The Violinist

by EGB Fan

After an unsuccessful marriage Dana Barrett has picked herself up, found a job with a haunted painting and got back together with Peter Venkman. In the meantime, her ex must make a new life for himself in London.

Ghostbusters: The Violinist

Andre Wallance was getting divorced. His entire family was scandalised.

"You have to work at a marriage," said his older brother William, calling him in New York from San Francisco. William had a submissive wife and a one-year-old daughter. Both were very beautiful, and very quiet.

"She doesn't love me," said Andre.

"Well," William said smugly, "that's down to you."

Andre slammed the phone down.

"What will people say?" said his mother, Elizabeth.

"I don't care," said Andre. "I'm going to London - I won't hear them."

"Dana's perfect for you, Andre! Why do this?"

"Why does it have to be my fault?"

Albert, his father, would not hear of it being Andre's fault. He telephoned his son and told him not to stand for it.

"It's your home, and your wife, and your son, and you have every right to be there!"

Andre and his wife Dana had given Albert and Elizabeth a second grandchild about a year after William's daughter was born. Unlike his cousin Anastasia, Oscar Wallance was not quiet, and neither was his mother. They both cried a lot.

"I've been invited to head the London Symphony," he said. "I can't do that from here."

"How will you see your son?"

"I'll see him."

He assured Dana of the same thing when she and Oscar were seeing him onto his plane. He held his two-month-old son in his arms, and wished everything was different. It was difficult even to love him with things the way they were.

"I'll visit whenever I can," he said.

Dana nodded.

"Tell me if you're struggling. I'll pay as much child support as you need."

"There are other kinds of support besides money, Andre."

"I know," he said, hurt by her tone. "Do you want me to stay?"

"No."

"We agreed it's better if I go."

"It's your career, Andre."

"It's all of our happiness," said Andre. "Yours, mine and Oscar's. It's been hell."

Dana nodded again.

"All right," he said, "it's my career as well. But if we were… if it had worked, I wouldn't have taken the offer."

Dana said nothing. Andre kissed Oscar's forehead, and then gave him to his mother.

"Goodbye, Dana."

It hadn't worked with Dana. It was her fault, and it was his fault too. His leaving was the only realistic option now, and there wasn't much sadness for the loss of the marriage - not from either of them - but they both regretted the loss of the friendship they'd once had. It not having worked out with Oscar was by far the worst of it. He and Andre hadn't bonded, and it couldn't be forced, but they would have had chances as he grew. But not anymore. People would say Andre had walked out on his son. They would shake their heads and click their tongues and question everything that made him a good person, all the while oblivious to how their lives had been. The best thing for Oscar was not to live with two parents who didn't love each other.

Andre watched his ex-wife and son from the aeroplane window. Dana looked sad, and he himself felt the same way. This wasn't how they were supposed to end up. But Oscar seemed to know something they didn't. He was not crying anymore.

.-.-.-.

Once in London, it took Andre just over a week to make a real friend. She cornered him at the after-party following a performance: a bosomy blond English rose who was dressed to kill. She had high heels, knees, a tight pencil skirt and a conservative hint of cleavage. Her smile was dazzling, and she exuded confidence. At first, Andre was scared of her.

"Stunning performance," she said, whisking a glass of champagne from a passing waiter.

"Thank you."

She fixed him with a playful look, and said, "I know who you are. The magical new first violin who's going to make the LSO more fabulous than ever - am I right?"

"Yes," said Andre. "Andre Wallance." He offered his hand, and she shook it like a professional hand-shaker. "I'm afraid I can't guess who you are."

"Kate Hamilton," she said. "I'm the arts correspondent for the Independent."

So she was a journalist. That explained everything. She looked too young to be the arts correspondent for anything; Andre estimated that she was in her mid-twenties, perhaps ten years younger than he was. As such, he felt bad for the attraction he was feeling towards her - but of course, that was the point of her being the arts correspondent for the Independent. Most people who rose to fame in the world of the arts were men. People like him, who were imported to make an orchestra or an art gallery or a theatre bigger and better, were nearly always men. Every wealthy country in the world had seen new arrivals just like him - and then in would swoop a Kate Hamilton, beautiful and confident and scary, shoving a tape recorder in his face and turning him to putty in her hands.

"I wondered if we could schedule an interview," said Kate.

"I'd be delighted," said Andre. Sending in Kate Hamilton seemed to be working.

Once they had arranged a meeting she went off to talk to some more musicians, but she came back to him within the hour and said he looked lonely. At that point, Andre started to think that she wasn't really so scary at all. He could tell she had a big heart.

After that, they stuck together all evening. They agreed that his interview would be conducted over dinner in an expensive restaurant. The Independent would pay, Kate said - it was standard practice for prestigious interviewees.

So, days later, Andre found himself in a restaurant with her. Once their food had arrived, she produced a tape recorder from her handbag and put it on the table between them.

"So, Mr. Wallance," she said, switching on a smile that could make just about any man say just about anything. "What makes you special enough to be imported for the LSO?"

"Well," said Andre, "my musical ability."

She raised her eyebrows. She obviously plucked them. "So you think you're good?"

"You don't get to where I am today without being good, and knowing that you're good."

She took a loud bite of lettuce, and nodded. "Like it. But it isn't all about ability, is it?"

"Isn't it?" said Andre.

"Even if no one else in the world can play the violin quite as well as you can, there must be plenty of people who could play with an orchestra and not make it sound bad. You're a name as much as anything, aren't you?"

"I'm a name because I'm good."

"Are you now? Tell me about your career."

The interview went on through the main course, and while they were waiting for dessert. Kate ordered something sweet and sticky. Andre was surprised. He had never known a glamorous woman to do that. Dana had never indulged her senses in restaurants.

"It's a marvellous perk," said Kate, once she had put her tape recorder away and was eating her fatty dessert in a way that made it look sophisticated. "The newspaper paying for whatever I want when I eat out, I mean. Are you all right? I was a bit tough."

"I can see how you got your job," said Andre.

"You don't get to where I am today without being good," she said, giving him a cross-eyed look - and somehow even that was ladylike. "We journalists have to grill people if we want to keep our jobs. Celebrities being challenged on every aspect of their lives and being made to feel uncomfortable sells papers, apparently."

"I'm not a celebrity," said Andre.

"You are in some circles, darling."

He was taken aback when she called him darling. He had been about to say he wasn't uncomfortable either, but now it wouldn't be true.

"Why be a journalist if you don't want to grill people?" he asked.

She looked thoughtful. "Gosh, I don't know. I ran the school newspaper for two years, and I seemed to have a knack for it. When I was seventeen, I interviewed the school caretaker and it ended in an exposé about him cutting corners when cleaning the lavatories. After that everyone said I should be a journalist for a big paper in London, so I thought, why not? And then I was. All right, your turn. Why are you a musician?"

Andre found that, once the interview was finished, she was very easy to talk to. Dessert was over all too quickly. He was glad when Kate insisted on ordering coffee - only because the newspaper was paying, she said - and he was sorry when they had to leave.

"Can I see you again?" he heard himself saying.

She gave him a coy look. "You're in the LSO. I'm the arts correspondent for the Independent. We'll see lots of each other."

"Good," said Andre. "Do you have a business card?"

"No. Why?"

"I'd like your phone number." He paused. "In case I have to call you to complain about the write-up of that interview."

She gave him her home number, which Andre suspected she did not do for every man she interviewed. As it happened, he did call her on the morning that the article on the LSO came out. Kate had reviewed the concert, and then came the write-up of the interview.

"You used something I said when I wasn't being interviewed," said Andre.

"Gosh, did I?" her voice came back to him, and suddenly he wasn't thinking straight.

"There's a whole paragraph about why I got into music. I told you that after you put your tape recorder away - it was supposed to be off the record."

"Oh, that," she said. "Well, it was so romantic. You made it sound like a beautiful love story - you had me on the edge of my seat. You don't mind, do you?"

"No," said Andre. "I just… I'm amazed you remembered."

"It was the best bit."

"Are you sure this is how your editor wanted it? You make me sound… well, sweet."

"Darling," said Kate, "you are sweet."

There was definitely something there. He was only just divorced and she was ten years younger than both he and his ex-wife, but none of that mattered. He asked her out on a date, and she said yes.

In the days building up to their first official date, Andre was drunk with anticipation. Then, suddenly, he was terrified. She didn't even know he had a child. He decided to tell her straightaway, if only to get it off his chest. He almost told her in the taxi on the way to the restaurant, but then decided to wait until they were settled with their food.

"Why didn't you mention them last time?" Kate asked calmly, "them" being both Oscar and Dana.

"I was being interviewed," said Andre. "I didn't want anything about it in the paper."

"Why? Is it so scandalous?"

"It's divorce. I… don't like it, on principle."

"Why do it, then?" She was talking like she did when she was being a journalist.

"Because it wasn't working out," said Andre. "We were miserable - all three of us."

"Do you have a photograph of Oscar?"

"Well… not on me."

"Show me one later. I love babies - I'm excited to meet him already."

Andre stared at her. She was her usual happy, smiling self again. She had asked him a few awkward questions, and now she was fine with it.

"You're… okay with this?" he said.

"Of course," said Kate. "Why wouldn't I be?"

"Well, I…"

"You made a mistake. You married someone you didn't love - people do it all the time. There are so many worse things you could do."

"I did love her," Andre said at once.

Kate looked at him, and raised her eyebrows in a silent question.

"I thought I did, anyway," he elaborated. "She was so right for me. She's a musician too. Cello. We got on. We were good friends. And our families… we thought it seemed like a good idea, and they certainly didn't do anything to discourage us. I didn't love her like you're supposed to love the woman you marry, but I loved her more than she loved me."

"Oh yes?" said Kate.

"She was in love with someone else."

"Since when?"

"Since long before she married me."

"Oh, darling, poor you."

"It wasn't all her fault," said Andre. "It was both of us. It just didn't work out. She was in love with this guy, and I didn't see it, and I loved her enough as a friend to make myself believe it was more than that, but we were both deluding ourselves. It was just…"

"Just a mistake," said Kate. "It's all right. It would only worry me if you were still in love with her, and you're obviously not. So what's the arrangement with Oscar?"

"Well… I see him when I can." He hadn't seen him since he left.

"It is a lot of distance to put between you."

Andre sighed, long ago having resigned himself to this. It would be difficult for anyone to understand how things could be so bad that a man with a newborn baby would leave the country, but he would just have to try to explain. He so wanted Kate to understand. Even if his brother couldn't, or his parents couldn't, or if Oscar couldn't as he grew older, he wanted Kate to understand. So he told her everything about his marriage from the beginning, and he told her his reasoning when he decided to leave.

"Maybe it was wrong," he said. "But I couldn't see what else to do."

"Well, I'm glad you came here," said Kate.

