BetterthanBob 8 страница

All that, and now this. If it was true that Tucker Crowe was in Gooleness—staying in his old house —then he had many other reasons to mourn the temporary desertion of his critical faculties. If he hadn’t been so irritated by Annie’s indifference, they might not have split up, and they might have met Tucker together. If he’d posted the same kind of review that Annie had written, Tucker might have e-mailed him. It was all too much, really. He’d lived his whole life cautiously, and on the one occasion when he’d screwed his caution up into a ball and thrown it to the wind it had ended like this. (And there was Gina, too, of course, which was another narrative strand in the same story. Gina was, metaphorically, Naked, and her literal nakedness, or the offer of it, had only served to underline the aptness of the metaphor. He’d jumped too quickly there, too. )

Most of his adult life he’d wanted to meet Tucker Crowe, or at least to be in the same room, and here he was, possibly on the verge of realizing that ambition, and he was scared. If Tucker had read Annie’s piece, then the chances were he’d have read Duncan’s, too. Presumably he’d hated it, and hated its author. Tucker Crowe knows who I am, thought Duncan, and he hates me! Is that possible? Surely he’d recognize and appreciate the passion for the work, at least. Wouldn’t he? Or would he hate that, too? It would be better for everyone if, after all, Annie were playing some kind of cruel and juvenile trick. He turned toward Gina’s place for a second time, thought better of it again.

And in the middle of all these doubts and anxieties, all this self-loathing, Duncan found himself trying to think of test questions that would either prove Tucker was who he said he was or expose him as a fraud. It was difficult, though. Duncan had to concede that Tucker Crowe was an even greater authority on the subject of Tucker Crowe than Duncan Thomson. If he were to ask him, say, who played that pedal steel on “And You Are? ” and Tucker insisted that it wasn’t Sneaky Pete Kleinow, that the album sleeve was wrong, then who was he to argue? Tucker would know, surely. He could win those arguments every time. No, he needed something different, something that only the two of them could possibly know about. And he thought he had it.

When Annie saw Duncan skulking on the other side of her front hedge, obviously trying to summon up the courage necessary to knock on what was, until comparatively recently, his own front door, and trying to peek through the window without anybody noticing, she almost hooted at the irony. Less than two hours before, she’d been quietly lamenting his lack of passion for her, her inability to provoke in him the desire to hide behind her hedge trying to catch a glimpse of her; and now here he was, doing exactly that. And then very quickly she realized that there was no irony here at all. Duncan was hiding behind her hedge because Tucker Crowe was in her kitchen. She was still not enough, in exactly the same way she hadn’t been enough before.

She opened the front door.

“Duncan! Don’t be an idiot. Come in. ”

“I’m sorry. I was just…” And then, unable to come up with any plausible explanation for his behavior, he shrugged and walked down the path into the house. Jackson was at the kitchen table, drawing, and Tucker was frying bacon for their brunch.

“Hello again, ” said Duncan.

“Hello there, ” said Tucker.

“There is a possibility that I might perhaps owe you an apology, ” said Duncan.

“Okay, ” said Tucker. “And when will you know for sure? ”

“Well, it’s all very difficult, isn’t it? ”

“Is it? ”

“I’m beginning to think that there’s no real reason for you to tell me you’re Tucker Crowe if you’re not. ”

“That’s a good start. ”

“But as I’m sure Annie has explained… I’m a, a long-term admirer of your work, and for some years now I’ve been under the impression that you don’t look like that. ”

“That’s Fucker, ” said Jackson, without looking up from his drawing. “Fucker is our friend Farmer John. A man took a photo of him and told everyone it was Daddy. ”

“Right, ” said Duncan. “Well. I can see how… It’s plausible, I grant you. ”

“Thanks, ” said Tucker, genially. “If it helps, I have a passport. ”

Duncan looked stunned

“Oh, ” said Duncan. “I hadn’t thought about that. ”

“Sorry to disappoint you, ” said Tucker. “You were probably thinking more along the lines of some exhaustive trivia questions. But there’s your world, which is full of, you know, rumor and conspiracy theories and scary photos of people who aren’t me. And there’s my world, which is all passports and PTA meetings and insurance claims. It’s pretty banal in my world. There’s plenty of paperwork. ”

Tucker went to a jacket hanging over the arm of a chair, and pulled his passport out from the inside pocket.

“There. ” He handed it to Duncan.

