Dating : What else would never be

The palace pilgrimage is my brother’s idea.

‘Where else are we gonna go? Trade?’ he asks, turning his face away, one hand on a jutting hip while the other fans imaginary tears. All of our eyes are bright with the glamour of the news.

The last-gasp stragglers are emerging from the club behind us. Gurning, yearning; alert to opportunity. Their eyes slide impatiently over me — the only woman — before settling on Milo and Gabe; considering, concluding, moving on.

The sky is mother-of–pearl, pinked at the margins, cool air already conceding to the claim of heat to come. There has been a deluge while we danced. The pavement shimmers with peacock colours.

‘Really?’ Gabe stretches his arms up, fanning his fingers and working his jaw, his eyes closing for a moment, ‘I mean, wouldn’t it be kind of, an apt tribute? The queers and the freaks you know, like, having their fill?’

Milo gives Gabe a withering look. ‘Darling, we know what you want filled. You can drag your hole to Chariots later. We are going to pay our fucking respects. I owe my career to that woman.’

Milo always said his alter-ego, ‘Lady Di-later Sphincter,’ came to him in a dream as the complete package: the ice-cream-swirl George Michael hair, the elbow-length white gloves (which only on close inspection revealed themselves to be made of rubber), the demurely crossed ankles, the big-eyed gaze from under cow-long blue lashes. And the catch phrases: ‘I want to be queen of your aahrse’; ‘there were three of us in there, so it was a little craahded.’

Lady Di-later gave Milo what he always both craved and assumed to be his due: fame. Or at least the trappings of it in our small world: the ability to stride past queues of hopefuls, their faces a study of nonchalance, for the rope to be lifted by a bomber-jacketed man-beast after a nod from the clip-board queen. Free drinks. Free drugs. First dibs on the bar staff at the RVT or the Black Cap.

Now, Milo leads the way, joining the rag-tag flow of club refugees, wide-eyed and sweat-sheened, swaying in time to the beats still in their bones, stumbling stop-start down Brixton Hill towards the night buses jostling for stops like beasts at a trough.

Gabe links arms with me as Milo catwalks ahead. Milo turns now and again to pose and preen; feigning a swoon, licking a finger to hiss it on the face of one of his typical types (white and preppy and usually attached); or blowing a kiss at a cabbie or a street sweeper to elicit a reluctant grin. Only occasionally does he allow his eyes to stray in our direction, like a dog off the leash, mapping the pack.

Gabe grins at me and kisses my cheek. Then, remembering, he forces a frown. ‘I can’t take it in, still. It’s mad.’

I give my long-dulled gum a couple of chews and lick my teeth. ‘I know. Fucking crazy.’ We both gaze ahead at Milo. ‘Still, little brother’s not taking it too badly.’

‘Do you think he’ll still do her?’

‘I don’t know. Might be tricky. I mean, there’s like a code. Nobody really does Judy. Or Grace Kelly.’

Gabe’s mind ticks over. ‘What about Marylin?’

‘As a tribute, sure. But not, you know — fisting.’

Gabe looks at me mischievously. Pouting and flitting his eyes upwards he sings breathily to the tune of Happy Birthday: ‘hun-gry butt-hole, or two’; pinching the tips of his fingers together on first on hand and then the other, ‘hun-gry butt-hole, or two,’ now making a fist with each, ‘hun-gry butt-hole, Mr…’

I grin and supply, ‘Mr Fun-da-ment!’

We both shriek with the shock of our own genius, stopping to hug, disappearing for a moment. I kiss Gabe’s forehead, tasting salt. ‘I fucking love you,’ I say.

In the bright cocoon of the bus upstairs there is an atmosphere of narcissistic thrill as we play our parts in the unfolding of the great event. We see ourselves reliving it later, rehearsing as we perform, alert to every detail: the silent shift-workers planted like spies; the boy in the drip-dry uniform of an electronics store weeping to himself quietly; the agitated lady next to him leaning across to pat his hand. It’s all pregnant with portent. Scenes scripted somewhere once; all of us eagerly awaiting our cue.

