Page 46 of Fe
“Oh, an ammonite,” Fen said. “Did you find it?”
“Yes, with my father.”
Fen spun to face him. “You should keep it. It doesn’t have a huge monetary value, but it’s a lovely memory. I’d keep it if it was mine.”
Ripley had thought he didn’t want anything to remind him, but Fen was right. He slipped it into his pocket.
“Where did you find it?”
“On holiday in Dorset.” They’d had a great time. “My father gave me the hammer and told me where to hit the stone. When it broke open and we saw that, we couldn’t believe it.”
“Where was your mother?”
“South of France. She didn’t consider Dorset a holiday. It was…magic. Me and my father, just the two of us, I—”
His throat dried up as he remembered their joy on that day, the way he’d run his fingers over the ridges in the rock and listened to his father explain how the fossil had been formed. He’d pushed all those memories behind a wall in his head. Fen had knocked out a brick. He was also aware Fen hadn’t been as fortunate as him. There were no father-son trips to recall.
“Mouseman bookends.” Fen sighed as he picked one up. “They’re lovely.”
“Have them.”
Ripley spoke without thinking. He meant it but he saw it was the wrong thing to say.
“Going to take six to eight hundred pounds off the eighty thousand?”
“Of course not. You can have them.”
Fen put the bookend down. “No thanks.” He scribbled in his notebook.
“What do you think of the crystal punchbowl set?” Ripley asked. More for something to say than out of any interest.
“I don’t like it but someone will. Two hundred pounds possibly.”
“Is there anything here you’d keep if it was yours apart from the bookends?”
“If I was into ornaments, which I’m not, the Lalique fish, and the little bird.”
“What about Japanese ornaments? You don’t collect those?”
“No. I like to look, but not buy.”
Fen took a couple of pictures and made more notes.
“I’m sorry about the way my mother spoke to you, the comment about not getting better.”
Fen twisted his mouth into a wry grin. “No one has ever said that before. It made a change. Though she did ask what was ‘wrong’ with me, an expression I find irritating.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“No. You didn’t.” Fen shot him a little smile, which brought a lump to Ripley’s throat. “I’ve thought about telling people I’d been attacked by a shark but you were the first person I actually said that to.”
“Is that good?”
Fen nodded.
“I’m sorry as well,” Ripley blurted. He never blurted. “I wish I’d not said that to you on Friday.”
Fen turned to look at him. “Are you rescinding the offer?”
