One Under

by JL Merrow

  “That’s him?” Jory shook his head slowly. “I . . . It seems awful, but I don’t remember him at all.”

  He gave the phone back. Mal didn’t know why he did it—maybe cos the bloke seemed so sad—but he flicked through until he found another shot of Dev, this one with Kyle. “That’s him and his bloke.”

  “He’s gay?”

  Mal nodded, and Jory smiled, like he was pleased about it. Mal’s stomach did a weird thing, sort of fluttered. He needed to get some breakfast down him. “That’s . . .” Jory trailed off, and just as Mal was about ask what he’d been going to say, he spoke again. “It’s odd . . . the other man seems more familiar, somehow.”

  “Yeah?” Mal shrugged. “You probably saw him around last year. He was renting one of them cottages down the cliff from your gaff.”

  Jory’s frown cleared. “Yes! I remember now. He came to introduce himself as a neighbour. I’d just had a godawful row with Bran about— And I wasn’t feeling very sociable right then. And, well, I wasn’t living here at the time, so I let Bran deal with him. He must have thought I was terribly unwelcoming.” The frown was back.

  “Where were you then?”

  “Edinburgh. Up at the university.”

  “Bloody hell, couldn’t you find one any further away?”

  Jory screwed up his face. “It was just a few years . . . Can you give me his number?”

  “What, Dev’s?” Mal managed to bite back the Fuck, no that had been on the tip of his tongue. “I’d have to ask him about that first, mate.”

  “Would you?”

  Mal slumped down on the bed and ran a hand through his hair. Christ knew what he looked like. It was way too early for all this. “Yeah, see, it really fucked him up, what your sister did. I mean, he said he didn’t give a shit, but he’s my best mate, right? I know him.”

  Jory seemed a shedload more oversized and awkward from this angle. “I’m sorry,” he said. And yeah, he sounded like he meant it, but Christ, how could he have been there all along last summer and not known?

  Trouble was, Mal was going to have to say something to Dev, wasn’t he? He’d be here in a week, and what were the chances of him and Kyle flying under Uncle Jory’s radar then? Only a crap mate wouldn’t warn him.

  Even if it meant him and Kyle might change their plans and not come here after all, and fuck, Mal really didn’t want that to happen.

  He wasn’t sure he could face it if Dev didn’t come down.

  Sod it. “Listen mate, if I ask you for a favour, will you do it?”

  “I, ah, well. Depending what it is.”

  Mal couldn’t blame him for being cautious. “Stay away from Dev until I give you the go-ahead, right? You gotta promise me you’ll do that.”

  “But—” Jory looked well confused.

  “Yeah, I know you ain’t got his number or his address or anything. But you could get it, couldn’t you? She’s got it. Your sister. But I’m saying, you leave him alone until I tell you.”

  Jory nodded. “Fine. Of course. But—”

  “See, the thing is, he’s coming here. In a week. So you’re gonna see him around. But you keep your distance, or I’ll . . . I’ll let Tasha post dog turds through your letterbox.”

  Mal wasn’t expecting Jory’s laugh at that, and maybe Jory hadn’t been either—he sort of snorted, then looked embarrassed about it, as if he’d farted or something. “I, ah, sorry. Rough night.”

  “Yeah, you and me both.” Mal found himself smiling. A week was a long time. Plenty long enough to find out a bit more about this Jory bloke, and whether Dev was going to want to know him. Mal patted the mattress, about to make some crack about Tasha having stuffed it with rocks, but Jory must’ve misunderstood, cos he sat down next to Mal.

  Okaaayyy. This wasn’t awkward at all, him and Jory sitting on his bed with the duvet still rucked up from last night. “So, yeah, you lived here all your life?”

  Jory nodded. “Apart from when I was at school. And university. And doing postgraduate work.”

  Mal had to laugh. “So basically, you just come here every summer like a bloody grackle?”

  Jory’s face screwed up in a frown. It was well cute. “I think you mean grockle? A tourist? Isn’t a grackle some kind of bird?”

  “Fuck if I know. And there was me thinking I was speaking fluent Cornish.”

  “Grockle isn’t even a Cornish word. It’s general southwest dialect. Emmet is more specifically Cornish.” He went a bit pink. “But you probably don’t want the whole lecture.”

  “That what you used to do in Edinburgh? Lectures and stuff.”

  Jory nodded seriously. “Particularly the stuff. An essential part of any university curriculum, stuff.”

  Mal grinned. “Fuck off. I coulda gone to uni if I’d wanted to, you know.” He could have and all. He’d had the grades. Straight As, and fuck you very much to all the teachers who’d predicted him Ds just cos he liked to have a bit of a laugh in lessons. He hadn’t fancied the crippling debt, that was all.

  Okay, so there might have been a bit of peer pressure in there too. His mates would’ve thought he was totally up himself if he’d gone to uni, especially seeing as he hadn’t needed a degree for the job he’d wanted.

  “I’m sure you could have,” Jory said politely, which wasn’t most people’s reaction when he told them that. “Academia isn’t for everyone.”

  “That why you left and came back here?”

