Authors: Joanna Trollope
Jasper said steadily, ‘Is any of that supposed to make what you did any better?’
Morris looked entirely undisconcerted. ‘Of course not. I didn’t tell you because I wanted to be whitewashed. I just told you how it was. How it came about. I can’t change the past. I can’t change who I was. Any more, son, than you can.’
‘Don’t call me son.’
‘Suit yourself,’ Morris said. ‘I could call you lad, like my old dad called me when I was still too small to have disappointed him yet.’
‘My name is Jasper.’
Morris grinned. ‘What a label to hang round any kid’s neck.’
Jasper said furiously, ‘You are so bloody infuriating—’
Morris held up a hand, its palm towards Jasper. ‘Peace, lad. Peace. I told you I was a nuisance.’
‘Too fucking right.’
Morris lowered his hand and put it in the pocket of his strange outer garment. He said, ‘We shouldn’t fight. We’re on the same side as far as Susan and the girls are concerned.’
‘
My
girls.’
‘I know that.’
‘My girls,’ Jasper said, ‘who are all stressed out about what to do with
you.
’
Morris looked round the room. He said, ‘If it’d help Susan to have me live here, I’ll do it. I’ll do whatever helps her. But if I was left to myself, I wouldn’t choose here.’
Jasper eyed him. ‘What d’you mean?’
‘I mean,’ Morris said, ‘that I only came back here because I knew it’s where I’d find Susan. But I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to be in Stoke, or even in Staffordshire. This place has bad memories for me, bad vibes. I’d be happy to be anywhere but here.’
Jasper crossed the room and leant against a wall. He said, ‘I thought you liked your billet with Grace’s boyfriend. I thought as long as you had bed, board and no responsibilities, that was fine by you.’
Morris sighed. He took his hand out of his pocket and looked at it, turning it over and inspecting the back, where bluish veins stood out like miniature tree roots. ‘I was getting out of Grace’s hair. I read all the runes wrong, so I did what I always do. Made myself scarce.’
‘I thought Jeff offered.’
‘He did,’ Morris said. ‘He wants to get back into Grace’s good books. But she shouldn’t let him.’
‘It’s none of your business.’
Morris said quietly, still looking at his hands, ‘She’s my granddaughter.’
Jasper took his shoulder away from the wall. He said, ‘Only in name.’
Slowly Morris raised his head and regarded his son-in-law. He put both his hands back in his pockets. He said, ‘If you could get over your temper with me, we might get somewhere.’
Jasper wandered back to the window and stared out. He said mulishly, ‘There’s nowhere to get.’
Morris waited. Then he shuffled across the room and stood beside Jasper, looking out at the garden. He said, ‘As long as I’m still breathing, lad, I’m afraid that there is. I’m here. I exist, and no amount of wishing I didn’t on your part or mine is going to make any difference. I had a bad childhood here, but I know that’s no excuse in your eyes for what I did later. But I did, it’s done, and Susan’s a marvel in spite of it – or
because
of it, neither of us will ever know. But if you could stop using all your energy telling me how atrocious a father you think I’ve been, we might have a chance of making my existence easier for Susan. And that’s what we both want, don’t we?’
‘If I fancy someone,’ Michelle said over her shoulder to Grace, ‘I’ll forgive them pretty well anything.’
Grace was at her computer. The drawings of wellington boots her mother had sent up were not, of course, compatible with the standard leg lengths or widths of the manufacturer who was interested in using their designs. The company was English, but the boots themselves were made in China,
inevitably. What Susie wanted could be made closer to home – in France, as it happened, by a superior company who offered eight calf widths for every shoe size, but the figures made no sense, even if they agreed to take Susie’s designs. The English company was cheaper, less specialized, and resistant to some of Susie’s design requests. There were battles ahead. She said distantly in reply, ‘I don’t fancy Jeff.’
‘Yes, you do,’ Michelle said. ‘You’d have to be off another planet not to.
I
do. Ben does. Don’t you, Ben?’
Ben gave no indication he had even heard her. Michelle went on, ‘Ben’s pretending not to hear me.’
‘Get back to work,’ Grace said.
‘I am working. I’m just talking while I work. I have the spec of the new cat design just about there. Ben wouldn’t eat any of Jeff’s chocolate truffles because Ben wants to stay slim and lovely for someone just like Jeff, don’t you, Ben?’