‘I heard it in McDonald’s, like, an hour ago. I’d left early, ‘cos, you know, my boyfriend was giving me shit, and I was like, “fuck you,” but then I got outside, and, like, he’s got the keys. So I go to Maccas. And these two security guards come in…’

‘Fucking hell, love, you’re torturing us!’ Milo silences the speaker for a moment — a mohawked kid with a boxer’s nose and a voice like a 1940s starlet. The boy decides to be charmed. He smiles.

‘Fuck you, I have to set the scene! So. I hear this guy. And he looks, like, really shocked. He’s, like, grey. And he’s saying, “no, no, she was alive at first…” and then, like his voice cracks, and I’m, like, filling up myself already, (because I’m, like, an empath?) And I’m like, “do you want to sit down, hun?” And he’s like, “nah man, it’s OK, it’s just like really shocking,” and I’m like, “what is?” and he’s like, “oh man, haven’t you heard?” and I’m like, “heard what?” and he’s like, “Princess Di’s, like, dead.”

Each time the words are spoken there is the same jolt. Not entirely unpleasant. Like the most audacious plot twist in your favourite soap. Or bigger — like a thing you’d never much noticed or cared about, but has always been there, suddenly wasn’t.

We’re crossing Vauxhall Bridge now and I turn to look at the river, oily in the still dawn. A pewter mirror. It’s as if, overnight, it has vanished and there are just more streets.

I feel suddenly adrift, like a rope has been cut in my own life. And I’m there again. That day, sixteen years ago. The first time I really realise about Milo and, because of me, the first time he realises too. That something joyful can so quickly turn to shame.

It is the summer of the year we move to Babba’s house, the one after that awful Christmas. So Dad has only been gone a few months. It already feels like forever. We didn’t see it at the time but it’s obvious now that Mum is already a good way towards broken. Sliding down the helter-skelter she’d never climb back from.

I see her, just sitting at the kitchen table, in the idle of the morning, in her pink, toweling dressing gown. But Babba is all ironed and trim, with her tweed skirt and her brooch and her cardigan, as if she has been invited to the wedding herself.

The TV has been on all morning. My excitement has turned to boredom after seeing what seems like the same clip of anoraked families with their sleeping bags for the fourth or fifth time. The children, though, I regard with real envy.

‘Mum! Mum!’ I tug her sleeve. At least she is still pleased to see me when she comes back to herself.

‘Hello, princess.’ She smiles thinly.

‘Why couldn’t we go?’

‘Where, darling?’

‘Why couldn’t we go to London? Babba’s got sleeping bags. And we’ve got flasks. We could have brung my Strawberry Shortcake one.’

‘Flasks?’

‘Yes!’ She looks away from me dreamily. I kick the leg of the table in frustration, so that it scrapes the floor. I feel Babba arrive behind me. I pursue my point with more urgency. ‘Yes! You sleep on the pavement. It’s cosy because you have your sleeping bag. And then in the morning you have your tea from your flask and that means you’re at the front when the golden coach comes. And you see everything. WHY didn’t we go? We’d be on TV now!’ I feel my eyes prick with the injustice. Babba puts her hand gently on the back of my neck.

‘Sweetheart. Hope. Leave your mother be. She’s trying to have her morning coffee.’

‘She’s been having her coffee for ages. And look. It’s cold. It’s disgusting.’

‘Don’t be rude, Hope.’ Now her hand is on my shoulder, more insistent. ‘Come through. Leave your mother be.’

‘But it’s boring. When are they going to show lady Di?’

‘A little while yet. Go and play with your brother.’

‘He can’t play proper games.’

‘He can play perfectly well. He’s just little. Now, go on.’ I cast a last, fruitless look of appeal at Mum, who just stares through me and back at her coffee, then I turn and stomp up the stairs. ‘And be patient with him!’ Babba shouts after me.

