Just Last Night(41)

“Uhm, yes,” I think, sipping. The whole “busking it and playing along” thing feels like it’s unraveling quite fast.

“A boyfriend?” he says, looking from one to the other.

“. . . Yes,” I say, gritting my teeth as I glance at Finlay, whose jaw flexes in cold fury. What else would he have me do? No, he barged his way in, call the police!

I realize Mr. Hart is waiting expectantly for an introduction. “Finlay,” I add.

“Oh my goodness,” Mr. Hart says, and Fin and I stare at each other, as we know what’s coming. “My son’s called Finlay. Fin, more often.”

We stand in silence and I sense that Finlay, above and beyond his deep irritation at my unexpectedly being here, is embarrassed. My seeing his father like this is a privacy invasion and he feels exposed. Fin is about the iron-clad fa?ade, the KEEP OUT sign he has hung on himself. This is weakness and vulnerability, if only by proxy.

“Tell you what, I’ve got some nice biscuits, with fruit in them,” Mr. Hart says. “I’m going to find those, then let’s chat about what you’ve been up to. Go on, take a seat through there and I’ll join you.”

I carry my cup of tea to the sitting room, Fin right behind me, near-closing the cream gloss painted door with its floral enamel handle behind us. The Harts’ home belongs to an era where the wife made all the interiors choices. It always blew my mind they had a sitting room they watched television in, here, and a posh front room next door with a dining table with a runner tablecloth and candelabra, where they received guests. (Not scrubs like me, I mean dinner parties.)

“You shouldn’t be here,” Fin says, in a loud whisper. “He doesn’t need the disorientation of strangers from Susie’s life turning up on his doorstep.”

“He knows who I am! He greeted me as Eve!”

“He thinks Susie is seventeen years old. He has no real idea who you are.”

“You’re here, and he has no idea who you are?” I say.

“I’m his son,” Fin says, eyebrows shooting up. “I have a right. You have no right.”

“You wouldn’t be in the door if it wasn’t for me.”

“Here we go, they’re pieces of crystallized ginger, I think,” Mr. Hart says, pushing the door open, bearing a plate, which he sets down on the coffee table. “Delicious. Would you like a cuppa, young man?” he says to Fin. “I do apologize. I’ve forgotten you.”

Indeed.

“. . . Yes, thanks,” Fin says, after a pause, where he no doubt realized it’d be a useful prop to extend his stay. “Milk, no sugar, thanks.

“Have you been into Susie’s house?” Fin says, after his father leaves. “I thought it looked like someone had tidied up.”

“Yes,” I say, sitting up straighter, spooked, thinking, Thank God for Ed. Thank God for him being the kind of person who spotted that we needed to attend to that straightaway.

Finlay Hart was clearly at Susie’s with the locksmith as soon as he’d got out of the airport transfer from Heathrow.

“Did you take personal effects from her room?”

My skin prickles.

“A box of personal mementos, nothing of financial value whatsoever.”

“Can I decide if they’re of value? What things, specifically?”

I have no idea whether I should dissemble and I don’t quite dare stonewall him.

“A box of letters and diaries.”

“Right. Can I have that back, please?”

“No, they’re private.” I had not, for a single moment, thought her brother would either know these things existed or identify their absence, and I’ve been caught off guard.

“They were private, to Susie? They’re not yours.”

“I’m keeping them private for her.”

“But not private from yourself.”

“Yes, actually. I’m not going to read them.”

Fin does a double take.

“You’ve got something you say I can’t have, that you’re not going to look at?”

“Yes. It’s about protecting Susie.”

“Er, OK, noble as that is, you don’t get to appoint yourself guardian of her possessions without asking me.”

“Why do you want her diaries?” I say. “You were hardly close.”

“I don’t have to justify my motives. How do you justify doing a smash and grab?”

“As her best friend, who knows the last thing she’d want is her brother”—I vainly try to be more diplomatic—“or anyone, reading her old diaries.”

“It’s not for you to decide.”

Pretending to get along with Finlay Hart, I’ve decided, is a jig that is up.

“Actually, it is. As I have the box, and that’s the end of that.”

“Do you want this to turn ugly? Do you want me to lawyer up? Because trust me, I will.”

“Knock yourself out,” I say, panicking that if he does this, I have no idea what his rights might be. As he pushes and I panic, the more defensive I feel. Should I burn them? Is there a destruction of property case he could then wield against me?

“. . . Are you pretending that you and Susie got along?”

Fin’s face contorts into restrained contempt: “I didn’t say anything about us getting along. I said that’s irrelevant to you effectively thieving, because you’ve decided her things belong to you. They don’t.”