Page 33 of Last Night

‘And he doesn’t model now?’

‘No, he is a – wait for it – shrink. Ugh. My brother, messing with anyone’s head. What a charlatan. He rinses rich old women with neuroses on the Upper East Side who fancy him, no doubt.’

Then their mum died, and the long-lost, long-gone, unlamented Finlay Hart was forced to reappear in common-or-garden Nottingham.

I remember the jolt of seeing adult Fin in an immaculate navy Crombie at their mum’s funeral, straight-backed with an incredible-looking auburn-haired girlfriend, clad in frock coat and spiky black heels. Her mobile went off during the ceremony, the unfamiliar rat-a-tat of a USA dial tone. She calmly switched it off without the slightest facial twitch of self-consciousness. Fin didn’t react at all. They looked as if a European prince and princess were on an official engagement to inspect a disaster zone.

I wish he hadn’t fucking come, Susie hissed at me, surreptitiously Lime-Drop-flavour vaping by the mulled wine urn in the village hall wake, afterwards. When I saw the Harts orbiting each other like satellites, I realised she’d not exaggerated his estrangement. It hadn’t dissolved on contact into even a forced friendliness.

Watching from afar, I noticed Mr Hart making a remark to Finlay, who replied in what looked like a curt fashion and then twitched imperiously at his own cufflink, short of anything more to say. Or perhaps simply uninterested in finding any more to say. They both looked blank, Mr Hart slightly stunned, and soon moved apart again. No smiles, no tears, no wordless supportive arm squeezes, no warmth whatsoever. It made me inwardly shudder, and my family hadn’t exactly written the handbook on functionality.

Susie had seen this too.Oh, Dad, don’t bother, seriously, she muttered.He’s not gonna change.This hasn’t changed him, and nothing will.

Apparently Fin was incensed by their dad’s insistence to have the service in a church because their mum wasn’t religious, and it went downhill from there.

‘You must be Mr Hart, Junior,’ said some nice old boy, pumping his hand and energetically and fearlessly greeting him, in our hearing.

‘Hart, an ironic name for someone born without one,’ Susie said.

12

‘Hi, you left me a message? It’s Fin.’

I jumped as if stung when ‘FINLAY HART’ sprang up on my phone screen.

I don’t know why this has caught me on the hop. After a half an hour’s reverie, he’d started to feel like a myth, not a real man with a mobile.

‘Hi! Thanks for calling me back,’ I say, in the tone of panicked jollity you automatically slip into with a total stranger whose attention you’ve summoned. Then it dawns on me it’s a wholly inappropriate tone to use before I announce the death of a close family member. We’ve been plunged into extreme circumstances where slight misjudgements equal horrendous gaffes.

Blood pounds in my ears as I say, with excessive formality: ‘Thanks for ringing back so quickly. I am so very, very sorry to be the one to break this news, Fin …’

‘I know,’ he says. ‘Are you calling to tell me Susie’s been killed? I know.’

I’m stunned, twice over: first that he knows, and second that he sounds so matter of fact.

‘Oh. How?’

‘The police contacted me this morning.’

‘Oh. I’m sorry, I didn’t know, I was told the hospital didn’t have details for you.’

‘You were her best friend?’

‘Yes. I’m her best friend,’ I say. Incorrectly correcting Fin Hart on the tense of my relationship to his deceased sister is both ridiculous, and feels necessary.

I don’t think Fin is feigning not to remember me, I guess the odds of him recalling the names of small girls his sister hung around with a lifetime ago are minimal.

‘How did you have my number, if you don’t mind me asking?’

This could sound as if he’s being polite but the delivery isn’t, at all.

‘I have Susie’s phone.’

‘You can get into it?’

This strikes me as such an outlandish line of inquiry I say: ‘Yes?’ in an affronted way.

‘I wondered. I’m glad you called me because I want to talk to you. My father’s no longer capable of managing something like a funeral …’

---