by JL Merrow
Then again, if you’ve got it, why not flaunt it? Even if the only people around to flaunt it at are either (a) related by blood or (b) demonstrably gay. Still, for all I knew, she’d be off out merry-widowing this evening. She was a lot younger than my mum, after all. Phil had told me she’d been twenty when she had her first kid, and there weren’t that many years between any of ’em, which made her . . . Blimey. Midfifties, I’d say. Yeah, plenty old enough to be my mum, but still young enough for my mum to be her mum, at least theoretically speaking, which was all kinds of weird.
Still didn’t make it any easier thinking of her as Tracy.
The hall leading from the front door was narrow and cramped, half-full with shoe racks, recycling bins, and coats hanging six-deep on pegs. There was a strong smell of air freshener. It was a bit of a relief to get out into the living room, which was rectangular and boxy, with a squashy sofa in front of a large flat-screen telly at one end and a small, rickety-looking dining table already laid up for dinner at the other. God knows how Phil’s mum and dad had brought up three strapping lads and a daughter in a place this size. Maybe they’d eaten in shifts?
There were napkins on the table. And forks for dessert, and the reason I noticed all this particularly was because I was putting off paying attention to the other end of the room and, specifically, the sofa. Not that there was anything wrong with the sofa, mind. Unless you counted its occupants.
Jase, Phil’s brother, was sprawled across two-thirds of it reading the Daily Mail. He looked up briefly to say, “All right, mate?” then looked back down without waiting for an answer. The girl curled up at the other end with her nose in a magazine didn’t even go that far to acknowledge our presence.
The telly, as Phil had predicted, was off. I got the feeling Jase and Leanne weren’t any too chuffed about that.
I caught a barely there sigh from Phil’s direction. “Leanne?” he said loudly, and waited.
She looked up with a sulky teenager expression on a face at least a decade too old for it. “Oh. You got here, then.”
“Leanne, this is Tom. My fiancé.”
There was a noise from Jase’s direction. It sounded a lot like a snort. Leanne twitched her lips up for a fraction of a second.
I sent her my best difficult-housewife smile. “Lovely to meet you, Leanne. Can’t say I notice a family resemblance between you and Phil”—this was true—“you’re way prettier than he is.”
That was a bare-faced lie. But it did the trick. Leanne uncurled her legs from the sofa and stood up. In her bare feet, she was a little shorter than me, with bleached-blonde hair pulled up into a big donut shape on top of her head that made her look like a ballerina doll. She had tattooed-on eyebrows and liked her makeup even more than her mum did. She hadn’t put any of it on wonkily, though. “You never said he was nice,” she told Jase accusingly.
“What? I said he was all right. You know, for . . .” Jase trailed off under the force of Phil’s glare.
“You just said he was better than the last one.” Leanne’s curled lip indicated just how little of a compliment that was.
There were rumblings from Phil’s direction, so I jumped in quick. “Phil never mentioned what you do for a living, Leanne.”
She smiled a bit more genuinely this time. “Beautician. You know that new salon in Pluck’s End?” I didn’t, but I nodded anyway. “That’s where I work. Dead posh, innit?”
“Nothing but the best, eh? My sister lives in Pluck’s End,” I added.
Leanne looked panicked. “I can’t do her a discount. I only just got taken on.”
“Nah, that’s all right. Cherry doesn’t go to that sort of place anyway.”
Now she just looked narked.
“Allergies,” I said quick. “She can’t wear makeup and stuff.”
You’d think I’d said she had something terminal. Leanne’s heavily mascara’d eyes went wide. “Oh my God, poor woman. That must be so awful. Still, she could have her nails done, couldn’t she? I get my nails done there.” She spread out her hands for my inspection. “Good, ain’t they?”
I gave ’em a good look, and did the pursed-lips-intake-of-breath thing. They were the fancy sort, all right, with several colours, little sparkles in and everything. Cherry, I wouldn’t mind betting, would rather do a Lady Godiva through the streets of St. Leonards than be seen dead with anything like that on her fingers. “Couldn’t get away with those in my line of work, love. But yeah. Dead smart. Like the bling.”