Two hours later, he kissed her outside her apartment, which he would have to get used to calling a flat. Once she'd gone inside, Andre thought about everything, and wondered what their relationship looked like to other people. She was a beautiful blonde ten years his junior, and he was a wealthy high-profile musician. He knew what some people might think, but he also knew it wasn't like that. He was already falling in love with her.

They went on another two dates before they became lovers. Andre had not expected it to happen so soon, but Kate was keen. She took him into her flat, which had a lot of tall windows and pine surfaces and black leather sofas, and expertly seduced him. She was so good at it that Andre briefly wondered whether this was something beautiful young arts correspondents for important newspapers did often.

Then afterwards she said she loved him. He was relieved. He would normally have expected that to come first.

"You should meet my family," she said chattily, lying naked in his arms. "I've got a big family. There's my mum and dad, obviously, and I've also got an older sister and an older brother and a younger brother. Jools and Andrew are married, and Jools has got children. James has got the most awful girlfriend. You must meet them all."

"All right," said Andre. "And I'll take you to New York and San Francisco, when we can both get time off."

"Do you have family in San Francisco as well?"

"My brother. He's married too. Has a little girl. Sees her every day."

"Oh, darling," said Kate, and she cuddled him tightly.

.-.-.-.

Shortly after the new year, Dana called Andre to tell him that Oscar had survived a paranormal crisis. Andre was suddenly shaken to his senses. He had been having a great time over the past few months, and he felt giddy and lovesick and seventeen. He had attended a fireworks display on the South Bank in November when Kate insisted on teaching him about Bonfire Night, and in return he had shown her how to celebrate Thanksgiving. He had made love to her on Christmas morning and then gone with her to see her family, hardly feeling homesick for his own relatives at all. If he missed anything, it was snow (Kate said that white Christmases were rare in the south of England, and the last one they'd had was three years ago). He called his parents once, and then spent the rest of the day being admired by the Hamiltons.

Days later, he and Kate had joined the crowd of people and the BBC camera crew in sight of Big Ben to ring in the new year, five hours ahead of all the people Andre used to celebrate with. He had heard about the events in New York involving an art museum and the Statue of Liberty and the Ghostbusters, and all kinds of other things his mind couldn't link together, but he'd had no idea Oscar and Dana were involved.

"Is he okay?" he asked.

"Yes, he's fine," said Dana. "Andre, listen, I'm… back with Peter now."

"Oh," said Andre. "It wasn't all for nothing, then."

Dana hung up. Andre stared at the phone, surprised. Then he called her back.

"I didn't mean to sound nasty," he said. "I just meant… you know… it's good that you got what you wanted."

"Oh," said Dana.

"I've been seeing someone too," he said. Six months ago he had promised Kate that she would meet Oscar. It was definitely time Dana knew of her existence.

"Oh? For how long?"

"A while."

"Tell me about her."

So he told her about Kate. He told her about her career, her big heart and her engaging personality. He thought about how much better sex was with her, but of course he didn't say that. He and Dana just hadn't been compatible. Dana undoubtedly enjoyed herself more with Peter Venkman than she had with him, in and out of bed. Andre didn't mind that. Whatever Dana wanted to do with Peter was her business. But Oscar… that was something else. Andre put it to the back of his mind, but it was something to be wary of.

"What does she look like?" asked Dana. "Is she pretty?"

"Beautiful," said Andre.

"She sounds perfect."

"You'll like her, honestly."

It took a little more time for Kate actually to meet Oscar. It needed organisation. She and Andre both needed time off work, and it had to be convenient for Dana. Then William and his wife Jane had a second daughter. Oscar was well over a year old by this time, and he and Dana had moved to Los Angeles. Like Andre, Dana had had a good offer from a good orchestra. Peter was still in New York. Andre felt optimistic about life.

"We can go to California and see them all," he said to Kate. "We'll spend a few days in LA, and then we can go and see my brother."

It turned out to be even less complicated than that. William was eager to show his new daughter, Francesca, to Oscar and Dana. He arranged to bring his whole family to LA a couple of days after Andre arrived with Kate.

Oscar and Kate hit it off straightaway. On the morning before his brother was to arrive with his family, Andre found himself sitting on fine golden sand with Dana, watching Oscar and Kate frolicking on the beach. He was adorable, being a small child - and a particularly attractive one at that - and she was a vision. Her laughter, the sunlight on her hair, the way she was with Oscar… it was like a clever piece of movie editing.

"She really is beautiful," said Dana.

"Yeah," Andre said dreamily.

"And she's so nice."

"Mmmm."

"And she's great with Oscar."

"I know."

"She really is perfect."

William, Jane, Anastasia and Francesca arrived in the afternoon. Andre was surprised to find that Francesca, though as cute as the next baby, was neither beautiful nor quiet. She hardly seemed like a Wallance at all. Jane spent most of the time breast-feeding her, as she cried incessantly without a nipple in her mouth; Anastasia forced Oscar to have dolls' tea parties all the time, and William worshipped the ground Dana walked on.

"He hates me!" Kate said to Andre.

"No, no, no," said Andre. "It's just that he likes Dana."

He put his arm around her, kissed her forehead and felt terribly sorry for her. She had been through this already with his parents, when they had flown to London to meet her. Elizabeth adored Dana and even Albert, who blamed Dana entirely for the failure of the marriage, had once thought she and Andre made a good couple.

But where Andre's love for Dana had been weak enough to let others influence his choices, his love for Kate was strong enough to resist all opposition. They got engaged, bought a house in Chelsea together and then married when Oscar was three. The ceremony took place in Los Angeles, at Kate's insistence, so that Oscar could be there. Andre had never been happier. Things were looking up.

.-.-.-.

Peter Venkman was a Ghostbuster. That kept him in New York. When the Ghostbusters had to shut themselves down, Peter went to LA - to Oscar and Dana. They were married within a year. All three of them. Oscar took to calling Peter "Daddy".

"He calls that idiot 'Daddy'!" said Andre, following a phone conversation with Oscar.

"Oh, darling," said Kate sympathetically, rubbing his back.

A week later Andre said, in the same tone of voice, "Oscar is learning to play the guitar!"

"Oh, how lovely," said Kate.

"He wants to be a rock star!"

"Perhaps he will."

"He was learning to play the piano! He got a tune out of it after five minutes, Dana said! He's obviously talented, and now he's putting it all into the guitar!"

"Well, that's smashing. He's only little - he'll be fabulous in ten years' time."

Andre said no more. Clearly, his wife did not understand.

Dana was pregnant. The news of Oscar's musical ambitions somewhat overshadowed this for a time, at least as far as Andre was concerned, but Kate was as excited as if Dana was her own sister. Sometimes Andre stopped whatever he was doing just to think about how well Kate always got on with Peter and Dana, and then he refused to believe it.

The baby was nearly due when Kate reminded Andre that it was, in fact, Oscar's fifth birthday. Andre felt more shocked than guilty. He had always made an effort to remember Oscar's birthday, but now… well, it just hadn't been anywhere in his mind.

"Call him," said Kate.

"Well…" said Andre.

"What?"

"Why bother? What does he need me for? I mean, Venkman will have done something over the top for him, and he calls him 'Daddy' now, and they're about to have a baby…"

"Oh, don't be ridiculous!" said Kate, clearly angry, and she threw the cordless phone into his lap. Intimidated by all of this, Andre called and wished Oscar a happy birthday.

Ten minutes later he found Kate in the kitchen, cleaning the oven. She seemed to have calmed down, and gave him a warm smile.

"I'll have to send him something," said Andre.

"Yes," said Kate.

Andre quietly thought that if it wasn't for Kate, his contact with Oscar would probably have diminished a great deal by now. Perhaps it would even be gone altogether. Oscar had a new father, and he was about to have a younger brother or sister. Andre felt entirely superfluous to his requirements.

"Well." Kate rose to her feet, and closed the oven door. "You had better not forget our children's birthdays."

"We don't have any children," said Andre.

Kate glared at him. Then she left the room.

They took little notice of each other for the rest of the day. Then that night, when she climbed into bed beside him, she said, "I want to have children."

"When?" asked Andre.

"One day."

"All right."

Exactly two weeks later, Jessica Venkman was born. Whenever Andre phoned their house he heard her in the background, either laughing or crying. Then, after a few weeks, he and Kate flew out to see Oscar and to meet Jessica.

She was even louder in person. She roared with laughter whenever she was happy, and she screamed and went bright red whenever she was unhappy. When Andre held her, she pulled his hair and punched him in the face and cried loudly. A little afraid of her, Andre bundled her into Peter's arms, and she started babbling contentedly.

"What do you think of her?" he asked Oscar.

"She's okay," said Oscar. "I thought Daddy might love her more, but he doesn't."

"Oh," said Andre, a little disappointed. "Um… how's the guitar?"

Oscar broke into a dazzling smile. "I'll play you something."

Andre followed Oscar up to his room, and listened to him play the guitar. Five years old, and of course his playing wasn't perfect, but he was obviously brilliant. Andre wished and wished that the guitar would by some miracle turn into a violin.

.-.-.-.

Shortly after they had met Jessica, Kate fell pregnant. Andre was terrified. Kate stroked his face and said soothingly, "It won't be like last time."

It wasn't like last time. Kate gave birth to a son at the Portland Hospital - London's very prestigious and expensive private maternity hospital, which was constantly full of pregnant celebrities - and as soon as he saw him, Andre was smitten. They called him Hayden. He was tiny, pale and quiet. Kate worried that he was unhealthy, but the doctors and midwives assured her that he was all right.

Every time he held his son, something entered Andre's mind, and eventually he voiced it to Kate: "Why wasn't it like this with Oscar?"

"I suppose because you had a rubbish marriage with his mother," said Kate.

Andre nodded. It was the only explanation, and it seemed to make sense.

They took Hayden home after a few days. It had been snowing recently, but this was February; Andre was still waiting for a white Christmas. Hayden was so quiet that Kate kept getting up in the night to feel his pulse. Then one night, when he was four months old, Kate climbed into bed beside Andre and said, "I'm pregnant again."

"Oh!" said Andre. "So, did we…?"

"Well, yes, I suppose we must have done."

They'd had almost no time for lovemaking since Hayden's arrival, but when he thought about it, Andre did remember. They had the pregnancy confirmed, and then eight months later went back to the Portland Hospital where Kate gave birth to another son, Lars. It was magical and wonderful again, and again Andre felt bad for not loving Oscar enough.

"He looks exactly like Hayden," Oscar said over the phone, when he had received the photograph of Lars that Andre had sent him. They were all back at home by this point. Kate and Lars were both asleep, and Hayden was playing with building blocks in the middle of the living room floor.

"He does rather," agreed Andre.

"When can I meet them?"

"Oh, well… I'll talk to your mom about that."

