by JL Merrow
Mark sighed, following her into the shop. “He is, isn’t he?” Then the rest of what she’d said sank in. “Wait a minute! I’m not even forty!”
“Yeah, but he’s well young. I can’t believe you made me come out in my school uniform,” she added, tugging angrily at her maroon skirt.
Mark decided firmly to ignore the implications of this and tried to concentrate on searching the shelves for hair dye. “You’re supposed to be at school right now,” he reminded her. “Not trying to impress young men who are, in any case, far too old for you.”
Ah. Bit of a fail in the ignoring-implications area.
“Boys mature later. Everyone knows that.”
“Not that late they don’t.” Mark tried not to give in to the misgivings causing his stomach to flutter. Had he seriously overestimated Patrick’s age? He’d thought the man to be in his mid-twenties—might he, in fact, be barely out of his teens? Mark glanced at the teenager slouching beside him and swallowed. “How old do you think he is?”
“I dunno? Twenty-five?” Her shoulders lifted in an exaggerated shrug.
The tightness in Mark’s chest eased with a flood of heady relief—which promptly evaporated when he remembered those implications he’d been trying to ignore. “Which is far too old for you,” he said sharply.
“I was only looking. I didn’t say I wanted to have sex with him or anything.”
She just had to come out with that in the middle of the shop, didn’t she? The young, white-coated assistant behind the counter smirked, while the old lady she’d just served, who’d already been eyeing Fen with disapproval, gave an outraged tut.
Mark flushed again. “Could you please just find some hair dye?”
“All right. Jesus.”
“Language.” Mark watched as she rummaged through packets of hair dye, all of which seemed to have the same model on the front, her hair photoshopped into all colours of the rainbow. He wasn’t sure how that was supposed to give you confidence they’d achieve the “natural” results they promised. “No, wait, that’s black,” he said as she grabbed one. “Your natural hair colour is brown.” At least, he was fairly sure he remembered her having brown hair. Back in the days when her age had been measured in single digits.
“The rules say a natural hair colour, not my natural hair colour. Black’s natural.” Fen’s expression could have been used to illustrate the Teenager Taming website, under mood swings: sullen.
“If you’re Indian or Afro-Caribbean. Which you’re not,” Mark gently pointed out.
“That’s racist.”
It was?
“Anyway,” Fen continued with an air of triumph, “brown won’t cover the purple. So I’ll have to get black.”
She didn’t actually say so there, but there was a definite so there-ness in her expression. Mark decided to let it slide. “Come on, let’s get it paid for.”
It was only as they walked back up the road that it occurred to him to wonder how Fen had gone from black to purple, and why that method couldn’t have been used to go from purple to brown.
Chapter Six
Patrick chuckled to himself as he made his way back to his office in River Lane, which SHARE got at a special rate on account of (a) being a charity and (b) taking a philosophical view of the occasional rat that wandered up from the river to sniff at the bins.
Looked like Mark had his hands full with that one. Purple hair with a burgundy school uniform? There was a girl who knew how to get noticed. Mark had been looking good, though. Although his clothes were a disaster, poor sod. Someone really ought to take him in hand.
And didn’t that conjure up some wicked images? Thing was, did Patrick really want to take on the job? From the way Mark was acting, it looked like he’d be a shoo-in for the role. But there was the age difference, the teenage daughter…
Yeah, there was all that. And then there was the guy’s smile, the way he genuinely didn’t seem to know how attractive he was, and, well, the fact he was prepared to be a single dad. Patrick liked a man who faced up to his responsibilities.
Sod it. He liked Mark.
When he opened the office door, Patrick was glad to see Lex, his admin assistant, had got in now, and was looking cheerful, so the medical appointment must have gone all right. Lex was nineteen but a bit more mature than your average teenager. Well, they’d had a lot to deal with growing up. Still did. “All right, Lex?”
Lex smiled, lip piercings bobbing. “Good weekend?”
“Not bad. You?”
“Met someone.” Lex swung around happily on their swivel chair, which squeaked even though Lex couldn’t weigh much more than the chair itself. Not that you could tell for certain, what with the baggy clothes Lex always wore, but nobody had wrists that bony if they had an ounce of meat on them anywhere else.