“See?” Leanne slung in Jase’s direction. “Some people appreciate them.”
Jase gave a more audible snort this time. “Lee, nobody gives a toss about your bloody nails. He’s just being polite.”
“Not like anyone else around here ever is, is it?” she snapped back.
Jase growled and put his paper down.
“Jase, mate, how’s work going?” I threw in a bit desperately.
That brought on a rant about effing bloody useless customers, which kept us safely occupied until Tracy came in to tell us dinner was ready and she wasn’t carrying it all in by herself so we could all shift our lazy bleeding arses, guests excepted, obviously, Tom, you just sit yourself down.
I sat myself down. At least the table was round, so I didn’t have to worry too much about sitting in the wrong spot. Phil, who still hadn’t said more than three words since we’d got here, sat next to me instead of trooping into the kitchen with Jase and Leanne. Fair enough. If the size of the rest of the house was anything to go by, it was probably chock-full even without his shoulders in there.
The meals arrived already plated, which was only sensible given the size of the table, but meant I got a lot more roast parsnips than I was entirely comfortable with. Also a lot more roast beef, Yorkshire pud, carrots, broccoli, and gravy.
I mean, I like my food, but I also like to be able to move after meals.
Jase was looking disgruntled at his dinner too, and seeing as I reckoned it was for the opposite reason, I swapped ’em quick when Phil’s mum optimistically went back out to get more gravy. “Think I got your plate, here.”
He grinned and gave me a thumbs-up. Phil huffed beside me, but I ignored him. I’d already checked, and he’d had at least as much on his plate as I had.
Leanne had brought her own plate in, with only lean meat, carrots, and broccoli, I noticed. She didn’t bother with the gravy either, just added a smear of mustard. Even then, she just picked at it all. I guessed she was trying to avoid taking after her mum’s admittedly well-rounded figure, but I was surprised she wasn’t giving the diet a day off seeing as her mum had made all this effort.
“Phil’s told you about our Nigel, I take it?” Tracy asked once she’d sat down. Jase was already tucking in, scooping up roast spuds with his fork like there was no tomorrow and no such thing as table manners either.
I swallowed my mouthful of gravy-soaked carrots. It was pretty tasty. “Yeah. Working on the oil rigs, isn’t he?”
“It’s good money up there. As certain other people could take note,” she added, with a pointed look at Jase.
He glared back at her. “Make enough to pay you rent, don’t I?”
“Living at home at your age. Some people’d be ashamed. You ought to get yourself a nice flat like Phil, here.”
Jase glared at Phil, who gazed back stonily.
“And Tom here’s got his own house, or so I hear,” she added.
Great. Now Jase was glaring at me. “It’s nothing much. Just a two-bed semi in Fleetville, but it’s home, innit?” It came out a bit more apologetic than it really deserved to.
“Yeah, but his folks always were loaded, weren’t they?” Jase muttered to his gravy.
“Hey, I pay for my house through the sweat of my brow,” I said breezily to hide the fact I was a bit narked.
Jase waved a roast potato at me. “Betcha had a bit of help with the deposit, though, dintcha?”
“Oi, you, stop getting on Tom’s case,” Leanne said snippily, surprising
me. “At least he don’t go on about all his posh uni mates all the time.” She smiled at me. “And I bet you won’t screw around on Phil neither, not like the last one did.”
“Leanne!” Her mum snapped it almost loud enough to cover the ominous scrape of Phil’s chair—but Jesus, that’d been well out of order. I turned Phil’s way so quick I got a crick in my neck, and put a hand on his arm in the hope it’d stop him walking out. Not that I’d have blamed him. His jaw was so tense you could crack a walnut on it, and he was visibly making an effort not to explode, breathing deeply and staring straight at the wall.
“What?” Leanne was saying. “We all know he did.”
“Yeah, see,” I said awkwardly. “Me and Phil, we don’t tend to talk about our exes all that much.”
Leanne went bright red and looked down at her plate. “How was I s’posed to know he din’t know?” she muttered.
I coughed. “So, you lived in this place long, Tracy?” I asked brightly.
