‘I’ll come back to bed,’ she said, ‘if you promise to take me for a nice lunch later. Somewhere we can sit and read the Sunday papers. Down by the river, maybe. A gastropub.’
Vince groaned. ‘I hate those poncey places. Posh waitresses, sawdust and no spit, and the beer’s usually rubbish. Can’t we just go down the Kempton Arms? Ossie’ll be there. They do burgers and stuff, if you want lunch. And they’ve got Sky. Arsenal are playing Juventus.’
‘No, Vince. I want to have a nice day. A civilised day.’
‘All right. But you’ll be the one paying. I’m skint.’
‘I don’t mind.’ She would pay a fortune not to have to sit in the Kempton Arms with Ossie and his weird girlfriend, watching football all afternoon while Vince got slowly pissed.
He kissed her again. ‘It’s a deal, then. Come back to bed.’
‘OK. Let me just make my tea first, and bring it with me.’
Choosing The Heron in Chiswick for Sunday lunch had been Rachel’s decision. She was nervous about Oliver and Simon meeting for the first time. Her relationship with Simon had been chaste so far, consisting of that first evening at Abacus, a lunchtime drink, and supper and a play at the Menier, after which she had gone back to Simon’s flat in Bermondsey for coffee. Rachel knew that her wary approach to sex, based on bad experiences from long ago, had a tendency to confuse and deter men, and she had been apprehensive about being alone with Simon. But he seemed remarkably sensitive to her mood and her feelings, and an hour after their first kiss and all that followed, she had found herself desperately wishing she didn’t have to go home. But there was Oliver to think of, the babysitter to pay, work and school the next morning. Rachel knew that the only way forward was for Simon to stay at her place some night, and that would have to be very delicately played where Oliver was concerned. So she had suggested that Simon and Oliver should get to know one another, that the three of them should spend a Sunday together. She liked Simon very much, more than any man she had met in a long time. He was easy, funny, and uncomplicated. And, rather gratifyingly, he seemed pretty smitten with her.
So on a bright, chilly December Sunday, Rachel and Oliver met Simon in Kew at noon, and the three of them took a long ramble along the river, aiming to get to The Heron between half one and two. Initially Oliver, who was quite jealous of his mother’s company, treated Simon with marked indifference. Simon took this in his stride, and didn’t try too hard to engage him in talk. Twenty minutes into the walk, in the course of a conversation prompted by the sight of rowing eights practising on the river, Simon revealed that he had been a rowing blue at Oxford. Once the term was explained to Oliver, he seemed grudgingly impressed. He was even more impressed when he discovered, in the course of a lengthy discourse about X-Men, that Simon had decided views on whether Cyclops’s ability to shoot red beams of force from his eyes was superior to Sabretooth’s accelerated healing powers and resistance to disease. By the time they reached the pub, Oliver had accepted Simon as a worthy friend, and was busy filling him in with information about the ancient Egyptians, whom he was studying at school.
The Heron was big and busy, but the early lunchtime rush had subsided, and they found a table at the far end by the window and ordered lunch. There was a deck outside, fenced around, and Rachel and Oliver went outside to feed the ducks on the river with some stale bread Rachel had brought. Simon stayed inside, leafing through the Sunday papers. After ten minutes Rachel came in.
‘Too cold for me.’ She pulled off her gloves and sat down. ‘Oliver’s determined to stay out there till the bread’s all finished. What’s in the papers?’
‘Oh, mainly the Bernie Madoff story. You do wonder why people weren’t more suspicious. Didn’t they ask themselves how he was managing to get people twelve per cent returns on their money in such an appalling economic climate?’
‘People are greedy, I suppose. And they like to have faith. Obviously Madoff inspired that.’
‘Some of the victims I feel sorry for – not all of them are rich. Some of them are charities.’ Simon sighed and folded up the paper. He glanced out at Oliver, who was still crouched down on the deck outside, his woollen hat down over his ears, patiently waiting for ducks to paddle past so that he could throw them pellets of bread.
‘He’s a very good little boy,’ observed Simon. ‘I’d have been roaring round the place at his age.’
‘He can be a terror when he wants to, but he’s very focused when he wants to be. Just like his father.’