I blink; it still sounds so strange. 'You didn't have any idea? I mean - you knew you'd slept with her, Guy, didn't you? Are you trying to say she drugged you?'

He smiles. 'Yep. I suppose this is when it gets a bit complicated. We'd been . . . well, over the years, after Cecily's death . . . you could say we sort of saw a lot of each other.'

'You were fuck buddies,' I say. His eyes open wide. 'What on earth did you just say?'

'Fuck buddies,' I say callously. 'Bootie callers. Friends with benefits.'

'I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about.' Guy moves back to the kettle, pours water into the cafetière and brings it over with two mugs, sitting down heavily in front of me. 'It wasn't like that.' He stares into nothing. 'You have to remember, Natasha. She had a bad time growing up, but in the seventies your mother was . . .' He shakes his head. 'She was absolutely devastating.'

237

'The seventies were terrible for a lot of people, you know,' Guy says, when we're sitting more comfortably, I've stopped crying, and he's calmed down. 'No electricity. Strikes. Mass unemployment. Platform shoes and spotty punks everywhere. But you know, it was your mother's decade in lots of way.' He smiles.

'How do you mean?' I am fascinated, and I'm just enjoying looking at him, staring at his face, his hands holding the coffee mug. I tuck one leg under me.

'Oh, you know.' He smiles. 'You know. Her own brand of cod-mystical - er - you know, headscarf-wearing hippyness - it all flourished then. I just think she became more comfortable in her own skin.'

I smile, because he's totally right, and it's so strange that he knows this. Knows her as well as he does. I prop my elbows up on the table, my chin in my hands, listening intently.

'I don't know what she'd been doing for the rest of the sixties,' Guy says.

'She did some fashion courses,' I say. 'I know that. She used to try and make dresses years later when I was little, from those Clothkits sets. They were always awful.' The burgundy and brown early eighties pinafore where one panel was back to front and the pockets were on the inside, for example. I shake my head, caught between tears and a smile as I think about her in the flat with her sewing machine.

Guy nods. 'I seem to remember there was an upholstery course somewhere, she was always making cushions. And I know she went travelling, but I met her again when she was working at this boutique, I think in South Ken.'

I remember her talking about the South Kensington shop. It originally sold awful kaftans and tie-dye prints, which in a few years gave way to Laura Ashley-style rip-off long, flowery dresses. She took it over and rechristened it Miranda. Of course she did. I have a photo of her standing outside the shop in skinny jeans and boots, a billowing embroidered cheesecloth blouse with huge sleeves, and a Liberty headscarf tied round her hair. She has her hand on her hip, her eyes are made up with black kohl and she is almost scowling. She looks like a sexy pirate. Something completely wild in her eyes. He's right, she looks devastating. I tell Guy this, and he nods.

'She was. We met at a party, in about 1973? I hadn't - I hadn't seen her for years. I'd been living in the States.'

'Doing what?' I say. I'm so curious, I want to know everything. I look at him again. He's mydad. He smiles. 'Oh, not very much, I'm afraid. Writing in a rather desultory way for a paper, living in San Francisco. I was trying to be a journalist.' 'Wow. Was it fun?'

Guy shakes his head. 'No,' he says flatly. 'I wasn't very good. And I went away for the wrong reasons. I couldn't wait to finish at Oxford and . . . I left England immediately after I came down, to forget about Cecily. About what happened that summer.' He stops, takes a gulp of his coffee. He is breathing fast. He purses his lips and says sadly, 'I wasn't even there when Frank married Louisa.'

'Really? You missed your brother's wedding?'

'It wasn't such a big deal then,' he says. 'Weddings weren't such a production, you know. Glass of champagne and some salmon mousse in a marquee then home by six.'

He looks away. I don't believe him. I wrap my fingers round my mug, so that my thumbs are interlocked.

238

'Anyway, I was there till '73, and then I came back . . . I'd been back a week, it was summer. Terribly hot. I wasn't sure why I was back, what I was doing . . . I was rather a lost soul. And then I met your mother at this completely crazy house party in Maida Vale one evening. We . . . um.' He trails off. 'We had a brief fling. And then I went off again.'

'Back to the States?' I ask. I'm not embarrassed. I am desperately curious. After all these years of knowing nothing, suddenly everything is out there, open, within my grasp.

'I was back and forth for a few years. There was a girl there - in San Francisco - things were rather complicated. I didn't know what I was doing, to be honest.'

'So you carried on seeing Mum when you were here? And the girl over there?'

Guy heaves his shoulders up almost to his ears, and then drops them again. 'Yes. But while it seems pathetic to say "It wasn't really like that", I try to console myself with the thought that it wasn't.'

'In what way?' I take a sip of tea, warming my hands around the mug.

'Miranda was . . .' Guy's eyes light up. 'She was very clear about what she wanted. And it wasn't a relationship. She was - you have to understand she was herself for the first time. She was making her own way in the world, she had a life of her own, away from Summercove, from your parents. She was the life and soul of every party. Absolutely beautiful. Coterie of men always around her, gay and straight. No fear. She swung on a giant chandelier once, in a dilapidated mansion off Curzon Street, and it crumbled away from the ceiling, and she fell to the floor.' He is almost chuckling at the memory. 'She didn't care. That was Miranda.'

My skin is prickling, hot, all over. 'What happened after that?' I ask. 'Did you go back to the

States?'

'Oh, yes, then back again to London. Few months here, few months there,' Guy said. He swallows. 'I was being pathetic. My girlfriend wanted me to stay there with her. She'd moved to New York by then. I couldn't make my mind up. Didn't want to settle down. Kept thinking . . . what if . . .'

He trails off. 'What if what?'

'What if Cecily hadn't died?' He looks up. 'Would we have been together? That's why I couldn't settle down with anyone else for years afterwards. I always thought we would.' He shakes his head. 'I can't say that now, not after my years with Hannah and the children.4// my children.' He smiles, and he reaches out his hand, puts it on top of mine.