‘I hope you told her she’d be more than welcome to stay here?’ Ruth asked, handing Freddie a glass of cloudy liquid.

‘Of course. She wanted to be alone though.’

Ruth nodded. ‘A little peace. I can see that.’

Freddie took a sip, grimaced. ‘What is this?’

‘Akvavit,’ Ruth told him. ‘We got a taste for it on the cruise. We’ve got wine if you prefer though?’

‘No. I’ll soldier on.’ He took another sip. ‘In the end it was just me, Jen and David something. Crane?’

‘You mean Catherine’s son?’ Ruth asked. ‘The house by the green?’

Freddie shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Tall, dark, handsome. About our age. He looks after his mother?’

‘Yes, that’ll be him. Was he at the funeral? I didn’t see him. How was he?’ Ruth seemed oddly excited.

‘Nice boy, from what I recall. Nice boy.’ Graham came in with a bag of Kettle chips and sat down with a sigh.

‘He always was a lovely boy.’ Ruth nodded. ‘Especially considering… Well, you know.’

‘Ruthy…’ sighed Graham.

‘I know what?’ Freddie leaned forward.

Ruth frowned at her husband. ‘Graham, it’s not gossip if it’s old news! It was years ago, now.’

‘Still…’

‘Catherine had that friend staying with them. Lived in some sort of granny flat in the garden. He looked like – oh, who’s that man? Dick Van Dyke! Like him, white hair, distinguished sort of. And he had a phony accent too – not Maori Parpins awful, but Michael Caine in Zulu awful.’

Freddie nodded sagely. ‘That was a terrible accent.’

‘What was his name, Graham?’

Graham coughed, answered unwillingly. ‘Tony.’

‘Tony! Yes! Well, he had some kind of house at the end of their garden, and he and Catherine used to spend all their time together, drank the pub dry on quiz nights – they both thought they were very knowledgeable, you know the type. Shouting out the answers, stage whispers. All that.’

‘Got the answers wrong most of the time too,’ murmured Graham.

‘So, what, were they having an affair?’ Freddie asked.

‘Oh come on—’ Graham growled.

‘No. Well, I always thought he was gay, but who knows? Maybe he made an exception for Catherine.’ Ruth poured herself another drink. ‘Anyway, one day the flat – or shed, or whatever it was he lived in – burned down.’

‘Oh my god, what?’ Freddie poured himself another drink too. ‘So what happened to him?’

‘He survived, but still. Catherine put about the story that it was an accident with a gas stove or something, but I remember there was talk about petrol,’ Ruth said significantly.

Graham rolled his eyes and put the bottle on the other end of the table, out of Ruth’s reach. ‘Don’t talk rubbish, Ruth,’ he murmured.

‘We worried about David at the time. There was so much gossip, and he always seemed to be a very sensitive boy. Can’t have been easy for him, with the whole village talking about his mother that way. Did he seem well?’

‘He seemed fine. What’s wrong with his mother?’ Freddie asked. ‘He mentioned she was sick, but I didn’t want to ask.’

‘Dementia? Rebecca at the Rose and Crown said it was dementia. Or Parkinson’s. One of the two. David stopped working to look after her full-time, not that he needed to work anyway, family money, you know. And Catherine too – she came from money. Though why they’d live here with all their money is beyond me.’

‘He’s been ill too, you know.’ Freddie sipped his drink with a grimace. ‘He had a stroke.’

‘Oh, I never heard that. Did you hear that Graham?’ Graham pursed his lips and shook his head ever so slightly. ‘Recently?’

‘No, when he was fifteen or sixteen. He had a hole in his heart. Ended up having to miss GCSEs and everything.’

‘Lord. That would be around the time of the fire.’ Ruth shook her head. ‘He’s really been through the mill that boy, hasn’t he?’

‘I think he likes Jenny.’ Freddie smiled.

‘Well, she could do a lot worse by the sound of it,’ replied Ruth.

‘He’s… he’s really calm. Gentlemanish,’ Freddie said.

‘You approve of him?’

‘I do.’ He poured himself another akvavit. ‘He seems lovely.’

That night, with a few more akvavits under his belt, Freddie found David on Facebook. His profile picture showed him looking relaxed, smiling. From the angle it was taken, it looked like a selfie. On the wall behind him, only half in shot, was a framed picture… One tanned arm in a splash of sunlight, a small hand resting on a fold of material, blue, patterned with stars. It felt familiar. Where had he seen that before? It was probably a print of something famous, a Klimt thing? There was something pleasingly whimsical about someone as solid as David having a soft spot for visionary art. It made him seem even sweeter. Smiling, Freddie wrote:

Hi David. Lovely to meet you today, even though it was under horrible circumstances! I can’t thank you enough for all the support you’ve offered Jenny. Anyway, hopefully we can all meet up soonish? Freddie

Then he pressed return. A minute later David replied.

Very nice to meet you too, and thanks for the kind words about Jenny. I didn’t really do much, but I’m glad what I did do was helpful. She’s a very special girl. I’m not on FB much, but occasionally I check messages, and thankfully today was one of those days! Friend request sent, and yes, we should all meet up again soon. Cheers! D

Everything about this reply – so modest, polite and charming – pleased Freddie enormously. It seemed odd that someone as solid and grown-up as David should be friends with the skittish, extreme-sport-loving Ryan Needham. But then Freddie was still ‘friends’ with lots of fools he’d met over the years, too. People he no longer had anything in common with, people who posted and liked faintly embarrassing things, people who verged into racism whenever there was a terrorist attack…

Against his better judgement, he started scrolling through David’s friends (205 – a decent amount, but not too many, indicating that he actually knew all these people in real life), until he found Ryan Needham. Here was the profile picture of him in snowboarding gear. The same motivational memes on his semi-private wall. He was a bit of a wanker, Ryan, he really was, and wasn’t he getting a little bit too old for all this intrepid stuff? Free diving. Rock climbing. Triathlons. Fitness was all very well, but… Freddie looked at Ryan, gazed down at his own burgeoning stomach, looked at Ryan again, realised he was considering messaging him, remembered how much akvavit he’d had, and shut the computer. Jenny was right; he really didn’t need to fall into that hole again.

In the morning, he noticed that David had taken down his cute profile picture and not replaced it. Now he was just a blank silhouette.