There had been talk of Dana flying over to London with Oscar. She hadn't wanted to when Jessica was a baby, but she was two years old now and, Andre was told, fiercely independent. She could do without her mother for a few days.

Andre was about to say goodbye to Oscar, when suddenly he heard scuffling noises and then Jessica's shrill young voice demanding, "Is Oscar going to England?"

"Um… maybe," said Andre.

"Don't have any more kids."

"W-what?"

"If you have a girl, I will kill you!"

She slammed the phone down. Andre stood dazed for a moment, and then looked up as Kate entered the room with Lars hanging over her shoulder. He might have woken up and started crying, or he might not have. When Lars cried, Kate woke up, but Andre had trouble hearing the feeble sound he made even when awake.

"I'll tell you this now," said Kate. "I want to try again for a girl."

For a moment, Andre was worried. He almost believed that Jessica really would kill him.

Kate fell pregnant again when Lars was just under a year old, but she miscarried at ten weeks. No one but she and Andre ever knew she was pregnant. He was sorry for the loss of what might have been, but not having seen and felt and bled the blood that held their tiny embryo, he did not feel it as strongly as Kate did. She cried once, and grieved for a few days, but always took comfort in her sons. She doted on them. After Hayden was born, she had not gone back to her job at the Independent. Being a mother suited her much better than reviewing arts events and interviewing pretentious people, she said.

"Not that I thought you were pretentious, darling," she added hastily.

It amused Andre to see that Kate's approach to being a mother was very like her approach to being a journalist. She was still glamorous, efficient and businesslike. When she played with her sons after bathing and feeding them, it reminded Andre of the way she had relaxed after finishing his interview and tucked into her dessert, all those years ago.

Another year on, she felt ready to try for another baby. They conceived quite quickly, and Kate spent the next six months or so feeling very anxious. Then, suddenly, she started to relax and look forward to the birth. Her midwife at Portland always assured her that the child was strong and healthy, and eventually Kate began to believe it.

One day Andre felt brave enough to say, "I want the boys to start learning music."

Kate looked horrified. "Darling, they're tiny!"

"If they don't start now, they'll never be brilliant."

"I am not going to force my children to be brilliant. Look, I'll tell you what. Hayden can start learning the piano when he's four, as long as he doesn't hate it."

It wasn't a bad compromise at all. Hayden was going to be four in a few months' time.

Kate spent the end of that year very big, and very happy. The baby was due in January. She became anxious around Christmas, when Andre's father fell ill and Andre refused to go and see him. He forgot to hope for snow that year.

"He and I haven't been getting along lately anyway," Andre told her. Hayden and Lars were sitting under the Christmas tree, Hayden pulling apart the tinsel and stuffing the debris down Lars's clothes.

"What if he dies?" Kate said bluntly.

"What if you go into labour?"

Albert did die soon after that, and Elizabeth was furious with Andre for staying in England. Days later, Kate did indeed go into labour. Her younger brother came to look after Hayden and Lars, and Andre and Kate went to the Portland Hospital in a taxi. At that point neither of them really cared whether the baby was a boy or a girl, as long as it was healthy. Then Kate gave birth to a daughter, and they celebrated with twice as many hugs and tears and mad fits of laughter as ever before.

.-.-.-.

Andre took Hayden and Lars over to Los Angeles the second summer after Emilia, their little girl, was born. The boys were four and five years old. Both were learning the piano, and didn't hate it, though Andre was not convinced Hayden was taking it seriously. Kate stayed at home with Emilia, and Andre very quickly began to wish they had all stayed at home. The aeroplane journey was very long indeed, and Hayden kept himself amused by seeing what noises Lars would make if he kept poking and prodding him.

Then, of course, came the actual visit. Andre was appalled to discover that Oscar seemed to be turning into some kind of punk rocker, and his other sons spent the entire time being bullied by Peter and Dana's tenacious six-year-old daughter. When they finally went home, Lars was traumatised. Hayden, on the other hand, seemed to have enjoyed himself immensely. As soon as he'd hugged his mother hello, he said, "When can we go back?"

"We're not going back?" said Lars anxiously.

"Probably in about a year," said Andre, hoping to appease both of them.

"That long?" Hayden said morosely.

"I'm not going!" said Lars.

For a few weeks after that, Hayden seemed to go slightly mad. He took to wearing his sweaters inside-out, for some unfathomable reason, and he made Andre buy him a pair of combat trousers and a football. Andre was so stunned by this request that on his first attempt, he forgot which country he was in and came back with the wrong kind of ball.

"That's a rugby ball," Hayden said disapprovingly.

Andre stared down at the ball in his hands. "Oh, so it is. Sorry."

"I want a football."

"Right."

Andre went out again the next day, and bought what he would rather call a soccer ball. Hayden accepted it smilingly, and kicked it around St. James's Park for over an hour.

"Where's the rugby ball?" asked Andre.

"I put it somewhere safe," said Hayden. "One day I'll play rugby too."

For the rest of the summer he played football with whomever he could find to join in. But then he went back to school, and he also went back to normal. The football joined the rugby ball in storage.

The following summer, they went to Los Angeles again. Lars spent his every waking moment trying to avoid Jessica, but Hayden seemed not to mind her.

On the last morning of the visit, Andre and Dana found Oscar and Hayden in Oscar's bedroom, stuffing a large amount of revolting oversized rags into Hayden's suitcase.

"What's this?" Andre said warily.

Oscar looked up anxiously. "Where's Jess?"

"She's on the beach with your dad, honey," said Dana, her word selection making Andre feel a little uncomfortable. "What are you…?"

"I'm having some of Oscar's clothes," Hayden said happily, throwing another bundle into his suitcase.

"Only the ones that - Hayd, Hayd, not those ones, those still fit me," said Oscar, taking clothes out of the suitcase as fast as Hayden was piling them in. "Only old ones."

"But," said Andre, "they're…"

Oscar looked at him sharply. "Yes?"

He was twelve, and his attitude was growing even faster than his hair. Besides, Dana would not stand for it, so Andre decided to refrain from telling his oldest son that his clothes were all hideous.

"Never mind," he said, hoping that Hayden would stop wanting to wear the things once they were back in civilised Chelsea.

Then something terrible happened. Jessica came back. She barged past Andre and stood in the bedroom doorway, followed by a terrified looking Lars. Hayden frowned at him.

"You were supposed to stop her from coming up here!" he said.

"She's bigger than me!" said Lars.

Jessica turned round and glared at him, and he seemed to shrink to half his usual size. Then she looked back into Oscar's bedroom, demanding, "What's going on?"

"I'm having some of Oscar's clothes," Hayden said defiantly.

Jessica turned bright red. "No you're not!"

"Yes I am. Why should you have them all?"

Andre sometimes wondered why Peter, wealthy as he was, never seemed to buy his daughter any new clothes. But of course, he didn't say so.

"Because he's my brother!" yelled Jessica.

"He's my brother too," Hayden said calmly.

Then Jessica lost it. She ran at Hayden, screaming, and pinned him to the floor. Lars stood rooted to the spot, clearly terrified. Dana gasped, and screamed, "JESSICA!" Peter came running upstairs, and watched his daughter attacking a younger and smaller guest in their home with an unreadable look. As for Andre, he didn't know what to do. He did not want to manhandle somebody else's child, but he knew that if neither of Jessica's own parents was going to rescue his son from her, he would have to do it himself.

These thoughts passed through his mind in a flash, and then thankfully Oscar intervened. He pulled Jessica away from Hayden, and she continued to thrash and scream. She scratched his face and kicked his shins.

"JESS!" he shouted.

Andre went over to Hayden, and helped him to his feet.

"Are you okay?" he asked.

"Yeah," said Hayden, staring at Jessica in sheer wonder.

"OW! Will you keep still!" cried Oscar.

"HE'S STEALING MY CLOTHES!" wailed Jessica.

"Jessica," said Oscar, "they're my clothes."

"They're mine now!" Hayden said loudly. Then he picked up his suitcase and, with a strength his father never knew he possessed, ran with it down the stairs.

Jessica let out a primal scream and tried to run after him, but Oscar was too strong for her. She did her best. He was holding onto her wrists, but she could still kick and bite. In the end, though, she wore herself out and gave up.

"I'm so sorry about her!" Dana said at length.

"Jessica, you've gone completely insane!" said Oscar, covered in flesh wounds.

"I HATE YOU!" she yelled. "LET ME GO!"

"Don't let her go until after they've gone, Oscar," said Dana.

"Right," said Andre, grabbing Lars's hand and steering him towards the stairs. "It was nice seeing you, Oscar. Bye!"

"BYE!" called Oscar, struggling to make himself heard over Jessica's screams.

Once they were all in a taxi on the way to the airport, Andre said, "That girl is insane."

"I know!" said Hayden, awestruck.

"Hayden," said Andre. "She's awful to you. Both of you. Doesn't that bother you?"

Then at last, Lars found his voice. "I'm never going back there."

But of course, they did go back eventually. Oscar and Dana went to London during the spring to see Kate, and to meet Emilia. Then the following summer, Andre's entire family was to visit the Venkmans in LA.

Andre began to worry about both of his sons. Lars was terrified of Jessica, and Hayden had gone mad again after the last time he saw her. He had got out his football and his rugby ball, and this time his temporary insanity had lasted a few weeks into the school term. He had gone back to normal eventually, but now that he knew he was shortly to see the Venkmans, he had become more outspoken again.

It did not occur to Andre to worry about his daughter until a conversation between his sons, now six and seven, over breakfast the morning before their departure.

"I don't want to go," said Lars.

"You're just scared of Jessica," said Hayden.

"Yes," said Lars.

"You should stick up for yourself."

"She'd kill me!"

"No she wouldn't. Don't be such a pussy."

Andre's jaw dropped.

"Darling, where did you hear that expression?" asked Kate.

Hayden shrugged. "Can't remember."

"Well," said Lars, "you should stick up for yourself."

"I don't have to," said Hayden. "I don't mind it."

They were silent for a moment. Then Lars said, "What about Emi?"

"What about Emi?" said Hayden.

"Jessica will be horrible to her."

Andre then looked at his daughter, who was daintily eating bread and jam, her cutesy blond curls tied back from her face to avoid getting soiled. Lars was right. Emilia was a little princess, and Jessica Venkman would tear strips off her.

Hayden was looking at Emilia too, very pensively, and eventually he seemed to reach the same conclusion.

"If she upsets Emi," he said slowly, clearly thinking it through, "I'll beat her up."

"No you will not!" Kate said sharply.

"You don't beat her up for me!" said Lars indignantly.

Andre was reminded of himself and William. He took a sip of coffee and tried not to think about it.

"Well I'll do it for Emi," Hayden said gallantly. "If she upsets my sister, I'll kick her in the balls."

Andre was shocked. Kate burst out laughing.

