A Spot Of Bother

“Fuck off. I feel bad enough already. You’re my friend. I just wanted to make sure. Now I’ve made sure.” Sarah paused. “He’s a nice man.”

“He is.”

“I think even Ed might be a nice man.” She turned to look across the lawn. “Well, maybe not nice nice. But all right. Better than the drunken pillock I met at your house.”

Katie turned, too, and saw Ed playing airplanes with Jacob, swinging him round by his arms.

“Look,” shouted Jacob. “Look.”

“Ed,” shouted Katie, “be careful.”

Ed looked over at her and panicked slightly and loosened his grip and let go of Jacob’s left hand and Jacob slid onto the wet grass in his Rupert Bear wedding trousers.

“Sorry,” shouted Ed, hoisting Jacob off the ground by one wrist like a shot rabbit.

Jacob squealed and Ed attempted to stand him on his feet.

“Bloody hell,” muttered Katie, walking over and wondering whether the ginger twins would allow them to use the washing machine.

At which point she glanced up and saw her father doing jumping jacks in the bathroom, which was odd.

115

Ideally, Jamie would have been sitting in the bedroom with his father. But you couldn’t see the road from the bedroom. And Jamie didn’t want the doctor arriving unannounced.

If the doctor could sort his father out, then maybe they could get through this without giving everyone else the heebie-jeebies.

So Jamie leant against the windowsill in the living room pretending to read the Telegraph magazine. And it was only as he was doing this that he started to wonder whether his father might end up being sectioned, which was not something he had thought about when he made the phone call.

Christ, he should have told someone else about this before deciding to solve the problem on his own.

Except you couldn’t be sectioned unless you tried to kill yourself, could you. Or unless you tried to kill someone else. To be honest, Jamie’s knowledge of these things came almost entirely from TV dramas.

It was entirely possible that the doctor wouldn’t be able to do anything at all.

Many doctors were useless, of course. Nothing like spending three years with medical students to undermine your faith in the profession. That Markowicz guy, for example. Plaster-casted up to the neck, then choking on his own vomit.

A man got out of a blue Range Rover. Little black bag. Shit.

Jamie leapt off the sofa, slalomed through the hallway and out of the front door to intercept him before he made a grand entrance.

“Are you the doctor?” Jamie felt like someone in a crappy film. Fetch the hot towels!

“Dr. Anderson.” The man held out his hand. He was one of those long, stringy men who smelled of soap.

“It’s my father,” said Jamie.

“OK,” said Dr. Anderson.

“He’s having some kind of breakdown.”

“Perhaps we should go and have a chat with him.”

Dr. Anderson turned to walk across the road. Jamie stopped him. “Before we go in there’s something I should explain. My sister’s getting married today.”

Dr. Anderson tapped his nose and said, “Mum’s the word.”

Jamie wasn’t wholly reassured by this.

They went up to his parents’ bedroom. Unfortunately his father wasn’t in his parents’ bedroom. Jamie told the doctor to sit on the bed and wait.

Jamie was checking the living room when he realized that his mother might walk into her bedroom to find a strange man sitting on her bed. He should really have locked Dr. Anderson in the downstairs loo.

His father wasn’t in the house. He asked Eileen. He asked the catering women. He asked the best man, whose name he’d forgotten. He checked behind the marquee and when he emerged he realized that he had now checked everywhere, which meant his father had run away, which was really, really not good and he sprinted back across the lawn saying, “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck” quite loudly to himself, and bumped into Katie en route and didn’t want to worry her so he laughed and said the first thing which came to mind, which happened to be, “The pigeon has flown,” a line which Tony used on occasions and which Jamie had never really understood, and which Katie wouldn’t understand either, but Jamie was halfway up the stairs by this time. And he burst through the bedroom door and Dr. Anderson leapt off the bed and adopted a slightly special-forces defensive posture.

“He’s gone,” said Jamie. “I can’t find him anywhere.” And then he had to sit down on the bed and put his head between his knees because he felt a bit dizzy.

“OK,” said Dr. Anderson.

“He wanted me to drive him into the country,” said Jamie. “So he didn’t have to go to the wedding.” He sat up, felt wobbly, and put his head between his knees again. Glancing sideways, he saw a sliver of pink card under the mattress. He reached over and extracted the Ordnance Survey map. His father had gone without it.

“What’s that?” asked Dr. Anderson.

“This is where he wanted to go,” said Jamie, unfolding the map and pointing to Folksworth. “Perhaps he took a taxi. I’m going to look for him.”

Dr. Anderson removed a small card from his jacket and handed it to Jamie. “I’m not really meant to do this. But if you find him, call me, OK?”

“Thanks.” Jamie slipped the card into his trouser pocket. “I’d better get going.”

Halfway down the stairs they bumped into Ray.

Dr. Anderson smiled and said, “I’m the photographer.”

“OK,” said Ray, looking a little puzzled, possibly by the fact that Jamie and the photographer had been upstairs together.

Jamie turned to Dr. Anderson. “It’s OK, he knows.”

“In which case, I’m a doctor,” said Dr. Anderson.

“Dad’s gone missing,” said Jamie. “I’m going to look for him. I’ll explain later.” Then he remembered that it was Ray’s wedding day, too. “I’m so sorry about this.”

“I’ll call you if he turns up,” said Ray.

116

Jean was getting dressed and wondering where on earth George had wandered off to when there was a ring at the front door and clearly no one else was going to answer it, so she fished her good shoes out of the bottom of the wardrobe, went downstairs and opened the door.

“Alan Phillips,” said the man. “Ray’s father. This is my wife, Barbara. You must be Jean.”

“How do you do,” said Barbara.

Jean ushered them inside and took their coats.

“Very good to meet you after all this time,” said Alan. “I’m sorry it’s so last minute.”

She’d expected a bigger man, someone with more bluster. Then she recalled Katie mentioning a chocolate factory, which seemed comical at the time, but rather appropriate now. He was the kind of man you could imagine playing with trains or growing carnations. “Have a seat.”

“It’s a lovely house,” said Barbara, and she sounded as if she meant it, which Jean found quite touching.

There was something formal about the two of them, and this was a relief (in her darker moments she’d