Duncan flicked through it.

“Yes. Well. That all seems to be in order. ”

Annie and Tucker burst out laughing. Duncan looked startled, and then forced a smile.

“Sorry. That probably sounded a little officious. ”

“You want to see Jackson’s? I can see you might think that I’ve forged this one. But would I go to all the trouble of forging a passport for a kid just so he has the same last name as me? ”

“Can I use your loo, Annie? ” said Duncan. And he left the room, without receiving permission.

“I think he’s a little overcome, ” said Annie. “He needs to recover his composure. Try and be nice to him. Just remember: this is the most amazing moment of his life. ”

When Duncan came back in, Tucker gave him a big bear hug.

“It’s okay, ” Tucker said. “Everything’s okay. ”

Annie laughed, but Duncan held on a little too long, and she could see that he had his eyes closed.

“Duncan! ” she said. And then, to make it sound as though she wasn’t telling him off, “Do you want to eat with us? ”

They chatted, as best they could, while toast was buttered and eggs were scrambled. Annie could have kissed Tucker: he could see how nervous Duncan was, and he was asking him questions—about the town, his work, the kids at the college—that he seemed reasonably sure Duncan could answer without crying. There was a tremble in Duncan’s voice whenever he spoke, and he was adopting a slightly over-formal register for the occasion, and sometimes he’d giggle for no apparent reason, but most of the time it was possible to imagine that the four of them were participating in a casual weekend social occasion, the sort of thing they’d all done before and might do again.

Annie could have kissed Tucker for lots of other reasons, too. It struck her that everybody in her kitchen loved him with some degree of intensity. (Everybody else, anyway—she knew him well enough to understand that he wasn’t too keen on himself. ) Jackson’s love was the most neurotic and needy, but well within the realms of the normal, as far as she could remember from her child psychology classes; Duncan’s was weird and obsessive; and hers… She could characterize it as a crush, or the beginnings of something deeper, or the pathetic fantasy of an increasingly lonely woman, or the recognition that she needed to sleep with someone before the decade was out, and sometimes she thought of it as all of these things at once, and she always wished that she hadn’t told him off so often over the previous twenty-four hours. And yes, he’d needed it, sort of, but only if he were to stay in the world he’d stepped into. There’d been a subtext to the scoldings: if you’re going to live with me in Gooleness, then you have to do right by your family. That’s how we do things around here. But seeing as he wasn’t going to live with her in Gooleness, what business was it of hers? It was like telling Spider-Man not to climb up buildings while he was here, because of health and safety. She was missing the point of him.

The social occasion soon fell, inevitably, into something else, mostly because every single thing that either Jackson or Tucker said either confirmed or disproved theses that Duncan had been constructing for years.

“Well, ” said Duncan, as they sat down. “This looks nice. ”

“My sister doesn’t eat bacon, ” said Jackson, and Annie could see Duncan wrestling with himself: What was he allowed to ask?

“Have you got other brothers and sisters, Jackson? ” he asked eventually, presumably on the grounds that to ask nothing at all would be rude.

“Yeah. Four. But they don’t live with me. They have different moms. ”

Duncan choked on a piece of toast.

“Oh. Well. That’s…”

“And none of the moms is named Julie, ” said Tucker.

“Ha! ” said Duncan. “We’d rather given up on that theory anyway. ”

Jackson looked at the men, uncomprehending.

“Don’t worry about it, Jack, ” said Tucker.

“Okay. ”

“I took Tucker and Jackson into the museum this morning, ” said Annie. There was very little neutral ground for them to clamber on, in this conversation, seeing as every little detail about Tucker’s personal life would offer a life-threatening level of excitement. “Showed them the shark’s eye. Do you remember me telling you about that? ”

“Yes, ” said Duncan. “Indeed. Your exhibition must be opening soon. ”

“Wednesday. ”

“I must try and get along to see it. ”

“We’re having a little drinks reception for it on Tuesday night. Nothing much. Just a few councillors, and the Friends. ”

“You should get Tucker to sing, ” said Duncan. It was going to be impossible, Annie could see that now. Duncan might only ever get one shot at this and he wasn’t going to waste it.

“Yes, ” said Annie. “I’m sure that, if Tucker wanted to break his twenty-year silence, then the Gooleness Seaside Museum would be the most appropriate venue. ”

Tucker laughed. Duncan looked down at his plate.

