Hank headed to the kitchen, and Amanda saw a thunderstruck Clare returning downstairs, JP in tow. ‘She’s moved in,’ Clare said.
For a second, Amanda couldn’t compute the meaning of this. ‘Who?’
Clare lowered her voice to a whisper. ‘Kumiko.’
‘Has she?’
‘You didn’t know?’
‘No. How do you know?’
Clare frowned, guiltily. ‘I looked through his wardrobe.’
‘Mum–’
‘It was half-full of lady’s things. So either she’s moved in or George has something very interesting to tell us.’ Clare looked around the small, crowded room, and they heard the voices of more guests arriving. ‘Where is she, anyway? What does she even look like?’
‘She’s got brown hair . . .’ Amanda started but then wasn’t quite sure where to go next.
‘Thank you, darling,’ her mother said. ‘That narrows it down to almost everyone.’
The party spread quickly, moving into the kitchen and even the garden, despite the coldness of the night.
‘Welcome,’ George said, pouring wine into rented glasses. ‘Welcome.’
A woman he’d never met before pinned him with her stare, an almost pleading look in her eyes that he’d come to recognise. ‘I don’t suppose you could direct me to the host?’
George blinked. ‘The host?’
‘This George Duncan person,’ she said, drinking the wine, making a face at it. ‘I came all the way out here to talk to him about his extraordinary art, and instead I’m standing in a freezing garden in–’ she made another face ‘–the suburbs.’
‘Yes, well,’ George said, ‘when I see him, I’ll be sure to send him your way.’
‘I mean,’ the woman continued, gesturing with her cigarette at George’s precarious breeze-block garage, ‘is this some kind of prank? Or do you suppose this whole place is an extension of his art?’ She turned to him, suddenly inspired. ‘Like Rachel Whiteread! Yes, except instead of the empty spaces of a house, we have the house itself.’
‘No, I think he just lives here.’
The woman snorted. She turned to the man next to her, who George had also never met, and said, ‘Do you think he lives here?’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ said the man. ‘When do you think they’re going to bring out the new tiles?’
George felt a hand at his elbow. He turned. Kumiko.
‘The house is full,’ she said.
‘Is it?’ He looked at his watch, and accidentally spilt a good portion of the bottle of wine onto the back patio. Men and women whose names he didn’t know jumped back in complaint. ‘It’s barely eight o’clock.’
‘Who are they all?’ Kumiko whispered.
George wished he knew. It wasn’t supposed to be anything like this, just friends and family, plus a few people from this new world they’d suddenly found themselves in, art buyers who kept saying how connected they felt to George and Kumiko through the tiles, all coming together at the comfortable intersection of his home. A simple party. Small.
Not this.
‘Well, the guy who bought the first tile asked if he could bring a friend along, and I guess it just snowballed–’
Kumiko looked around at the crowds, but even her alarm was mild. ‘We will not have enough tiny sausages.’
‘They don’t really look like tiny-sausage people–’
‘George?’ Rachel said, appearing at his shoulder like poison gas. He tensed, so much he was sure Kumiko could see it. He’d come out here because it was the furthest place he could get away from Rachel without actually leaving the neighbourhood. The light from the kitchen window caught her eyes, and they blazed green for a second. Like devil eyes in a photograph, George thought.
‘And you can only be Kumiko?’ Rachel said.
‘Yes,’ Kumiko said. ‘That is who I can only be.’
George realised it was the first time he’d ever heard her speak to someone else in a way other than completely friendly. It made his stomach hurt, not least because he felt as if it could only be his fault.
He refilled his own glass of wine and drank it, quickly.
‘It’s not like they’re even that good,’ Mehmet said, enunciating in the careful way of the marginally too intoxicated. ‘You know what I mean?’
‘I’ve only seen pictures of them,’ Hank said, skilfully mixing a gimlet for Clare, ‘but they look pretty amazing to me.’
‘Yeah, okay, I’m lying, they’re brilliant. Can you make me one of those?’
‘I could, but I’m guessing you haven’t exactly been pacing yourself this evening.’ Hank waited near the refrigerator door until the man in front of it noticed him and hurried apologetically out of the way. It was one of the things he liked about this country, the solicitude. People apologised if you stepped on their foot. Though it probably helps if you look like me, he thought. He pulled out a bottle of white and judged its label with a raised eyebrow. ‘Oh, well,’ he said and started looking for a corkscrew anyway.
‘I mean, I shouldn’t even be here,’ Mehmet said. ‘I’m missing a party for this.’
Hank gestured with the corkscrew at the bodies pressed into the surprisingly narrow kitchen. ‘This is also what many people would call a party.’
‘George said he wanted me to come in particular tonight, since I was there when he met her first.’ Mehmet gave him a shifty look. ‘I think there’s going to be some big announcement.’
‘Oh?’ Hank said, feeling slightly interested as he poured himself the mediocre Pinot Grigio. He didn’t much care. George was a nice enough guy, but so far in his acquaintance George’s actual friends – as opposed to the alarming number of art buyers and hangers-on currently besieging Bromley – seemed limited to women and this slightly drunk g*y person. George wasn’t exactly a man’s man, and though Hank wasn’t so much of a Texan that he wore a cowboy hat, he was a Texan. On the other hand, Clare still liked George, and if there was gossip to be had, Hank was more than happy to be the one to deliver it to her. It would make her smile and, fool that he was, Hank’s heart would thump quite off rhythm when that happened.
‘They’ve moved in together,’ Hank said, re-corking the wine and shooing the same man out of the way of the fridge again. ‘Something like that.’