‘Don’t answer her,’ Grace said. ‘Ignore her. Shut your offensive mouth.’
Ben said, ‘The cat design doesn’t look right on the dinner plates. It’s too big. Maybe just the rim—’
‘I ate the whole box,’ Michelle said. ‘They were amazing. I allowed myself two a day. I’d rather have had Jeff, though.’
‘Have him,’ Grace said.
Michelle turned round from her screen. She said, ‘You’re joking.’
‘No, she’s not,’ Ben said. ‘I’m not.’
‘But he’s part of the family! Your granddad’s living there—’
‘That’s neither here nor there.’
Michelle got up from her chair. ‘I bet Jeff thinks it is.’
‘Well, he’s wrong.’
Michelle came across to Grace’s computer. She said, ‘What’s got into you?’
‘Resolve,’ Ben said. ‘Unlike you. Anybody’s for a box of chocolates.’
‘Jeff isn’t anybody.’
‘He’s nobody,’ Ben said. ‘Being hot isn’t enough, in the long run.’
‘What would you know?’
Ben turned round. He said, ‘Look at Grace.’
‘I am.’
‘How does she look?’
Michelle considered. Then she said, ‘OK, actually.’
‘Not like she did a month ago?’
‘Can I join in?’ Grace said.
‘Not yet,’ Ben said. He looked at Michelle. ‘Grace looks better?’
‘Sort of – yeah, she does.’
‘No Jeff for most of the time,’ Ben said. ‘All kinds of upsets, like her granddad, but not much date time with Jeff.’
Michelle said to Grace, ‘Are you just going to let him nick your boyfriend?’
Grace stared at her screen in silence.
Ben said slightly scornfully, ‘Jeff’s straight.’
Michelle bent closer to Grace. She said, ‘You’re never going to dump him. Lose the fittest man in Stoke and put your own grandfather out on the street?’
Grace didn’t turn. She moved her computer mouse to adjust something. Then she said, ‘If you don’t get back to work, you’ll find there isn’t any work to get back to.’
Michelle gave a yelp of laughter. ‘Who says?’
Grace glanced up at her. She wasn’t smiling. ‘I do,’ she said.
There was a sudden and faintly alarming silence.
‘Wow,’ Michelle said.
‘Goodness,’ Susie said. ‘Are you still here?’
Ashley was at her computer in an otherwise empty office.
Cara and Dan had left half an hour ago, saying that they were going to the gym.
Ashley didn’t look up. ‘It was a Bicester day,’ she said. ‘I only got back at four.’
‘And?’
‘Good,’ Ashley said. ‘We did a spring-sale mailshot for Bicester, and their sales were up eight per cent last week. Six mugs for the price of five shifted over three hundred.’
‘Excellent,’ Susie said. ‘Well done. That was a good sale catalogue.’
Ashley focussed on her screen to turn it off. ‘Ma?’
‘Yes?’
‘I want to talk to you about catalogues, actually.’
‘I rather wanted,’ Susie said, ‘to talk to
you
about your father.’
Ashley looked up at her. ‘Why? What’s he done?’
Susie perched on the edge of Ashley’s desk. ‘I think it’s what
I
’ve done. Or haven’t done.’
‘In what way?’
‘Grace has taken him up to Stoke with her. To meet Morris and see the cottage. They only rang to tell me once they were on the train. And they don’t seem to think they’re the ones in the wrong. I feel hurt, and I’m puzzled.’
Ashley leant back and folded her arms. She said sympathetically, ‘Oh, Ma.’
Susie said, ‘It’s so weird, being in Radders with no one there except a sulking parrot who won’t even look at me.’
‘Why didn’t you say? Why didn’t you come round to ours?’
Susie fiddled with a pencil lying on Ashley’s desk. ‘I don’t seem to feel very fit for company. I didn’t want to talk about it, somehow. It made me feel a bit – wobbly. But I’m certain, at the same time. I mean certain about the business.’
‘Pa did need to meet Morris.’
‘I know.’
‘And see the cottage.’
‘He’ll hate it,’ Susie said. ‘And he’ll hate Morris. It’s an awful idea, it’s a disaster. I don’t know what got into Grace. I can’t think why she didn’t tell me.’
Ashley looked straight ahead at her blank screen. She said, ‘I wouldn’t have told you, either. And I think she’s right. You can’t control everything. You can’t just connect with Pa when it suits you.’
