When You Are Mine(38)

I wander into the library, half listening to her whispered conversation. My father has a large antique desk with a leather insert. A laptop is open. The screen dark. I press the space bar. The screen lights up and asks me for a password. How do I make it go dark again? I close the lid.

Footsteps. Constance appears in the doorway.

‘He wants to show you Hope Island.’

I glance at my phone. It will take me forty minutes in traffic at this hour, but I’m here to ask for favours. Constance walks me to my car and tucks both hands into the back pockets of her jeans.

‘I wanted to thank you,’ she says.

‘What for?’

‘Convincing Edward to have the surgery.’

‘I don’t think it was my doing.’

‘You coming to his birthday – and the wedding – it’s given him a new lease on life. He’s almost his old self again.’

The word ‘almost’ carries more weight than I want to bear. Maybe he’s better this way – a changed man. Constance stands and waves as I navigate the driveway, staying in my mirrors until I reach the main gate.

During the drive through Dartford and Greenwich, I calculate the extra numbers involved if I invite the McCarthy clan. It can’t just be my father. My uncles and aunts and cousins will expect invitations. I take the Blackwall Tunnel beneath the Thames and turn east toward Canning Town. Hope Island is visible from a mile away – a forest of cranes and newly constructed buildings, rising above the old wharves and rows of tenements and soot-blackened warehouses. It’s not actually an island but an isthmus that hangs from the northern bank of the Thames like a teardrop earring.

The site office is a prefabricated building with muddy metal stairs and rows of hardhats and high-vis vests hanging on hooks. I sign a register and am escorted by a foreman in a red vest, whose heavy leather work-boots are permanently curled at the toes and stained with dirt. He drives a golf cart, pointing out various projects as we weave between machinery and piles of metal formwork, girders and pipes. Some of the office blocks have already been bought or leased by major companies or arts organisations, who are advertising their new premises on billboards.

We reach one of the finished buildings, which has tape crisscrossing the large plate-glass windows on the lower floor. The surrounding garden is being landscaped with sandstone blocks and rolls of turf. Somebody wolf-whistles and a dozen workmen turn to look at me.

Really? I want to ask. Is that still a thing?

I know what my mother would say, ‘Enjoy the attention, Philomena, because one day they stop whistling.’

‘Top floor,’ says the foreman, pointing to a lift.

I should have known the slum-dog millionaire would take the penthouse. I press the top button. The doors close and I’m shot upwards at stomach-dropping speed. When they open again, I’m looking at an empty reception desk and chairs still wrapped in plastic. I follow the sound of voices until I reach an office. A receptionist is seated outside.

‘He won’t be long.’

She shows me to a conference room that has a long table and a dozen chairs, with notepads and jugs of water and glasses set out for a meeting. The walls are covered with artists’ impressions of the finished development; and at the end of the room, a large table has a scaled model of Hope Island. The detail is astonishing, showing all the buildings and open spaces, right down to tiny plastic figures of joggers and cyclists on the river path, and diners sitting at outdoor cafés.

I pick up and replace a tree that has fallen over.

‘You always did like playing with dolls’ houses,’ says my father. He’s standing in the doorway. ‘Remember you had that wooden one. It took up half of your bedroom.’

‘You spoiled me.’

‘I can see that.’

He steps closer. I’m unsure if I should hug him. Avoiding the decision, I walk to the far side of the boardroom table, where floor-to-ceiling windows provide spectacular views along the Thames. We’re almost at the same height as a passenger jet making its final approach to London City Airport. I can see two pilots in the cockpit. Further west, the towers of Canary Wharf are silhouetted against the afternoon sun, and directly across the river, the O2 Arena looks like a half-buried naval mine.

‘What do you think?’ he asks.

‘Does it matter?’

‘I lie awake at night wondering if this is the right thing.’

‘Why?’

He points below us. ‘You see all those apartment buildings, next to the water.’

I nod.

‘That’s the Royal Docks. The Luftwaffe tried to bomb it out of existence during the war. I grew up less than ’alf a mile from ’ere. We had this two-up, two-down terrace with an outside privy and a lane at the back for the nightsoil cart. I shared a bed with Daragh for most of my childhood. Finbar and Clifton slept in an annexe that Dad built.’

I’ve heard this story before, his creation myth.

‘Sometimes I look at all these new developments and think that we’re burying the past.’

‘You said they were slums.’

‘Yeah, but they were our slums.’ His fingers touch the glass. ‘The people I grew up with can’t afford to live in the places I build. I’m helping push proper Londoners out of London.’

‘What does Daragh say?’