Out!

by JL Merrow

  “Over my dead body—no, wait. Over his bloody dead body, the shite.”

  “—or Lenny, remember him? Back when you was a nipper. He wanted to marry me.”

  “Yeah, so he’d have someone to wash his socks and go and visit him in the nick. He’d have been as bad as Dad if he’d only had half a brain.”

  “That’s not fair. He never knocked me about, Lenny didn’t.”

  “Great, Mum. Really high standards you’ve got there. It’s nothing to do with me not having a dad, all right? Mark’s not like that.”

  “Like what? A decent father?”

  “Oi, stop that. He’s not like a father figure to me or anything. It’s like… When I’m with him, I don’t feel like he’s older.” Patrick laughed softly. “Sometimes I feel like I’m the older one. He’s never been out—never been with anyone except his ex-wife, from what I can tell.”

  “Oh, love. How d’you know he’s not just using you to get his confidence up? Dipping his toes in your waters, and then once you’ve taught him how to swim, he’ll be off diving into every ocean in sight?”

  “’Cos he’s not like that. I trust him, Mum.”

  She picked up the knife and started chopping again. “So when are you seeing him again?”

  “Tonight. After I’ve eaten that delicious dinner you’re slaving away over,” Patrick added hastily. “So no need to shove that carrot where the sun don’t shine.”

  * * * * *

  Patrick got to Mark’s house pretty much dead on eight o’clock. Mum hadn’t exactly given her blessing, in the end, but she’d stopped trying to persuade him out of it, which was almost the same thing.

  Course, now he was about to face another possibly hostile female relative. But Fen’d be all right—wouldn’t she? At her age, there probably didn’t seem that much difference between twenty-five and thirty-nine—it was all just old. He hoped.

  He’d tried ringing up Lex to get a bit more info, but they weren’t answering their phone. Probably busy with the boyfriend. So yeah, Fen was an unknown quantity. He could deal with that, though.

  He took a deep breath and knocked sharply on the door.

  Mark opened it with a smile that did a bloody good job of knocking all Patrick’s worries clean out of his head. “Glad you could make it,” he said as he stepped back to let Patrick in the hall.

  “No problem.”

  “Come through to the living room. I’m afraid I owe you an apology.”

  “Yeah?”

  Mark made a face. “Fen’s watching Scraping the Barrel—you know, that awful reality show where they take all the talent show no-hopers and send them to boot camp to try to teach them to carry a tune. Apparently the terminally deluded are the one group it’s still socially acceptable to poke fun at.”

  “Oh yeah, I know that show,” Patrick said.

  Mark froze. “Um. You’re not a fan, are you?”

  Patrick had to laugh at his horrified expression. “What, deal-breaker, is it? Nah, don’t worry. Mum likes it, that’s all. Makes her feel she’s not doing too badly, she reckons.”

  Fen looked up as they walked in the living room.

  “You remember Patrick, don’t you?” Mark said, his hand hovering so near the small of Patrick’s back he could feel the heat from it, yet still not actually touching.

  Fen nodded but didn’t say anything.

  “Hi,” Patrick said.

  She bit her lip and looked back at the screen, where one of the contestants was being forced to sing Three Blind Mice over and over again in front of a jeering audience until they either got it right or broke down in tears. Patrick wished he knew if she was being deliberately unfriendly or just shy.

  “Drinks?” Mark sounded a bit desperate.

  “Cup of tea would be great, thanks.”

  “Fen?”

  “Hot chocolate. Please. With marshmallows.”

  Patrick wasn’t sure why Mark winced at that. “Sorry, darling, we’re out of marshmallows.”

  “Oh. Squash, then.”

  “Right.” Mark disappeared.

  Patrick tried not to feel like he’d been thrown to the lions. He sat down gingerly on the sofa and watched the telly for a couple of minutes, but it was hard to get really involved in it what with the way the hair on the back of his neck was prickling.

  Fen was staring at him. Patrick thought about just staring back, but it seemed a bit mean. And, well, he was trying to establish himself as one of the adults here. “School all right?” he asked, thinking a bit of conversation would definitely help. The contestant on screen had gone for the ugly sobbing option, which wasn’t doing a right lot for the atmosphere.