  “I . . .” Jory gave a weird, awkward shrug. “Family. Are you staying here long?”

  Mal could take a hint. “Not sure. Gonna see how it goes.”

  “Between jobs at the moment?”

  Jory’s tone was sympathetic, which made Mal feel worse about lying to him, but he wasn’t ready to go there. “Something like that. Old Jago said I can stay as long as I want, long as I pull me weight and don’t leave the place looking like a pigsty.”

  “Kind of him.”

  “Course, if he finds me hanging about with you . . .”

  Jory swallowed. “It’s not just about Devan?”

  “Nah. Your big bruv screwed his mate’s family over some property or other—I didn’t get the details. Chucked ’em all out when the old bloke died, was it? Tasha’s mate’s grandad, that was. Used to be on the lifeboats. So yeah, Roscarrock’s a bit of a dirty word round here.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Hey, it ain’t your fault.” Mal sent him a sharp look. “Least, far as I know.”

  “God, no. I’ve never had anything to do with all that. Bran inherited the family interests. Father was something of a traditionalist—primogeniture, and all that.” He flushed. “The eldest child inheriting—”

  “I know what it means,” Mal cut him off, a bit narked. “Just cos I never had a public-school education don’t mean I never read books.”

  “Sorry. But you’d be amazed how many students I’ve known with frighteningly limited knowledge outside their own field.” Jory paused. “So what is your field? You never said.”

  “Customer service.” Mal didn’t even feel bad about the lie. People who put you on the spot like that shouldn’t expect the truth, right? He stood up. It was good, yeah, getting to talk to Jory, but if they hung around any longer, Tasha might come bursting in, and Mal really couldn’t face having World War III kicking off in his bedroom. “Listen, it’s been great, and all”—fuck, he sounded like he was trying to ditch last night’s one-night stand, and Jory still sitting on his unmade bed wasn’t helping—“but I ain’t had me breakfast yet and I’m starving.”

  Jory scrambled to his feet. “I could take you out somewhere? If—if you’re willing to give me another chance?”

  Jory felt like an idiot the minute he’d blurted out the invitation. Mal just stood there, staring down at him. Quite clearly, he’d just been trying to get rid of him. “But you’ve probably got other plans. Things to do. I’ll—” Jory stood up.

  “Nah, okay.” Mal blinked, giving Jory the absurd impression that he was as surpris
ed as Jory at his response. “Where d’you wanna go? Caff in town?”

  Jory hadn’t thought that far ahead. “Yes, why not?” After all, the town was full of eating places, and he’d be able to tell at a glance if there was any danger of bumping into Bran or Bea inside whichever one they chose.

  “Right. Come on, then.” Mal grabbed his wallet and phone, shoved them into his jeans pockets, looked out of the window, and then turned to Jory expectantly. “Ready?”

  “Uh . . . Yes.” Christ. It was ridiculous how attracted he was to the man. Mal seemed all sharp angles, all spiky class-war defensiveness, but there was a warmth underneath that took Jory’s breath away. He was all mercurial changes too—one minute showing tenderness and genuine curiosity, the next slipping back into his cocky, am-I-bothered persona.

  And no amount of dithering on Jory’s part was likely to make Mal say, Sod breakfast, and jump back on the bed with him, and even if he did, Jory was self-aware enough to realise he’d probably run all the way back to Roscarrock House rather than stay and take advantage. But maybe going out for breakfast could be a first step. So Jory forced himself not to smile too widely like a complete idiot. “Yes. Let’s go.”

  Mal nodded. “But keep it down, yeah? On your tippy-toes, and no talking on the stairs.”

  Sneaking down the back stairs of the pub like a teenager. Bran would be appalled, Jory thought. His students in Edinburgh would be amazed.

  When they emerged into bright sunlight, both of them were grinning. Mal put a finger to his lips and grabbed Jory’s arm, leading him not down the lane but over the fields and through a gap in the hedge to the road. Spiky branches clutched at Jory’s clothes, hair, and beard.

  Once through, Mal turned to Jory and burst out laughing. “Seriously, mate, you look like a fucking mountain man. How come you’re all ripped, anyway? What did you used to teach up in Edinburgh—body-building and ’roid rage?”

  Mal was exaggerating. Jory tried not to redden at the compliment, even as warmth flooded through him. “I got into climbing while I was at school. Upper body strength tends to be a bit of an advantage.” Especially for those whose genetics had blessed them with a larger-than-average frame that took more hauling about than most when it came to vertical rock faces. Although, to be fair, the reach was a distinct help too.

  Building up a bit of muscle had come in handy in other ways too, but he wasn’t about to tell Mal any sob stories about being bullied as a young boy.

  “Let me guess—your school was the sort that had its own climbing wall?”

  Jory gave him a look. “And a fully equipped gym. Am I supposed to apologise for that?” he asked boldly, as they set off down the road.

  Mal didn’t seem to take offence. “No, but you could try pretending to be a tiny bit sad that mine didn’t, yeah?”

  “Would you have used it if they did?”

  “Fuck, no. I’m a total wuss about heights.”

