There Michael was, walking out onto the streets of his hometown with his two best friends from childhood, neither of which he’d seen for over twenty years. He was swimming with the tide—which reminded him of an uncomfortable task ahead. Sam and he really needed to sit down and talk about his mother, why it ended, or at least why Michael thought it ended and she never contacted him. For now, the sun was out, Sam was off with a girl his own age, one Michael could see made him blush, and Michael was doing the adult equivalent, without the blushing part and the pretty girl my own age. Though if Nush was here, who knew?

  The three of them—Michael in the middle, Toby on his left, and Nat to the right—crossed the road and walked the short distance up King’s Street to The Stag and Snake. Heads turned and followed them. Michael guessed they were wondering who this stranger was in their little town, where everyone knew everyone and all their business. He would have done the same when he was a kid. This trip was the proverbial memory lane. They’d walked these streets countless times, back in the same formation they always had. Just as he wore his father’s watch, these streets wore them, the completion of paired things, wheels in grooves. The comfort of that familiarity carried its own disquiet, and Michael had a feeling a few more minor memory-cards had been dealt with him hardly noticing. And there were some high value cards still waiting to be played.

  ‘Tobe’s says you’re selling the place,’ Nat said.

  The pub loomed ahead, its signage hanging over the road, swaying a touch in the light sea breeze. It had a white background. A heraldic style stag reared up in the rampant pose. Its hooves were bloody from stamping, and under one of them was pinned the undulating body of a horned serpent, whose own fangs dripped bright red blood.

  ‘That’s right. No point holding on to the place. I’m never here. Better someone else enjoy it. Maybe bring a bit of money back into the local economy.’ Michael sweetened the truth with not exactly a lie, but the kind of spin Nush was so good at pitching.

  They reached the pub’s door and Toby pulled it open with one of his ham-sized fists. A waft of warm-hearted conversation greeted them.

  ‘London treating you well?’ Nat asked.

  ‘Not bad,’ Michael lied, as they stepped across the threshold, and the chattering died to almost nothing, leaving him feeling naked. The smell of pipe smoke, rich and earthy-sweet, hung in the tobacco-fogged air. The smoking ban hadn’t reached as far as Hernshore, apparently. He knew, or thought he knew, many of the faces taking him in. Grown older, children to adults, adults to pensioners, Michael recognised them but in a way that made him acutely aware of how long he’d been away, and then that unseen dealer of life’s hand played a new card. A king—of clubs or hearts, Michael couldn’t tell. Perhaps both.

  He was nine, maybe ten. They’d done this so many times, especially on a Saturday. He held his father’s hand, a tall man with a narrow waist and long arms ending with slender hands, which encased Michael’s own both physically and spiritually, his loving God. That was what fathers are to sons, whether they are benevolent, capricious, or absent deities. His shoulders were broad like Michael, the kind that—if he’d had a manual job or a passion for the gym—might have been slabbed with muscle; instead, they were angular beneath his shirt, just as Michael’s were. His hair was brown, several shades lighter than Michael’s, but their parting was the same, on the left side. Michael’s hair was shorter and gelled; his father’s free and waving across his brow above intelligent and caring grey-green eyes. He smiled down at his son.

  ‘Beer?’ He said with a flash of teeth.

  ‘Gin and tonic,’ Michael said, playing his part in the double act, because that’s what his dad drank at home. He could smell the juniper, taste the tang of lemon in the air, hear the clink of ice against the crystal tumbler’s side—then and now.

  ‘Good man, better make it a double.’ He winked.

  The recollection was so warm, so utterly made of love, Michael felt conflicted between a minute private ecstasy in rediscovering something so precious, while also being confounded with how the ecstasy sat at odds with his final memories of the man. He was faced with something different than the horrible betrayal he’d carried around in his head for decades. He remembered the flash he got in the telephone box, warm coins from dad’s pocket to spend at the shop. That was little more than a picture, a sense impression. This new memory—or should he say old, as time was gushing back into the present? —was complete, a rounded thing that contained much more of the man. Was it a version of him Michael had kept locked away and hidden from himself? Which version was the right one?

  ‘Beer?’ Toby asked, cutting into Michael’s thoughts. He was almost surprised he wasn’t holding his father’s hand. Instead of asking for gin and tonic, Michael let the memory go, though it felt like letting his father go, and suddenly he couldn’t hold that positive memory. Not about him. Not now. Not ever. He knew what happened, what he did. How he left them. The coward.

  ‘I’ll get them. What you having?’ Michael reached for his wallet, already striding toward the bar, away from ghosts. The staring faces half-turned away, though eyes stayed on him, and the ambient conversation warmed once more.

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  ‘Pint of heavy,’ Nat said.

  ‘A porter for me.’ Toby retained his sullen edge, same as when he was a boy. Slow to turn his mood, whether fair or foul, though most often it was fair. He was a carefree babbling brook of a boy, meandering through life, sunlight speckled on its surface. Going with the tide. That would make Nat, maybe Michael too, the tide, forever getting Toby into trouble.

  Michael ordered. He went for a pint of heavy too, from the local brewery, trying to remember where in the town it was located, and also added a ploughman’s lunch for himself. Toby and Nat had already eaten. He wondered if Sam got something to eat okay, acknowledging that he was failing at this whole fatherhood thing.

  The barmaid pulled the last of the three pints, a buttery foam settling on the top, clouds billowing in the amber liquid, like a sandstorm in a bottle. Michal had his card ready to tap. She placed the three glasses on the beer mat to soak up the overflow and spied the card.

  ‘Sorry, m’duck. Cash only, I’m afraid.’

  Michael flicked open his wallet and slide the card back inside. ‘No worries; I’ve cash, I think.’