  She shrugged. “S’pose.”

  “Made any friends?”

  She shrugged again. “S’pose.”

  Christ, had Patrick been this difficult as a teenager?

  Yeah. Yeah, he probably had. Mum could probably go on for days about it, which was why he was never gonna ask her. Patrick smiled. “Good to see you getting friendly with Lex. They had a rough time at school—it’s left ’em a bit wary about people.” Well, people who weren’t big, bearded bikers, when Lex’s self-preservation circuits tended to short-circuit big-time.

  Fen leaned forward, tucking her hair behind an ear dotted with cute little sparkly studs. “Have you met Lex’s boyfriend yet?”

  “Not yet, no. Why, they said anything that’s got you worried?”

  “No… It’s just, Lex seems so totally into him, you know? And it’s, like, really soon, and they still haven’t met any of his friends, and I’m just worried, you know? But, I mean, it’s probably nothing.”

  Patrick frowned. “No, I know what you mean. Not sure there’s anything we can do about it, though. ’Cept be there for Lex when they need us. If they need us,” he added optimistically. “He might be all right, this bloke. Just give it time.”

  Fen nodded slowly. “Do you like going to the theatre?” she asked out of nowhere.

  “Yeah. Do a bit of acting myself, actually. I’m in the Shamwell Amateur Dramatics Society, like Heather who runs your theatre group.”

  “Yeah?” Fen perked right up at that. “Can we go and see you in a play?”

  “Next time I’m in one, yeah. You know, if the group works out for you, you should join. They’re always after more young actors.” Well, if he was honest, probably not that young, not for most of the plays they did, but there was still stuff she’d be able to get involved in, like props and scenery.

  Patrick looked up as Mark came back into the room, carrying two steaming mugs in one hand and a glass of orange squash in the other. “Ah, cheers.”

  “Dad, can I join the Shamwell Amateur Dramatics Society? Patrick’s a member, and so’s Heather who does theatre group.”

  Mark blinked, and looked pleased. “Of course you can—if you’re old enough?”

  He looked at Patrick, who nodded. “Yeah, she wouldn’t be the youngest. Everyone calls it the Sham-Drams, by the way. Bit less of a tongue-twister.”

  “So…do you act?” Mark asked, sitting down.

  Patrick cradled his mug of tea. “Yeah, but I haven’t done anything for a while. Had to take a break after last summer.” He slapped his leg, then realised that wouldn’t mean anything to Fen. “Broke my leg playing cricket,” he explained. Then, ’cos he thought she’d appreciate it, he added, “Nasty one too. Had the bone sticking right out through the skin.”

  She shuddered, wide-eyed. “Did it hurt?”

  Patrick had to stifle a laugh, and from the look of him, Mark was having similar trouble. “Yeah, just a bit. Wanna see the scar?”

  Patrick pulled up his trouser leg and got a weird sense of déjà vu as she reached forward to run a finger over it, just like her dad had done.

  “I broke my arm when I was little,” she said, then added in a disgus
ted tone and with a face to match, “Dad tried to rub it better.”

  Okay, there was no holding back the laugh that time. “Let me guess, didn’t really help?”

  “Now hold on a minute,” Mark protested with a mock grimace. “She fell off her bike when it was stationary. How was I to know she’d broken a bone? I wouldn’t have thought it was even possible.” He gave his daughter a fond look, like he was proud of her for defying probability like that.

  “Yeah? A bit accident prone, are we?” Patrick teased Fen.

  “No.” She gulped some squash. “Ask Dad who broke a window teaching me how to play cricket when I was six. Twice. And he made me take the blame for the second time.”

  Mark’s face was definitely a bit on the pink side. “I did not make her take the blame, all right? Payment was involved. Five pounds, as I recall. And two Cadbury’s Creme Eggs.”

  Patrick shot him an amused look. “Sorry to break it to you, but the parenting halo’s still starting to look a bit tarnished.”

  Fen giggled, then gave him a serious look. “Dad said you work for a charity. Helping disabled people.”