The fact that Milo and I were going to have to share a room seemed like the greatest injustice of all when they broke the news. Far beyond the fact that Daddy was leaving, which seemed to me a superfluous detail, and one they seemed to be making far too much fuss about. He was always leaving to go somewhere or other. But then he’d come back and there would be presents, and Mum would set her hair and dab on perfume from the dusty bottle on the dressing table, and I’d hear them long into the night. Muffled laughter and thuds and long mysterious silences, first through the floor and then through the wall.

But this: the fact that I would have to take down my ‘Look In’ posters and leave behind my Strawberry Shortcake wallpaper and find space for the My Little Pony Fantasy Castle in Babb’s tiny spare room, alongside his stupid Smurfs and baby toys. This was insupportable.

Now, unusually, I find the door closed. When I push against it, I meet some resistance. ‘Milo, let me in!’ There is a muffled scrambling on the other side. I push it again. It opens further, but not fully. Through the gap I can see the blue of Milo’s Smurf Land duvet cover. ‘Milo, why is your cover on the floor? Babba will go mad!’

‘Hold on.’ More rustling, a thump, and then the duvet drags itself away from the threshold. I shove the door again.

The tiny room is a chaos of pillows and sheets. Milo is in the middle of it all, grinning ruefully. He has pulled the sheet from his bed and wrapped it around himself. It is rucked tight around his waist with, I notice at once, my patent leather belt, which goes with my velvet skirt and is only for parties. Most scandalous of all, he holds in his hand Mum’s Clarins lipstick, fully extended in a way she emphatically cautions against when she lets me open it. His mouth is slashed with it and oily smears blossom like poppies on the sheet.

Watching my gaze travel from the lipstick to the belt, Milo’s exuberance fades. ‘I haven’t done anything. I just did it up.’ He spreads his little lipstick-stained hands expansively, ‘I’m being Diana.’

I push the door shut behind me. ‘That’s Mum’s. You’re not allowed.’

‘But I only used a tiny bit. It hasn’t even gone down.’ He twists it back inexpertly and casts around fruitlessly for the lid. ‘Oh.’ He puts it down with exaggerated care. ‘I’ll find the top later. Look, Hope. I made the dress.’ He grips the full skirt he has made by somehow doubling and redoubling the sheet, printing it again with lipstick, and lifts it in a kind of curtsey.

The dress has long been a topic of conversation between Babba and I, and Milo has clearly been absorbing it all. I am possessed with the wordless frustration I often feel around Milo when he fails to grasp some simple, fundamental concept which seems to me to be self-evident, but I find to my frustration I can’t explain. ‘You CAN’T be Lady Di.’ I say.

‘I can. See.’ I look around the chaos of the room and feel the heat of injustice at the fact that I know we will be jointly blamed.

‘You’re stupid. You can’t be Lady Di. You’re a boy.’

‘Why can’t I? It’s pretend.’

My gall rises. I parse my brain fruitlessly for examples to prove the point. I resort to edict.

‘No. Boys can’t be princesses. I have to be Lady Di. You have to be Charles.’

He looks defiant. ‘Charles is boring. I don’t want to be Charles. And you’re stupid. You can pretend anything. That’s why it’s called pretend.’

‘That’s my special belt. Give it back.’

‘In a minute. I haven’t finished.’

‘Give it back now. You look stupid anyway.’

‘I do NOT look stupid.’ He backs away from me as I advance for the belt.

‘You do. You look stupid. You can’t be a princess. It’s…’ I grappled for a word that would do justice to the scale of the transgression. ‘It’s weird.’

His defiance begins to waver. I make a lunge for the belt. He pushes against my shoulders and catches me off balance. I fall back with a thud that alarms both of us. We wait for the footsteps on the stairs that will herald Babba. A beat. Two, and we are safe. I stand and advance again.

