Like This, for Ever

two adjoining pieces of a jigsaw. For a second, Barney felt rage threatening to overwhelm him.
    Not fair, not fair!
    OK, Harvey didn’t have a dad, but dads weren’t the same. Dads earned money and kept you fed and clothed and drove you around the place, but mums wrapped their bodies around yours and made you feel safe. Mums were the ones who cried when you cried, but loved your tears all the same because they had the power to make them go away. Mums were there in the night, when dark, twisting fears were wrapping themselves around you. Mums were the ones who lay down close and whispered stories about riding through tropical forests on blue elephants. Mums were the ones who could put their hands on your bare bum and bite your neck and nobody would think it at all unusual.
    Not fair!
    He’d heard nothing from Lacey. He’d known it had been bad luck to mention his mum to her. Now he’d done it with Abbie, too. In the picture glass he could see her now, watching him over Harvey’s head.
    ‘Tell you what, hon,’ she said to her son. ‘Will you go and get my phone for me? I left it in Jorge’s room.’
    With a heavy sigh, as though there were no end to the effort expected of him, Harvey left the room.
    ‘Did you take all these?’ asked Barney, embarrassed now, feeling as though he’d give anything to take back what he’d just revealed about his mum.
    ‘Years ago,’ Abbie said. ‘Before Harvey was born.’
    Upstairs, Jorge had stopped singing. Barney could hear him and Harvey talking.
    ‘I asked your dad once about your mum,’ said Abbie. ‘Not being nosy, just friendly. He told me it was just you and him. And he said it in such a way that made me feel he didn’t want me to ask any more questions. So I didn’t. As far as I know, no one else ever did either.’
    Barney looked at a picture of a boy of about his own age, gazing up at the camera. A boy with a blood-soaked bandage around his head. ‘You’ve seen some pretty nasty stuff,’ he said.
    Abbie came closer, until she could put a hand gently on Barney’s shoulder. The little finger of her hand brushed softly against his neck.
    ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I have.’

53
Monday 10 March
    ‘YOU SAVED ME the best view,’ said Dana, as she settled into the chair by the window and stiffened against a shiver. It would be cold here, floor-to-ceiling windows made it inevitable in March, but the view from the first-floor Blue Print Café on Butler’s Wharf was just about worth it.
    ‘Actually, I didn’t,’ replied Detective Superintendent Weaver, nodding downstream. Judging by the level of wine in his glass, he’d arrived early. ‘That’s the one I prefer.’
    Dana had been looking past the thousand-year-old Tower of London towards the metallic gleam of the City. Every brick, every steel plate, every pane of reinforced bomb-proof glass sang out power. She turned a 90-degree angle. Warehouses, dock buildings, rotting wooden piers.
    ‘Whistler did a series of sketches of the Thames warehouses,’ said Weaver. ‘I’ve got copies at home. I’d have them on the wall, but Mary thinks unsigned prints are naff so I keep them in a folder in my study. Incredibly atmospheric – I’ll bring them in some time. Torn sails flapping in the gales, masts brushing against the rooftops, buildings that seem to be growing out of the river and tumbling into it at the same time. Working boats like beached whales, you can’t see how they’ll ever get out of the mud.And then the tide comes in and they’re off again, to distant shores.’
    ‘Very poetic, Sir.’
    ‘And so many people, scurrying around like ants, with their individual jobs and their collective purpose. In over a hundred years it hasn’t changed.’
    ‘I hadn’t appreciated luxury riverside apartments and embankment restaurants were popular in Whistler’s day,’ said Dana, as the waiter approached them.
    ‘Yes, very funny. The detail might have evolved, but the picture remains the same to me. East of here is what London’s really all about. The City, on the other hand, could be anywhere. What’ll you have?’
    With the skill born of frequent practice, Dana opened the menu and spotted the choices that would be the easiest to force down. ‘Salad and the risotto, please,’ she said. ‘Do you want me to kick off ?’
    Weaver pulled out a notebook and put it, unopened, on the table. Dana had brought her laptop.
    ‘The exercise we did monitoring traffic in and around the dump sites threw up