by J. L. Merrow
What could possibly go wrong?
Sunday dawned bright, warm, and sunny, with nary a cloud in the sky. All this good weather was well unsettling. I was lying in Phil’s bed with him beside me, a couple of inches of space between us because while getting hot and sweaty together is fun up to a point, once that point’s been reached, you start getting a bit desperate to cool off.
He’d been busy Saturday afternoon, but we’d met up in St. Albans in the evening to try out a new Indian place that’d opened up on Holywell Hill. The food had been good enough that we’d made right pigs of ourselves and couldn’t be arsed to trek across town to mine, seeing as Phil’s flat was only a hop, skip, and a jump away on London Road.
Or, as might be, an overfull stagger and a belch away. We hadn’t even had the energy for a shag, which was why we’d been making up for it this morning.
I nudged Phil. “You know, I was reading somewhere that the earth flips poles sometimes. Do you reckon that’s happened and no one noticed? And Hertfordshire’s in Australia now? It’d explain why it’s so bloody hot all of a sudden.”
“I don’t think that’s how it works. It’s just the magnetic poles that switch.”
“What, so north is south and so on?” I frowned. “Won’t all the homing pigeons get lost? They use all that magnetic stuff. I saw it on the telly. Bit sad, that—all these homeless pigeons. Someone ought to do something about that.”
Phil laughed. “Christ, you’re the living embodiment of ‘a little learning is a dangerous thing.’”
“Who said that?”
“Pope.”
“Since when are you a Catholic?”
“Alexander Pope. He was a poet.”
“And since when are you into poetry?” I grinned at him. “Bit poofy, innit?”
“Up yours.”
“You already have been.”
“Could be again if you play your cards right.”
“Promises, promises . . . Nah, sod it. No time. We’ve got lunch over at Greg’s, remember? And I’ll need to stop by mine first and feed the cats before they go feral and eat the neighbours.”
“Thought lunch was only salad? It’ll keep if we’re a bit late.”
I firmly disengaged his big, hot hands from certain parts of my anatomy. “My mum brought me up proper, all right? We’ll get there on time.” Or at least, not more than around twenty minutes late, which was good as, in my book, and seeing as that’s what Cherry would expect, it’d be rude to turn up earlier, wouldn’t it?
We drove over to St. Leonards in Phil’s Golf, seeing as neither my van nor the Fiesta had air-conditioning. I was seriously considering making that a deal-breaker next time I replaced one of them, although sod’s law, the minute I got sorted for hot weather, normal service would probably be resumed and we’d be back to brollies for the rest of the summer.
I should have twigged the moment I saw the Škoda parked on the gravel drive outside the Old Deanery. The fact that it was this year’s model and I’d never seen it before was neither here nor there. I should’ve guessed, and then I could have faked an emergency call-out or a heart attack or a bloody zombie apocalypse or something, for God’s sake. Instead, I blithely stepped up to the doorstep, rang Greg’s bell (no sniggering in the cheap seats, please), and stood there like a muppet until he let us in and waved us into the front room for a predinner drink.
And brought us face-to-face with my mum and dad.
Look, I know what you’re going to think. And yeah, maybe I wasn’t exactly winning any awards for the world’s best son, seeing as how I’d managed to avoid seeing them ever since I’d found out who my real dad was, back in January. But Christ, I’d known what it was going to be like. I stared at the round-shouldered, bald-headed old bloke who’d taught me how to drive, bought me my first bike, and sent me off to bed early when I was naughty—my dad, in other words—and all that went through my head was this bloody siren screaming NOT DAD NOT DAD NOT DAD.
I swallowed and turned to Phil for a bit of moral support, but he was busy doing rabbit impersonations, caught in the full-beam headlights of Mum’s glare.
I’d always wondered what it’d take to rattle Phil’s composure—apart from the sight of me in mortal peril, but call me vain, I liked to think that one went without saying. And now I knew: it was a tall, thin woman in her seventies without a scrap of makeup, her grey hair sculpted into rigid waves and her cardi buttoned up to the neck. Otherwise known as Mum.
Looked like it was up to me to break the silence and hopefully disrupt the waves of hostility rippling out from her towards my bloke.