There was a pause. Then Susie said, ‘He likes his own life. He likes his freedom as much as I do.’
Ashley looked at her watch. ‘Ma, I should go. Do you want to continue this in the car?’
Susie got off the desk. ‘Not the way it seems to be going, no.’
‘You mean my not instantly agreeing with you?’
Susie said sadly, ‘It’s more complicated than that. I wanted your father uncontaminated by Morris, for one thing.’
Ashley began to drop things into her handbag. ‘He’s not
that
awful!’
‘That’s not what you thought when we were up in Stoke.’
‘I’m getting used to the idea of him. We all are. Anyway, he’s … having an effect on everyone.’
‘That is partly what I’m afraid of,’ Susie said.
Ashley stood up. ‘I didn’t mean that. I meant he’s having an effect on our dynamic. We all seem to have moved round in the dance a bit.’
‘I know,’ Susie said. ‘And it isn’t good.’
‘But it is,’ Ashley said. She hoisted her bag on to her shoulder and flipped her laptop shut before sliding it into her workbag.
‘Ash?’
‘We’re – all a bit different,’ Ashley said. ‘All of us. It’s good. Grace. Leo and me.’
‘Leo?’
‘Looking after the children. Sacking the nanny. Like I told you.’
Susie said faintly, ‘Like Pa—’
‘No,’ Ashley said, ‘not like Pa. Things are different now. It’s different for men at home these days.’
‘Oh.’
‘And Ma—’
‘What?’
‘Another thing,’ Ashley said, moving away from her desk. ‘While we’re talking about change, there’s something else Leo and I were discussing. We talked it over with Grace at the weekend. And Cara and Dan think it’s a good idea. It’s about the children’s catalogue.’
‘Oh?’
‘I think that it should be shot at our house this time. With Maisie and Fred. We need a new setting for the family shots – we’ve done Radders to death, don’t you think?’ She reached the door and smiled back at her mother. ‘I just thought I’d mention it, so you can think it over. OK?’
Polynesia had not touched the sunflower seeds or the out-of-season blackberries that Susie had left for her that morning. She was at the far end of her perch, against the bars of her cage, staring out of the French windows at the wet garden. She looked smaller somehow, and faintly bedraggled, as if her feathers were damp.
‘He’ll be home tomorrow,’ Susie said. ‘He’ll be back. Perhaps we’ll both have a lot to say to him.’
Polynesia shrank her head down into her neck and closed her eyes.
‘Please eat something, at least,’ Susie said, indicating the blackberries. ‘Don’t give him something else to be fed up with me about.’
Polynesia swivelled her head and opened one eye. Then she
yawned, showing her little black darting tongue, and closed her eye again.
Susie returned to the kitchen table, where she had left a mug of tea. A feeling, not of liberation, to which she was accustomed, but of isolation was threatening to overwhelm her. It had been coming on stealthily, ever since Jasper had telephoned from the train to Stoke the day before, and the conversation with Ashley had unleashed the final wave of it. Under normal circumstances, her reaction would have been to go up to Stoke immediately, to head straight for the factory and reassure herself of her significance there, her effectiveness, her centrality to the whole purpose and success of the enterprise. But she couldn’t do that, not tonight. Jasper was up there, with Grace. Jasper had seen the Parlour House and met Morris, and had neither rung nor texted afterwards. When she had rung him, his phone went straight to voicemail. Grace had answered her phone, but had said that she hadn’t seen her father and that she was going out for a drink with Neil before she went home. She’d been as sweet as ever, but had declined to, well,
engage
with her mother, not by being obstructive but merely by being elusive. Ashley was at home with her family. Cara and Dan were at the gym and were then going out for a Chinese. They had suggested Susie join them, but she had felt reluctant to agree. So here she was, in Radipole Road, alone and … and lonely. There was no getting away from it. That’s what she was. Lonely. She glanced across at the parrot cage.
‘Please?’ she said again.
H
ey!’ Leo said in surprise. ‘Come on in!’
‘I should have rung,’ Jasper said.
Leo stood aside, holding the front door open. On the floor behind him, Fred was sitting up on his padded bottom, jiggling excitedly at the sight of his grandfather.
Jasper stooped to pick him up. ‘Hi there, Freddy.’
Fred hit him lightly with the plastic brick he was holding.