So they went to LA as usual, this time taking Kate and Emilia. In a way, Andre was right to be worried about his pink and pretty little daughter. Jessica took an instant dislike to her. Whenever she saw her, she glared. Emilia always stared unblinkingly back at her, knowing that help was on the way… and then suddenly there was Hayden, glaring as hard as Jessica ever could. There was no real need to worry at all.

The war between them was silent. Andre suspected that Jessica knew it was wrong to victimise a helpless little girl, and did not want to be obvious about it, and that Hayden never challenged her verbally because he didn't have to. As soon as he turned up, Jessica would turn her evil eye onto him, and Emilia would wander off. She usually went to Oscar. They were developing a good relationship and Jessica, Andre could tell, simply couldn't stand it.

Then the following winter, just before Oscar turned fourteen, the Venkmans moved to New York. They were now significantly closer to Andre and his family, geographically speaking. Soon after the move, Andre got a phone call from Oscar. He said he wanted to come and live with him. Andre knew he didn't really want that at all, so he said no, don't be so silly. Then he started to think about how upset Oscar had sounded, and how callous he himself must have sounded, and it made him feel as though he had to go to New York.

"I'm going to see Oscar tomorrow," he told his family.

"Do we have to go?" Lars asked, alarmed.

"No," said Andre.

"Can we go?" Hayden asked hopefully.

"No," said Andre.

He arranged the time off work, and went to see Oscar. They went out for a meal together. Oscar had cut his hair, and professed to hate Peter. In a way, it was too good to be true - but in another way, there was a catch, and the catch was that Oscar was miserable. He wanted to live in LA, with Andre or Dana or anyone. They established there was no way this could be achieved, Andre and Dana had a serious talk about their son and then Andre went home. He tried to think of what else he could do, but there wasn't anything.

Then Hayden, Lars and Emilia all got chickenpox. Kate was frantic. They were all very distressed, and even pretty little Emilia got to a point where she didn't care how scarred she got - she just wanted to scratch!

"Oh darling, darling, you will care when you're older!" said Kate. Andre was loading the dishwasher after lunch, and he heard her voice up in Emilia's bedroom.

"I only care about now!" wailed Emilia.

Then Andre's eye happened to fall upon the calendar, and he realised that it was the day after Oscar's birthday. He went cold all over.

Kate came downstairs and caught him staring. She looked at the calendar too. Then she said, "Oh Andre, not again!"

"I'm sorry!" said Andre. "I just… you normally remind me."

Kate glared at him. "My children are ill!"

"My children are ill!"

"That's no excuse. Oscar's your child too. He isn't mine."

She was right. Andre knew it was no excuse, but that was why he'd forgotten. He and Kate were both busy with sick children. She had no other child, but he did, and he had forgotten him. It was inexcusable.

"I know," said Andre. "I'll call him."

Oscar was polite, and seemingly forgiving, but he was also despondent. Andre felt terrible. The next time he saw him, Oscar had blue hair and had made friends with a gay drummer from school. They were in a rock band called Mood Slime. It was awful.

.-.-.-.

Inevitably Oscar found himself a girlfriend, a year or so after he stopped dyeing his hair and had grown it all back. Andre came to the conclusion that long hair was better than blue hair, and had to try and feel contented. Oscar's girlfriend was called Amy, and Andre earned himself a lot of disapproval by being surprised when he saw that she was black. But Amy wasn't just black; she was a social class or two below Oscar as well. It seemed to Andre that the mismatched relationship was ultimately doomed, but once he had learnt to sit on his disapproval, he said nothing and let it run its course. Oscar was still seeing Amy when Andre's mother died, which resulted in a lot of sadness and an unscheduled visit to New York.

The Wallances visited New York again about a year and a half after Elizabeth's death; it was the winter before Hayden turned thirteen, Lars twelve and Emilia nine. Mood Slime had just signed their first major record deal. The band was talented - or so Andre was led to believe, though he couldn't make head nor tail of their songs - but thousands of people wanted to be rock stars, and talent was not enough on its own. Fortunately Oscar was very marketable, having a Ghostbuster for a stepfather, and he was gorgeous too.

Thanks to his band's success, Oscar would most likely be in London as often as he was in New York. There was no more need for the Wallances to visit him there. To mark the occasion of their final visit, they went to a New Year's Eve party with the Ghostbusters and all their friends and relations. Andre did not particularly enjoy himself that night, not least because Dana's friends found him so fascinating, and were full of probing questions. Hayden disappeared with Jessica for a while after midnight, and came back with a split lip. He said he'd had a drink from a chipped glass, but Andre was not convinced. When he took his children away from Jessica for the last time, he was not sorry. Lars and Emilia weren't sorry either but Hayden, after that night, became more baffling than ever.

First, he found himself a girlfriend called Sarah. She lived on a council estate in Stepney and called him "'Ayden". She was nice, but Andre was relieved when their relationship ended after a year. Shortly after that, Hayden had to choose his GCSEs. Andre realised then that he was not as familiar with the English schooling system as he ought to be.

"So," he said, "you do these GCSEs until you're sixteen?"

"Yes," said Hayden.

"Two years."

"Yes."

"What does GCSE stand for?"

"General Certificate of Secondary Education."

"Can I see that?"

Hayden cleared a space for him on the kitchen table, and showed him the table of options he had to choose from. They were divided into five columns: Compulsory Subjects, Arts, Technologies, Languages and Humanities.

"So you have to do those?" Andre said, pointing at the Compulsory Subjects column.

"Yes," said Hayden.

The subjects were English language, English literature, mathematics and science (double award) - the last equivalent to two GCSEs. Andre nodded approvingly. "Good."

"And I have to choose one from each of these other four columns, and one other."

"One other from where?"

"Anywhere."

He didn't sound happy. When Andre asked why, Hayden told him that he didn't think he should be made to do an art and a technology. He said it was a waste of his intelligence.

"I'll do food technology," he said dully, ticking off the option. "It might even be useful."

"More useful than textiles and… what's resistant materials?"

"Wood and metal."

"Wooden metal?"

"Wood. And. Metal."

"Ah."

"I don't want to do an art," Hayden said irritably.

"Do music," Andre said at once.

"No."

"What? Why not?"

"I don't want to."

"But you're good at music."

"I don't care. I'm not going to sing and play the piano and identify the instruments playing in a symphony only to be judged by Mr. Walton."

"Well," said Andre, "what would you do instead?"

He and Hayden looked at the arts column. Besides music, the options were PE, drama, media studies and, sensibly, art. Andre could see no reason for Hayden not to do music.

"I'll do drama," said Hayden.

"What? Why?"

"It'll be a laugh."

"These GCSEs are important to your future, Hayden. They're not supposed 'a laugh'."

Hayden looked at him. "You didn't even know what a GCSE was this morning."

He ended up doing drama, food technology, German from the languages column, and geography and history from the humanities column. Besides the absence of music from the selection, it wasn't so bad. Andre preferred French to German, but only until Hayden said, "I don't want to do French - I think Monsieur Lawrence fancies me."

A year later Hayden started working in a fish and chip shop, in spite of Andre constantly offering him money to stop, and Lars had to choose his GCSEs. There was no problem with amorous French teachers for him. Andre had tried to send his sons to the same school, but two weeks into his first term Hayden had absolutely insisted that he would get a much better education if he went to a school which had girls in it. This was when they had still been going to see the Venkmans on occasion, and Hayden had enlisted Oscar's help in getting Andre to relent on the issue. Even Kate seemed to think Hayden should have his way, so Andre found a good private school that taught girls and boys.

But he still liked his original choice of institution. When asked if he wouldn't mind going to an all-boys' school, Lars had been quite complicit. Andre then felt rather smug. When Emilia's turn came, Hayden was fifteen and had just entered into a somewhat amorous relationship with a girl from school called Christine. She was a nice girl, which was why Andre thought that if he was her father, he would not approve. So Emilia went to yet another school, this one for girls only.

Lars did GCSE French. He also did music. Andre could have wept with joy. He too puzzled over the technologies column, and in the end chose food technology, because it was the only one of any practical use. When her turn came, Emilia also did French and music. Andre was delighted. She and Lars really did seem to be on the right track.

When Emilia started the first year of her GCSEs, Lars was getting ready to sit his A (Advanced) levels (music, English and history), and Hayden was going off to university. He kept making the most bizarre choices about his education, or so it seemed to Andre. His AS levels (Advanced Subsidiary, equivalent to half an A level) and A levels had caused even more arguments than his GCSEs. Again it all had to be explained to Andre, and he came to understand that Hayden would do four AS levels, and then carry three of them on to A level. He knew that he wanted to do history, sociology and psychology. Andre could not begin to understand why, but he said nothing. Drama AS level, on the other hand - which Hayden was doing for a laugh - he could not let go so freely.

"What use is drama AS level to anyone?" he said to Lars one day - a suitably neutral sounding board - when he found him on his own in the kitchen, revising for his GCSEs. "Who needs an AS level in drama?"

"Actors," said Lars.

"No they don't," said Andre. "Actors need drama A level. People who are not actors do not need any drama qualifications at all. AS level drama is completely useless!"

After getting his drama AS level and then dropping the subject in his final year, Hayden announced his intention to study psychology and criminology at Brighton University. Andre could not believe it. He had read up on this. Oxford and Cambridge were the cream of English universities. Others like York, Warwick, Lancaster and East Anglia were almost as desirable. There were several that were okay, but not brilliant. Brighton was the pits.

"Hayden… why?" said Andre.

Hayden did not explain himself very well, and Andre didn't believe he had any real reason to want to go to Brighton other than to feel rebellious. He said he was sick of living amongst upper-class snobs, and wanted to experience life in the real world.

"You're applying to other places, though, right?" said Andre.

"Yes," said Hayden. "They're making me."

For the first term and a half of his A level year, Hayden's life was made miserable by UCAS: the Universities and Colleges Admissions Service. There was a form he had to fill in online, and the teachers would not let any student submit his or her form until they had re-written their personal statement every other day for at least fifteen weeks. Hayden was consistently moody and irritable during this time. He was still seeing Christine, and he seemed to enjoy their relationship, but Andre had noticed that his second son's teenage years had really changed his once sunny disposition.

"Will you at least apply to Oxford and Cambridge?" said Andre.

"Oxford and Cambridge?" Hayden boggled. "Are you insane? Do you know what you have to do if you want to apply to one of those places?"

"No," said Andre.

Hayden told him that first of all, you had to tell your teachers you intended to apply so that they could "help". You then had to send the university some absolutely dazzling essays, better than any you had done at school, meaning you had to come up with some new ones, which would be put under scrutiny by your helpful teachers and changed several times before you were allowed to submit them. You had to attend a gruelling interview at the establishment, and you had to sit an entrance exam that involved answering an impossible, pretentious question like, "Is there such a thing as a question?", or writing a two-thousand-word essay on a single word like "complication" or "creation".

