Page 2 of Don't Let Him In

“Where’s that?” she asks her mum, turning the album toward her mother.

“Ha, Glastonbury. Of course.”

“Of course,” says Ash drily. “Were you there too?”

“Yup. Oasis. Pulp. The Cure. Boiling hot. We went with Lena and Johnny. Dad got very, very…”

“Drunk?” Arlo suggests.

“And the rest.”

They all smile wryly. Everyone knows what Paddy was like. He liked to drink, he liked to take party drugs, he liked to get stoned. He liked to listen to music all the time, always walked around in headphones. He liked vinyl, liked T-shirts, liked live music, liked people, liked food.

Paddy Swann was the most uncomplicated human being in the world, and then, two weeks ago, a very complicated person used Paddy Swann as a character in his own very complicated internal story and pushed him under a train. And now he is dead.

The remains of his clan are loud now, they don’t know how to be quiet, even in the fading light of the day that they buried him. But the noise is riven through with something piquant and terrible. The lack of his voice, his laugh, his bulk. The fact that at the other end of today, everyone’s lives will continue without him.

Ash slams the album shut and grabs her wineglass, tips it back, ignores the sugary, cloying warmth of it in her mouth, the way it leaches into the stale insides of her cheeks. How will they go to bed tonight? How will they say that this day is over, and the next bit begins?

Part Two

THREEJANUARY

Ash picks up the card that is propped on the sideboard in the kitchen and reads the greeting inside.

Dear Nina and family

I just heard the news about Paddy. I am so devastated to hear of his death last year. Paddy and I worked together in a restaurant in Mayfair many, many moons ago. He was one of the nicest guys I ever knew, and one of the best chefs I’ve ever worked alongside. A few years ago, I chanced upon his restaurant in Whitstable and didn’t realize it was his place until I saw him passing across the floor. I stopped him and we had a chat, and he looked so well, so full of his usual bonhomie and generosity of spirit. He pulled up a chair and joined me for the rest of my meal, forced good wines upon me. We caught up a little on our lives, his spent growing a family and a restaurant empire on the south coast, mine living the bachelor life and running a wine barnot far from where we first met in Mayfair. I always thought our paths would cross again someday, that I’d go back to Whitstable and enjoy another hour or two in his delightful company, eat another one of his delicious meals, but it never happened, life got in the way, and now it is too late.

Anyway, I just wanted you to know how much I adored Paddy and how sorry I was to hear that he had gone so young and in such tragic circumstances.

Yours, with sympathy and with love, Nick Radcliffe

Ash waves the card at her mother, who is standing by the kettle, waiting for it to boil.

“Nice card.”

Her mother turns. Her eyes are dull and tinged with gray circles.

“Oh,” she says. “Yes. Very sweet.”

“You ever met him?”

“No. I don’t think so. At least, not that I remember.”

Ash pulls her phone out of her pocket and googles the name, adds Mayfair to the search terms. His name pops up on LinkedIn and she clicks it.

Nick Radcliffe is listed as the “Co-founder and Owner of Bar Amelie in London W1.” In his profile photo he looks about fifty, has pure white hair, a trim white beard, very blue eyes, and a pleasant smile. She turns the phone toward her mum. “Look,” she says.

Her mum glances distractedly at the photo and says, “Nope. Never seen him before. He’s quite hot, though.”

Ash throws her mother a look of horror.

“What?” says her mother. “There’s no law against it.”

Ash googles “Bar Amelie” and finds a glitzy website for it. It’s just off Curzon Street and is sleek and beautiful—brushed brass and pale velvet, three different types of caviar on the bar menu. It’s the antithesis of her dad’s restaurants: sandy-floored, rough-hewn, chalkboards, tongue-and-groove cladding, smoky chowders and chargrilled lobsters.

“We should go there,” Ash says, showing the wine bar’s website to her mum. “Get him to tell us more about what Dad was like back then, before you met him.”

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