“Yeah?” Patrick’s smile was cautious. Lex was forever meeting someone, but it didn’t always end well.
“We just sort of got talking. And then we sort of got snogging. He’s a metalhead. Rides a Harley. Wants to take me to Bloodstock—did you see Corpse Grinder are playing this year? It’s gonna be well good.”
“Yeah? You gonna camp? Tell you what, you wouldn’t get me doing that. It’s en suite or nothing for me.”
Lex grinned. “Yeah, you’d be more into glamping. You oughta try it. Get out of your comfort zone.”
“I like my comfort zone. I like comfort, full stop. Do I look like Bear Grylls? No. So don’t expect me to go sleeping in a puddle of mud and washing in front of ten thousand strangers.”
“It’s not that bad. Well, not if the rain holds off. Anyway, it’s fun. Get a few beers down you and you won’t care what your hair looks like.”
Patrick grinned and ran a hand over his hair, which stayed reassuringly in place due to just the right amount of product, ta very much. “If I ever don’t care what my hair looks like, you’d better run ’cos it means the zombie apocalypse has happened. So what’s he like, this biker bloke? Apart from the musical tastes?”
“He’s sweet.” Lex grinned. “Got really soft lips.”
“Oh yeah? No beard?” Patrick made an obvious show of examining Lex’s pale skin for stubble rash.
Lex backed off, laughing. “Oi, get outta my face. Course he’s got a beard. He’s a metalhead, in’t he? His beard’s really soft and all. He’s gonna set me up on his League of Lorecraft server so I can play with him and his mates.” Lex paused. “Haven’t met his mates yet.”
“Yeah, well, if he likes you, they’ll like you, won’t they? If they’re proper mates.” Patrick crossed mental fingers. People could be gits. Lex’s last bloke had been best mates with a total tosser who’d called Lex “it” and asked about all kinds of stuff that was none of his sodding business. And yeah, maybe the fact that the boyfriend hadn’t called him on it had been a quick way of finding out whether he was a keeper, but it hadn’t been a good one. Not for Lex, it hadn’t. “Anyway, you’re not going out with his mates, are you?”
“Nah. S’pose. So what about you? Anything happening in your love life?”
“Not exactly.”
“Oh yeah? That’s not a no, that ain’t. C’mon, tell us all about it.”
Patrick leaned back and stretched. The chair back added its protests to the squeaks of Lex’s swivelling—seriously, the furniture in here was shite, but Patrick wasn’t gonna complain when the people SHARE was set up to help needed every penny. “Nothing to tell. Seriously, nothing. It’s just there’s this new bloke at the Spartans, that’s all. And I’m pretty sure he’s into me.”
“Yeah, but so’s lots of people. You wouldn’t even be mentioning him if you weren’t into him back.”
Shit, sometimes he forgot how good Lex was at reading him. “Yeah, well. Maybe. Got baggage, though.”
“Yeah?”
“Single dad.”
“How old? The kid, I mean. Out of
nappies yet? ’Cos I’ve done babysitting, and seriously, that shit’s gross.”
Patrick laughed. “Hope so. She’s about fifteen.”
Lex’s eyes went wide. “Fuck, how old’s he? Oh my God, has he got all his own hair? Teeth?”
“Shut up. He’s not a bloody geriatric. Dunno how old, ’cept he’s in the Spartans, so he’s under forty-five, all right?”
“So he’s probably not older than your mum. So what, you after a sugar daddy now? Can I have your job if you go off to be a kept man?”
“Jesus, why does everyone have to make such a big thing about his age?”
“’Cos it is a big thing. Like, twice as big as yours. Nearly.” Lex caught Patrick’s look. “All right, shutting up. Sorry. Jeez. You touchy or what?” They mimed zipping their lips, then mumbled, “Happy now?” sounding like a bad ventriloquist.
Patrick had to laugh. “Yeah, well. Maybe it is a bit of a touchy area. Shit, I don’t know. I’ve never thought about getting involved with someone that much older, all right? Think it could ever work?” God knew why he was asking Lex, whose record with relationships was only a bit better than Patrick’s mum’s.
