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stay.’
    He’d reached them. He got off the bike, took off his helmet and finger-combed his hair. Abercrombie gestured for him to join them. He unzipped his jacket, took it off and hung it across the back of his chair. Francesca poured him coffee. He smiled a thank you and raised the cup to his lips. She noticed a slight tremor in his hand. It could have been caused by the vibration of the bike, but she didn’t think it was.
    ‘How’s our yew?’
    ‘Lonely.’
    ‘But healthy? Flourishing?’
    Curtis paused before replying. He said, ‘It looks like it belongs there. It looks at home.’
    ‘No downside, Tree Man?’
    ‘Not with the yew. I think you might have a wildlife issue, though.’
    ‘No way,’ Abercrombie said.
    ‘Something large and feral.’
    ‘A beastie? We’re a long way from Bodmin Moor, brother.’
    ‘I’d take the Beast of Bodmin over whatever it was I heard in the fog this morning.’
    When her father next spoke it was in his real voice, the one underneath the hippie vernacular, the one Francesca remembered having heard maybe half-a-dozen times in her adult life. The last time, it had been to break to her the news of her mother’s death. And that had been five years ago.
    ‘I’m dying, Tom. This project is important to me. It will very likely be the last thing I ever do.’ He reached for his daughter’s hand. ‘Don’t run out on us.’
    ‘I’m going to London,’ Curtis said. ‘I’ll be back tomorrow evening. I’m not running out on anyone, but when I get back, I’d like answers to some of the questions this place is posing.’
    ‘You’ll have them,’ Abercrombie said, ‘if I know them. Word of honour, you will.’
    Curtis nodded and rose to go. To his retreating back, Abercrombie said, ‘There’s a little something in your room, Tree Man, in a bag on the bed. Let’s call it a down payment.’

THREE
    S he said, ‘I’m surprised you haven’t asked to see her yet. It’s almost twenty minutes since you arrived.’
    ‘She isn’t here.’
    ‘Your self-control is quite something. Don’t you want to see your daughter?’
    ‘She isn’t here, Sarah. You wouldn’t have agreed to see me if she was.’
    ‘I probably would have, just not here. I would have insisted on neutral ground.’
    ‘What do you think of my proposal?’
    She looked at the open bag on the table between them, at the money it contained. It was so quiet in the sitting room of the home they used to share that Curtis could hear rain beat on the window almost one heavy drop at a time.
    ‘Where do you think she is?’
    He stood and went over to the window. What used to be his family were housed in a gated development. The view outside was sterile, rows of parked cars in identical drives, white paintwork and trim lawns and sycamore saplings in a tame row, everything wet. He said, ‘It’s half-term. I expect she’s enjoying a sleepover somewhere with a friend. Not here, not a neighbour. You’ll have put her a safe distance away.’
    ‘How much is in the bag?’
    ‘Nineteen thousand pounds. Walking around money, he calls it. I kept a thousand for the actual walking around. That’s the balance.’
    ‘What’s he like?’
    ‘You’ve heard of him?’
    ‘Everyone has. He went to prison after that student protest in Red Lion Square. He was fashionably militant, back in the day. They tried to link him in court to the Red Brigades and the Baader-Meinhof Group. But it was the seventies, the days when police routinely fitted people up. He’s certainly proven since he’s no anti-capitalist.’
    ‘What else?’
    ‘What I just said. Conspicuous consumption is the phrase, isn’t it? Drugs, hostess bars in south-east Asia, casinos, mansions, all the paraphernalia of being rich when you’re not a family man.’
    ‘He has a daughter.’
    ‘So do lots of men. Paternity is different from parenting. It’s just biology.’
    ‘He’s dying.’
    ‘What are you doing for him, exactly?’
    ‘It’s a secret. I