  “Yeah, that’s right. SHARE—it’s for adults with learning disabilities. Helping ’em be as independent as possible. A lot of people forget it’s not only disabled kids who need a bit of support. I just do the fundraising, though—I leave the actual helping to the people who’re qualified for it.”

  She nodded. “We’re going to do the fun run, me and Dad. The 10K.”

  “Yeah? Lex handles all the online registrations, so I didn’t know you’d signed up. Glad to hear it.” Patrick smiled. “Hope you’re getting him in training.”

  “He says he goes running when I’m at school.”

  “Excuse me?” Mark gave her a mock glare. “What do you mean, says? I do go running while you’re at school, madam. You could have a bit more confidence in your father. What do you think I do all day, anyway?”

  Patrick laughed. “Probably best not to ask that.”

  Fen giggled again. The lack-of-talent show ended, and she uncurled herself from the sofa. “I’m going upstairs, right?”

  Mark, flicking through TV channels, just nodded vaguely.

  Fen tutted. “Dad? I said I’m going upstairs, all right? I’ll probably just go straight to bed, you know, when I’m ready.” She waited a moment, clearly decided it hadn’t sunk in, and added, “So I won’t be downstairs again, ’kay?”

  Patrick had to hold back a laugh when the penny visibly dropped in Mark’s brain and he went a bit pink.

  “Oh. Right. Well, good night, then, darling.”

  “Night, Dad. Night, Patrick.”

  Well, that hadn’t gone too badly. And now here he was. With Mark.

  Alone.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Mark experienced mixed emotions on watching Fen leave the room, supposedly exhausted from all that demanding TV watching. On the one hand, he was proud of her thoughtfulness in letting him have some time alone with Patrick. On the other, he was absolutely mortified that his child was bent on facilitating his love life. On the third hand, and he realised this metaphor was starting to get a little out of, hah, hand, there was a strange, anticipatory fizzing inside him he wasn’t sure he’d ever felt before that was so overwhelming, he almost thought of calling her back.

  Mark had finally found a channel that was showing some golf tournament, which he felt would be a much better backdrop for romance than, say, the blood-gore-and-screaming hospital drama that had come on straight after Scraping the Barrel. He wondered which bright spark in scheduling had decided to follow that bit of car-crash telly with a programme which featured actual car crashes.

  “She’s a good kid,” Patrick said into the sudden silence.

  “Yes. Yes, she is.” Mark really didn’t deserve her.

  “It’s great, you and her having all those memories together,” Patrick said. He sounded almost wistful, but then perhaps he was thinking of his own father.

  The fizzing subsided a little. Mark felt like an imposter. “Yes, but… They’re all from a long time ago.”

  “So? At least she’s got good memories of you.” Patrick grinned. “Although bribing a kid to take the fall for a broken window, that’s low.”

  “Clearly you haven’t met my ex-wife.” Mark shook his head, smiling back. “No, that’s not fair. But I was still trying to make things work with her, and we’d been going through a rough patch, so… All turned out to be a waste of time, in the end.”

  “Well, at least Fen got five quid and some chocolate out of it,” Patrick pointed out.

  “There is that. Um. Would you like a real drink now? I’ve got bottled beer—just some stuff that was on offer at Waitrose, but it’s fairly drinkable. Or there’s wine.”

  “Wine’d be good. I like my beer draught, you know? But with wine, I’m not fussy.”

  “Wine it is, then,” Mark said. Thank God. Not only was the prospect of his preferred brand of Dutch courage a relief, there was something more intimate about sharing a bottle of wine. Or did he only think that because he’d never been, well, intimate with a beer drinker before? “Shiraz okay?”

  “Told you, mate, I’m not fussy. I grew up drinking the stuff Mum buys cheap at Asda.” Patrick leaned back in the sofa, resting an ankle on the opposite knee.

  Mark’s heart beat faster as he went to get the wine from the kitchen. His hands slipped a little as he uncorked it, but he had himself back under control by the time he was back in the living room, bottle and two glasses in his hands. He even managed to pour the wine without clinking the bottle top on the glass.

  “Hey, calm down, all right? I’m not gonna jump on you.” Patrick’s eyes twinkled.

