Capital

could worry about defending that to their shareholders. That was one thing. But the more important thing, he gradually realised, was that they thought the whole issue was moot. For all their stalling, they believed the gloomiest medical prognosis. They didn’t think Freddy would ever kick a ball in anger again. Allowing him to play pro football back home was like giving him permission to be the first man on Mars – it just wasn’t going to happen.
    No need to tell Freddy that, though. Mickey watched the news sink in, and Freddy reached for his father’s hand.
    ‘I get to play football again?’ he said.
    ‘And five million pounds. And,’ said Patrick, looking for the first time in months like a man with something to look forward to, ‘we get to go home.’

101
     
     
    At number 42, the garden which had been Petunia Howe’s great joy in life, her hobby and her solace, was being dug up and replaced. Zbigniew stood at the window of the main bedroom on the first floor, the room in which Petunia had died, and watched.
    He had come back to fix some wall sockets in the bedroom. The wiring was a little loose and so the power supply was intermittent. He had promised a year’s guarantee as well as the work he’d done, and he was happy to come back and fix it, even though the house no longer belonged to the Leatherbys. It had been bought by a City banker and his American wife, a childless couple in their early thirties who had paid £1,550,000 for it. The house was as yet unfurnished; the new people were going to get a team of painters in. Zbigniew didn’t mind that, part of doing up a house to sell it included the assumption that the new owners would change stuff. It wasn’t his house anyway. But he did find that he disliked seeing the garden torn out. The new owners wanted a more modern look. The crowded, profuse, overgrown, over-living plant beds of old Mrs Howe were to be replaced by a geometric pattern of decking and gravel and pavings, with a water feature at the end, and four small square formal beds of low shrubs. So now four men from the garden design company were ripping out Petunia’s garden and bodily carrying the debris through to the skip at the front of the house, over the plastic sheeting they’d put in to protect the carpet.
    The Sunday on which Zbigniew had taken the money and given it back to Mrs Leatherby had turned into the best day of his life. The first reason: Mrs Mary Leatherby had rung him up in the early evening and had told him about the money. It had been worthless, or all but worthless, all along. If Zbigniew had tried to spend it, he would have had no explanation of how he had all this out-of-date currency and he would have been caught as a thief. He would have lost his honour, and for nothing. He felt the way a man feels when he’s been about to step out into the road without looking, then caught himself at the last moment and just avoided a speeding car.
    But that wasn’t the main reason it was the best day of his life. The main reason was that when he had got back to the train station and found Matya sitting outside the café, he had said, ‘What shall we do now?’ and she had shrugged and said, ‘Let’s go to bed.’ For a moment he had thought he was undergoing an aural hallucination. But the look she gave him told him he wasn’t. That was the single happiest and best and most surprising moment of his entire life to date. They had spent the trip home kissing, carried on snogging on the Tube, kissed all the way up the stairs to her flat, and then stayed in bed until it was time for both of them to go to work on Monday morning. It would be an exaggeration to say that they had been in bed ever since. But it wouldn’t be all that much of an exaggeration. He simply couldn’t get enough of her, her body and her company – it wasn’t just the sex (though it was, obviously, that too) and the amazing thing was that she seemed to, said she did and acted as if she did, feel the same way about him. She said she liked the way he was truthful and the way he stood in his shoes. Zbigniew wasn’t quite sure what that meant so was happy to take it as a compliment.
    It happens quickly when it happens, and it had happened to Zbigniew and Matya. Now they were looking for a flat together. They were spending two evenings and one weekend afternoon a week flat-hunting – they had agreed to do it that way, and take as long as they needed to find a place which felt right, rather than blitz