The Kiss by Joan Lingard Page B

birthmark shaped like a kite. He puts a proprietorial hand under his daughter’s elbow, not that she would be likely to need his protection. She would probably be readier than he to deliver a swift kick to the man’s shins should he become obnoxious. They begin their ascent of the steps.
    ‘That doesn’t solve the problem, you know,’ he says.
    ‘I’m aware of that.’
    ‘Some of them could get jobs if they tried.’
    ‘They could always open sandwich bars. If they had the dosh.’
    He makes no reply. It would be too boring to pursue the conversation. And he doesn’t want to have any arguments with his daughter on the one day in the week that they spend together. This is supposed to be what is known as ‘quality time’. Another phrase that makes him shudder.
    They reach the High Street and turn down the narrow Fishmonger’s Close, watching their feet on the cobblestones slippery with bird shit. He loves the mediaeval old town, would have liked to have lived in it if it were not for the children and their schools. He likes the closed-in feeling of the streets, its areas of secret darkness, and the way the buildings huddle together, whereas Rachel prefers the space and light of the Georgian New Town. It was amazing that they had ever got on together, and yet not. Their recognition of each other was immediate and explosive, a meeting of minds and bodies. He remembers it vividly, the sudden wonder of it, the laughter, their inability to let go of each other. And now … He almost slips and is saved by Sophie’s hand.
    ‘Thanks, my love. I always knew a daughter would come in useful one day.’
    The bistro, which is housed in a seventeenth-century building, lies at the foot of the alleyway. The low-ceilinged rooms are bustling and cheerful with the sound of talk and clink of glasses and cutlery and Cormac is delighted to be taking his daughter out to lunch. He holds her chair.
    ‘Can you afford this?’ she asks, peeling off her mittens and unwinding two long woollen scarves from around her neck. ‘Are sandwiches selling like hot cakes?’
    ‘Sure! No problem.’
    He orders a bottle of house red with their food.
    ‘Will you have a glass?’ He doesn’t need to ask. She has two glasses, might have three if she were given the chance. But she is only fifteen. She leans her elbows on the table. She becomes talkative. She talks of going to Greece, of wandering from island to island. All normal teenage stuff. Dreams of freedom, casting off the parental shackles. Cormac is reassured. Rachel was saying that Sophie has been behaving oddly and playing hookey from school. She asked him to try to find out what Sophie is up to. ‘She talks to you more than to me,’ said Rachel.
    ‘How’s school?’ he asks.
    She wrinkles her nose. ‘It’s so cut off.’
    ‘From what?’
    ‘The real world.’
    He could start up a little homily on the value of education but decides against it. She knows what he thinks on the subject, anyway. And he is less sure about the value of anything now. What has it ever done for you? she might ask. Look at you, forty-four years old, all that taxpayers’ money spent on you, and there you are making sandwiches which any fool could do. You might as well have left school at sixteen. You might have worked your way up to owning a chain of sandwichbars by this time with other people doing the cutting and slicing.
    ‘How’s your mother?’ he asks casually.
    ‘Seems OK. Busy. She’s always busy, isn’t she, with all her committees and whatnot? As if she’s afraid to stop.’
    They have finished the wine. Cormac turns to catch the waiter’s eye and catches the eye of Clarinda Bain instead.
     
    The police came to interview him the day after he was suspended. Two constables arrived, a man and a woman. He felt the woman’s aggression the moment he opened the door; it hit him like a slap in the face with a wet cloth. It was the first of many such looks he would encounter.
    ‘Cormac Aherne?’
    He