“I’d enjoy it, anyway. I… I don’t know what Annie’s told you, but I really am a very big admirer of your work. I’m… Well, I don’t think it would be overstating the case were I to describe myself as a world expert. ”

“I’ve read your stuff, ” said Tucker.

“Oh, ” said Duncan. “Gosh. I… Well, you can tell me where I’ve gone wrong. ”

“I wouldn’t know where to start, ” said Tucker.

“Would you maybe like to do an interview? To set the record straight? You’ve possibly seen the website, so you know you’d get a fair hearing. ”

“Duncan, ” said Annie. “Don’t start. ”

“Sorry, ” said Duncan.

“There isn’t a record, ” said Tucker. “There’s me and my life, and fifteen people like you who have for reasons best known to yourselves spent too much time guessing what that life is. ”

“I suppose that’s what it must look like. From your perspective. ”

“I’m not sure there’s another one. ”

“We could limit the questions to the songs. ”

“Don’t push it, Duncan, ” said Annie. “I don’t think Tucker’s keen on the idea. ”

“Was I right, by the way? ” said Tucker. “Did you have some questions that you thought would prove that I am who I said I was? ”

“I… Well, yes. I did have one. ”

“Hit me. I want to see if I know my own life. ”

“It’s possibly… I’m wondering whether it’s possibly too invasive. ”

“Is it something I’d have to send Jackson out of the room for? ”

“Oh, no. It’s just… Well, it’s silly really. I was going to ask you who else you’ve drawn, apart from Julie Beatty. ”

Annie could feel the drop in temperature. Duncan had said something he shouldn’t have said, although she didn’t understand why he shouldn’t have said it.

“What makes you so sure I drew her? ”

“I can’t divulge my sources. ”

“Your sources are no good. ”

“I respectfully beg to differ. ”

Tucker put down his knife and fork.

“What is it with you guys? Why do you think you know stuff, when you know nothing at all about anything? ”

“Sometimes we know more than you think. ”

“Doesn’t sound like it to me. ”

Duncan was suddenly unable to make eye contact with anyone at the table, which in Annie’s experience was the first sign that he was losing his temper. His anger was so carefully and closely managed that it only came out through the wrong holes.

“It’s a lovely drawing, the one of Julie. You’re good. I’ll bet she doesn’t smoke anymore, though. ”

That last detail was triumphantly delivered, but the triumph was diminished by Tucker standing up, reaching across the table and lifting Duncan up by the neck of his Graceland T-shirt. Duncan looked terrified.

“You went into her house? ”

Annie remembered the day Duncan had gone out to Berkeley. He’d come back to the hotel in a peculiar mood, flustered and a little evasive; that night he’d even told her that he felt his Tucker Crowe obsession was waning.

“Only to use the toilet. ”

“She invited you in to use her toilet? ”

“Tucker, please put him down, ” said Annie. “You’re frightening Jackson. ”

“He’s not, ” said Jackson. “It’s cool. I don’t like that guy anyway. Punch him, Dad. ”

The request was enough to loosen Tucker’s grip on Duncan.

“That’s not nice, Jackson, ” said his father.

“No, it isn’t, ” said Duncan.

Tucker shot him a warning look, and Duncan held both hands up in immediate apology.

“So come on, Duncan. Explain to me how you ended up using Julie’s toilet. ”

“I shouldn’t have done it, ” said Duncan. “When I got to her house, I was bursting. And there was this kid there who knew where she kept her front-door key. And she was out, so we let ourselves in, and I went for a pee, and he showed me the picture. We were in there for five minutes maximum. ”

“Oh, that makes it okay, ” said Tucker. “Seven would have constituted a violation of her privacy. ”

“I know it was stupid, ” said Duncan. “I felt terrible about it. Still do. I tried to forget it ever happened. ”

“And now you’re boasting about it. ”

“I just wanted to prove that I’m… a serious person. A serious scholar, anyway. ”

“It doesn’t look as though those two identities are compatible, does it? A serious person doesn’t break into somebody’s house. ”

Duncan took a deep breath. For a moment, Annie was frightened that he was going to confess to something else.