Leo said, ‘What brings you here?’
Jasper took the brick out of Freddy’s hand. ‘Just passing.’
‘Really? Coffee?’
‘Please,’ Jasper said, and then to Fred, ‘You’re all dribble.’
‘He’s teething,’ Leo said. ‘Poor Fred.’
Jasper kissed his grandson’s forehead. ‘Poor little sod. Hard to find a dry bit to kiss.’
Leo went ahead of Jasper down the basement stairs at speed, calling over his shoulder, ‘‘Scuse the mess!’
‘Can’t see it.’
‘I decided I’d get resentful if I tidied up all the time.’
Jasper came carefully down the stairs behind him, carrying Fred. He said, ‘Resentful of Ashley?’
‘Well, it might have manifested itself like that. And I didn’t want it to,’ said Leo.
Jasper reached the bottom of the stairs and stooped to set Fred down. ‘Have your brick back now, Freddy.’
Fred turned away, ignoring the proffered brick, and began to crawl rapidly towards the television.
‘He wants the remote,’ Leo said. ‘What is it about buttons and sockets and switches and kids?’
‘I think,’ Jasper said, ‘it’s just a reaction to always being given what society thinks is age appropriate. At any age.’
‘Kettle or machine?’
‘Kettle. I like a big cafetière of the old-fashioned stuff.’
Leo carried the kettle to the sink, stepping over the toys and clothes on the floor. He said, ‘I drink so much coffee-shop coffee these days.’
Jasper was watching Fred pull himself up on the low table by the television. He said affectionately, ‘You boys together. Always out.’
‘Actually,’ Leo said, ‘it’s our new social circle.’ He put the kettle back on its power pad and switched it on. ‘Maisie’s school mothers.’
‘Yummy mummies?’
‘Only some of them,’ Leo said.
They both laughed.
‘Good for you.’
‘Actually,’ Leo said again, ‘I made a bad start. I just kind of funked even talking to them. But I did a coffee-shop thing the other day, and it was weird but it was OK in the end. In fact, I quite liked it.’
Jasper moved to retrieve the remote control from Fred. He said casually, ‘Is that dangerous?’
Fred roared.
Jasper put the DVD control into his hand instead. ‘I imagine the DVD isn’t switched on?’
‘No,’ Leo said. ‘And no to the other, as well. I’m not in the market for straying.’
Fred thumped down into a sitting position, clutching the second remote.
‘Sorry,’ Jasper said.
‘It’s OK.’
‘I’m just always a bit sensitive about – well, you know, I’m Ashley’s father.’
‘And I’m her husband. I suggested this arrangement.’
Jasper looked up. He said, ‘I shouldn’t have said what I did …’
‘No. I’m not a cliché, Jas. Any more than you are. I’m not out to punish Ashley for earning more than I ever will. I’m just trying to get the hang of keeping the domestic show on the road.’
There was a small silence, broken only by the bubbling of the kettle. Then Leo said, ‘You OK?’
Jasper made a face. ‘Yes and no.’
The kettle switched itself off. Leo rummaged in a cupboard for mugs, his back to his father-in-law. He said, ‘Want to talk about it?’
‘Not really.’
‘Suit yourself. How was Stoke?’
There was a further silence. Jasper sat down on the low table next to Fred, who was frowning at the remote and determinedly pressing its buttons. Then he said, with deliberate energy, ‘It was good. I went round the factory. I haven’t been round the factory in five years. It was amazing how many of the same people are still there – same old faces. Lovely, really. I found myself promising to go and do a gig up there some time. Of course, there’s a worry about the future, about the skills gap. The girl apprentices will stay on the whole, but they have awful trouble keeping the boys. They’ll do three or four mornings and then they won’t get up. They can’t take the discipline of an early start – it’s easier to stay on benefits than get up at five in the morning and learn a skill.’
Leo carried the cafetière and a couple of mugs over to the table where Jasper was sitting. Fred looked up at his approach and grunted urgently.
‘What’s up with you, Freddy?’ said Jasper.
‘He wants a biscuit,’ Leo said. ‘Coffee for us means a biscuit for him. He thinks.’
‘Can he have one?’
‘No. He can have a carrot or an apple.’
Jasper looked down at his grandson. ‘Poor old Freddy.’
Leo said, ‘What about the cottage?’
