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solving. Finding solutions. You can do that with the packaging
business.'
    'I know exactly what you mean,' said
Brendan. 'On the face of it, packaging sounds obvious. But a few years ago,
this man called Harry Vermont and I set up this dotcom company.'
    'What company?' my father asked.
    Brendan laughed ruefully.
    'One of those that was going to make us
all millionaires,' he said. 'But it's gone now.'
    'What did it do?' said Bill.
    'The point of it,' said Brendan 'was that
people could order different sorts of consumer goods from the website and we
would deliver them. We would be middlemen. Middlepersons, I should say. When it
started, I thought it was all about technology. But once it started, I realized
it was partly that but, when it came down to it, it was also about packaging
and delivery. You had to get the right packaging at the right place, you had to
source it and do the actual packing, and then you had to deliver it on time. It
was an amazing challenge for us.'
    'Who did you source it from?' asked Dad.
    'Sorry?'
    'Packaging in this country is quite a
small world. I was wondering if you were dealing with someone I know.'
    'We were only in the planning stage,' said
Brendan. 'Then the dotcom collapse happened and we lost our funding. Poor old
Harry never quite got over it.'
    'If you're interested, Brendan, I'll show
you around some time,' said my father.
    'I'd love that,' said Brendan. 'Meanwhile,
I reckon it's time to get the food on the barbecue.'
    As it turned out, it wasn't time to put
the food on the barbecue. While we had been talking, the barbecue had gone out.
Brendan said that this sometimes happened when the bricquettes had been left in
the shed for a long time and had become damp. My father looked pleased and said
that he wouldn't have been able to bear it if there were somebody better than
him at lighting barbecues in the family. His position as lord and master would
have been threatened.
    I was disconcerted for a while by that
notion of Brendan being 'in the family' and I fell silent. I finished my beer
and opened a second one, and then I started to feel more mellow about it all. I
stood apart and looked at the family and looked at Brendan bustling around. I
thought of this narrow strip of urban garden, one of dozens in the street, one
of millions in London, and suddenly I was touched by the sight of Brendan going
to so much effort, bustling between the barbecue — which had now been lit,
quickly and efficiently by Bill — and my father and my mother. Every so often
he would sidle up to Kerry and touch her or whisper something to her or give
her a look, and she would light up.
    He helped my mother with sorting out the
marinade for the chicken and salmon pieces. Somehow he went into the house and
tracked Troy down to whichever hole he'd been hiding in. He chivvied him out
and persuaded him to carry plates to the table, and the different salads that
Troy and my mother had made that morning. It made me think about myself and I
felt a little ashamed. I wondered if I had assumed that the Cotton family
existed entirely for my benefit, like some sort of museum that I could drop
into whenever I felt like it. And I could always rely on other people to
maintain it. My parents were there to do things for me and to blame when things
went wrong. Had I thought enough about doing things for them?
    By the time I was on to my third beer, I
was feeling thoroughly forgiving of almost everybody in the world, and
certainly everybody in this garden, though not necessarily in the most coherent
way.
    There was Brendan, doing five things at
once, working so hard; and there was my mother bustling in and out with plates
and cutlery; my father fiddling around with the barbecue to stop it tipping
over; Kerry in conversation with Judy; Troy playing some game with Bill's
children, Sasha and Mitch. And I noticed something odd: they all seemed to be
having a good time. Brendan brought me a plate of grilled chicken and salad,
and I ate it