She didn’t fumble the catch, thank God. “Oh Christ, yes. Ever since I got married. Well, not quite, but I don’t count that flat we had until Nigel was on the way. Proper disgrace, that was. Cockroaches! Never seen so bleeding many, not even when I was in South London. Knocked ’em down after we got moved, they did. It’s mine now, this place. Me and Phil’s dad got it under the right to buy. Course, I could probably retire if I sold it and downsized somewhere smaller. These ex council places, they go for a fortune nowadays.”
Round here? I doubted it. Then again, fortunes are relative too.
“Yeah, uh, Phil said you work at Sainsbury’s, right?” They had a big store not far from here, next to a Homebase and a Matalan and a few other big shops that were subject to change without notice.
Tracy nodded. “Gets me out the house. Course, I never had a chance to learn a trade like you or Phil, here.”
“And me,” Leanne piped up. “I got my City and Guilds.”
“Yes, love.” It came over as well dismissive. Poor Leanne. “How are your parents, these days? Still going strong?”
“Yeah, they’re, uh, all fine.” Okay, there might have been a bit of a wince at the all.
Leanne looked up from her dry meat and boiled veg. “‘All’? Why, how many you got?”
Shit. Phil hadn’t told them? I sent him a panicked glance. Was now really the time to announce my mother’s infidelity to the world?
Phil coughed and put down his fork. “Since when have you been the family grammar Nazi, Lee?”
She flushed. Jase laughed. “It’s them courses she been doing, innit? Creative bloody writing and English fucking literature, like anyone gives a toss about all that bollocks.”
His mum glared at him. “You leave your sister alone. At least she’s trying to better herself, unlike some lazy arses I could mention.”
“Where are you studying?” I asked quickly. “Local college, or Open University?”
Leanne looked at her plate. “College. I mean, I’d like to do OU, but it’s expensive, innit?”
“What, you with a degree?” Jase was off again. “Be like—”
“Shut it,” Phil said before we could find out what it’d be like, in Jase’s very limited imagination.
Jase slammed down his fork. “Oh, for fuck’s sake. What’d I even say?”
“Jason Aaron Morrison, I will not have that language at my dinner table.”
Jase opened his mouth. Tracy glared at him until he shut it.
“More gravy, Tom?”
“Yeah, that’d be smashing,” I said, and faked a smile so hard my cheeks hurt.
We eventually got out of there, but not before I’d earned Jase’s and Leanne’s undying hatred by offering to wash up. Tracy refused to hear of it, so Jase and Leanne got the ear-bashing from their mum about how some people had proper manners, and then had to wash up as well.
Me and Phil had to sit on the sofa—telly still off—and try to make polite conversation with Tracy to the backdrop of them bickering in the kitchen. Every so often, she’d break off to yell at them to Shut up, Christ, and act your bleeding ages.
Phil was quiet as we walked back to his car. My eardrums were honestly enjoying the peace and quiet, but I didn’t like to think of him brooding. “Look, about what Leanne said,” I started.
He didn’t ask what I was referring to. “What? Want to know if it’s true? Yes, all right? He screwed around on me.”
Shit. “That wasn’t what I was gonna say. None of my business, yeah?”
“So what were you going to say?” he ground out.
“I was gonna say, I’m sorry you had to go through that. Her coming out with it, I mean. That wasn’t right. Doesn’t matter whether it was true or a complete load of bollocks, she shouldn’t have said it.”
It was only as Phil visibly relaxed beside me that I realised just how tightly wound up he’d been. He took a deep breath. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to take it out on you.”
“No worries. It’s family, innit? Didn’t some posh bastard write a poem about how they fuck you up? Far as I’m concerned, it didn’t happen, okay?”
’Cept it wasn’t okay, not really. Because it had happened, and now that I knew . . . I really, really wanted to know more. Like, f’rinstance, why, if the Mysterious Mark had been a cheater, had Phil kept his photo around long enough after the bloke had died that I found it on a windowsill first time I’d visited his flat? It hadn’t looked like he’d been using it for darts practice.
I couldn’t ask him, though.
Like I’d said. None of my business.