“All I can say in my defense is that… well, you asked us to listen. And some of us listened a little too hard. I mean, if someone had had a chance to break into Shakespeare’s house, he should have taken it, shouldn’t he? Because then we’d know more. It would have been perfectly legitimate to… to rummage around in Shakespeare’s sock drawer. In the interests of history and literature. ”

“So according to your logic Julie Beatty is Shakespeare. ”

“Anne Hathaway. ”

“Jesus Christ. ” Tucker shook his head bitterly. “You people. And for the record: I’m not even Leonard Cohen, let alone Shakespeare. ”

* * *

You asked us to listen … That much at least was true. It had to be. He’d always said the right things, back in the days when he still spoke to local radio DJs and rock writers: he’d told anyone who wanted to know that there wasn’t anything he could do about being a musician, he just was one, and he’d be one whether people wanted to listen to him or not. But he’d also told Lisa, Grace’s mother, that he wanted to be rich and famous, that he wouldn’t be happy until his talent got recognized in all the ways that talent could be recognized. The money never really happened—even Juliet only provided a decent living wage for a year or two—but other stuff did. He got the respect and the reviews and the fans and the model who used to hang out with Jackson Browne and Jack Nicholson. And he got Duncan and his buddies. If you wanted to get into people’s living rooms, could you then object if they wanted to get into yours?

“This will probably sound silly, ” said Duncan, “and not what you want to hear. But I’m not the only person who thinks you’re a genius. And while you might think we’re… we’re inadequate as people, we’re not necessarily the worst judges in the world. We read, and watch movies, and think, and… I probably blew it as far as you’re concerned with my silly Naked review, which was written at the wrong time, and for the wrong reasons. But the original album… Do even you know how dense that was? I still haven’t peeled it all away, I don’t think, even after all this time. I don’t pretend to understand what those songs meant to you, but it’s the forms of expression you chose, the allusions, the musical references. That’s what makes it art. To my mind. And… sorry, sorry, one last thing. I don’t think people with talent necessarily value it, because it all comes so easy to them, and we never value things that come easy to us. But I value what you did on that album more highly than, I think, anything else I’ve heard. So thank you. And now I think I should leave. But I couldn’t meet you without telling you all that. ”

And as he stood up, Annie’s phone rang. She answered it and held the receiver out to Tucker. Tucker didn’t notice it for a moment. He was still staring at Duncan, as if the words he’d just said were suspended somewhere near his mouth in a speech bubble and could be reread. Tucker wanted to reread them.

“Tucker. ”

“Yeah. ”

“Grace, ” she said.

“Yay, ” said Jackson. “Gracie. ”

For most of the last twenty years, Tucker had Grace down as the key to a lot of things. She was why he’d stopped working; every time he’d taken the lid off himself and taken a peek inside, he’d had to close it quick. She was the spare room that never got tidied, the e-mail that never got answered, the loan that never got repaid, the symptom that never got described to a doctor. Except worse than any of that, obviously, what with her being a daughter, rather than an e-mail or a rash.

“Grace? Hold on a minute. ”

As he took the handset from the kitchen to the living room, he suddenly saw that this strange little seaside town was perfect for the sort of reconciliation that could bring that whole sorry story to an end. He didn’t think he could ask Annie to accommodate yet another member of his family, but Grace could stay in a B& B or somewhere for a couple of days. The bleak pier they’d seen that morning… He could see them sitting on the boards, dangling their feet under the railings, talking and listening and talking.

“Tucker? ”

“Dad” was an appellation you had to earn, he guessed, mostly by being one. Maybe that’s how their conversation on the pier would end: she’d call him “Dad, ” and he’d weep a little.

“Yeah. Sorry. I was just taking the phone somewhere more private. ”

“Where are you? ”

“I’m in this weird little seaside town on the east coast of

England called Gooleness. It’s great. You’d dig it. Grungy, but kind of cool. ”

“Ha. Okay. You know I came from France to see you in the hospital? ”

She had her mother’s voice. Or rather—and this was worse, really—she had her mother’s temperament: he could hear the same determination to think the best of him and of everybody else, the same puzzled smile. Neither Grace nor Lisa had ever made it easy for him: they’d both been heartbreakingly tolerant and sympathetic and forgiving. How was one supposed to deal with people like that? He preferred the chilly sarcasm that was his usual lot. He could ignore that.