  There were a couple of crisp twenties folded in the money clip. He only kept them there because London cabbies could be utter dicks and act like it was your fault when their card machine wasn’t working. Once, having returned from a trip to Edinburgh for a university friend’s stag do, Michael unthinkingly passed a cabbie a Scottish tenner. The gammon faced misanthrope went puse. You’d have thought Michael had taken a shit in his palm. The fact it was legal tender throughout the United Kingdom—the clue was in the name—did little for his cause. Thankfully Michael had an English ten-pound note as well, which the gammon snatched before a blood clot from decades of full-English breakfasts broke free and exploded in his brain.

  The barmaid took the note between thumb and forefinger, a practiced gesture, and tilted her head at Michael. She was young, maybe early twenties. Too young for him to have known personally. ‘First time in Hernshore?’ she asked.

  ‘Not exactly,’ he said, as she turned her back to him, head cocked to show she was still listening while she got his change. The old cash register, a thing with chunky buttons and greyscale digital read out, kachinged open. ‘I grew up here,’ Michael said. ‘Haven’t been back for a while.’

  With an everyday grace she was back in front of him, the three pints between them on the bar, over which she handed him his change. ‘What’s your name? Maybe I know your family. Bound to round here.’

  Nat appeared at Michael’s elbow, picking up his and Toby’s pints, and managing to sip and grin mischievously at the same time. ‘Sharon, this here is Lord Michael Lorimer,’ he said, a thin foam moustache on his top lip.

  Sharon, the barmaid, went stiff, her hand unable to let go of Michael’s change. The colour drained from her face and then a bright red flushed back in. ‘Oh, oh my. I... Lord Lorimer. It’s a... Oh, I... I mean, I didn’t... You never said.’

  ‘Give the man his change, Sharon,’ Nat said, smirking.

  ‘Yes, sorry. Here you go, Lord Lorimer.’ She actually half-bowed, half-curtsied.

  Michael pocketed the money. ‘Michael, is fine, Sharon.’ The chatter in the pub had stopped. Only the haze of pipe smoke moved. That, and the twinkle in Nat’s eyes. What a dick!

  ‘Michael?’ Sharon seemed unable to comprehend that was his name. ‘Oh no I couldn’t.’ She turned an even brighter shade of red and dropped her gaze from his, backing away from the bar, like a lower courtesan leaving the throne room. Michael was bemused.

  Toby sighed. ‘I’m going to the beer garden.’

  ‘Sharon!’ Nat said with a wink and bidding her goodbye with his pint.

  They walked through the bar. Michael could feel its patrons staring after him. They went out the back door, near the lavatories. Another familiar smell. Piss is piss, wherever you are in the world, doesn’t matter if you’re Lord Michael Lorimer or Sharon the barmaid. Tara used to have a saying about that when he’ told her about his background. It was about how money and... What was it? He couldn’t recall, even though it had made him fall for her even more. It was a long time ago. He chewed on this, sipping his pint as they crossed the beer garden. There was a smattering of people enjoying the sun with their drinks. It was less blatant than inside, but they watched Michael too. The trio found a picnic table. Toby took one side, Nat and Michael slid onto the bench opposite. There was silence while they each took a couple of gulps. It was good beer, really good, in fact.

  Nat put his pint down. ‘Good to see you back, Mikey.’

  ‘Thanks, but, like I said: I’m not staying.’

  ‘Seems like your luck has other ideas.’

  Michael swallowed another gulp of the amazing pint and rested it on the tabletop. ‘Tell me about it. My luck has been shocking of late.’

  ‘That so?’ Nat said. ‘And you’ve discovered you’ve got a son and heir, right out of the blue as well?’

  Toby shot Nat a look. Michael needed to smooth this over between them, even if he was only back for a day or two. Technically, Toby and Nat were his oldest friends. Toby being a bit racist was a little harder for him to square.

  ‘Ever since my mum died, it’s been one thing after another. I don’t want to bore you with it. Business stuff.’ He said it like it was nothing, not his impending bankruptcy, and forged ahead. ‘Toby, I’m sorry I went off on one this morning. I had all these plans about being in and out, show the house and area to the agent from the safety of my car and get out of Dodge before nightfall, without people knowing I was ever here. Our little accident kind off trashed that, and I guess on top of everything else... Christ! I inherited a teenage son I never knew about until a couple of weeks ago. What I’m trying to say is, I’m sorry.’

  Michael offered his hand, and Toby took it, meeting his eye briefly.

  ‘That’s beautiful,’ Nat said in a joking tone, which suddenly changed. ‘You tell him about the crops yet, Tobes?’

  Toby shook his head.

  ‘What about the crops?’ Michael asked, recalling the dirty patches of land he saw up on the hill at the Tunstall farm.

  Toby took a big breath as though he was about to let out an enormous sigh, when Sharon appeared at Michael’s shoulder with his ploughman’s lunch. ‘Lord Lorimer, here’s your food.’

  ‘Thanks, Sharon. It’s Michael, remember?’ he said, unwrapping his knife and fork from their paper napkin shroud. Sharon lingered, maybe waiting for him to sample the food and give it his seal of approval, he thought. But he was wrong. He was so very wrong.

  ‘Sorry, Lord... I mean, Michael, would it be okay if these people talk to you?’

  Toby pretended to be interested in his pint. Nat, grinning, nodded for Michael to take a look behind them. Michael twisted around. There was a small line of people, at the front of which was a couple in their mid-twenties, the woman holding a baby swaddled in a pink blanket. Michael smiled at them because he was confused and didn’t know what else to do and they took this as his assent. And if he thought his day had been strange so far, what came next was about to change that.

  The man of the young couple was nervous and cleared his throat. ‘Lord Lorimer,’ he managed finally, but his wife or girlfriend was too excited to wait and butted in.

  ‘Would you bless our child, sir?’