“News to me,” I said under my breath, because as far as I knew, we’d been running from a mountain of debt and other trouble, not headed towards a bright new future. Hannah slapped me on the back of the arm and gestured at me to zip it or get out.
“It’s a really good move for us,” she said, “apart from the weather.”
“Why have you called, Hannah?” I heard him say. “What do you want?”
My mother has a special voice for deal making. It’s sharp and flinty, like a rock face, like gritted teeth. She locks everything into a safe and then she opens her mouth. “Shall we meet?”
There was a pause, just quiet on the line like he was thinking about it. The way I saw it, he wasn’t exactly jumping at the chance.
“Why now?” he said.
“Don’t you want to?” Hannah put her hand over the mouthpiece and hissed, “See?” like this was proof she’d always been right about him. I got ready to be rejected all over again. I hadn’t been expecting anything different. It wasn’t even that big a deal.
“It’s not that,” he said.
“So what is it?”
“I’d need you to come here.”
I figured that was that. I was about to leave the room and get on with the rest of my Ernest-less life. Hannah told me once that Ernest lived alone in the middle of nowhere and that she’d never go back because it was just about the dullest place on earth, with no shops or Wi-Fi or bars or people or tarmac or houses. My mother was a fish out of water in a place like that, a bird of paradise in a cesspit.
“Just sheep,” she’d said, “and grass. And Ernest,” and she’d shuddered at the horror of it. “Never, ever again.”
“Why’s that?” she asked him now in an I’m-holding-all-the-cards, mountain-to-Mohammed, over-my-dead-body kind of way. “Why don’t you come to London? I thought we could meet at the Royal Academy. You can buy me tea at Fortnum’s, like you used to.”
A trip like that was beyond him. Just getting out of bed was a half-hour operation, followed by a three-hour sleep. Ernest wasn’t going anywhere. He said so.
“Bring Iris if you can,” he said. “I’d really like to get another look at her before I’m gone.”
“Another look?” I whispered. “What am I? A vase?”
“Gone?” she said, swatting me away. “Where are you going?”
“I’m sick,” he told her.
“What’s wrong with you?”
He paused. I could hear it. “Lung, liver, bone,” he said. “Oh, and brain. I forgot to say brain.”
He could have lied. He could have made something up, I suppose, but he gave it to her straight. He was dying.
I felt the base of my stomach drop out, just for a second, like it does on a rollercoaster, when you’re at the top and about to tip over and it’s too late to change your mind and go back. Thurston was always looking for that feeling. He said he went after it because he could never tell if it was the tail end of excitement or the beginning of remorse. I said maybe it was both and wasn’t that possible and he said that was exactly why he liked me, precisely how come we were friends.
Hannah’s pupils deepened like wells and she gripped the receiver harder, until her knuckles went white. She made the right noises but they didn’t match the look on her face.
“Oh God,” she said. “How long have you got?”
“Hard to tell,” I heard Ernest say. “Weeks, if I’m lucky.”
“And how long have you known?”
“Not nearly long enough.”
“And you’re sure?”
“I’m sure, Hannah,” he said. “It’s over. I’m out.”
I watched her wet her lips with the tip of her tongue, like she could taste something sweet. Hannah saw me watching and turned away. “She’s sixteen, you know,” she said, twirling at her hair with her fingers, sliding it past her teeth, checking for split ends. “Iris. Can you believe it?”
Ernest breathed for a bit, which sounded like someone walking on bubble-wrap, and then he said, “There are things I’ve been hoping to give her. Family things. It would mean a lot, to be able to tell her myself.”
It didn’t mean much to me one way or another, not back then. I was too busy working out how I was ever going to get home, worrying about how I was going to find Thurston. Family wasn’t high on my list. Blood is no thicker than water, not when you’ve been on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean for most of your life, not when the one person you care about is still over there, and not talking to you, and you haven’t had a chance to say sorry, or goodbye. Hannah looked at me, all worked up and wide-eyed, but I just shrugged.
“What things?” she said, too fast if you ask me, too hungry.
“Just some paintings.”
“Just some paintings,” she echoed through her Cheshire Cat smile.
“If she wants them.”
“Oh, Iris is into her art,” she drooled. “She’ll want them.”
“So bring her,” he said. “Come and visit.”
She used this pouting, sugar-soaked voice to shake him down. “And what do I get if I do? Are you going to make it worth my while?”
I was ashamed of her, honestly. I didn’t know where to look. And at the same time I thought maybe Ernest deserved to be played by her, that he’d made his own bed, after all. I definitely remember thinking about that.
“Let’s talk about it when you get here,” he said.
“If I get there,” Hannah hardened up again, “not when. I can’t promise, Ernest. It’s not a given. I can’t just drop everything.”
I wondered what it was she reckoned she was carrying, what it was she’d have to drop, apart from credit cards and cigarettes and gum.
There was a silence then. I heard the loose wet rattle of him sighing into the phone. Hannah counted with her fingers, slowly, for my benefit, to show she knew already how this would go. She winked at me, like we were in it together.
“You’ll be rewarded,” Ernest said. “You know how generous I can be.”
“I do,” she said.
“Come soon,” he told her. “I don’t have much time left.”
When she put the phone down she was glowing. She couldn’t wait for Lowell to get back from his audition so she could tell him the good news. Everything about the way my mother moved around the room was different after that call, lighter, like she’d just mainlined a barrel full of hope.
I asked her how come Ernest was so keen to get eyes on me all of a sudden, after so many years of nothing. I didn’t feel like humouring him. The last thing I wanted was to be the centrepiece of an old man’s guilt trip.
“Who cares?” she said. “This is good news, Iris. Don’t try and spoil it.”
“Good news how?”
“Your father,” she told me, “was a very wealthy man.”
“Is,” I said. “You just got off the phone with him. He’s not dead yet.”
“Yes, OK.” She dialled Lowell’s number, pulled a face. “Is. But he’ll be dead soon.”
I laughed. “You look human,” I told her, “but inside you’ve got to be part android.”
“Don’t