A Week in December by Sebastian Faulks Page B

turning Eye; but Veals believed it was important for him to be aware of other people, natives and visitors alike, however partial and bizarre their take on life. Since his own reality derived from numbers on a computer terminal, he thought it wise to keep an eye on flesh and blood; there might still be something he could profitably learn from them.
    As John Veals made his way back home from Holland Park Tube station, a bicycle with no lights on shot past him along the pavement, making him leap to one side.
    He swore briefly, then let himself into a white-pilastered house. It was in a quiet street, far enough away from the noise of Holland Park Avenue or the rowdy communal gardens of Notting Hill, where it always seemed to be firework night. For five years when his two children were still small, Veals and his wife Vanessa had endured the life of such a garden, where American investment bankers celebrated July 4, Hallowe'en, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's (always with that irritating possessive), Spring Break, Easter, innumerable bank holidays and - biggest explosion of all - Bonus Day, a moveable feast of the patron saint of Mammon, usually some time in January. Veals's breaking point had come when a series of Baghdad-intensity explosions woke his children from their sleep at midnight.
    He went round and rang the bell next door. 'What the hell's going on?'
    'It's Bastille Day,' said his American neighbour, perplexed. 'Come in and have a glass of champagne.'
    'Ever been to Paris, Johnny?' said Veals, with grim restraint.
    'Only for a meeting, once,' said the American with the matches.
    'You're like that cartoon in the sixties,' said Veals. 'Two astronauts approaching the moon. One's saying, "Have I been to Paris? God, no. This is the first time I've left the USA." Now put your fucking toys back in the box.'
    Soon afterwards, the family moved to a dark but quieter street and installed the Filipina nanny in a small room, once the coal-hole, with a glass roof, to the right of the steps as you went up to the front door with its brushed nickel fittings and 'historic' paint colour. It was peaceful here, and when Veals got to the half-landing, to a study that overlooked the small but mercifully private garden, he fired up the Internet to check the market news. Nothing disastrous. Vanessa had left a postcard from Sophie Topping on his desk: a 'pour-memoire', Sophie called it, about her dinner on Saturday. Veals grimaced.
    At that moment he heard his daughter's heavy footsteps going downstairs. He went out on to the landing in time to see Bella walking down the hall towards the front door with a small pink rucksack on her back.
    'Where are you going?'
    'I'm having a sleepover at Zoe's,' she called up.
    'Didn't you go there last night?'
    'No, Dad. I told you. That was Chloe's.'
    'Have you--'
    The door banged and Bella had escaped.
    Veals went to find his wife, who was in the bath. 'Where's Finn?' he asked from the doorway.
    Finbar, their sixteen-year-old son, was up in his top-floor room watching a large flat-screen television and rolling a joint. He had bought PS20 worth of skunk on Friday from a boy in Pizza Palace during a break from school, where he was in his GCSE year. Spread out on an atlas, he had three papers and the tobacco from a cigarette. The book was heavy on his knees and he envied his parents' generation, for whom LP sleeves must have provided an ideal surface. Most of his own music was digitised, and CD covers were anyway too small for the task - not that they were much good at the day job, either, as the cheap hinges usually snapped within the week, leaving him with naked, scratch-prone discs of Wind in the Trees by Stefan Everson or Forecasts of the Past by New Firefighters. But rolling up on top of a picture of Neil Young's patchwork jeans or the Beatles' psychedelic uniforms ... That must have been something, he thought.
    Finbar sat back against the end of the bed and fired up the joint. The flame from the