"I am not doing that twice," said Hayden.

It wasn't unreasonable, so Andre persuaded him to apply to go to Oxford or Cambridge. Hayden agreed, and picked Cambridge.

"Why Cambridge?" asked Andre, who had been quietly hoping for Oxford.

"It's better," said Hayden.

"Who says?"

"Everyone."

"Then why is Oxford more famous?"

"What? Don't be stupid - it isn't."

"It is in the US."

"Well that doesn't mean anything," said Hayden. "Dad, most Americans don't even know what a Womble is."

He put himself through the application process, and swore to his father that he had done his best, but in the end he was not accepted to Cambridge. Andre made up his mind not to be too disappointed, but instead channelled his energies into persuading Hayden to go anywhere but Brighton. Hayden became increasingly irritable, and worried the hell out of his father by having a lot of sex with Christine. They were discreet about it, but Andre knew what was going on. So did Kate, but Christine's parents seemed oblivious. Andre once called Oscar and asked him to have a good, long talk to Hayden about contraception.

"Why don't you do it?" asked Oscar.

"Because he never listens to me," said Andre. "Can you make out like it was your idea?"

In the end, Hayden and Christine broke up without her getting pregnant. Hayden went away to Brighton, and Andre worried about him getting somebody pregnant there. Then, after a while, it occurred to him that if Hayden didn't get someone pregnant it might mean he was unwittingly sleeping with a post-op transsexual. They had a fair few of those in Brighton, he had heard, and that would be far worse than an unwanted pregnancy.

Hayden professed not to have a girlfriend, and once during a phone call with his father, something prompted him to add that he wasn't having casual sex either. There was no one since Christine, he said, but he'd made a lot of great friends and was happy. Andre had to admit that he sounded happier than he had in a long time.

"He just needed to spread his wings," Kate said wistfully.

The year after that was Emilia's GCSE year, and Lars's first year at university. He too was going away from home, to the University of East Anglia. At the end of his three years, he would be a secondary music teacher. It was too good to be true.

Hayden, meanwhile, wanted to spread his wings even wider. When he came home in the summer, he said that the second year of his degree would be undertaken in New York.

"Why New York?" asked Andre, faintly amazed. After all this time, Hayden was going back there. He would be reacquainted with the Venkmans. It would be weird.

"They had places available," he said. "And I know New York, and I know people there."

That was all he would say. The next time he left the house, Kate called Dana and told her that Hayden would be going to New York in September to study, and she had to promise to look after him. Then she gave the phone to Andre, and he asked after Oscar.

"He's bulimic," said Dana.

"He's what?" said Andre.

"It's okay, he's getting help. Don't tell him I told you - I don't think he wants you to know. But I thought you should. You are his father. Don't tell Peter I said that."

"Is, is he okay?" asked Andre. "Oscar, I mean. Is he… okay?"

"Yes," said Dana. Then she burst into tears, and told him how stressful it all was. She had been having problems with Jessica too, apparently. Andre remembered the day Jessica had attacked Hayden over a few items of clothing, and wasn't at all surprised she had turned into a nightmarish teenager. Dana said things were better with her since she'd left school, but still, Andre couldn't help worrying about Hayden seeing her again.

Eventually Kate seemed to sense his discomfort, grabbed the phone and said to it, "Dana, are you all right? Oh, darling, whatever is it?"

Andre left her to it, and went to ask Emilia if she needed help with any music practice.

.-.-.-.

Andre and Kate went to see Hayden in Brighton and Lars in Norwich once each, to see how they were settling in after their first few weeks. After that, they never went again. They sometimes talked about going to visit them, but whenever they were close to going they suddenly found it was Christmas or Easter or the summer, and their sons were both coming home anyway.

Emilia did very well in all of her GCSEs, especially French and music. She carried them both on to A level, and ended up becoming a very busy and important person who wore a power suit and liaised with French people. Andre never quite understood what the company did, but he gathered that it was something to do with the media. It wasn't a career in music, but it was impressive all the same.

Hayden of course came back from New York, and finished his sociology degree in Brighton. He passed all of his modules with distinction, and then decided that he was going to get a vocational qualification in supervising young offenders. He did this in London, during which time he lived at home but was hardly ever there. He was either attending classes by day, or serving drinks in a club by night. Andre didn't like it much, but he had long ago learnt that questioning Hayden's choices was futile. At that time Emilia was studying for her A levels, and took her exams at the end of the spring.

Lars was still at university, almost qualified to teach music to eleven-to-eighteen year olds. He then found his first job in Buckinghamshire, not a million miles away from home, but still a little way away. He checked in every so often, but mostly kept himself to himself and didn't talk much about what he was doing, which rather worried both of his parents. But it was easy to forget to worry about him with Hayden now living and working in Hackney with some of London's most unsavoury people.

In that time, if Lars ever pursued a romantic relationship, he kept it to himself. Hayden started seeing a woman called Mary, whom he later nicknamed Mary Mouse, after he had broken up with her. It took him over a year to find the heart to do so, she was so fragile and emotional, but in the end it had to be done. Then there was another: Yvonne. She was loud and abusive, ordered Hayden around like a dog and then left him for somebody else. When she heard the news, Kate bundled Andre into a taxi and they went straight to Hackney. They had expected to find their son in a state of extreme unhappiness, but he just said he hadn't been that keen on her and he was going to move to Newcastle anyway.

"You'll get a northern accent," said Kate.

"Why Newcastle?" asked Andre.

"I don't want to work in London anymore," said Hayden. "The crime here gets into the national news and the government's far too interested. They won't leave us alone."

As it turned out, he didn't like working with young offenders in Newcastle either. The city was not quite as high-profile as London, but the government still took an interest, and Hayden said that their red tape and stupid policies were stopping him from doing his job properly. He didn't stay long enough to pick up a northern accent. After eight months there he told his parents he'd be going away for a few days, did so, and then came back and said he was taking a job in New York.

"Why does he keep going back to New York?" Andre asked Kate.

"I don't know," said Kate. "But he was very happy studying there. Didn't you notice?"

"Yes," said Andre, "but I didn't know he wanted to live there."

In the days building up to Hayden's leaving, Andre gently quizzed him about the appeal New York held. Hayden kept giving him the standard answer about being able to do his job better there, and once he said, "You used to live there - perhaps it's in my blood." Another time he said, "Look, why is it such a big deal anyway?"

"It's just such a big move," said Andre.

"You did it."

"I had a lot of good reasons."

"Yes, your career, same as me."

"And my being in New York was making Dana and me and Oscar all miserable."

Hayden looked at him for a moment. Then he said, "Was it? Was it really?"

"You know it was," said Andre.

"No I don't. I wasn't there."

"Hayden, we've done this. I wouldn't have left if - "

"I know, I know."

The next morning, he left for New York. Andre, Kate and Emilia all saw him onto his plane. When the flight took off, Lars was in his Buckinghamshire school teaching a year nine class - students aged thirteen and fourteen. Andre suddenly remembered him when he and Kate got home, and called him in the evening.

"How are you?" he asked.

"All right," said Lars.

"Work still going well?"

"Yes."

"How's everything else?"

"What everything else?"

"Um. You know - non-work-related stuff."

"All right."

"Good," said Andre. "Hayden'll be in New York by now."

"I know," said Lars.

"I really wonder why he seems to like it there so much."

"Why can't it just be because the US government leaves professional people more or less alone, just like he said?"

"I… well, I guess it can."

Lars had his own issues with the British government, being a teacher. He said there was no flexibility in the state schooling system, and the students might just as well be taught by robots. Andre once asked him why he didn't try to get a job in a private school, and Lars said he might do that one day, but first he needed to find a private school where he wanted to work and whose bosses wanted him to work there.

(Ever since Kate had explained the different terms to him, Andre had never been able to understand why in England public school and private school meant exactly the same thing, while a free education could be obtained in a state school when England had no states. He had asked Kate about it, and she had said there was no reason. He'd asked Lars as well, when he qualified as a teacher, but he was no wiser.)

Emilia, meanwhile, neither worried her father nor puzzled him. She was doing her important office job, and she had found herself a boyfriend called Michael Carrow. Andre liked Michael immensely. He was from a good background, had an even better job then Emilia, spoke well, dressed well, liked classical music and detested rock and roll. He had never heard of Mood Slime.

"Gosh, didn't Emi mention them to you?" asked Kate. It was their first time meeting Michael; they were in Emilia's Westminster flat, and she had made them all dinner.

"No," said Michael, looking at Emilia, who was blushing and trying to hide behind her hair. "Is there any reason why she should?"

"Andre's son is the lead singer," said Kate.

"Oscar doesn't really have a lot to do with us," said Emilia.

"I think they're fabulous," Kate prattled on. "Andre may not like rock music, but I certainly do, and I know Emi buys their albums so she can't hate it."

This led to Emilia being made to dig out a Mood Slime album - their second from quite a few years ago, entitled Take Two - and play it over dessert. Kate enjoyed it, and even moved a little to the music - but Andre, as much as he listened, still could not hear anything to suggest that it really was music. Emilia continued to look embarrassed.

"He has a good voice," Michael said diplomatically.

"He's very sexy," said Kate.

"Mum!" said Emilia.

"I'm sorry, darling, but he is. You'd think so too if he wasn't your brother."

In spite of that, it was a good evening. Emilia was doing fine. Lars might have been doing all right, or he might not, and Andre had no way of knowing. Visits to his home in Buckinghamshire were just like the phone calls: guarded and uninformative. As for Hayden, he sounded happy most of the time, puzzlingly sad some of the time and nothing like the quiet, dignified young man the boy might once have become.

.-.-.-.

Then, out of the blue, came the Sunday that explained everything. Suddenly every single thing that Andre's two sons had said and done made perfect sense. It was terrible.

First, Lars came to their house.

"I'm gay."

Andre couldn't speak. All this time, no girlfriend, no mention of wanting a girlfriend… and this had never occurred to him. This could not be the explanation. There was no reason for Lars to be gay. Gay men were gay because something had gone wrong with them. Surely, surely nothing had gone wrong with Lars.

"Are you sure?" asked Kate.

"Yes," said Lars.

Then the phone rang. Andre wanted to ignore it, and Kate didn't move, but Lars looked at the caller display and said, "It's Hayden's mobile."

Kate rushed to answer it. All of her children were in their twenties, and she still lived in fear that something terrible was going to happen to one of them.

Andre and Lars sat awkwardly, listening to Kate's half of the conversation.

"Hello, darling. Are you all right? …You're what? …Oh! Well… yes I see. Darling, darling…" - she cut a glance at Andre - "can we talk about it later? …No, love, tell him later… Well it's not really the best time… Well the thing is…" - she moved her gaze onto Lars - "the thing is that your brother's here, and he's just told us he's gay."

