Silva sighed to herself. She owed it to her mother to go and see what her father wanted. Hard as it was to imagine, at some point her parents had cared for each other and Silva was a direct result of their union.
The next morning she called in sick. Said her first day back had been too stressful and she needed a little while longer to recover. She took her motorbike and rode hard up-country towards London. Her father lived an hour west of the city in a big old house inherited from his own father. Silva remembered the place from childhood visits to her grandparents, but she’d never lived there. Several acres of garden surrounded the house, a winding drive curling past a lake to an expanse of gravel. She followed the drive and parked up alongside a black Range Rover with smoked-glass windows. She got off her bike, removed her leather jacket, her helmet and gloves, and stood by the Range Rover for a while. She wondered if her father had all of a sudden given up his miserliness and decided to splash out on the smart new vehicle. Silva shrugged and went to the house.
Mrs Collins, her dad’s long-suffering housekeeper, showed her in and through to the back where her father sat in a chair on the terrace. Next to him there was a glass-topped metal table on which stood a jug of cloudy lemonade and three glasses. The ice cubes in the jug had sharp edges and the surface of the jug was beginning to mist with condensation.
‘Rebecca,’ her father said as she walked over and bent to kiss him. He sat still while she did so and then brushed her away. ‘You’re late.’
Silva glanced at her watch. One minute past eleven. ‘One hundred and fifty miles and I’m sixty seconds late. I’d say that was pretty good.’
‘Pretty good, yes.’ Her father watched her as she sat down. ‘But not perfect.’
Silva wasn’t surprised by her father’s opprobrium. As a child she’d had to live up to his exacting standards, all too often failing to meet them. He’d treated her mother the same way until she’d grown tired of having the minutiae of her life controlled and micro-managed. When Silva was ten, her mother had upped and left, taking Silva with her. Looking back with the benefit of hindsight, Silva wondered if her father’s nature could have been altered by his experiences in the Gulf. PTSD affected people in different ways, and his desire to control everything might have been a response to the stress he’d faced in the deserts of southern Iraq. Then again, it might not.
‘You look fine,’ Silva said, trying not to rise to the bait. ‘I thought you might be poorly.’
‘I told you I wasn’t ill on the phone. Didn’t you believe me?’
‘There are times when people don’t like to admit something’s wrong with them.’
‘Not me.’ Her father paused and then knocked the table with his right fist. ‘You got the keys and the documents I forwarded from the solicitor?’
‘Yes.’
‘You’ll go there on your way back to Plymouth? Check the house is OK?’
‘Sure,’ Silva agreed without much enthusiasm. She changed the subject and gestured at the three glasses on the table. ‘Are we expecting a guest? Or are you going ask your servant to join us?’
‘Don’t wind me up, Rebecca. Mrs Collins isn’t my servant.’
‘Lover?’
‘Stop it.’
‘Well, this is nice.’ Silva leaned back in her chair. Below the terrace a large area of lawn led down to the lake. There was a boathouse at one end and a small island in the centre. ‘Just think, I could have been delivering the mail to the good people of Plymouth instead of sitting here getting bored.’
‘When were you last up?’
‘Must be a year ago. You’ve repaired the boathouse, I see.’
‘Repaired the boathouse, dredged and restocked the lake. A lot’s been done in the house too. You’ll see later.’
‘Later?’
‘You’re staying over.’
‘I am?’ Silva turned to look at the house. ‘You’ve hardly been in touch in the past few years and now you want to play happy families? I don’t think so.’
‘This isn’t about me, this is about you.’
‘I’m fine. I’m OK with where I live, OK with my job. I know you don’t think being a postie is any kind of living, but it’s risk free.’
‘You were never one to be scared. You got a commendation for bravery on your first tour.’
‘I’m not talking about what’s out there.’ Silva swept her arm and turned back to her father. She tapped her forehead. ‘I’m talking about what’s up here.’
‘It was an accident. They tend to happen in war. Nobody was to blame.’
‘Funny how you didn’t come to my defence at the time. “No comment” was all they could get out of you.’
‘I couldn’t be seen to question the chain of command, but now I’m retired from the Ministry I can speak the truth. You weren’t at fault.’
‘What is this, “kiss and make up” time? Has Mum’s death brought about a new sense of your own mortality? All of a sudden you feel responsible for your little baby?’
‘Nothing like that.’ Her father lowered his shoulders and shook his head.
Silva turned back to the lake. A rowing boat slipped into view from behind the island. A man sat in the boat, pulling slowly for a small jetty next to the boathouse. The boat slid across the lake and came alongside the jetty and the man climbed out. He was a similar age to her father, perhaps mid-sixties, with short grey hair. He wore a