‘I’m NOT weird. I’m not.’ There is a catch in his voice. I sense a surge of power. Usually, I feel a mixture of benign indulgence and annoyance towards Milo. But now a toxic stew of emotions comes to the boil. Contempt for his plaintive, whining voice; the pathetic industry all around me; the unfairness that I should be stuck here having to explain something that should be obvious to anyone; the injustice that all those kids were up in London right now, with their Mums all dressed up with proper makeup on, going to see the real, true Lady Di.

I despise Milo for his weakness, his literalness, his child’s logic. And now, at the perfect moment, a weapon presents itself. One which I don’t understand, and yet know instinctively is perfect for the case. One so clearly proscribed and dangerous I know it would be annihilating and unanswerable.

‘You’re a — fucking gaylord.’

Milo’s face crumples like a sheet. I feel immediately remorseful, but I don’t know how to retreat. So, dry mouthed, I say it again. Now Milo wails.

‘I’m not!’ He manages between sobs. His face is puce. He lunges for me but trips on the edge of the sheet. I step out of the way and he falls forward. He reaches out an arm to steady himself but meets only air and lands with a crash, louder than the last. This time there is no delay. Babba is thundering up the stairs and is in the room before Milo is back on his feet. She takes in the scene in the space of a breath.

‘What have you done to your brother?’

‘I didn’t, I-‘

Babba gathers him up. She struggles to make herself heard over his squealing. ‘This is your idea of a proper game is it? Is this your Marks’ belt?’ She has it off him and now is examining the sheet. She frowns. ‘And what’s this?’ She looks at the smears, then at Milo’s face. She casts her eyes around the room. Her and my gaze alight simultaneously on the lidless lipstick. She shakes the sheet down. Milo’s sobbing has subsided. He aims a calculating look my way. She closes the lipstick. ‘You’re in big trouble, young lady.’

Only now does it dawn on me what she thinks. My throat thickens.

‘I didn’t! He did it!’

‘He did this to himself, I suppose? He’s not one of your dolls. Looks at him, poor boy.’

‘But I… He…’

‘Go downstairs and wait with your mother while I get this boy tidied up and decide what to do with you. This sheet is ruined.’

My outrage makes me mute. I go downstairs in a state of trembling rage that is new to me and almost frightens me.

I look in at Mum. She hasn’t moved, despite the commotion upstairs. Her coffee mug sits untouched in front of her. She stares blankly ahead. I feel a rush of pity. Not for her. For myself. I think about our old house, with the garden sloping up to the edge of the fields and my own room looking over it, with my rainbow sticker on the window that spilled coloured light across the carpet where I played. I think about the dim time before Milo when the house was huge and Mum was always there and smiling. I think about Dad. My rage and pity meet and settle themselves into a quiet determination. My eyes drift from Mum back into the living room.

The too-big furniture crammed into the too-small space, pink and swollen like drowned things. The mantlepiece, bristling with souvenirs and pictures. Me, Milo, Mum, Grandpa — mysterious and forever strangely young. None of Dad. The TV, on but turned down, cutting from flag waving crowds to old grainy footage of unrecognizable royals. The little telephone table by the front door, which opens directly onto the street. The silver jubilee ashtray with its cargo of keys. Next to it, Babba’s purse.

We are allowed to walk on our own as far as the Post Office Stores. It isn’t a real post office but a proper shop, with groceries, but we only ever stop there for sweets and treats, to spend our pocket money. Beyond is the recreation ground and, further still, the shopping arcade with its air of forbidden menace. Then the high-sided bridge over the tracks where, if you time it right, you can rest your chin on the ledge and feel the air sucked out of your lungs by the thundering rush of the London-bound trains.