She stopped talking. Andre glanced at Lars, who looked at the floor. Then he looked back at Kate. By now it was obvious that Hayden had more bad news for them.

"Are you laughing?" Kate said sharply. "You are! Hayden, stop it. Stop laughing… Darling… darling, please stop laughing… Why is it funny?"

Eventually she hung up, and went back to sit with Andre. Lars spoke first. "Why did he laugh?" For the first time in his life, he sounded angry.

"He wasn't laughing at you, darling," said Kate.

"What did he say?" asked Andre.

Kate put her hand on his knee. "I'll tell you later, darling. Lars - "

"Kate!" said Andre. "What did he say?"

"Oh, all right," said Kate. "He's in love with Jessica."

"Who?" Lars said blankly.

"Jessica, darling. You know… Jessica."

Lars looked both shocked and disbelieving. "Jessica Venkman?"

Andre groaned, and put his head in his hands. "Oh my God," he said. Jessica Venkman. The girl who had threatened to kill him at the age of two, if he and Kate ever had a daughter. The girl who had tried to beat Hayden to death with her bare hands just for taking a few of Oscar's old clothes. The girl who, the last time he had seen her, was wearing the most unsightly cargo trousers and gyrating to some hideous metal music.

"You can't be serious," said Lars.

"That's what he said," said Kate.

"Is he insane?"

Andre looked up. "Weren't we talking about you?"

Lars looked steadily back at him. Then he said, "That's all. I'm gay. I'm not going to hide it from you anymore."

"How long have you known?" asked Kate.

He hesitated. Then he said, "A long time."

"Darling, why tell us now?"

He took a deep breath. "Because I'm in love."

Andre stared at him, and Kate didn't say anything. In love. In love with another man. It simply wouldn't register.

"I said I'm in love!" said Lars, his voice cracking at last. He looked hurt, and Andre noticed that all of this seemed to be directed at Kate rather than at him. Perhaps Lars had expected her support more than his. He stood up, and said, "I'm going to see Emi."

As soon as he'd gone, Andre said, "I'm going to call Hayden."

He called, but there was no answer, so he and Kate began to talk about Lars.

"What do you think?" asked Andre.

"Well," said Kate, "oddly enough, I didn't like it when he told us. That's awful, isn't it?"

"He's gay!"

"I know. But there's nothing we can do about it. We have to accept it."

Andre didn't know what to say, so he said nothing.

"He's our son," said Kate. "And he's in love, just like you and me."

Andre shook his head. "It's not like you and me."

The next few hours were very uncomfortable for him. He couldn't accept that Lars was gay, and he was dying to talk to Hayden. Going to university in Brighton and working with young offenders was one thing, but to fall in love with Jessica Venkman…

"I suppose you know what he's doing," said Kate, when Andre hung up after his fifth failed attempt to call.

"It's two o'clock in the afternoon there," Andre said, as though it made a difference.

"So what? It's Sunday, and he's in love. They'll be at it all day. Your best bet would be to try and catch him at work tomorrow - he'll let you distract him from that."

Then Lars came back. He looked so miserable, Andre almost forgot he was twenty-five and gay, and wanted to cuddle him.

"She was even worse than you," said Lars.

"Lars…" said Andre. "Why are you?"

He sighed deeply. "It's no good asking me that."

"It's late, darling," said Kate. "Do you want to stay the night?"

Lars shook his head. "I'm going home." Then he went. He had only been there for two minutes. Andre wondered why he had bothered coming back after seeing Emilia.

Two hours later, he said acidly to Kate, "I suppose you know what he's doing."

"Darling," said Kate. "Either accept it, or don't think about it."

Andre chose not to think about it. It was better to think about Hayden, and to wonder what on earth could have made him fall in love with Jessica Venkman. Perhaps she had changed, but from what he remembered she was loud and rude and unpleasant and opinionated, and she wasn't even particularly attractive. She wasn't unattractive either, but there were plenty of much prettier girls than she was, and nicer ones too. He began to feel angry when he thought of how she had abused his children in the past, and he worried about the nature of the relationship she and Hayden had now.

The next day, Andre followed Kate's advice and called Hayden's office at ten past two. It would be ten past nine for him, and he would have arrived at work a few minutes ago.

"You'd better tell me," said Andre.

"Tell you what?"

"About Jessica."

"Oh. Well, she's absolutely perfect."

"No she isn't!"

"Dad, come on," said Hayden. "Be happy for me. I love her."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes. Why, what do you mean?"

"Well…"

"Yes?"

"These things sometimes… I mean… are you sure it isn't just…"

"Dad," said Hayden. "Are you talking about sex?"

Andre, alone in the house, blushed to his ears. "Yes."

"If it was just about sex," said Hayden, "it would have been over a long time ago."

"What? When?"

"That New Year's Eve party when I was twelve."

"WHAT?"

"Relax, I'm joking. Look, we've been sleeping together since I got here. And we did it when I came over here to be interviewed. Oh, and all the time I was studying here."

Andre put a hand on his forehead. "Oh my God."

"I love her."

"Why?"

"Because she's amazing! I've loved her since the moment I clapped eyes on her."

"You were five years old!"

"So? That's how old you were when you fell in love with the violin."

"THAT IS NOT THE SAME THING!" Andre said hysterically.

"All right, all right, calm down," said Hayden. "Look, I may have been five then, but I'm twenty-six now. I've loved her for a long time, and now she loves me too, and one day when I think she's ready I'm going to ask her to marry me. Okay?"

"Not really."

"Well you'll just have to lump it, then. So anyway, I hear Lars is gay."

Andre sighed heavily. "I know you do. Why did you laugh?"

"What?"

"When your mom told you about Lars."

"Oh, that," said Hayden. "No reason. Just my timing when I called." He sniggered.

"I see," Andre said dully. Hayden's timing had been something all right, but as far as his father was concerned, it certainly wasn't funny.

At the weekend Kate, feeling bad about how she had reacted to Lars's news, went to see him. When she came back in the evening, she told Andre everything she had learnt.

"His name's Nathan Gilbert. He's a physics teacher. And general sciences to lower-school students. He's been doing maternity cover where Lars works. He said he started off hoping the woman wouldn't come back after she had her baby so he could take her job permanently, but now that he and Lars are in love they've decided it's best if they don't work together after his contract expires, so he's going to try and find another job."

"I'll tell you why," said Andre. "The students would make their lives hell if they found out two of their male teachers were… you know."

"You're probably right," said Kate.

"I don't understand why it happened."

"Why he's gay, you mean? Darling, I don't think anyone understands why that happens."

"And as for Hayden…"

"Oh, did you talk to him?"

"Yes. He says he's loved her since the moment he clapped eyes on her. I find that hard to believe. If he was in love with her, he sure hid it well."

"But he didn't really, did he?" Kate said thoughtfully. "Even when they were little, he always used to look forward to going to the US, and he used to find Jessica absolutely fascinating. Then he was moody when we stopped going there, and when he went back there to study he sounded happier than he'd been in a long time."

Andre thought about this. He could think of nothing to say.

"All three of our children are in love," said Kate.

Andre supposed that had to be considered a good thing, but still, Emilia's choice was by far his favourite. He had yet to meet Nathan, and he hadn't seen Jessica since she was a teenager, but he just knew that Michael would always be his favourite.

Word got out about Lars, although no one heard it from Andre. He got a phone call from William, who wanted to know how his brother could have let such a thing happen and what he planned to do about it. Andre said he was going to do nothing and hung up, but William wouldn't leave it at that. He didn't like the idea of having a gay nephew one bit. Andre could understand that - he didn't like the idea of having a gay son - but he also knew that there was nothing he could do about it. He knew he was going to have to get used to it, but he didn't know how. He had quickly got used to Oscar having black girlfriends, of which he'd had several since Amy, but this was something else altogether.

Andre met Nathan after Lars came back from visiting Hayden, and being assured that he had his brother's support. The whole episode seemed to have improved and strengthened their relationship, anyway. Andre and Kate went to Buckinghamshire; they went to the flat Lars was sharing with Nathan, had dinner and spent the night. Andre kept staring at the wall separating their two bedrooms, wondering what was going on in there.

"Remember when we went to stay with your mum and dad?" said Kate. "They will have gone straight to sleep."

Nathan was a great guy, and if it hadn't been for the fact that he was sleeping with his son, Andre would have liked him. Through all of his disgust and disapproval he held onto this thought, willing himself one day to come to terms with it. If it had been Oscar, he didn't know what he would have felt or thought or done… but he still loved Lars.

Then they went to see Hayden and Jessica. She still dressed like a fifteen-year-old boy, and she was still loud and opinionated. She was nothing like the glamorous and sophisticated women Andre had been attracted to, and would have liked his sons to get involved with. But this time, she wasn't unpleasant. Hayden was besotted with her - that much was obvious. They hardly touched at all when Andre and Kate were there, but they called each other "babe" and smiled a lot. They said things which made absolutely no sense, and then hooted with laughter. Andre was making an effort to be civil to Jessica, and she was making an effort to be civil to him and Kate. It really wasn't too bad at all.

This all took place in the one-bedroom apartment that Hayden was renting. Jessica told them that she was very close to buying them a new apartment, and it would have a spare room where Andre and Kate could sleep next time (that time they had a hotel, just like in the old days). There wouldn't even be a mortgage, she said. Apparently she had made a few million dollars by fixing up houses, and now she was buying Hayden an apartment.

"Doesn't it bother you," Andre asked him, "that she's earning so much more than you?"

"Dad," said Hayden, "that's so sexist!"

Of course, Andre and Kate also reacquainted themselves with Peter and Dana. Peter and Kate absolutely fell on each other. Apparently they had once been better friends than anyone imagined.

Time passed, and nothing much changed, except that Hayden married Jessica in a simple ceremony in New York at City Hall and then, just over a year later, Lars and Nathan wed in a civil ceremony near Nathan's family, and fairly near Lars's, in Islington. As far as Andre was concerned, neither situation was ideal, but he had grown used to it and he knew his sons were happy. Jessica and Emilia never stopped hating each other, but that didn't matter too much, as they lived in different countries.

A little over two years into their marriage, Hayden and Jessica had a son called Tom. He took up so much of Andre and Kate's interest that they forgot to keep track of Emilia's relationship with Michael. It had been just the same for years: she was desperately in love with him, he said he loved her and he hadn't asked her to marry him yet. Everyone imagined that one day he would. Emilia would not propose, in spite of Jessica's advice - she was too much of a traditionalist. So, when she got sick of waiting, she sat him down for an intense talk that let him know they were either getting married, or breaking up.

When her six-year relationship with Michael ended, Emilia was genuinely heartbroken. She took three days off work, went to her parents' house and sobbed bitterly into her mother's breasts. Then suddenly, things began to move on very quickly. Oddly enough someone seemed to have cloned Michael, given him the name David Chambers and dropped him into everyday life. Emilia then found him, decided that they were in love and got engaged to him in under a year.