Freddy gave an experimental roar. Leo went across to the fridge, opened it and took out a packet of carrot sticks. He extracted one and held it out to Fred. Fred looked outraged and glared at his grandfather. Leo said, ‘It’s all you’re getting.’
‘Wow,’ Jasper said to Fred. ‘Tough old daddy love.’
Fred began to wail.
‘Ignore him,’ Leo said. He put the carrots back in the fridge. ‘Bring your coffee over to the big table.’ He picked up the coffee pot and his own mug. ‘What did you think of Susie’s cottage?’
Jasper followed him, leaving Fred indignantly on the floor by the television. He said carefully, ‘Her vision. Her need. Her thing, you know.’
‘So you didn’t like it?’
‘I’m no good outside a city. I can’t see rural potential.’
‘So you didn’t like it,’ Leo repeated.
Jasper shifted his mug, not looking at his son-in-law.
‘Not my thing. No, I suppose I didn’t.’
‘Nor did Ashley,’ Leo said, ‘if that’s any comfort.’
Jasper was still staring at his coffee mug. He said, ‘I don’t want to fan flames.’
‘So you’ll say nothing? To Susie?’
‘Not sure yet.’
Leo got up from his chair and went to stoop over his son
and fish something from his mouth. He held it up. ‘A hazelnut. Where did he find a hazelnut, for God’s sake? We haven’t had hazelnuts in the house since Christmas. Jas, what have you come to say?’
Jasper gave his coffee a nudge. He said, ‘I was getting to that.’
‘It’s taking you a bloody long time.’
‘I’ve got a suggestion …’
‘Have you? For me?’
‘Well, yes.’
Leo came back to the table and sat down, dropping the hazelnut into a nearby bowl left over from breakfast. He said, ‘Come on!’
Jasper turned his head slowly and looked at him. ‘You might think I’m off my trolley.’
‘Try me.’
‘Brace yourself,’ Jasper said. ‘It’s about Morris.’
Cara lay on the sofa in the sitting-room part of their large open-plan flat. It was an Italian sofa, which she and Dan had spent as much time researching and sourcing as they had his bike. It was angular and sleek, upholstered in soft dark-blue fabric, with brushed-steel legs, and it was long enough for Dan to lie on although he was more than six feet tall. So Cara could stretch out quite flat, as she was now, her head on a cushion, staring out at the twilight sky visible behind the roofs and chimney pots of the houses behind their block of flats. It was a greyish-mauve sky, without stars, and every few minutes an aeroplane crossed it, surprisingly slowly, with winking red and white lights and a roar of engine noise subdued by double glazing.
Dan was out. He was having yet another meeting with the management consultancy – oiled this time by alcohol. The man who had started the consultancy had been a colleague
of Dan’s in their early years at a major chainstore, so there was the advantage of mutual liking and respect, and the disadvantage of embarrassment over the number of delays and cancellations there’d been in arranging meetings with Susie Sullivan pottery. Dan had first approached Rick about how to expand the company, as well as rebranding it – this being Rick’s new area of expertise – without losing core customers or the integrity of the initial vision. The company, Dan felt, was stuck. Not irrevocably, but halted at a crossroads. He had wanted Cara to go with him for a drink with Rick that evening, but she had said that he should go alone.
‘Because you think it would be better if it was just me and him?’ Dan had said. ‘Or because you don’t want to?’
Cara had hesitated. Then she’d said, ‘Both, actually.’
Dan had opened his mouth to protest.
‘Please,’ Cara had said, holding her hands up, as if at gunpoint. ‘Don’t push me, don’t ask me. Just go. Give him my love.’
Dan had leant forward and kissed her cheek. ‘OK.’
‘Thank you.’
He’d regarded her. ‘You all right?’
She’d nodded. ‘I’m fine. I’ll be fine.’
‘I’ll pick up something on my way back. Chinese?’
Cara had smiled at him. ‘Japanese,’ she said, and then again, ‘Thank you.’
So, here she was, on the sofa, Laura Marling on the iPod, green tea cooling in a mug beside her. Her mother was in town, as was Ashley. Grace was back in Stoke, with their father. She had no impulse to ring any of them; no desire to. She didn’t even, she realized, have any curiosity about them, about what the current difficulty was between her parents, or what her father had made of Morris or the Parlour House, or what Leo felt about being a house husband, or the state of Grace’s love life. It wasn’t that she didn’t care. It was more,
right then and there, lying on the sofa with Laura Marling singing softly in her ear, that she couldn’t reach caring. It was as if, just for the moment, she was detached from all of them, like a helium balloon that’s escaped its tether and gone bobbing up into the clouds, above all the busyness. I can see them all, Cara thought, but I can’t hear them. And it isn’t bothering me.
