I Found You by Lisa Jewell

‘So, Graham.’
    ‘Gray,’ he said, ‘everyone calls me Gray.’
    ‘Except me,’ said Pam.
    ‘Gray. How old are you?’
    ‘Seventeen.’
    ‘So you’re still at school?’
    ‘Sixth-form college.’
    ‘And you, Kirsty?’
    ‘I’m fifteen.’
    Kitty arched a fine eyebrow. ‘Young,’ she said absently.
    Kirsty nodded and blushed.
    ‘What about you, Mark?’ asked Tony. ‘How old are you?’
    ‘Nineteen.’
    ‘And what do you do?’
    ‘I’m at college. Business studies.’
    ‘That’s nice,’ said Pam. ‘What do you hope to be?’
    ‘A millionaire.’
    He said this with an entirely straight face and it was all Gray could do not to spit out a mouthful of tea.
    ‘Well,’ said Pam.
    ‘That’s great,’ said Tony. ‘Nothing like ambition.’
    Kitty’s mouth set into a straight line, giving away nothing.
    ‘Oh!’ said Pam, turning in her chair to peer through the windows of the orangery. ‘A peacock!’
    And sure enough, there, on the lawn, fluttering its iridescent fan of feathers like a showgirl, stood a peacock.
    ‘Well, that just puts the cap on it,’ chuckled Tony. ‘Peacocks!’
    ‘I know,’ said Kitty tiredly. ‘It’s a cliché, I suppose. But the novelist had a pair and I got used to having them around. So when they died I got a new pair. They’re surprisingly good company. I have other animals,’ she said. ‘A donkey. A Shetland pony. It just seems pointless having all this space and not putting something in it.’
    Kitty noticed Kirsty’s face light up at the mention of donkeys and ponies and said, ‘Mark, why don’t you take the kids down to the animals?’
    ‘Er, no thanks,’ said Gray, appalled at being referred to as a ‘kid’.
    Mark glanced at his sister. ‘Kirsty?’
    She nodded and got to her feet, her fists curled into her sleeves, looking every bit a ‘kid’. And as Gray watched Mark lead his sister from the room, watched them vanish through the door, heard their voices trailing into inaudible echoes and then disappear altogether, he felt a violent ache of anxiety. He looked from his mother to his father and back again but they were both preoccupied by the effort of making a half-decent conversation with a woman with whom they had nothing in common.
    What was it, he wondered, about that guy? What was it that kept setting all his alarm bells jangling? It was all in the detail, he decided. The bare feet, the carefully combed and set hair, the unlikely bond with the glacially grieving aunt, the precocious talk of being a millionaire. Not to mention the blatant staring on the beach and the inexplicable invitation to tea. None of it gelled. None of it consolidated itself into a type of person that Gray could recognise. And Gray knew some strange people. Croydon was full of them.
    He glanced at his parents again and then through the window across the lawn where he saw the recedingfigures of his sister and Mark, strolling companionably, Mark laughing, his sister turning to smile at him. Then they were gone but the peacock still stood, holding his ground, shimmering his tail feathers, staring, Gray felt, straight into his soul.

Thirteen
     
    The beers go quickly. Alice had a thirst and so, it appears, did Frank. She gets two more and when they are gone and there are no more beers left in the fridge, she crouches to her knees and pulls a bottle of Scotch from the bottom of the dresser. It’s pushing midnight and normally Alice would be watching the clock, imagining her precious seven hours being whittled away. But tonight she has no interest in the time. Time is irrelevant.
    She stretches to her feet and reaches up for tumblers.
    ‘Mum?’
    She turns at the sound of Jasmine’s voice.
    ‘What are you doing?’
    ‘Getting drinks,’ she replies.
    ‘For him?’
    ‘For Frank. And me.’
    Jasmine arches her left eyebrow. ‘His name’s not even Frank.’
    ‘No,’ she says patiently, ‘but it’s better than nothing.’
    ‘Why is he even here? I thought he’d