“Yeah, Grace, I heard you were coming. ”

“So, you know. Why did you run away? ”

“I wasn’t running from you. ”

He couldn’t afford too many lies, if he was really aiming at truth and reconciliation, but one or two little ones, judiciously positioned right at the beginning of the road in order to ease access, might be necessary. “I didn’t want to see you with all those other people. ”

“Ummm… Is it unreasonable to point out that most of those other people are your children? ”

“Most, sure. But not all. There were a couple of ex-wives in there. They were making me feel uncomfortable. And since I wasn’t feeling so great…”

“Well, I guess only you know how much you could cope with. ”

“What I was thinking was, you could come up here, ” said Tucker. “That way, you and I could…”

Some terrible words and phrases were coming into his mind: “quality time, ” “heal, ” “bond, ” “closure. ” He didn’t want to use any of them.

“What could we do, Tucker? ”

“We could eat stuff. ”

“Eat stuff? ”

“Yeah. And I guess talk. ”

“Hmmm. ”

“What do you think? Should I get you the train schedule? ”

“I think… I think I don’t want to do that. ”

“Oh. ”

He couldn’t quite believe it. Where was the accommodation in that?

“I didn’t really want to come to London to see you. I couldn’t… I couldn’t quite see the point. ”

“That was Lizzie’s idea. ”

“I mean, the point of any sort of visit, anywhere. I don’t wish to be difficult, Tucker. I think you’re an interesting and talented guy, and I used to love reading stuff about you. Mom kept a whole heap of things. But we don’t have much going on, do we? ”

“Not… recently. ”

Grace laughed, not unpleasantly.

“Not in the last twenty-two years, anyway. ”

She was twenty-two already?

“And I’m pretty sure that my very existence is sort of awkward. I mean, I’ve listened to that album. You can’t hear me in there. Or Lisa. ”

“It was a long time ago now. ”

“I agree. A long time ago, you chose art over… Well, over me. ”

“No, Gracie, I…”

“And I understand. Really. I didn’t use to. But, you know. I like artists. I get it. So what would you do with me now? I can see that there’s room for some painful conversation in a godforsaken town miles from anywhere. But there’s no room for anything after that, is there? Not unless you want to own up to being a phony. And I wouldn’t want you to do that. I’m not sure you’ve got enough going on to let go of Juliet. ”

She hadn’t got that degree of perspicacity from Lisa. He could be proud of that.

He went back into the kitchen and handed Annie the handset.

“How did it go? ”

He shook his head.

“I’m sorry. ”

“It’s okay. I blew that one a long time ago. I’ve been watching too much daytime TV. ”

Duncan was making a big deal of putting his coat on, desperate to glean anything he could from what might be his last couple of minutes with Tucker.

“You don’t have to leave, ” Tucker said, wearily. Duncan looked at him disbelievingly, a sixteen-year-old who’d just been told that the prettiest girl in class wasn’t going to finish with him just yet.

“Really? ”

“Really. I… What you said before—it meant a lot. Thank you. Sincerely. ”

And now the prettiest girl in class was taking off her panties and… Actually, this whole analogy was too weird. Weird and disturbingly self-serving, if anyone cared to examine it properly.

“If you would like to talk to me about my work, I’d be happy to do so. I can see you’re serious about it. ”

What was the big deal? Why had he spent half his life trying to hide from people like Duncan? How many of them were there? A handful, scattered all over the globe. Fuck the Internet for collecting them all in one place and making them look threatening. And fuck the Internet for putting him right at the center of his own little paranoid universe.

“I really am sorry about taking a pee in Julie Beatty’s toilet, ” said Duncan.

“I’m not sure I care as much as I pretended. Off the record? Among certain people, Julie Beatty has enjoyed a long and unsullied reputation as a fiery muse. In retrospect, she was kind of a pretty airhead. If someone pees in her toilet every now and again, it’s a fair price to pay. ”

The two biggest parts of a man’s life were his family and his work, and Tucker had spent a long time feeling wretched about both of them. There was nothing much he could do about big chunks of his family now. Things would never be right with Grace, and he could see that his relationship with Lizzie would always wobble between something they could both tolerate and something that would hurt his ears. He wasn’t so interested in the older boys. That left Jackson, which gave him a 20 percent success rate as a father. There was no examination worth taking where you could pass with a mark like that.

It had never occurred to him that his work was redeemable, or that he was redeemable through his work. But as he listened that afternoon to an articulate, nerdy man tell him over and over again why he was a genius, he could feel himself hoping that it might actually be true.

fifteen

C ouncillor Terry Jackson had fifteen come to the museum for a private view and seemed pleased with what he’d seen. Indeed, he was so pleased that he now had ambitions for the launch.