I forced a cheery tone. “So, it’s Sunday afternoon, all the shops are shut, and I’m too full of your mum’s gravy to even think about going for a pint. Wanna slob out in front of the sport at mine?”
Phil was silent a moment. “I’ll drop you off. Got stuff to do at the flat.”
Great. Still, at least now I knew why Phil was so bloody emotionally constipated. Turned out it was his mum’s cooking that did it. “Urgent stuff, is it?”
“Don’t start.”
“Would I?” I sighed. “Look, feel free to come round later, yeah? Or not. Whatever you want.”
He nodded, which I took as a reasonably positive sign.
I wondered, after I’d let myself into my cold, empty house—all right, my comfortably warm, cat-occupied house—if he’d really thought things through before asking me to tie the knot. I mean, we hadn’t talked about dates or anything, but judging from a few things he’d let slip, I wasn’t the only one assuming he’d move into mine sooner or later, and at any rate after the wedding. So what was he going to do then when he wanted to come over all Greta Garbo and indulge in a bit of solitary brooding?
I laughed as a thought struck. I could always build him a shed down the bottom of the garden.
Phil didn’t come round on Sunday evening. Not that he was supposed to. I mean, I’d made it clear it was up to him. So it wasn’t like I went to bed pissed off at him for not turning up or anything.
Yeah, right. Anyhow, I just happened to be down Brock’s Hollow way around lunchtime, so I called Gary up and dragged him out for a pub lunch. Not that he needed a lot of dragging, mind.
Gary’s my best mate. He’s some sort of IT consultant who works from home and does well enough to keep Julian, his Saint Bernard, in sirloin steak and Bonios. He’s the camp-’n’-cuddly sort—Gary, I mean, not Julian, who has an air of sober and stately masculinity despite the vet’s attentions—and rings the bells at St. Anthony’s church in Brock’s Hollow. I don’t get to see as much of him as I used to, since his wedding, which was another reason to meet up for lunch. Evenings, him and Darren come as a job lot these days.
The Dyke being out of commission, and Harry’s arrangement with the local restaurant not, unsurprisingly, extending to competing for the lunch market, we went to the Four Candles. Gary’s choice, not mine. It’s a chain-owned pub down by the river. It’s all right, I guess, but every time they redecorate the place, they take a little bit more of th
e soul out of it.
“You have glum-face,” Gary told me as we sat down in the bar area. I swear that gets smaller every time I go in, as more and more tables get co-opted for diners. “Tell Uncle Gary all about it. What has the nasty man done now?”
“Nothing. Seriously.” I shrugged. “We just went round to his mum’s for Sunday lunch yesterday, and it was a bit of a mare.”
“Ooh, go on.”
I hesitated. It didn’t seem right spilling the beans about Phil’s cheating ex. “Oh, you know. The usual family arguments. His mum having a dig at the kids every chance she got, playing ’em off against each other. She even brought me into it a couple of times. You know how it goes.”
Gary stared at me in polite incomprehension. “No, but I’m fascinated. Do go on.”
Right. Gary was the only child of hippy parents who were still daft for each other. He’d probably never observed a full-on family row in the wild. “Uh . . . It was just a bit tense. That’s all.”
He pouted, cheated of juicy details. “You’re no fun.”
“Yeah, neither was that lunch, which is why I don’t wanna talk about it.” I hesitated. “Listen, have you ever had an ex you just couldn’t get over, no matter how much of a shit they were to you?”
“I hope we’re not talking about your fiancé, here.”
I gave a shaky laugh. “No.”
Gary raised an eyebrow. “Hmm. Well, personally, no, but I have observed the phenomenon in others. It’s The One That Got Away. The Grass That Is Always Greener.”
Don’t ask me how Gary manages to pronounce capitals. He also does a nice line in quotation and exclamation marks.
“What, you reckon it’s not the bloke at all, just the idea of ’em?”
“How unusually perceptive of you, Tommy dearest. Yes.”
Great. So I wasn’t up against a memory of a cheating bastard. I was up against a memory of an idealised bastard.
Gary patted my knee. “But don’t worry. I’m sure he loves you more.”
I gave him a weak smile of thanks. Then I blinked. “Oi, I said we weren’t talking about Phil.”