“Um, ’lo, Mum. Dad. You all right?”
“I’m fine, thank you, Tom. But your father’s knees have been giving him some trouble.” There was the faintest tint of pink in her cheeks, and she stopped there, which wasn’t like my mum at all.
Shit. She knew. She knew I knew.
“Ah,” Greg said, and the embarrassed tone told me everything I needed to know about how close-lipped Cherry had been about the whole bastardy business, i.e. about as close-lipped as Gary with a juicy scandal. “Sherry, everyone?”
“Yeah, please,” I said, wishing I could ask for something stronger but not daring with Mum here. There was a general chorus of agreement that alcoholic refreshment would be a bloody good idea. Even from Dad, who looked a bit startled when Mum then didn’t chime in with an automatic Not for you, Gerald, you’re driving.
Shit. Did Dad know I knew? Two thoughts zipped into my brain simultaneously. One: if he was the only one in the room who hadn’t been told about the bloody great elephant prancing around in the corner and making dents in the floor, that was . . . That was beyond unfair. And two: no way on earth was I going to be the one to mention it to him.
“Excellent, excellent.” Greg bustled around filling glasses and handing them out. “You know, I really can’t think what’s keeping Cherry.”
Severe guilt pangs for setting me up like this, I hoped.
“Now,” Greg went on, “I believe you already know Philip, Barbara?”
“We haven’t seen him for a number of years,” Mum said in a tone that managed to imply that the number hadn’t been nearly big enough. She turned to me and tried to smile. “Cherry didn’t mention you’d be here.”
“Yeah, well, snap.” I found myself biting a fingernail and quickly shoved my hand in my pocket before she could tell me off. “Um. Been up to much?”
“Oh, just the usual.” We both drew in a breath and then changed our minds and didn’t say anything.
Dad doddered over into the silence and gave Phil a watery stare. “You’re a private investigator now, I hear?”
“Yeah. Yes,” Phil said and cleared his throat.
“And before that, a policeman? Hmm. Interesting career progression.” He wandered off to peer at Buster the stuffed border collie, who was today perched on a chair, looking out of the window.
Phil, who’d offered a handshake that Dad had either totally ignored or plain not noticed, looked wrong-footed and shoved his hand in his pocket.
Mum was glaring at him again. “How’s your hip these days, Tom?” she asked pointedly.
“Good. It’s fine. Hardly even notice it, weather like this.”
Phil’s lips had tightened. “I’ll go and see if Cherry wants a hand.” He tossed down his sherry and strode out of the room, presumably heading kitchenwards, although I wouldn’t have blamed him if he’d done a runner all the way back to St. Albans.
“Mum . . . try and be nice, yeah? Please?” In the background, Greg was hand-wavingly explaining the finer points of taxidermy to Dad, whose expression was a cross between bemused and horrified.
Mum sipped her sherry and looked unhappy. I was going to kill Cherry for this. “I’m doing my best,” she said in a firm, low voice. “But it’s a little hard to be nice to the man responsible for crippling my youngest son.”
I winced. On several levels. “Mum . . . I’m not a cripple, all right? And he never meant for anythin
g like that to happen. You know that.”
“I know nothing of the sort. It would never have happened if he and his friends hadn’t terrorised you. For all we know, they stood there laughing while you lay in the road half-dead.”
We were still speaking pretty quietly, but over in the corner, Greg’s voice got noticeably louder and more manic.
“We were just kids then,” I said, trying to keep it down a bit. “He’s a different bloke now.”
Her mouth turned down even further at the corners. “Even if he does regret it now, aren’t you afraid . . .” She trailed off and turned away. It wasn’t a good move, seeing as it had her staring directly at Mrs. Tiggywinkle the stuffed hedgehog. She seemed to have got a boyfriend from somewhere since I’d last visited—the hedgehog, that was, not Mum this time—and was getting a bit frisky with him on the mantelpiece.
“Afraid of what?” I prompted. “Look, I know he’s big and all that, but he’s not violent or anything. Phil’d never hurt me.”
Mum’s eyes opened wide. “That’s not what I meant.” Although it looked like she’d started to worry about that too, now.