  Mark laughed ruefully. “God, am I that obvious? It’s just—”

  “I know, all right? Never done this before. Don’t worry about it. We don’t have to do anything, if you don’t wanna.”

  “I wann—I mean, I want to,” Mark said fervently. He took a fortifying swallow of Shiraz. “I’m really much better with women.” It just slipped out. Mark cringed inside.

  Fortunately Patrick laughed. “Yeah, girls are easier, some ways. You grow up, nearly everything you see on the telly and in films—yeah, and in real life too—it all tells you how to treat a woman. Or how not to,” he added, his face darkening for a moment. “Even when there is gay stuff, a lot of it’s issue-driven. You know—if a character’s gay, there’s gotta be a reason for it.”

  Mark nodded and took another gulp of wine.

  Patrick was silent a moment before he spoke again. “So how come you never, you know, experimented or anything?”

  The fizzing, this time, was definitely uncomfortable. “I did. Sort of.” Mark’s heart was racing. He put his glass down, although reluctantly. “You asked me, a while ago, how many boyfriends I’d had before I was twenty-one. The answer is one.” Mark hardly got the word out through a throat that seemed to have closed up. “Just one.” He shrugged jerkily. “It didn’t last long. My dad saw us, and, well, made it clear it wasn’t acceptable. And we had to move again soon after that, anyway.” He took a deep breath and wiped his hands on his trousers. There. He’d said it. It hadn’t been so bad, not really.

  Just… It had just been so long since he’d spoken about Ray. That was all.

  Mark realised Patrick hadn’t replied, and looked up. Those sharp blue eyes were piercing into him. “What happened?” The tone was low, calm, but he looked almost angry.

  “What I just told you. I was sixteen; he was twenty-three. Dad broke his nose and told him if he saw an effing poofter like him hanging around his son again, he’d be carrying his balls home in a bag.”

  “Christ. What did he catch you doing?”

  “Talking.” Mark took another deep breath. “It was late, and Dad was walking back from the pub with a couple of mates, and there I was wit
h Ray. Standing under a lamppost like a couple of idiots in a bloody spotlight. I suppose he thought he had to take a stand. Everyone knew Ray was queer, so…” He swallowed. “After Dad knocked him down, the men with him put the boot in. Cracked a couple of ribs.”

  “Bloody hell. Did he report it?”

  “Of course he didn’t! I told you, I was sixteen. What the hell do you think would have happened if he’d brought the police in?” Mark looked Patrick in the eye. “You don’t get it, do you? This was over twenty years ago. It wasn’t like it is now. Best-case scenario, they’d have sent him home with a warning not to waste police time. Worst case… Worst case, he’d have been branded a paedophile, and he’d have been lucky if he only got bricks chucked through his windows. Dad… I thought he was going to wallop me too, but he just took me home, sat me down, gave me a beer and asked me if that was what I wanted my life to be like.”

  “So basically this Ray got beat up to teach you a lesson?”

  Mark’s stomach lurched. “I… Oh God.” He’d never thought of it that way. Why the hell had he never thought of it that way? “Maybe. God. I only wanted… He was the only gay man I knew. You couldn’t miss him—he was so bloody camp, he probably had tent poles instead of bones. So when I realised I was, well, confused, he was the one I went to speak to about it. I liked him, although we never did much more than kiss.” He licked his lips, only realising he was doing it when he saw Patrick staring at his mouth. Mark gave a shaky sigh, feeling hot and cold all over. “Sorry. That’s rather killed the mood, hasn’t it? This probably wasn’t what you were expecting, coming round tonight.”

  Patrick leaned over and put a hand on Mark’s arm. “No. But I’m glad you told me.” His other hand came up slowly to Mark’s face, as if Mark were a nervous cat that needed to be gentled. “Can I kiss you?”

  Those startlingly blue eyes were only inches from Mark’s own now. He felt confused, off-kilter. He hadn’t expected—he wasn’t sure what he’d expected. But something in Patrick’s intense gaze seemed to say he knew what it meant to Mark, to finally get his past all out in the open between them. It even seemed to suggest it meant something similar to Patrick, to have been the recipient of his confidence.