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Fergus.
    M’Gurgan said: ‘I would like you all to show a little respect to me, your father, to my friend Adam, and to this 1996 Bordeaux, which I paid fifteen pounds for at Haddows.’
    ‘It smells like bus shelters,’ said Angela.
    ‘You shouldn’t be encouraging us. We’re not old enough for binge drinking,’ said Carrie.
    ‘It’s not binge drinking!’ shouted M’Gurgan, banging his fist on the table. ‘It’s civilised – European – French – Jean-Paul fucking Sartre culture.’
    ‘Oh, I feel dead civilised now,’ murmured Angela. ‘If you’re wanting us to drink alcohol, how come I can’t have a blue Margarita?’
    M’Gurgan’s face darkened and he stretched his arm out at Kellas. ‘Do you realise that by this time next week, Adam could be blown to pieces by a landmine? Sorry, Adam.’
    ‘It’s OK,’ said Kellas. ‘Hope I won’t, though.’ He grinned. ‘Cheers,’ he said, raised his glass and took a drink.
    ‘Aye, cheers,’ said M’Gurgan. The prospect of Kellas’s violent death soothed everyone and the daughters took prim sips of wine. Angela wrinkled her nose and stuck out her tongue and Fergus, who’d already emptied his glass, held it out for more.
    As the meal drew to its end, with the second bottle almost empty and the children gone, Kellas began to feel the fright before his confession hopping in his stomach. He wanted to receive the same kind of shallow loving anger M’Gurgan had shown Carrie and Angela. True disappointment would be tolerable. The worst would be understanding, the absence of surprise. He feared M’Gurgan had expected him to sell out all along. He was aboutto ask M’Gurgan how his fantasy trilogy was coming along. Sophie spoke before he could open his mouth, to ask if he was still seeing Melissa.
    ‘It was a mistake,’ said Kellas.
    ‘Who’s that? Did I meet her?’ said M’Gurgan.
    ‘You know you did,’ said Sophie. ‘The posh one.’
    ‘Oh, I remember her,’ said M’Gurgan, smiling. He twirled his empty glass by the stem and tapped the rim against his upper lip. He regarded Kellas. ‘I remember you explaining that.’
    ‘Do you?’ said Kellas.
    ‘You said you’d always had an ambition to sleep with a right-wing woman,’ said M’Gurgan. ‘You felt they’d be less encumbered by guilt than the left-wing ones. They’d assume they were entitled to pleasure. You hoped they might share some of their selfishness with you.’
    ‘I don’t remember saying any of that,’ said Kellas. A smile worked at the edge of his mouth.
    ‘Did she not meet up with your hopes?’ said Sophie. She was looking hard at Kellas, with curiosity, her very dark brown eyes intent under her cropped chestnut hair. The three of them had attended the same school in Duncairn, although M’Gurgan’s timetable had been such that he did not meet her until years later.
    ‘Liam Cunnery knows her,’ said Kellas. He realised he was blushing and looking down at his hands as he fidgeted with the pepper mill. He looked from M’Gurgan to Sophie and back, grinned and looked down at his hands again. ‘He gave her a job as a TV researcher once. He does a nice job of separating the person from their ideas. He can pick out Melissa’s ideologies and get on with Melissa, like a vegetarian picking out the scraps of bacon from a salad and leaving them on the side of his plate. But she is a snob, and she does think rich folks’ kids are born brighter. And the last thing she said when she was leaving was: “You know, Adam, if your cock could have been just half an inch bigger.” She held her fingers up, like that. The precision of it, like some kind of scientific instrument. I think she might have closed one eye when she did it.’
    Their laughing was in the downswing a short time later and M’Gurgan went to fetch another bottle. Upstairs, they heard one of the girls scream, a door slam, and Fergus singing the chorus from Hotel Yorba . When he got to ‘I’ll be glad to see ya