.-.-.-.

It was so well timed, they could almost have called a temporary truce in order to plan it together. When Emilia got married, Jessica was too pregnant to fly to England for the wedding, but not so pregnant that Hayden had to stay with her for fear of missing the birth of his second child. He flew over to London three days before the ceremony, bringing Tom with him at the behest of his sister and his parents. Everyone imagined that he would have a terrible time on an aeroplane with a child not yet two, but when Andre and Kate met them at the airport, Hayden looked fine. Tom looked fine too, and he even turned round and waved to a group of women in their twenties. They waved back, all giggling and wearing looks of adoration, and then disappeared into the crowd.

On the first night, after Tom had finally gone to bed (having been kept awake for nearly twenty-four hours, to his delight - he would never have slept if his body was telling him it was four o'clock in the afternoon), Andre had with Hayden the same conversation that just about everybody had had with just about everybody else. He himself had had it with Oscar, Lars, Kate, his niece Francesca and even Dana. No one really believed that Emilia marrying David was a good idea, even if they didn't explicitly say it.

"What happened to Michael, anyway?" said Hayden.

"I thought you hated Michael," said Andre.

"Well," said Hayden, "yeah, but I hate David too. Anyway, that's beside the point. I may not have liked the guy, but she loved him, and I can't believe that after six years with Michael she really fell in love with David after twenty-five minutes."

Kate came in with a tray of hot drinks. She put it on the coffee table and sat down.

"Thanks, Mum," said Hayden, taking one. "So what do you think?"

"It doesn't really matter what any of us thinks," said Kate.

"No, I suppose not," said Hayden.

"I'll say this," said Andre. "It reminds me a little of me and Dana."

"Exactly - she married you because she'd broken up with Peter," said Hayden. "Why do people do that?"

"Because they want to get married," said Andre.

"What, to anyone?"

"Not to anyone, no, but… what would you have done if Jessica didn't love you?"

"Well I wouldn't have married someone else, that's for damn sure."

"So why did you go out with those women when you came back from studying there?"

"I just thought I'd try it," said Hayden. "But it didn't take me long to work out that I wasn't going to marry either of them - I only ever wanted Jess."

"So if she didn't want you, you would have never gotten married?" said Andre. He wasn't sure that he believed it, even if Hayden did.

"Yeah, sure, like Oscar," said Hayden. "He's not married, and he seems to survive. I wouldn't marry anyone if my heart wasn't in it."

"I might have," said Kate. "I always wanted children as much as anything else."

"Mum, really," said Hayden. "It's that attitude that traps people in unhappy marriages."

"You're only trapped if you're Catholic, darling," Kate said sagely.

"Don't I know it," said Andre.

"I suppose she'll do it anyway," said Hayden, "so there's no point in talking about it."

"She'd better," said Andre. "I've never spent so much money in one go in my life."

Then Jessica called. She had been calling a lot, because apparently she was missing Tom more than she had thought she would. She might have been hoping to talk to him, and it was certainly worth a try given the strange hours Tom kept, but Hayden had to tell her he was asleep. Andre half-listened to his son's side of the conversation whilst putting away the toys that were strewn around the floor.

"Darling, why bother?" said Kate. "He'll have them all out again tomorrow."

She was right, of course. Tom took after his mother in many respects; he had always been an energetic baby, and now that he had found out how to make a mess, he made it something of a hobby. He had also picked up Oscar's need to be the centre of attention, Peter's obsession with women and Hayden's strange sense of humour. Oddly enough, Andre didn't mind any of this. He thought his grandson was absolutely delightful.

"But anyway, how are you?" said Hayden, when he was finally allowed to stop talking about Tom. "You're not going to gut any houses while I'm away, are you? …No, no, listen - if you go into premature labour before the wedding, I can't come home. Emi would kill me… Yeah, I know, you'd think no one had ever got married before…"

The wedding was a huge deal, and no one would have expected anything less from Emilia. She had even persuaded William's entire branch of the family to fly over from San Francisco, which was impressive, because William had more or less disowned Andre five years ago when he said he wasn't going to try to cure Lars of his homosexuality. They were going to take up a lot of space - Andre estimated a pew and three quarters (the wedding was taking place in a church, even though Emilia only ever went to church for weddings and funerals). Between them William's daughters had two men (one each), and six children (Anastasia had a son and a daughter; Francesca, three daughters and a son).

The day before the wedding, William deigned to call Andre to say, "I suppose Lars will be there with that… civil partner of his."

"Of course," said Andre.

"Well, I just wanted to ask you…"

"Yes?"

"Do they see much of Tom?"

It so happened that Lars and Nathan were both there, playing with Tom in the middle of the living room at that very moment, all three of them in Andre's clear sight.

"They're playing with him right now," said Andre.

"They are?" said William, his voice rising an octave or two.

"Yes."

"Doesn't that… you know… worry you?"

That made him angry. Andre did not very much like Lars being gay, but at least he was enlightened enough to know the difference between homosexuality and paedophilia. He supposed that William might have been asking whether he was worried about Lars's gayness being contagious - and actually, the thought had occurred to him - but he just knew that wasn't the issue at all.

"No," he said defiantly.

"It would me."

"Yes, well, it's no good telling me. If your daughters want to keep their sons away from him, that's their business." Then he hung up.

Later he wished he'd told William that Nathan and Lars were staying overnight, just to shock him. It would have been an early start and a hurried journey from Bucks, so they had arrived earlier that day and were both going to sleep in Lars's old bedroom. Hayden was also in his old room, and Tom was sharing Emilia's room with Oscar, who also happened to be staying. It had been assumed by everyone that Tom would go in with Hayden, but of course, that was a silly idea. Oscar was his cool fun uncle, and sharing a bedroom with him was a terrific novelty.

The next morning, they all woke up to the prospect of Emilia's wedding. She had made Hayden and Lars ushers; they had to stand at the doors with roses in their buttonholes and tell people which side of the church to sit on. Kate had to go in and wait on the front left pew in her new hat, and she had to try to keep Tom under control, which was no mean feat. Nathan and Oscar sat with them, Oscar keeping his head down and evidently hoping David's foppish family had not spawned any deviant Mood Slime fans.

Andre had to stick with his daughter. He was going to be walking her down the aisle and giving her away to a man whom he did not believe she loved, and who he did not believe loved her. It pained him to think of it. Emilia had always been precious to him: three sons, one of whom he hardly ever saw, an early miscarriage and then, finally, her.

He loved his sons as much - or two of them, anyway - but there was something particular about his only daughter. She was what he had always imagined. She never shocked or disappointed him. Even now he didn't disapprove of what she was doing; he liked David, and thought him a good choice of husband. If they could not learn to love each other, and their marriage was ultimately an unhappy one, Andre would blame Michael. Michael had hurt Emilia terribly. She had wanted to have this wedding with him. He looked at her in her elaborate wedding dress, remembering her tears and her heartache, and in that moment Andre wanted to find Michael Carrow and kill him.

"You look beautiful," he said, as they stood waiting for the Wedding March to start.

Emilia smiled at him.

"You look just like your mother," he added.

"So everyone says."

Andre hugged her, trying hard not to crease or crumple any part of her, and said, "I hope you'll be happy, sweetheart."

.-.-.-.

In November, Jessica gave birth to her second son in a birthing pool in the middle of her living room, which Andre thought was an extraordinary idea, but he had learnt to expect that from Hayden and everything to do with him. They gave him a good, sensible name - Robert - but they shortened it to Robbie, which Andre did not think was a good idea. Still, he had another beautiful grandson, so there was really nothing to complain about.

Oscar got into his forties, had a lot of very beautiful girlfriends - and some not so beautiful ones too - but still didn't marry any of them. Plenty of rock stars had abused their bodies more than he did, but still, he did some damage that took its toll. He stopped looking like a sex symbol, and instead looked like a man who had long ago been very handsome. Mood Slime turned out to be one of those groups that were consistently popular with new generations of fans, so Oscar kept coming to England. He doted on Tom and Robbie, and on the son and three daughters of his friend Tim, the only Mood Slime member to produce children. Oscar had no children of his own, but he seemed happy, and he always said he would never swap his career for anything.

If Lars and Nathan ever felt the need to raise a child together, they never mentioned it and it never came to anything. They stayed together, and were both happy working in their different state schools. Lars always stuck with the first teaching job he had got. He had once said he might like to work in a private school, but Andre came to doubt that he had meant it. Lars clearly loved his job. After a few years, he became head of the music faculty. It wasn't the London Symphony Orchestra, nor any kind of orchestra besides the one comprising a constantly changing group of gifted students, but Andre was proud. He never quite came around to the idea of Lars being gay, but he had learnt to accept it.

As for Emilia, she stayed married to David for a very long time. Her parents both agreed that it wasn't the happiest marriage they had ever seen, but they seemed to get by, and two years after they married they had a little girl. They called her Georgia, spoilt her horribly and wrapped her in cotton wool. Their differing parenting techniques became another excuse for Emilia and Jessica to snipe at each other. Emilia once called Andre from Jessica's house, and asked him to persuade Hayden to disinfect the place; Jessica had apparently refused to do so, saying that exposure to a few germs would do Georgia good, as otherwise she would build up no resistance. Emilia never let her daughter out of her sight, whereas Jessica had been known to walk into an otherwise deserted room and say, quite calmly, "Tom, don't play with that - it'll take your fingers off."

As the years went by, Tom and Robbie grew more comfortably into travelling while Andre got gradually too old for it. He only ever saw Robbie in New York three times, but the family took to flying to London every summer, and sometimes at Christmas or Easter. Inevitably, Andre grew closest to Georgia, whom he saw constantly and even looked after with Kate for two days a week when Emilia went back to work part-time. Kate was older too, of course, but to Andre she looked as young as she ever had. She had made a wise choice with him when she was still in her twenties, and would have an extra ten years with their grandchildren. Andre was just grateful to have any time with them at all. He had made a mistake with Dana, but got a second chance with Kate. He had been lucky.

At eighty years of age, Andre's brother suffered a stroke, which was absolutely terrifying. Andre was, after all, only a few years younger than he was. William didn't die right away, but went home to his wife severely handicapped, and they had to get a live-in carer to help her look after him. Andre, realising now how fit he still felt, made the effort to get on a plane and make the long trip to San Francisco. Everyone was there: William's two daughters, his six grandchildren and Francesca's husband. Anastasia had divorced a few years ago as she - like her youngest cousin - had married a man she didn't really love.

Francesca and two of her daughters, now in their early teens, met Andre at the airport. Francesca hugged him, and said, "This means so much to Dad, your coming here. He is sorry, you know. About everything."