“Then what?”
“How will you ever know if he’s with you for the right reasons? And not, well, out of guilt, or because he feels sorry for you?” She looked down, her face pink and blotchy.
“He doesn’t feel sorry for me, all right? There’s nothing to feel sorry for. I told you, I’m fine.” It came out a bit more heated than I’d meant it to.
“You used to love playing football,” she said vaguely. Maybe she’d noticed I was feeling like someone had just booted one into my chest.
“That was when I was a kid. I’m a grown-up now, Mum. And I don’t need his pity, or yours, or anyone else’s. Right. I’m going to go and see how they’re getting on.” I looked at the sherry in my hand, but couldn’t stomach it, so I left it for Mrs. Tiggywinkle and her bloke to fight over while I stomped off to the kitchen.
Not limping even a little bit.
As far as atmospheres went, the kitchen wasn’t a lot better. Phil was leaning against a counter with his arms folded and his expression set in stone, while Cherry stirred furiously at a glass jug of what looked like homemade vinaigrette.
“You’ve got too much vinegar in that,” I told her helpfully. “Bung a bit more oil in to balance it out.”
I nearly dropped the jug when she thrust it into my unwary hands. “If you’re such a bloody expert, you do it.”
“Language, Sis. And oi, what’s got you all in a lather?” I narrowed my eyes at her. “You’re the one who’s gone round springing Mum and Dad on the rest of us.”
“Me!” Cherry squawked so loud they must have heard it in the front room, even over Greg’s booming tones. “That was Gregory’s idea. And he didn’t see fit to inform me of it until five minutes before they arrived.” Her hands twitched like they were regretting giving up the vinaigrette. Possibly because they wanted to throw it at her officiously reverend fiancé.
Which right then didn’t sound like such a bad idea.
I put the jug down with a sigh. “S’pose he meant well.”
Cherry just sniffed.
“Talk about your road to hell,” Phil muttered from the sidelines. He heaved his bulk off the counter. “What else needs doing? For lunch, I mean,” he added with a sharp look at me and Cherry.
“Nothing. It’s all done, except the vinaigrette.” Cherry glanced at me, but I was already there, chucking in a bit more of the extra virgin and giving it a whisk.
“Have you seasoned it already?”
Cherry gave me a blank look. “Are you supposed to? I thought it was just oil and vinegar.”
At least she hadn’t used malt vinegar, which in my book is lovely on chips and handy for getting rid of limescale, but shouldn’t be allowed within ten feet of a lettuce leaf. “Got any honey? Mustard?” I asked as I ground in some salt and a little bit of pepper.
“This isn’t bloody MasterChef,” Phil huffed into my ear. “Just get it on the table. Sooner we eat, the sooner we’re out of here.”
“If we’ve got to sit through this lunch, we might as well have a decent bloody dressing on the salad.” I was a bit narked at his implication he couldn’t wait to get away from my family. Which, all right, was pretty much how I felt, but that was different. They were my family.
Lunch, when we finally got to sit down to eat, went pretty much as expected.
Unfortunately.
“Does your family still live on the council estate?” was Dad’s opening conversational gambit to Phil.
“Yes,” he said shortly.
“It’s looking very run-down these days. Still, one would never think it to look at you,” Dad finished on a cheery note.
Mum took the opportunity to give Phil a good once-over. “Of course, anyone can dress well these days, with so many designer outlets around. There’s one in St. Albans now, although I can’t see why anyone would want to shop there. It’s just like a jumble sale, only more expensive.”
Cherry and I shared an embarrassed look. “Phil’s been trying to improve my wardrobe too,” I offered, hoping to find them some common ground. Mum was always telling me off for being too scruffy. And the odd “You’re going out in that?” comment from Phil counted, didn’t it?
“Yeah, I’ll have you doing the drains in Dolce & Gabbana in no time,” Phil muttered with a face like he’d just found half a slug in his lettuce.
“I think people go too far with these things,” Mum said as if she’d never heard of sarcasm.
Phil’s jaw tensed, but he didn’t say anything. I bit into my celery, and the crunch seemed to echo in the frigid silence.