“We should try and get a celebrity to come along and open it. ”

“Do you know any celebrities? ” said Annie.

“No. You? ”

“No. ”

“Oh, well. ”

“Who would you invite if you could? ”

“I’m not very good at celebrities. I don’t watch enough TV. ”

“Anyone in world history. Fantasy guest. ”

“Hmmm, ” she said. “And what function would this person be serving? I mean, would we be inviting him or her to say a few words? ”

“I would have thought so, ” said Terry. “Something to get the local press interested. Maybe even the nationals. ”

“I’d have thought that if a dead person from world history opened an exhibition at the Gooleness Seaside Museum, we’d be fighting the media off. ”

“So who would you have? ”

“Jane Austen, ” said Annie. “Or Emily Bront& #235;, I suppose, seeing as we’re not that far from Bront& #235; country. ”

“You think the national press would come up here for Emily Bront& #235;? I know they would for Jane Austen. Bol lywood and all that. ”

Annie had no idea what this meant and as a consequence chose to ignore it.

“Even for Emily Bront& #235;. ”

“Well, ” said Terry. He was clearly dubious. “If you say so. Anyway. Let’s keep it within the realms of the possible. ”

“So you’re asking me to name a famous person who might actually come to the Gooleness Seaside Museum to open an exhibition? Because that’s different. ”

“No it isn’t. Aim as high as you like. ”

“Nelson Mandela. ”

“Lower. ”

“Simon Cowell. ”

Terry thought for a moment.

“Lower. ”

“The mayor. ”

“The mayor’s got another do on. If you’d sorted this out quicker, we could have asked her first. ”

“I’ve got an American singer-songwriter from the eighties staying with me at the moment. Would he be any good? ”

She hadn’t planned to mention him, but Terry Jackson’s unfair attack on her organizational skills had stung. And in any case, she couldn’t quite believe that he’d chosen to stay: Tucker and Jackson had been with her for three nights already and showed no desire to leave.

“Depends who he is, ” said Terry.

“Tucker Crowe. ”

“Tucker who? ”

“Tucker Crowe. ”

“No. No good whatsoever. Nobody’s heard of him. ”

“Well, which American singer-songwriter from the eighties would have done the trick? ”

He was beginning to annoy her now. Where had this sudden need for celebrity come from? It was always the way, with councillors. At the beginning of a project, it was all about the needs of the town; by the end it was all about the Gooleness Echo.

“I thought you were going to say Billy Joel or someone. Is he a singer-songwriter? He’d have got us out of a hole. Anyway, thanks but no thanks, Tucker Crowe. ”

He made air quotes around the name and he chuckled, apparently at the depths of Tucker’s obscurity.

“I’ve an idea, ” said Terry.

“Go on. ”

“Three words. ”

“Right. ”

“Have a guess. ”

“Three words? ”

“Three words. ”

“John Logie Baird. Harriet Beecher Stowe. ”

“No. Neither of them. Oh. And I should probably say that one of the words is ‘and. ’ ”

“‘And’? Like Simon and Garfunkel? ”

“Yes. But not them. I think you should give up. ”

“I give up. ”

“Gav and Barnesy. ”

Annie burst out laughing. Terry Jackson looked hurt.

“I’m sorry, ” said Annie. “I wasn’t being… That wasn’t the direction I was looking in. ”

“What do you think? They’re local legends, and a lot of people around here recognize them…”

“I like it, ” said Annie, decisively.

“Really? ”

“Really. ”

Terry Jackson smiled.

“Bit of a brainwave, really. Even if I do say so myself. ”

“There’d probably be no national press interest, ” said Annie.

“That’s all right. That was always going to be a long shot. ”

Annie had once heard someone say that in the future everyone would be famous to fifteen people. In Gooleness, where Tucker Crowe slept in her bedroom, and Gav and Barnesy were invited to open exhibitions, the future had arrived.

On Wednesday, the day of the launch party, Tucker and Jackson were still with her; their departure was postponed one day at a time. Annie didn’t want to press them on their plans, because she couldn’t bear the thought of them leaving; every morning she was fearful that they would come into the kitchen for breakfast with their bags packed, but instead they announced plans to fish, or walk, or take a bus along the coast. She had no idea whether Jackson was supposed to be at school but again she didn’t want to ask, in case Tucker suddenly slapped his forehead and dragged his son off to the station.

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