Darkhouse. Alex Barclay

‘I’ll show you to your room.’

      ‘I think I can remember,’ said Joe. He took his suitcase and went alone up the stairs to a room he hadn’t seen in twelve years. He opened the door on the hotel minimalism that had never welcomed him before and didn’t welcome him now. From the age of fourteen to seventeen, he caught a ride with his neighbours to Rye to spend August with his father. And each September, his mother would run down the steps of their little Bensonhurst apartment to welcome him back home.

      Pam led Joe to a vast cherrywood dining table. She went to the kitchen and came back with three small plates of blackened asparagus in balsamic vinegar.

      ‘Put some parmigiano on that,’ said Giulio, pushing a small bowl towards Joe.

      ‘This is good,’ said Joe, raising his fork. ‘Is Beck supposed to be here? I couldn’t get hold of her on her cell phone.’ Beck was Joe’s name for his older sister, a movie locations manager.

      ‘Rebecca is on set,’ said Giulio. ‘Quite fittingly, in a lunatic asylum.’

      ‘We’re one big let-down,’ said Joe to Pam. She looked away.

      Giulio ignored him. ‘How’s Shaun?’

      ‘He’s great, settling in—’

      ‘—until he’s uprooted in a few months to come back home.’

      Joe looked at him. ‘Maybe it’s in his genes.’ He turned to Pam. ‘I spent my childhood in Brooklyn, then we all moved when Dad got his job at Louisiana State, then I had to come back to Brooklyn with my mother when they divorced, then split my time between there and Rye when Dad bought the apartment and then this house. I went back to LSU for a few years, then back to New York. And now of course, there’s Ireland.’

      ‘Wow,’ said Pam. ‘That’s a lot of moving. You went to the same college as your father? I didn’t realise.’

      ‘Briefly,’ said Joe. Giulio cleared his throat.

      After dinner, they moved into the living room with its thick carpets, ornate white-and-gold tapestry sofa and heavy velvet drapes. Anna’s worst nightmare.

      ‘So, you looking forward to the wedding?’ said Joe.

      Giulio and Pam exchanged glances.

      ‘We already got married,’ said Giulio. ‘In Vegas. At the weekend.’

      ‘In Vegas.’

      ‘I know,’ said Pam. ‘It sounds so tacky. But it was wonderful—’

      ‘Jesus, Dad; you know, I’ve never actually been invited to a wedding where the bride and groom have gone ahead and married before I got there. This is really something. A real special day for all of us.’

      ‘What’s done is done. I’m glad you came all this way,’ said Giulio.

      ‘Great,’ said Joe. ‘Look, goodnight, OK?’

      He put down his drink and went to his room. He lay on the bed and flicked on the TV. Later, when he heard his father’s bedroom door shut, he got up and went to the kitchen for coffee. He took his mug and wandered down the hallway, drawn to the study. He looked across the shelves at books that traced his father’s career: texts from the sixties on general entomology – introductions and field guides, then agricultural entomology – tabanids, mosquitoes.

      Joe had just turned four when Giulio started college at Cornell. He was twenty-seven years old and worked three jobs to pay his way through an entomology degree. He was the only father in the neighbourhood who stayed in at the weekends to study. Joe felt an unfamiliar stab of pride. He forgot the boy in the garden bouncing a ball off the wall so he could swing a bat at it.

      The rest of the books covered Giulio’s final specialism, titles just as familiar to Joe – Time of Death, Decomposition and Identification: An Atlas, Entomology & Death – A Procedural Guide, Forensic Entomology: The Utility of Arthropods in Legal Investigations, then four copies of Learning to Tell the Time: A Guide to Forensic Entomology by Giulio Lucchesi. Row after row of books about insects and forensics. At the bottom of a fallen pile, Joe recognised the navy binding and yellowed pages of a thick manuscript that made his heart flip. He pulled it out and wiped down the cover.

      Louisiana State University: Entomology and Time of Death: a field study. Three names were printed beneath. The one that leapt out at him was his own. It was 1982. He had been nineteen years old, a sophomore. Because of his father’s friendship with Jem Barmoix, LSU’s medical entomology professor, Joe had been invited to join the team for a groundbreaking new research project.

      ‘Regrets?’ said Giulio from the doorway. Joe jumped.

      ‘No, Dad. No.’

      ‘I don’t think you appreciate what you had.’

      ‘I don’t think you appreciate what I have.’

      ‘But Jem—’

      ‘I know. I know how much the research meant. But instead of squinting down a microscope all day, I’m the one who goes out and finds the fuckers who create the corpses in the first place. No corpses, no decomposition, no maggot- and-fly timeline. But no murderers, no corpses.’

      ‘Found the fuckers.’

      ‘What?’

      ‘You said you find the fuckers who commit murder, but shouldn’t you have said found? Aren’t you on a break? What are you now, Joseph? Anna tells me you’re a carpenter. How biblical.’

      ‘What the hell is your problem?’

      ‘You could have been an academ—’

      ‘Listen to yourself.’ Joe jabbed a finger at his father. Then he stopped and took a breath. ‘You know something? I’m not gonna bother. We both know what’s going on here. I’m not rising to it, the same conversation over and over.’ He threw down the paper and walked out of the room.

      Pam made a wasted effort over breakfast. Joe gave short, sharp answers through teeth he had been grinding all night.

      ‘I hate to leave on your wedding day,’ he said, getting up from the table and walking out to the bags he had left in the hall. Giulio followed him.

      ‘There’s no need to go after one night.’

      ‘I came for your wedding,’ said Joe, ‘which is now over. Which was over before I got here. Congratulations. Pam is a lovely woman. I’m now going to spend some time with Danny and Gina.’

      ‘As you wish.’

      ‘As I wish. Sure.’

      It was dark when Anna went out to close the gate at the end of the lane. She was about to turn back to the house when she saw the tip of a cigarette light up across the road. John Miller raised a hand for her to stop.

      ‘I definitely lost last night,’ he said, walking towards her with his head hanging, looking at her with sad eyes. He was freshly showered, dressed in a clean but rumpled rugby shirt and jeans.

      She looked at him, confused. Then she remembered. The first night they met, twenty-one years earlier, he was celebrating. France had beaten Ireland by one point in a rugby match in Paris. At the start of the night, John was mourning the loss, but by the end of it, he was drunk and jubilant that the Irish had come so close.

      ‘Whiskey doesn’t agree with me,’ he said, leaning his arms on the gate, staring down, kicking at the loose gravel.

      She shook her head and sighed.

      ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, looking up. ‘I really am.’

      ‘It’s fine,’ she said and tried to walk away.

      ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Please.’

      ‘What do you want me to say? It wasn’t a nice introduction after all this time.’

      ‘I