At the right time of day the drive only took half an hour, but this was the wrong time. It was rush hour and the cars crawled along, suspicious, selfishly sticking close to the bumper in front in case anyone tried to cut in. He could always tell when they were getting close to Sevenoaks because the cars seemed to be bigger and cleaner, like his father somehow. Sleek and clean and powerful enough to run you over without stopping.

Thomas hated Sevenoaks. They moved there six years ago when his father was at the zenith of his career and the money was rolling in. Lars came home every night looking happier and happier with himself. He put on weight, Thomas remembered, had a whole new wardrobe of bespoke clothes made to disguise his swelling arse and belly.

It seemed inconceivable that he had hanged himself. He was not a man given to dark reflections on his own character. It wouldn’t have been over the public scandal because he despised his investors. He said you couldn’t trick an honest man.

Moira changed when they moved to Sevenoaks. Thomas never knew why. He was just a kid at the time. He didn’t question the dynamics between them, but it felt as if his father was sapping the life from her, that the more animated and fun he became the more she melted into a soft-eyed victim. She stopped attending company parties, company holidays, company wife-bonding days. She began to take pills that made her mouth infuriatingly dry. Thomas remembered the disgusting rasp of her tongue moving inside her dry mouth. Her blinking stopped being expressive and became slightly slow, as if, sometimes, when she shut her eyes she wasn’t altogether certain that she ever wanted to open them again.

Thomas was holding the armrest below the window with both hands, looking resolutely out of the window. He could feel Mary’s presence burning behind him, could feel the vague disinterest of Jamie, his mother’s proxy, in front. He stared at the glass, at his reflection, his round eyes and stupid big Moira-lips, faint over the watermark of Sevenoaks. Mild hills, not rugged or massive like at school. Big houses hiding away down roads, skulking behind trees.

Moira moved into the Sevenoaks mansion Lars had bought without consulting her and she did it without an objection. She moved miles away from her friends and neighbors and all the shops in north London. It’ll be great, they were told—possibly by her, maybe by him—it’ll be great there because we’ll have acres of our own land and a big fence all around it and a top-of-the-range security system. We’ll have electric shutters and a panic room and a safe.

They moved, and then Thomas was sent away to school, before he even had the chance to find out what was so great about a panic room. Moira didn’t complain about that either. When Ella’s turn came she fought for her though, insisting she stayed at the local school until she was twelve. Thomas asked her about it, why she fought for Ella and not for him. She got teary, slacking her tongue from the dry roof of her mouth, guilty maybe. Boys are different, she said. That’s all she said. Boys are different.

Moira didn’t look vacant in the papers. She looked good actually, a couple of the boys had mentioned that she did. She had stayed thin and his father paid someone to come and do her hair a lot, dye it and set it. But even in the papers as she bustled through airports, drove through waiting protesters at the gate, even then he could see the emptiness in her. She was all he had left and there was no one there.

They were drawing near the turn-off, edging along with the other big cars, Jamie indicating early to let them know he was trying to get out. The sky was dark, the fields were fallow strips of turned mud. There might be nothing on the earth but this strip of tarmac, this line of cars.

He could hear Mary next to him, thinking of something to say, opening her mouth and shutting it. She kept quiet. She must be worried about her job, they must all have been worried. They couldn’t afford to keep all the staff on. If he met Mary and she didn’t work for them, he wondered, would she be different? He knew she thought things and didn’t say them, everyone did that. Jamie would probably be the same as he was now. The exact same. Silent, pleasant, a bit vacant. Moira loved Jamie for that. She liked him because he had nothing going on either.

Jamie took the turn, followed the road along to the gates, new gates, faux Victorian; his father loved faux things. Jamie pulled up to them, pressed the button on the dash and the gates swung slowly inward, giving Thomas time to take in all the graffiti on the walls. LIAR, said one. Thomas had seen it before, it had been pictured in the papers. SCUM BANKERS, said another. Ridiculous. He didn’t work for a fucking bank. Other than that the protests seemed to be very mild. A bunch of cheap supermarket flowers had been left propped up with a wooden cross. People knew about the suicide.

Through the gates, the drive was sheltered from the wind off the hill by a long arcade of gnarled old trees, naked, mournful and looming. The glass roof over the swimming pool looked dirty. Thomas could see dead leaves on it.

It was a nasty house, an asymmetric façade, plastic Arts and Crafts, supposed to look like a squat cottage with a heavy roof, but much too big for that. It looked like a sports center, had a big hall, big rooms. His father got it cut-price from a bankrupt trying to minimize his losses by selling for cash. The stench of panic clung to the place. Moira had redecorated. In a dry-mouth rasp she ordered the decorator to do it all in frosty blue and white, Swedish, completely inconsistent with the Voysey-esque exterior, but consistently so. Thomas’s quarters were full of spindly-legged tables and white chairs and strings of painted love hearts.

As they stopped at the bottom of the steps Mary finally thought of something to say. “We are all very sorry about your dad.”

She watched the back of his head for a reaction but Thomas didn’t move. He was looking at his father’s lawn.

The house was set up high, not on a steep hill like the house in Thorntonhall, but elevated, with a balustraded terrace along the front of it, stairs leading down at the side, to the top of a long gentle slope of lawn. He was looking at it and his mind was blank. Thomas should get out of the car now but he couldn’t move, his muscles were slack, he was afraid to let go of the armrest.

“Shall I go and see if your mother is in?”

If she’s in? She wasn’t even in the house. She’d gone out. Home to nothing. Still looking at the lawn he realized very suddenly that his eyes were dry, they were open wide as if he was being hit. He could hardly draw breath.

Mary took his silence for a yes and stepped out of the stationary car. She hurried up the steps to the door.

Thomas’s eyes were on the lawn. His dad loved the lawn. He loved that he owned it and the shape of it, that it dropped at the end so it looked as if it went on forever and he owned it. When they moved in Thomas and Ella wanted to play on it, run and roly-poly down it but Moira said no, it’s your father’s, he owns it, it’s not for playing on.

He owned it and no one, not Moira or even Ella, was allowed to run on it or step on it and the gardeners were sacked if they let an inch of it fail. Thomas’s nose was hard against the window, it hurt how hard it was against the window, and he looked out at his father’s lawn and pressed harder until his nose clicked and he saw a heel crushing a nose and saw the inside of the broken nose and the blinding white of the cartilage and perfect round bubbles of blood on it and Squeak on all fours, looking up at him with blood running from his mouth, smiling in the dark—

“You all right, Tommy?” Jamie had turned in his seat, his face a quarter visible, a vague, awkward smile on his face.

Thomas let go of the armrest and threw both forearms around Jamie’s throat, choking him as he dragged him backwards into the passenger seat.