Then again, none of it had been Lex’s fault.
Lex frowned, their eyebrow piercings drawing closer together. “S’pose it depends, dunnit? What’s he like?”
“I dunno, really… Sort of shy. Like he’s only just come out.”
“Sure he is out?”
Patrick thought about it. And frowned. “S’pose I just assumed.”
“Might wanna find out before you start planning the wedding.”
“Sod that.” Patrick sat up straight and pulled his chair back in at his desk. “Come on, break’s over. We’ve got a fun run to organise.”
“Gonna get your bloke to sign up for it?”
Patrick nodded. “I might just do that.”
“Better make sure we’ve got St. John’s Ambulance in, then. Wouldn’t want him keeling over with a heart attack before you get your leg over.”
Lex laughed as Patrick stuck up a finger.
* * * * *
“It’s funny, innit?” Lex said out of the blue as they were eating their lunch—a roll from the baker’s for Patrick, and some weird homemade vegan rabbit food for Lex. They were eating at their desks today. Sometimes they took their lunch out to a park bench, or even just stood by the river and watched the ducks go mental hoping for freebies, but the wind had got up, making it a bit too nippy today.
“What is?”
“Well, you’d think it’d be better, knowing the other person likes you, wouldn’t you? ’Cept, like, it’s not, ’cos it messes with your head, dunnit?”
Patrick had his mouth full, so he just raised an eyebrow.
“Well, see, if you know they like you, it makes you think of ’em different, dunnit? Like, maybe you wouldn’t of thought about fancying ’em if they hadn’t fancied you first. So maybe you ask ’em out, or you say yes when they ask you out, and you think, did I do that ’cos I wanted to, or ’cos they wanted me to?”
Patrick swallowed his mouthful. “Yeah, but if nobody ever said they liked anyone else, nobody would ever go out with anyone. We’d all be sad, lonely bastards sitting at home watching telly.” He frowned. “This about your metalhead? You know you don’t have to settle for—”
“No. And yeah, I do know that, ta very much. I was talking about you and that bloke of yours. I been thinking about it, that’s all.”
“Yeah, well, why don’t you wait until there’s an it to think about, all right? If there ever is.”
Patrick had thought about it too, on and off. Him and Mark. Could it work?
Could it work with a stroppy teenager in tow? She’d looked like a good kid, though. Trying her hardest to strike out her own path and prove she was totally different to her dad—but didn’t all kids do that? Patrick ran a hand over his hair. Course, some had more reason than most.
Still…if Mark wasn’t out to her, that’d be a problem. And not just ’cos Patrick wasn’t planning on being anyone’s dirty little secret. The thought of being part of a lie Mark was telling to his own kid left a bad taste in Patrick’s mouth.
Shit. Why had Lex had to bring that up and throw ice water on all the warm and fuzzies? Patrick did a mental eye-roll at himself. Yeah, because blaming the messenger was so bloody mature. Not to mention productive. He’d just have to tread carefully, that was all. Make sure Mark understood his position from the outset.
Yeah, that was the way to go. He’d sound the bloke out during the pub crawl. Patrick chuckled under his breath. If he couldn’t get Mark to give up his secrets while they were half-cut and tied to each other, he was losing his touch.
Lex chased the last few nuts and…whatever around the corners of their lunchbox. “You’re thinking about him now, aren’t you? When are you gonna see him again?”
“Saturday night. The Spartans are doing a three-legged pub crawl.”
“Saturday? That’s ages off. Why don’t you ask him out before then?”
Patrick crumpled up his paper bag and chucked it in the bin with a thud. “Because I don’t jump in with both feet the minute I meet someone, all right?” Shit. That’d come out sounding a bit harsh. It wasn’t just him thinking that, either—Lex’s head was down, back hunched. “Sorry. But I like to get to know people a bit before I get involved. What’s wrong with that?”
