Lazy Bones (43 page)

Thorne was looking at a picture of his father from maybe thirty years before. The majority of the old photo albums were foxed and fal ing apart; none had been taken out of the sideboard since his mother had died. She had been the photographer, the one who always remembered to take along the Instamatic, who bought the albums from Boots and spent evenings pasting in the pictures...

Thorne looked from the photo to the real thing, from the young man to the old. His father looked up at him. Thorne noticed, as he always did, the hair that like his own, was greyer on one side than the other.

'Do you want some tea?' his father said.

Thorne understood the code. 'I'l make you some in a minute...'

He turned a stiff, faded page and stared at a picture of a young couple, their arms around a child of six or seven. The three of them 367

sat, squinting against the sunlight, a deep green sea of bracken rising up behind them.

Thorne smiled at the can of beer in his father's hand, at the expression on his mother's face having talked some hapless passer-by into taking the picture. He stared down at the boy, gurning happily at the camera. The brown eyes round and bright, the shadows yet to fal across his face.

Long before anybody died.

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