'The mural. At the school. Freddie showed me a photograph.'
Rory, who had been carrying his plate forward one bite at a time like a man crossing a rope bridge, set his own fork down.
'Did he now.'
'On his tablet. The little one Gemma got him.'
'What did you think?'
Malcolm considered the question with professional seriousness. He'd been a buyer for a wallpaper wholesaler for thirty-one years. He had a small, dry, reliable eye for pattern and colour, and nobody had ever asked him what he thought about a piece of art.
'The roots.' Malcolm paused. 'The way you've done the roots. They're not decorative. They're... structural. Like you're showing how the thing holds itself up.'
'Yes.' Rory's voice had dropped half a register. The voice he used when someone got it right. 'That's exactly it.'
'Why did you put the words into the bark. Not over it.'
'Because a tree grows round a thing. I didn't want the language to sit on top. I wanted it to be part of the surface.'
'Like rings.'
'Yes.'
'A tree records a bad winter in the ring.'
'Yes, Malcolm. That's the idea.'
Malcolm grunted. He picked up his fork again. He ate a potato. The potato was seasoned as Diane had seasoned potatoes for forty-six years and the seasoning was correct and Malcolm ate it and looked at his plate and did not look at Rory again for the rest of the main course.
Three minutes of conversation. That was the whole of it. For Malcolm Ashworth, it was a speech. Diane served Rory a second helping of roast potatoes without being asked, because Diane's language was carbohydrates, and the second helping was her part of the conversation Malcolm had just had.
Pudding was apple crumble. Freddie was allowed up. Freddie told Malcolm about blue whales having hearts the size of small cars and Malcolm saidis that rightin the voice he used for his grandson, which was a voice Neil had forgotten Malcolm had.
On the drive home, Rory did not speak until Neil had merged onto the A-road. Then, looking out at the hedgerow:
'He's trying.'
'I know.'
'The tie, Neil. The man put on a tie.'
'He did.'
'That's not nothing.'
'That's not nothing.'
The decision was Neil's.
'I want a place where neither of us has history. Where the first marks on the walls are ours.'
'Spoken like someone who'd been turning it over.'
'I've thought about nothing else.'
So, in July, they looked at seven houses. Two were too small. One carried damp. One was above a kebab shop, which Rory declared 'character' and Neil declared 'untenable.' One was beautiful but had no room for a studio. One had a studio but no room for Freddie.
The seventh was right.
