. Plus there’s guilt. He had to kill one of his own men.’
‘He told you that?’
‘It came out. I’m not sure you should go tomorrow. He was okay with me but every time a female walked into the room he went fucking crazy. I mean, the air was blue.’
‘I can handle that.’
‘No, like angry-blue. Out-of-control blue.’
‘I have to come with you. Anyway, he asked for me, didn’t he? I have to.’
They went back together the following evening. The nurse at the desk told them that Peter had had an uncomfortable day. When they went in, Jake thought he sensed a miasma, a cloudiness in the room he hadn’t detected the previous evening. Peter at first appeared to be asleep but then he opened his eyes.
‘It’s looking bleak,’ Peter said.
Jake didn’t know whether he was referring to the cancer or to his chances in the mountains. ‘You’re a fighter, Dad,’ he said. ‘You’ve always been a fighter.’
Peter seemed to consider that.
Zoe approached him. ‘Hello, Dad.’ She always called him ‘Dad’, just like Archie, and Peter had always liked it.
‘Zoe,’ he said, accepting a kiss. ‘I so wanted to see you.’
‘Well, I’m here. How are you feeling?’
‘Lot of pain. Comes through the morphine, it does. And sometimes I don’t know where I am. And I want to cry. But we’re not having that, are we?’
‘I doubt it,’ said Zoe. She sat on the edge of the bed and stroked his hair. ‘Well. We’re here for you now.’
‘Never mind that. I had something important to say to you but it’s gone clean out of my head. What use is that?’
They waited in silence as he tried to remember.
Then Jake sat down in the plastic chair and said, ‘Did you tune in to hospital radio last night?’
‘What?’
‘They had a request for you. Frank Sinatra. Played it for you specially.’
Peter looked at Zoe and laughed, though the laugh pained him. ‘He’s barking mad, isn’t he? What on earth is he talking about? I don’t know how you ever came to marry him.’
‘It’s a mystery, Dad,’ she said.
‘Oh, that was it: I remembered what I wanted to say. Hang on to him, for his sake. Death us do part and all that. Hang on to him. You’ve been the making of that boy. You really have.’
‘Oh?’
‘That was it. And to ask you for one thing. One little hug. From you. One little hug.’
‘I can do that, Peter.’
Zoe inched up the bed as far as she was able and put her arms around him and laid her face against the rough stubble of his cheek. Jake watched from the plastic chair. The hug lasted for ten or twelve seconds, during which Peter flicked a finger at Zoe’s hair.
‘That’s enough,’ he said.
‘Do I get a hug?’ Jake asked.
‘Unmanly.’
‘Okay.’
Peter didn’t have a lot of chat left in him. Zoe and Jake both exhausted themselves trying to initiate conversations, dredging up bits of news in which he might be interested. But the time-slip seemed to have released him from its claws, and for that Jake felt grateful. He didn’t want to have to go outside to put a bullet through Charlie a second time.
Peter fell asleep after a while, and they left. The hospital would inform them if there was any change in his condition. Zoe drove on the way home.
‘Did you smell it?’ Jake asked her as she drove.
‘Smell what?’
‘Maybe nothing.’
They got home and before Jake put the key in the door he heard the phone ringing. It was the hospital calling to say that Peter had slipped away in the last hour.
14
Jake was at the window of their hotel room.
‘What are you looking at?’ Zoe wanted to know.
‘Nothing.’
She stepped forwards to see for herself, but he turned quickly and blocked her advance towards the window. She giggled, and tried to slip by him. He blocked her again.
‘What are you doing?’
He said nothing. Just held her so that she couldn’t get to the window. She tried to push his arms away from her, but he bear-hugged her, steering her towards the bed, finally toppling her backwards onto it.
‘Get off me, Jake! I want to see.’
She pushed him away and struggled to her feet, rushing to the window. She looked out across the snow. The sky presaged more in heavy grey clouds. The road curved away into the distance, flanked on either side by trees like frozen sentries in a forgotten war. There was nothing she hadn’t seen before.
Jake came up behind her, peering over her shoulder. He reached an arm around her belly, stroking her.
‘What was it?’ she demanded to know.
‘Nothing.’
‘You lie.’
‘Yes.’
‘So tell me.’
‘No.’
Something made her shiver. She turned suddenly and grabbed his jaw with her hand, squeezing. ‘Are you protecting me? I don’t want to be protected. Whatever there is to be known about this place, I want you to tell me.’
He took her hand away from his mouth. ‘It was a horse.’
‘A horse?’
‘Yes, a horse. And a sledge. It was waiting there. Now it’s gone.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘I’ve seen it there before. It frightened me.’