“Would you pass the tomatoes, please, Gregory?” Dad chuckled. “I see you haven’t stuffed these.”
Nobody else laughed.
“Gregory’s a very good cook, actually,” Cherry ventured bravely.
“Oh, merely adequate,” Greg protested. “And I must say you’ve outdone yourself with the salad dressing, my dear.” He beamed.
Cherry’s smile curdled. “Tom made it.”
Dad lifted his gaze from his plate again to focus on me. “I suppose you and, er . . . Philip take turns, do you? Doing the cooking, of course,” he explained quickly, which only drew our attention to all the other sorts of things we might have thought he was talking about.
Mum’s eyes narrowed. “Do you cook, Philip?” she asked, menacing him with a slice of beetroot on the end of her fork.
“Not a lot,” Phil answered shortly, which was utter bollocks. He might not enjoy cooking, like I did, but he could bloody well knock up a meal if he had to, and pretty often did.
Mum made a noise that sounded like hmmf. I imagined her adding it to the mental ten-things-I-hate-about-Phil list: makes Tom do the cooking.
“I like cooking,” I said quickly. “’Sides, we don’t always eat together. Phil’s got his own place.”
“Oh? Where’s that?”
“London Road,” Phil admitted.
“Really? Of course, it’s such a mixture there. All those huge houses, mixed in with poky little flats. Do you have a house or a flat, Philip?”
“Flat,” he ground out. “Could you pass the—”
“Bought or rented?” Christ, Mum was like a dog with a bone.
“Does it matter?” I interrupted. “What were you after, Phil? More ham?”
“Forget it. I changed my mind.” He pushed his plate away, still half-full with food. Bloody hell, was he about to walk out?
“You know,” Greg boomed out with desperate hand gestures. “I haven’t told you about my sermon this morning. Quite a fascinating theme, all about the persecution of the early Christians—”
“I know how they felt,” Phil muttered a bit too loudly for politeness.
“—and how their faith was strengthened as a result,” Greg went on doggedly. His voice, never exactly quiet to begin with, reached ear-splitting levels by the end of the sentence.
�
�Cherry, is there any wine left?” Mum interrupted him.
We all looked down the end of the table at Cherry, who at that moment was emptying the last of the bottle of sauvignon plonk into her glass with a grim expression on her face. She turned pink. “I’ll get another bottle.”
“No more for your father, though. He’s driving,” Mum said, equilibrium apparently fully restored by that bit of Phil-baiting. “Did you bring the Fiesta, Tom?” she added in my direction.
“Nah, we came in Phil’s car.”
“He’d better not have any more either, then. We don’t want any more accidents.”
I swear I heard Phil’s teeth grinding. I turned to Greg in desperation. “So, early church, yeah? Tell us all about it.”
I’d planned to make our excuses as soon as politeness allowed, but Phil was making them for me before coffee was even served, pleading a “work commitment” I reckoned he’d made up on the spot. That dropped me right in it—either I got the family’s backs up by nipping off early with him, or I pissed Phil off, stuck it out on my own, and had to hitch a lift back to St. Albans with Mum and Dad.
I nipped. I didn’t have to bloody well like it, though. “Work commitment, my arse,” I hissed at him as we crunched over the gravel drive to his Golf. “You could have waited half an hour, instead of making a run for it while Greg was still eating his pud. You ever hear of this thing called manners?”
“Come off it. Manners, my arse. Your mum made it plain she couldn’t wait to see the back of me.”
“She’d have warmed up to you in the end. If you’d put in a bit of effort. You didn’t even bloody try!”
“So? Neither did she. In fact, scratch that. She went out of her way to make everything as fucking unpleasant for me as she could.”
“Oi, don’t you talk about my mum like that.” I dropped into the passenger seat.
“Your dad wasn’t any better.” Phil slammed the driver’s door shut behind him and buckled up with a vicious jab.
“You can leave him out of it and all. You’re always telling me not to be so sodding touchy—why don’t you take your own advice for once?” I was pissed off, I’ll admit it. I’d spent months worrying what I was going to say to Mum about my real dad, and avoiding her until I could face it, and then when I finally got to see her, all we’d bloody well talked about had been Phil.
