CHAPTER THIRTY-SIXColin phoned his son without realising he was going to, as if the days and days since Delphine said I pushed her, and she fell hadn’t been a vertiginous trial of longing and reluctance, of not right now, but maybe later; as if the thought of doing it didn’t bring him out in a sweat.
He dialled the number, those quick, slippery digits that Frederique had given him.
“Hello?”
The sound of his boy’s voice shot through him, the shock of it reaching right to his fingertips.
“Michael…?”
He was walking along the tow path of the Canal St Martin: walking as escape, walking as expiation. He stared at the green water lapping against the waterway’s green walls, the green railings at street level, the green branches arching under the ribbed blue sky: the long, urban nave of the ca