“I just think you never see what people are really like before you go out with them, so you might as well get on with it. Saves time, dunnit?” Lex looked up, face earnest. “And well, before you go out with someone, you sorta build them up in your head, don’t you? Like, you start thinking they’re all brilliant and well fit and stuff. So when you finally go out with them, yeah, and they’re just like a normal person who farts in bed and picks their nose, right, you’re gonna be way more disappointed than you would of if you’d just gone out with ’em straightaway.”
“Bollocks. I don’t go putting blokes on a pedestal.”
Lex looked at him thoughtfully. “Nah, s’pose not. You’re more the he’s a wanker until proven innocent sort.”
“Oi, I don’t think all blokes are wankers.” Patrick grinned. “Well, ’cept in the literal sense. Nah, I dunno. Just, you meet a few tossers”—most of ’em, in Patrick’s case, hanging around his mum—“and you start to get a bit wary, that’s all.” Still, maybe Lex was right.
Maybe it was time to take a chance on someone.
Chapter Seven
Friday, Mark felt, was the welcome end to a rather halfhearted week. Somehow, by the time Fen had finished dyeing her hair back to something resembling a natural colour on Monday, it had been too late to take her back to school that day. Which had no doubt been her intention. However, Mark had been encouraged by her managing a whole day on each of Tuesday and Wednesday. She’d come home tired and snappish, which Mark had supposed was only natural. He’d spoiled her a bit, providing dinner from her favourite fast-food drive-throughs. They’d eaten in the car, which had been unexpectedly companionable compared to Fen’s usual sullen silence at the dining table.
Mark had considered it entirely worthwhile, even if he did now have a BMW that smelled like the bins outside a burger bar. And had ketchup stains on the passenger seat.
Thursday, however, brought a text from the school about a fault with the boiler, which apparently meant that not only did the children have to be sent home early, the school would be closed Friday as well. What with the dyed-hair debacle, Fen’s first so-called week at her new school had turned out to be barely two and a half days.
While Mark appreciated that the school didn’t exactly plan these things, it was a little irritating that they couldn’t have got it all out of the way during the Easter holidays. He’d gone to considerable trouble to find Fen another school. He felt the least the wretched place could do was actually let her i
n the door occasionally.
Still, he wasn’t sorry to have an excuse to step away from the computer. Writing, which had seemed the ideal solution to keeping him occupied while Fen was at school, was not going as well as he’d expected. He’d thought working from home, in the peace and quiet of an empty house, would be ideal. After all, he’d always cursed the constant interruptions that were an unavoidable feature of office life. Somehow, though, the very lack of distractions was distracting in itself. Either that, or there was something in the Shamwell water that had reduced his attention span to that of a gnat.
He’d managed forty-seven words of the introduction so far. And he wasn’t sure how many of them were actually good words.
Damn it. Still, at least it meant he could enjoy the unexpected pleasure of his daughter’s company all the more.
If she ever came down from her room.
Mark was just debating the best way to entice her from her fortress of solitude (Television? Snacks? Television with snacks?) when the doorbell rang. Who the hell could that be? Postman? Someone to read the meter? Right now he’d even welcome the Jehovah’s Witnesses. Mark strode to the door and threw it open, to be greeted by a cry of “Surprise!”
Well, he’d got that right. Through the foliage of an obscenely large bouquet of flowers, Mark could just make out David’s sensitive features, stretched into a beaming smile.
Mark found himself smiling back, his mood soaring from subterranean to stratospheric in an instant. “David? Shouldn’t you be in the office?”
The smile pursed up into a pout. “Work’s been just awful since you left, so we thought we’d take a day off and come and see you.”
We? Mark blinked. Maybe the boyfriend was locking up the car or something. David certainly looked like he was dressed for a date, in an alarmingly tight burgundy T-shirt—didn’t he feel the cold? His nipples certainly begged to differ—and wet-look black jeans.
“It’s great to see you,” Mark said, guiltily conscious just how much more sincere his welcome was than it would have been a few short weeks ago. “Come on in. Just you, is it?” he added, the boyfriend still being nowhere in sight. Mark doubted anyone capable of hiding behind David’s svelte-to-a-fault figure would have the strength to stand up.