Alistair keeps it short but tells them everything. Elena, the cocktail, what it means. He does it in the same even, precise way he delivers every difficult piece of information—completely, clearly, and with no visible emotion whatsoever. The table receives it in various ways, and begin to eat.
Gregory listens with his head tilted, his wine glass halfway to his lips, frozen there for the duration. When Alistair finishes he sets it down and says: “The Mirror Bratva. I thought we'd seen the last of them.”
“We had,” says Alistair. “This is personal. Not organizational.”
“Ah,” says Gregory. “Worse, then.”
“Potentially.”
Isobel picks her wine up and takes a long thoughtful sip. “Well. We've survived worse.”
“We have,” says Alistair.
“Though not,” Gregory adds, “with quite so many men with guns on the lawn. Brumilde, this gravy is extraordinary.”
“Thank you, Mr. Ravenscroft,” says Brumilde, entirely unfazed.
Christopher has been very quiet throughout. He is eating steadily and looking at his plate with the focused attention of a man who is thinking about something else and using the lamb as a decoy.
“Chris,” I say.
“Mm?” He looks up with the expression of a man who has only just remembered where he is.
“You all right?”
“Absolutely,” he says, too quickly. “Fine. Yes. Completely.”
He looks back at his lamb.
“Completely,” he says again, to his plate.
Alex is in his high chair at the corner of the table, working his way through a bowl of pumpkin mush with the focused intensity. Reacher is stationed directly beneath him, correctly identifying the high chair as the highest-probability food source in the room. Bijou is on Christopher's lap, which she is not supposed to be, and everyone is pretending not to notice.
It is Henderson who breaks it, quietly, when Brumilde brings the sticky toffee pudding—which is, as Brumilde’s puddings always are, the kind of thing that makes you briefly forget whatever was troubling you.
“Eight tomorrow?” he says to Alistair.
Alistair nods.
Ariana's hand moves to her stomach. She doesn't seem to notice she's done it. She looks at Henderson and he looks back at her and the conversation they are not having is the loudest thing in the room.
“Mildew,” says Christopher, reaching for the pudding. “You are the only good thing about this family.”
“For children who behave themselves,” Brumilde says, with a look, “there is more.”
“I thought I behaved impeccably,” he replies.
They leave together—coats, keys, a round of goodnights at the door, the cold night air rushing in. Gregory with his coat on inside-out which nobody mentions. Christopher already on his phone. Ariana lifting Alex from his high chair and passing him toBrumilde, not quite looking at Henderson. Henderson not quite looking at her.
Isobel is last.
At the door she pauses and turns back. She looks at me—just me—and for a single moment her expression is something other than composed. Something warmer and more complicated and harder to look at directly. She wants to tell me something.
“Good night, Ivy,” she finally says.
“Good night, Isobel,” I reply.
The door closes softly behind them all.