I finger the smooth paper of the folded note, pushed deep into the pocket of my corduroy skirt. It had been the only one in the purse, so she was bound to notice, but by then I would be on my way. Perhaps she’d be out looking, in all the usual places. The playground at the top of the rec. The inlet by the weir. I imagined her anxiously scanning the water with Milo by her side, gripping her hand, sobbing and contrite. Or perhaps she’d call the police straight away. Or maybe the first they’d know of it would be when they saw me on TV, ushered to the front by kind families. In time, I am sure, if not to see the procession to the church then certainly the procession away from it, because, didn’t weddings take hours and hours? And royal weddings probably longer. And there would be the golden coach and the horses and the dress and the diamond tiara, and her, turning to look just as she passed, and seeing me, and recognising the kinship between us, and smiling, just to me.

Feeling the note, I imagine placing its edge into the little fissure at the centre of the metal carousel at the ticket desk and saying, ‘return to London please,’ and the smiling lady doing the same with the tickets on her half, and putting the change down, and pushing the handle, and the carrousel making its satisfying half turn with a clunk, and me picking up the tickets and the change. How much would there be? Sometimes, when I went up with Babba to Reading for Heelas or Marks, they would say, ‘do you have ten P?’ to make the change easier. I feel a lurch of anxiety.

I’m almost at the PO stores, and I’m thinking now about a strawberry Mivvi. The sweet pink shell that I would erode with the tips of my teeth, my lips drawn back, holding off as long as I can the moment when I break through to the yielding vanilla marrow; and then the whole operation becoming a delicately balanced trade-off between extending the process as long as possible and losing it to drips down the stick or, God forbid, as once happened, a whole section of strawberry dropping in the dust, setting stickily like a blood clot.

‘Don’t you have anything smaller dear?’

‘My Mummy said she needed the change.’

‘Your Mummy? I do hope she’ll think to spend some of it in here. I’ve only got a few pound notes. I’ll have to give you some of it in 50Ps. How is she, dear? I haven’t seen her for a long time.’

I feel myself growing hot. ‘I mean, Babba. My Babba needs the change.’

Mrs Patmore, the shop lady, suddenly softens. She has been behind this counter all my life. I can only really imagine her here. She is as much a part of the shop as the half-penny sweet jars and the comic rack and the life size guide dog outside with its sad eyes and the coin box around its neck, which I used to have to stand on tip-toes to reach. ‘I see. Well, you give your Babba my best. You should hurry. You don’t want to miss the dress. You’re lucky you found me still open. There’s not a soul about.’

A possibility flares briefly. I could tell her I had forgotten something and that I need to put the ice-cream back. And I could go home and say I had just gone for a walk. And then I could see, cuddled up with Babba, the dress for the first time. Along with everybody else. Everybody else in the whole country. In the whole world. But then, I think about the purse on the table by the door. And the note, hot in my pocket. And Babba, bound already to be downstairs. And the whole day through, the whole wedding, and afterwards. I knew all I would be able to think about would be the note and how I could get it back in the purse, and what if she didn’t go out of the room at all? Or what if she went to the loo, and came back too quickly and found me there, the forbidden object in my hands? And I realise it is already too late, I can’t go back. It is as if I am already on the train, and I feel tears prick. I suddenly feel very lonely. So I think about Milo, and how stupid he looked in the sheet, and how unfair it is that I am the one in trouble. And I look at the ice cream again, and the wrapper dusted with frost, and Mrs Patmore holding the heavy handful of change out to me, and the whole imagined day ahead, with its tickets and trains and crowds and a smile from a princess seems less unlikely and less complicated than somehow winding back the last fifteen minutes, so that the ice cream is in the freezer and the change is in the till and the soft, hot, purple note is folded in my fingers again.

I am so distracted by the sticky uncooperativeness of the ice-cream wrapper, that the first I notice of him is his voice, close behind me.

‘Blow into it.’

‘What?’ I stare at him squintily. He’s tall, and close enough that I have to twist my neck up. ‘Why do you have hair like a girl?’

He smiles broadly, revealing a row of even white teeth. These somehow make me feel better disposed towards him. He pushes his hand through his almost shoulder-length, straight blond hair, splaying his fingers like Babba does with mine after the bath. ‘That’s what my little sister says. She’s about your age.’ He can’t be that old then, I think. But he has wisps of beard, and his arms, emerging from the sleeves of white t-shirt, which grips his body tightly like a sock, are shaded with dark hair.