Very occasionally, in childhood and adolescence, she had felt like that. In the middle of the hubbub of family life – in the middle, even, of organizing her sisters’ lives, which she had always been renowned for – she had suddenly felt detachment drop on her like a magic invisible cloak, distancing her from everything that was going on. When she was very young it had slightly frightened her, but she grew to tolerate and then to welcome it, this feeling of stepping out of the heat and din and action into a cool, calm place where one could just unaffectedly
be.
Her mother, for all her remarkable energy, could always create that effect, it seemed, just with her presence. The house would be in uproar, all those years ago – full of all of them, full of schoolfriends, full of music – and Susie would return, slam the door behind her, shout ‘Home!’ and the whirling kaleidoscope would still, and order would return.
Cara turned her head and looked at her mug. If she were to drink some tea, it would mean rearing up from the cushion to a sitting position, taking out her earphones, and reaching for the mug. From where she lay, that whole procedure just seemed to be too much trouble. She was quite content without tea, anyway; quite content just to lie there and think about drinking it sometime soon, when the prospect of sitting up seemed less of an effort.
She had loved it when her mother was at home, loved it to the point of craving it. When she was a child, she had always longed for Susie’s return, and felt an immediate settling of
internal anxieties once she was back. But as adolescence dawned, so did a whole range of new feelings – feelings that were very much less docile and manageable. She had felt fury and resentment towards this other, clearly imperative element in Susie’s life, which presented such an irresistible alternative to the family. Her early teens were spent in a turmoil of hotly defending Susie in public, while raging at her in private: raging at her mother finding anything more compelling than her children; raging at what she saw as the bitter, unfair consequence of Susie’s choice – namely that she, Cara, as the eldest, had to do so much to compensate for Susie’s absences.
Jasper had been wonderful. He really had. He had been the most assiduous of fathers, the most loyal of husbands. Even at her most furious, Cara had known that she would only redouble the injustice of the situation if she took out her rage on him. And to take it out on Susie was simply pointless. Susie was impervious. Smiling, steady, consistently affectionate when around, and unreachable when not, Susie had been impregnable. So Cara, incapable of shaking Susie’s implacability about her work–life balance, had retreated to her own occasional detachment. Better in the end, surely, to distance yourself than to bloody your knuckles hammering on a door that would never open.
She remembered thinking, when she was about sixteen, that she hated the very idea of high-achieving women, that she wasn’t remotely interested in equal opportunities, and that, given her looks and her determination, she would marry a very rich man and spend her life without needing to prove herself to anyone. But her brain wouldn’t, in the end, allow her to surrender to this vision. Her own mental energy and appetite, her own urge for achievement wouldn’t let her rest for long in dreamy contemplation of a gilded cage. She found herself with excellent A-level results, and a propelling
force in her personality which could only be called ambition.
So here she was, qualified, capable and effective, beached on the expensive Italian sofa that she had paid for out of money she had earned. The same could be said of the shoes kicked off on the floor beside the sofa and all the technology that lay within her reach – all those screens and gadgets of communication – as well as the copper pans hanging over in the kitchen, and indeed the very flat itself. She had taken advantage of everything that her mother had offered, and had harnessed her own talents to those considerable opportunities, to great effect. She had brought Dan into the company – possibly the best thing that had ever happened to the business, after Susie herself – and between them, they were responsible for most of the innovation and growth that had got the company to where it was today.
She shifted a little. The sky through the big window was now dark and reddish, the planes distinguishable only by their wing- and tail-lights and the peculiar high roar of their engines. Dan would be back soon, bringing those crackling translucent bags that the local Japanese takeaway packed their fragrant food into, and with him would come news of his meeting and the accompanying resultant energy, as well as affirmation of their chosen view of the future. Dan’s return would be both reassuring and confirming. And it might signal a new start for Cara, something of a breakthrough. It came to her, with a little thrill of excitement, that she might be able to let go of being constantly angry with Susie, if she didn’t work alongside her any more.