The Third Shadow

Three

Back at the vineyard I spent a sweaty late afternoon scooping up armfuls of the kitchen lino I'd earlier ripped out, tossing them into the the van. At the communal skip I scooped it all back out again, liberated myself of the damn stuff like a snake shedding its scales. Little by little, piece by piece, old man De Ruvo's lingering stamp on the world was beginning to fade.

It was during the short drive home back along the coast road that I was surprised to receive a phone call from my daughter.

"It's not even my birthday," I commented by way of greeting as I pulled over onto the edge of an olive grove.

More than the wrinkles and the thinning hair, a sure sign of old age is when you start trying make offspring feel guilty for the irregularity of their calls.

She'd been busy with a new campaign, Ellie was quick to inform me. The market launch of a new chocolate bar, it seemed, was more of a preoccupation than her old pa.

"So..." she began, her tone the hesitant one of someone bracing themselves for a long and difficult response, "how are you dad?"

"Fine," I replied simply. Yet even to my own ears the word sounded somehow dud, as automatic as a fridge light.

An unconvinced sigh swooshed its way the length of Europe. "No, I mean, really how are you dad?"

So I considered the question seriously for a moment; considered the languid swathe of the Ionian out of the passenger window to my right, the initial glow of sunset sending peach-coloured shards skipping over the waves.

"I'm doing great Ellie," I assured her. "Really." It wasn't even a whole lie, I realised pleasantly, maybe just half a one.

"But I mean, don't you get bored?"

The question brought a rueful smile to my face. "Far too busy for that," I assured her. This time, there wasn't even the merest hint of mistruth.

Our conversation proceeded along its usual course. After winning the exchange of cross-continental weather reports - it seemed the UK was suffering one of its usual rain-tossed August bank holidays - I enquired dutifully as to the welfare of Tabatha, her demonic cat, and that of her live-in lover, Adam. Both, I was a little disappointed to hear, were doing fine. Our conversational repertoire thus exhausted, we fell into awkward silence.

It was always the same: I would wait so long for the phone to ring and then when it did wonder what a retired provincial detective and a London-based advertising executive were supposed to talk about exactly.

There was, of course, one subject matter we had in common. It had to be broached I supposed, a question of basic politeness, of feigning a continued sense of family - as much for Ellie's sake as anyone else's.

"How are your mother and..."

I faltered, my tongue blocked in my mouth. Eighteen months on, and I still couldn't bring myself to utter the sod's name.

"Gordon. His name's Gordon, dad."

"Gordon, yes." There, I'd done it. Passed the test.

"Oh, the same as always I suppose."

This was the reply of someone readily acceptant of the new status quo. A casual shrug of the shoulders, as if Heather and Gordon were an established thing, had been together for decades.

The same as always... What did it even mean, I wondered? That they were still in that sex-twice-a-day thrall of the newly married, or had already lapsed into mutual boredom?

"Taken themselves off to the Algarve for a fortnight," Ellie added. "Flew out a few days ago."

"That's nice." What the hell else was I supposed to say?