‘What do you mean, blow into it?’

‘The Mivvi. To get the wrapper off. Look. Let me show you.’

I look left and right. We are alone on the narrow path leading to the rec. In the winter you can look down from here straight to the playground and, the other way, back up to the road. But now the bobbing cow parsley is grown up almost as tall as me, so that we are in a kind of bower. I grip the ice cream more tightly and pull it towards me. He shows me his teeth again. ‘Alright. Very sensible. There are ice-cream thieves about. A young lady can’t be too careful. But it’s a cool trick. Will you try it if I explain it to you?’ I nod uncertainly. ‘OK. Rip open the end. That’s it. Now, put it up to your mouth and try to get your lips around the wrapper completely. That’s it. Now, blow gently.’

I blow, but hard, and the wrapper makes a flatulent squeak. We both laugh. ‘Try again,’ he says, ‘more softly. You’re trying to get your breath inside the wrapper.’ I do it again, and this time, the wrapper, which has been stubbornly stuck to the melting shell, pops free, bulging like the belly of a sail, and I draw the ice cream out easily.

‘That’s amazing!’ I say in wonderment.

‘You’ll be the toast of the school now. Do you want to give me the wrapper? I can put it in my jeans. We don’t want to be litter bugs.’ I give him the soft paper with its bleeding edge and he folds it carefully, so that the sticky parts are contained, and pushes it into the tight extra pocket that boys have in their jeans. ‘Do you mind if I walk along with you?’ I shrug. ‘My name is Dave.’

‘That’s my Daddy’s name,’ I say, before I have time to think, or check myself.

‘Well, isn’t that a coincidence? I suppose your Daddy must be a good-looking man.’

I look at him suspiciously.

‘I mean, to be the Daddy of such a pretty girl. What’s your name, daughter of David?’

I know that I am not supposed to tell him, but somehow, the fact that he has the same name as my Daddy makes him a step closer to him. Like a friend, or even a relation. He is walking close behind me on the narrow path so that now and again his loose, long hands, swinging as we walk, brush the backs of my arms. We round the gentle bend onto the rec and the field opens out in front of us, bleached bright by the high sun. ‘Hope,’ I say.

‘Ah. Hope springs eternal.’ I’ve heard this before and, as I always do, I picture myself bounding on a coiled spring, somewhere white and heavenly.

‘I’m surprised you’re not at home, Hope. It’s not every day that you get to see a princess get married.’

‘I probably am going to really see it,’ I say, looking up from the Mivvi. I slow my pace to concentrate on the delicate manoeuvre of removing a section of strawberry shell.

‘You mean, really see it? In London?’ he says, nodding slowly as he absorbs the knowledge. ‘Gosh. But, haven’t you left it a little bit late?’

I find to my surprise that the lie invents itself easily at the same time as the words emerge. ‘I’m meeting my Daddy. He’s a policeman. He’s got special tickets.’

He nods sagely again. ‘Your Daddy sounds like someone very important. Where’s he meeting you?’

‘London,’ I say quickly, and then regret it, as David’s pace slows slightly. He squints for a moment, perhaps against the sun. Then his face recovers its open expression. ‘I see. Well. I understand why you are in a hurry,’ he pauses, seems to consider something, then continues with conviction, ‘I’d be going up too. For my job. But, you know. I’ve seen it all already. It’s old news for us now. I’ll catch it on the telly later.’

We walk on a few more paces. The shell of the Mivvi is all gone now. I erode the ice cream pensively. ‘What’s, “old news”?’

He looks at me in apparent surprise. ‘The dress and all that’.

I look back at the stick nonchalantly, the letters of the joke beginning to show like a monument appearing through sand.