It was all very well Francesca saying that, but William could no longer say any more than three or four words with any degree of clarity, so Andre never knew whether he was sorry or not. But they both knew this was going to be the last time they would see each other. Even if they both had another ten years in them, neither of them was ever going to make that long journey again. It was horribly depressing, and made Andre think about death.

When he went home, he decided that he too should hurry up and get all of his children and grandchildren in one place. It was October; Georgia had turned four the previous month, Robbie would be six in November and Tom was shortly to turn eight. Andre thought about having all of them for Christmas. He had to share Hayden, Lars and Emilia with their in-laws, and rarely had all three of them on Christmas Day. But then he thought of Oscar. He wanted him there too. It would be unreasonable to expect Peter and Dana to do without either of their children at Christmas, so instead Andre decided that it was time Tom and Robbie came to England to witness Bonfire Night.

"That's a Wednesday," was Hayden's first comment, when Andre called him.

"So?"

"So what about school?"

"Take them out for a few days," said Andre.

"Okay," said Hayden, "who are you and what have you done with my dad?"

"Please, Hayden - I really want to do this. Tell the school I'm dying."

"Wait - what?"

Andre hastily assured his son that he wasn't really dying, at least as far as he knew, and then he went on to explain about why he wanted them to visit him so particularly.

"Oh my God, Dad, that's so depressing!" said Hayden, sounding rather unsettled.

"Will you?" asked Andre.

"Oh… hang on a minute. JESS!" Hayden shouted. "Dad wants us to take the boys out of school for a few days and bring them to London for Bonfire Night. Can we?"

Andre faintly heard Jessica calling back, "Sure, why the hell not?"

That was the tricky part sorted. Oscar would come without hesitation; Emilia lived nearby anyway, and Nathan and Lars would be allowed to leave work at three thirty when school finished, a couple of hours earlier than they normally would, and make the journey from Bucks probably in under an hour.

Three weeks later they were all there: Andre, Kate, Oscar, Lars, Nathan, Hayden, Jessica, Tom, Robbie, Emilia, Georgia and David. Throughout the day Andre felt a heightened sense of awareness; he picked up on everything that was said and done, every quirk, every little thing that made them special. He thought about William. Andre had twice as many children as his brother, and half as many grandchildren. He was sure that his children had now produced all the offspring they were going to. Everyone was there with him.

He began to feel that sense of doom again. It did not mean that he thought he was going to die soon, but the rarity of his family all being together forced him to think about the inevitable fact that he was going to die one day, and he had to take his opportunities in the meantime. It was so depressing. Andre wished Hayden still lived in England, if not London. It was so easy to wonder whether things would have been different if he had never married Dana - if there had been no Oscar, and they had all been different people - but it was pointless to think about it. Hayden was obviously so happy, his father could not wish for anything more for him.

At five o'clock, on the night of the fifth of November, they were all getting ready to walk en masse to St. James's Park. For Georgia, getting ready meant being packed into an excessive amount of warm clothing by her mother, while Jessica stood by saying, "No, really, it's not that cold."

"If you live in the south of England it is," said Hayden. "Robs, don't you think you'd better put a bit more on?"

"I'm hot," said Robbie.

"Go and stand outside and see if you're still hot," said Hayden.

Robbie went and opened the front door, and stood outside in the November evening air in his thin, short-sleeved t-shirt. Then he came back and said, "It's boiling out there."

Andre saw Hayden glance at Jessica. She said, "Okay, honey, if you say so."

"Oh, but he'll catch his death like that!" Emilia said shrilly.

"She," said Jessica, nodding towards Georgia, "will suffocate like that."

Tom put his hands to his throat and gasped dramatically, his eyes bulging out of his head. He fell to the floor, where he continued to suffocate quietly. Andre stared at him, not sure what to make of Tom's strange behaviour. He had been doing things like that all day: miming weird situations, mimicking voices, bursting into song…

"Oh don't be ridiculous," said Emilia. "Are you really going to let him go like that?"

Tom suddenly stopped suffocating, leapt to his feet and started to sing: "Hold - me close, don't let - me go - oh no. - - - Girl - - I love you and I think that you know…"

It was an old song. From what he had heard since Tom's arrival, Andre guessed that Oscar had been teaching him something about the popular music of every decade since at least the nineteen fifties.

"You bet I am," said Jessica.

"I might just take his coat in case he gets cold," Hayden said timidly.

"Hey," said Oscar, nudging Jessica and then nodding towards Tom. "What's with him?"

Andre was relieved that somebody had finally asked.

"Oh," said Jessica. "He wants to go to stage school."

"I need to go to stage school!" Tom declared dramatically.

"You do not," said Jessica. "Now don't start, because I am not even going to discuss it until you finish elementary school."

"Why not?" said Oscar. "He's really good. If you send him now, in ten years' time he'll be awesome."

"Oscar, shut up!" said Jessica.

Tom went and stood by Oscar, and glared defiantly at his mother.

"Excuse me," said Lars, "but are we ready to go yet?"

"Why yes, I do believe we are," said Tom, in a perfect imitation of Lars's accent.

"See, you can do accents already," said Jessica. "You don't need stage school."

"I hate you, Mom," said Tom. "I don't know what you're worried about. Not all famous people turn into crack-heads like Oscar, you know."

Emilia gasped and, for the first time in hours, David too made a sound.

"Sorry, Uncle Henry - did I shock you?" said Tom. "Come on, let's go."

On the way out, Andre grabbed Oscar and said, "Why do they call him Uncle Henry?"

"Because," said Oscar, "he's married to Aunt Em."

"Oh."

They walked through the artificially lit streets to St. James's Park. David, Hayden and Jessica were carrying Guys with them: effigies of the half-forgotten Guy Fawkes made by the children, from old clothes stuffed with newspaper, that they would throw on the bonfire at the climax of the evening. They were nine adults, three Guys and three children. They didn't have to worry about the traffic - it stopped for them.

Jessica found the guy selling sparklers within the first five minutes, and a minute after that Tom and Robbie were fencing with two lighted and crackling white sticks.

"Oh my God that's so dangerous!" shrieked Emilia.

"They do it every fourth of July," said Jessica.

"Robbie isn't even wearing gloves!"

"So? Who wears gloves in July?"

"I want one," said Georgia.

"You have got to be joking!" said her mother.

"Emi," said Jessica, "that's just cruel."

This developed into a very heated argument, which Andre quickly stepped away from to avoid getting involved. He watched as a colourful rocket exploded in the sky. Then, when he looked again at Tom and Robbie, Georgia had joined them and Robbie was teaching her how to fence with his sparkler.

"I think they're doing her good," said a voice beside Andre, and he turned to see Oscar standing there.

"Well," said Andre, "maybe she could do with toughening up a little."

"Do you think Tom should go to stage school now?"

"I don't know. Why are you asking me?"

"Because you understand the importance of starting young. He's already eight - it's almost too late. You can help me persuade Jess to let him go."

Andre gave him a withering look. "No I can't. Who ever persuaded her to do anything she didn't want to?"

"Well, I'm going to try. Tom's a great little performer. And he's gonna be hot. Robbie's cute, but I think one day he might suffer from having a good looking older brother."

"I think you're right," said Andre. "I don't think he'll ever need stage school. He's your nephew, and Venkman's grandson - he can get into show business whenever he wants."

"What, just by being my nephew and Dad's grandson?" said Oscar. "That would make him a commercial whore. He obviously wants to be good."

"Well, I can see he's got talent. He could learn an instrument - she can't object to that."

"Ooh, yeah - he'd look great with a guitar."

"He'd look better with a violin."

"Hey." Suddenly Robbie was with them. Looking at Oscar, he said in tones that brooked no argument, "We need more sparklers."

"Oh, you do, do you?" said Oscar.

"Yes. Three."

"Now what would two kids want with three sparklers?"

"We need three."

"You're not going to give one to Georgia, are you?" said Oscar. "Because if you wanted to do that, and I knew about it, I couldn't possibly buy you any."

"Who said anything about Georgia?" Robbie said innocently.

"Come on then," said Oscar. He spread his palm on the top of Robbie's head, and steered him towards the sparkler guy.

Andre watched them go. Then suddenly Kate was beside him, with her arms around his waist, saying, "This is nice. It's just like when the children were little, only this time it's a one-off. I wish we could do it every year, like we used to."

"So do I," said Andre, putting his arm around her shoulders. "Do you think Tom should go to stage school?"

"One day. Not yet."

Robbie was still in his t-shirt, but Andre had long ago grown used to the English weather and now thought it was cold. Standing around freezing on Bonfire Night was one of life's richest experiences - that was just one of many things Kate had taught him. Jessica had her arms around Hayden and was saying something to him, probably that it wasn't as cold as he was making out, neither of them watching their sons very closely. Emilia spotted Georgia with a sparkler and flew into hysterics. Oscar was with Tom, teaching him to play air guitar. Nathan and Lars were watching the fireworks with their arms around each other. David was standing with the Guys. Andre felt rather sorry for him.

"I wish I could freeze time," he said wistfully.

"Be nice, wouldn't it?" said Kate. "Oh well. I'll take a picture instead."

Andre could well remember a time when no one but a professional would ever have got a good shot of what was happening on Bonfire Night, but cameras were constantly being improved, and failing all else you could always enhance your image on a computer. Kate moved off with the digital camera she had brought, and then came back with an okay picture of the scene. After that they all watched the rest of the fireworks display, and finally threw the Guys on the bonfire.

Gradually, over the next sixteen hours, everyone left. It started with Emilia's family, and finished with Hayden's. Andre and Kate wanted them to stay until the weekend, and Tom and Robbie wanted to as well, but Jessica wanted them back in school on Friday.

Then came Christmas. Andre and Kate had Nathan and Lars on Christmas Day, while Hayden stayed in New York and Emilia and Georgia spent the day with David's family. After lunch, when Lars and Nathan had gone for a walk, Kate presented Andre with a framed photograph from Bonfire Night. It had Nathan and Lars looking like they might just be good friends, if you didn't know better; Hayden and Jessica cuddling and laughing and arguing about the temperature; Robbie in his short-sleeved t-shirt, watching with a comic expression as Emilia tried to coax Georgia into surrendering her lighted sparkler; Oscar teaching Tom chords on an imaginary guitar - and behind them all, an explosion of colour against the dark sky.

"That's amazing!" said Andre. "You didn't show me this on the night!"

"It was a complete fluke," said Kate, "but it's still brilliant, so I kept it back for today. I thought - you know - it was a good night, and it's over, but it's worth remembering."

"Definitely. Oh, look, poor David."

"Yes, I know - I couldn't get him in the frame."

Andre hung the picture over the mantelpiece, and everyone who came to visit remarked on what a good piece of photography and what a lovely keepsake it was. Andre said it was the best present he had ever got. Really, it was all the best presents he had ever got, in an eight- by twelve-inch frame.

THE END