“What about her?”
“She is upstairs on the sofa. I left her on the sofa.”
“I’ll go up and fetch her in a minute. Of course she’ll stay down here with us.”
Vidal closed his eyes. Connor’s chest was warm under his cheek. He worked, with a great deal of effort, on not thinking about Beauchamp, and staying focused on Connor sleeping beside him.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Thepygmy goat had been in the kitchen for twenty minutes, and nobody had yet shown any interest in removing it.
Beauchamp had counted, from his armchair in the corner of the main room, four discrete deposits of poo pellets across the flagstones: two near the Aga, one under the long oak table, one in the doorway to the boot room, where Marley’s eldest had nearly trodden in it before being scooped sideways by an aunt who hadn’t broken off her own conversation to do it. The goat itself was now tucked against Lennon’s hip on the sofa opposite, chewing methodically on the trailing fringe of a throw Helen had given Hunter a decade ago.
The dog, a long-suffering lurcher called Patti, had taken herself behind the armchair and put her chin on Beauchamp’s foot in what he understood to be a gesture of solidarity.
“Major.” Hunter swept past the back of the armchair with one of Marley’s twins on his hip and a glass of something pink in his free hand. He kissed Beauchamp on the crown of the headwithout breaking stride, and carried on towards the kitchen. “Eat something, darling. You’re glowering.”
“I’m not glowering.”
“You’re glowering with your whole face, Hendrix.”
He went on into the kitchen, where he could be heard kissing a daughter-in-law on each cheek.
Beauchamp closed his eyes for a moment.
He had arrived at the barn at half past eleven on the strength of a phone call from Helen at nine, in which she had said, with the particular brightness she used to disguise news he wouldn’t enjoy, that everyone wasdescendingand it would mean a great deal to your father if you came down, too.
Descendingnow felt like the operative word here.Descendinginto chaos.Descendinginto madness and into a state of affairs in which a goat was given free range of their father’s home.
He had got into the car on the grounds that he was three weeks into Princess Caroline’s diary and would, before long, be far too busy to be social. Better to go and see the family now, while he still could.
In the far corner, Jagger had set up a Bluetooth speaker on a stack of cookery books and was working through what sounded like one of his own demos. Two of Nicks’ children were running the length of the room with what Beauchamp identified, on the second pass, as the carving knife from the Sunday roast. He sat forward an inch in the chair before he saw the elder of them hand it off to Joplin’s husband in the doorway, who took it without comment and carried it back to the kitchen.
“Right.” Joplin lowered herself into the armchair opposite his with a glass of red and a plate of cheese balanced on the arm. “Move your feet, Patti, that’s a good girl. Hendrix, darling, you look appalling.”
“Thank you.”
“When did you last sleep properly?”
“Five years ago.”
“You look like you’ve spent three weeks lying in the dark listening to the radiators.” She popped a piece of cheddar into her mouth and chewed thoughtfully. “Dad says your secondment ended.”
“Dad needs to stop briefing his children on my postings.”
“He doesn’t brief us, darling. Dad weeps about you to anyone within earshot. You’re his tragic uncoupled baby, tamping down your grief by serving the big, bad Institution.”
Beauchamp took a measured sip of the coffee Helen had pressed on him an hour ago, which had gone cold against his palm.
“So.” Joplin settled in. “Are you seeing anybody?”
“Joplin.”
“I’m asking as your sister.”
“You’re interrogating me as a journalist.”
“I write a parenting column for the Telegraph, Hendrix, you’re hardly my usual subject. You’d have to go out and have some cock first.”