He looks up and scans the trees at the perimeter of the field, as if looking for something. ‘I’m a photographer. For the Emmanuels.’ I feign comprehension. He smiles. ‘I would have thought you would have known. A woman of the world like you. They’re the designers. Of the dress. I’ve been shooting the fittings. Hot stuff. People would have given a fortune for those pictures. Just an hour or so left, I suppose, and then everyone’s seen what I’ve seen.’

I clean the lolly stick with my tongue. ‘What’s the joke say?’ he asks.

‘Where does a cow hang her photos?’ He looks at me expectantly. I feel a sudden sense of stage fright. To cover my nervousness, I announce grandly, spreading my arms wide, ‘In a mooo-seum!’

David laughs exuberantly. I do too, although ordinarily I would scorn such a joke. Wiping away mock tears he says, ‘and how’s that for a coincidence? A photography joke!’

He stops. I stop. He scans the trees again. Then he looks back at me, with a strange, serious look. ‘I really shouldn’t do this, but it feels like fate, Hope.’

‘What does?’

‘Well, I meet you here, you’re on your way to meet your Dad, same name as me, David, to see the dress for real. And here’s me, with maybe the only photographs of it in the world, just over there, in my studio. And now, your lolly, a photography joke. I’ve kept my promise not to show those pictures for weeks and weeks, but now, with almost no time to go, what harm can it do, eh, Hope?’

My heart is pounding. I look up at him, haloed blond against the sun. ‘I don’t know’.

‘Don’t worry. You’ll still have plenty of time to get your train. And just think, you’ll be able to tell your Daddy you were the only little girl in the world who knew what that dress was like, before Lady Di steps out of the carriage.’

I think, I don’t have to go to London at all. This is a much better story. I wonder, perhaps he can give me one of those photographs, so that I can prove it to Milo, and all the girls in school. I think, perhaps I can put the change back, and in the excitement of the photograph, she’ll forget, and she won’t notice. And I think, yes, this is fate, this is like those stories where something accidental and magical happens and changes the course of someone’s life, like finding a map to hidden treasure or a key to a secret room.

Then I hear it. Impossible. Awful. Her voice, drifting across the park. David suddenly stiffens. His hand on my shoulder, squeezing, then squeezing tighter. His voice is different. ‘Ah. Bad luck.’ Then he turns. A familiar cold, sick feeling descends as he lopes irretrievably away. By the time Mum reaches me, fussing and breathless, he’s disappeared into the overgrown path that skirts the other end of the field.

Now she’s beside me, her too-big long purple coat on over her night dress, toenails chipped and pink in her grimy flip flops. I know, with absolute, cold certainty, that as long as I live, I will never despise a person more than I hate my mother now.

At Kensington High Street the chatter on the bus subsides. We hold ourselves differently. Backs stiffen; faces compose themselves into a picture of awed respect. We descend to the street and join the strange, silent procession towards the palace gates. Old, young, rich, poor, gorgeous, gross — nothing in the sparse crowd indicates kinship, except for the flowers. Most carry forlorn, hurriedly procured kiosk blooms. A few cradle ostentatious, cellophane-wrapped bouquets. Others clasp wild bunches, apparently plucked from verges or parks.

I look down at my empty hands. Milo, close beside me, smiles gently and takes my palm in his. Walking together, we watch Gabe, strutting like a sentinel. Shoulders thrown back, chin high, long legs glossy in the August sun.

A small woman keeps pace beside us. Something about her makes me look. Her deeply lined face is crowned with a mass of unwashed iron-grey hair. A long, stained, purple wool overcoat swamps her tiny frame. Disintegrating sandals stencil grime on her swollen feet. Bright remnants of pink polish freckle the nails. In her hands she clasps a faded bunch of forecourt carnations, like a bridesmaid.

Wordlessly, carefully, she unties the bouquet. She touches Gabe lightly on the arm and hands him a flower, then gives a second to Milo. A third stem is pressed into my palm. After placing the flower, she keeps her hand closed tightly around mine. Her skin is dry and cool. I turn to face her. Her eyes are a startling blue.