At twenty past three, the Evans front door opened.
Patrick came down the steps in his shirtsleeves, jacket gone, with a disposable bowl balanced on top of another disposable bowl and a pair of plastic spoons stuck into the top one like flags. He crossed the road at an unhurried diagonal and came up to the driver’s side of the car, bending to rap one knuckle against Hassan’s window.
Hassan lowered it.
“Alright, lads.” Patrick’s grin was broad and easy. “Mum sent me out. Said she couldn’t sit down to pudding knowing there were two blokes freezing in a car on her street without any. There’s a bowl each. Trifle. Don’t ask what’s in it, just eat it.”
Beauchamp took the bowl that Patrick passed through the open window, balanced the spoon against the rim, andsurrendered to the fact that he was about to break standard operating procedure.
The trifle had everything in it. Custard, jelly, sponge, cream, glacé cherries, what looked like crushed meringue and a quantity of sherry that announced itself by smell before his spoon had cleared the lip of the bowl. He took a first mouthful and was hit square between the eyes by a sweetness that made the back of his teeth ache.
“Cheers, Patrick. Tell your mum thanks.”
“I’ll tell her.” Patrick didn’t seem in any hurry to go back into the house. “She’s pretty taken with your fella, you know. I’m fairly sure she loves him more than my brother does at this point, and Connor’s been her favourite for forty-odd years.”
“He has that effect on people.”
“Yeah.” Patrick studied the upstairs window. “Look, no offence to him, alright. I’ve got nothing against the gay thing. Connor’s been Connor since we were little, and Mum sorted that out about thirty years ago. Half my mates’ kids are queer these days. Not the issue.”
“Right.”
“Just…Your bloke. He’sa lot, isn’t he.”
Beauchamp set his spoon against the side of the bowl and looked up. “He’s exactly who he is.”
“No, I know. I’m not having a go.” Patrick lifted both hands in a placating gesture. “I’m just saying. He came in, he kissed my mum on both cheeks as he dumped a stack of flowers on her, and henever stopped talking. I clocked you in the car and I thought,Christ, those blokes are earning their money today.”
“He keeps us on our toes.”
Patrick was watching him. Beauchamp registered the appraisal without lifting his eyes off the trifle and took another spoonful.
“Don’t take this the wrong way, Major. I know you’re paid to look after him. But you’ve gone a bit stiff on me there.”
“I haven’t.”
“You have. Relax, mate. I’m not slagging him off. He’s good fun. The whole house has lifted six inches off the floor since he walked in. My mum’s already started knitting him a beanie, and she only knits beanies for people she’s decided to keep.”
“That’s good of her.”
“Is he like that all the time, though? Genuinely. Off the clock, in his pyjamas. Same bloke?”
Beauchamp considered the trifle.
“He is, yes.”
“Christ. Must be exhausting.”
“It can be.”
“He’s got a thing for olives, hasn’t he? He was telling Mum about the olive oil. Wouldn’t shut up about it. Kept telling her she had to throw out the bottle she had in the cupboard, and that he’d be sending her round the proper stuff, and she wasn’t to use the stuff from Tesco for the dressing because it would, and I quote,ruin her good tomatoes.”
“Fonte di Foiano.”
“What’s that, then?”
“It’s the olive oil. From a single estate in Tuscany. He had a bottle of it in his luggage the night he flew in. I have to make runs to a specialist store for it about every other week. I think His Serene Highness bathes in it.”
Patrick gave a surprised laugh. “Good for Connor then, must keep his skin nice and soft.” Patrick shook his head and pushed himself off the doorframe. “My brother’s a goner, isn’t he.”