  “Heights have never bothered me. It’s the depths that get you down.” Guilt twinged in Jory’s chest. If Bea or Bran heard him speaking of this sort of thing so lightly. . . But they hadn’t and wouldn’t.

  Mal gave him a gentle dig in the ribs with his elbow, apparently far more at ease with casual physical contact than Jory. “Ever go caving? There’s a lot round here, aren’t there? Old smugglers’ haunts?”

  Jory hesitated. “A little. But mostly I prefer being out in the open air. Less risk of drowning.”

  “You got no romance in your soul.”

  Jory gave Mal a slow, sidelong look. “If drowning is your idea of romance, I may have to seriously reconsider taking you out for a meal.” And then he held his breath because, damn it, he still didn’t have any idea if Mal saw him that way at all.

  If Mal saw men that way, full stop.

  Mal gave an airy shrug. “Hey, it worked for Leo DiCaprio and whatserface in Titanic, didn’t it? Nah, I meant, there’s legends and stuff about those caves, aren’t there? Might even find King Arthur down one of ’em, cuddling up to the Holy Grail while he waits for the second coming.”

  “Or you could get eaten by a questing beast.” Great. Marvellous. Young men with a nonclassical education were always impressed by literary obscurity, weren’t they? He braced himself for a You what, mate?

  Mal just grinned. “Nah, I’m safe. I ain’t slept with me sister, and cheers for making me think of that, by the way.”

  Jory actually stopped dead in his tracks for a moment, and had to force himself to start walking again because, that must look incredibly patronising of him. “You know about the symbolism of the questing beast?” he couldn’t help asking. He tried to keep the surprise out of his voice but wasn’t sure he’d succeeded.

  “Ain’t just a pretty face, am I? Course I know. I watched Merlin on the telly.”

  “Oh. I hadn’t realised—”

  “Nah, I’m yanking your chain. The TV show was on Saturday teatime, wasn’t it? So they totally glossed over the whole incest bit so’s not to put the kiddies off their fish fingers. I mean, it was all right, but they changed a shitload of stuff from what was in the Morte d’Arthur.”

  Jory’s stomach somehow managed to clench and flip at one and the same time, as if his insides were auditioning for some kind of acrobatic act on Britain’s Got Talent. “You’ve read Thomas Malory?”

  Mal shoved his hands in his jeans pockets—or at least, as far as they’d go, which was about halfway—and gazed off down the road. Was his face redder than before? Jory couldn’t be sure in the sunlight. “Yeah, well, Mum used to read me The Once and Future King when I was little—you know, the book Disney based Sword in the Stone on? Wait, what am I saying, course you know—and I wanted to know where it all came from, yeah? And then there’s the name thing.”

  He was definitely red in the face now, and it was unbearably charming. “The name thing?” Jory almost forgot to ask.

  “See, Mum was always into all that stuff. Arthurian legends and that. Then she got married to a bloke whose last name was Thomas and, well, Mal ain’t actually short for Malcolm.”

  “Not . . .”

  “Yep. Malory Thomas, esquire, at your service, sirrah.” Mal sketched a ridiculously overblown bow in the air. “Bet you can guess how that went down at school.”

  Jory, who’d been laughing, stopped abruptly. “You were bullied?”

  “Fuck yeah.” Mal put on a snide, mocking voice. “‘It’s a girl’s name, Mallorie, innit?’ And that was before they found out I got a sister called Morgan. Then it was all, ‘Go on, show us which one of you’s really the girl.’”

  Ouch. Some parents . . . “They didn’t tease you about the literary associations, at least, then?”

  Mal gave him a look of exaggerated disbelief. “You’re giving them gits way too much credit. Most of ’em thought a book was just a posh way of packaging bog roll.”

  “Did—” Jory stopped, realising he didn’t actually want to change the subject right now, no matter how important the question was to him.

  “What?”

  Apparently there was no help for it. “Did you know Devan then?”

  “Dev? Nah, we didn’t meet till we were eleven. High school. Had a couple of teachers who used to sit everyone in alphabetical order, yeah? So him being a Thompson, and me being a Thomas . . .” Mal shrugged.

  “Thompson . . . that was the family who adopted him?”

  “Yeah, but they ain’t been around since I’ve known him. Died.”

  God, how awful for Devan. Dev. To be orphaned, effectively, twice, before he’d even reached his teens. Jory glanced over at Mal and desperately hoped he wasn’t about to hear another tale of everyday woe. “Have you got family, apart from your sister? You mentioned your mum, but . . .” Jory had never been able to think of a tactful way to ask if someone was still alive. Maybe there wasn’t one.

  Mal seemed to take his meaning anyway. “Mum? Nah, she ain’t popped her clogs yet. Hit the big five-oh last year. Her and my dad are still married and everyth
ing. Morgan’s older than me. Married. Got a kid on the way. Like, any minute now.”

  It was a rush of information all at once. Jory had to take a moment to sort it out in his head.

  They’d reached the edge of town, and the first shops were beginning to appear.

  Mal turned to him. “Got a place in mind, have you?”

  “Ah, not really, no.”

  “The Turkish place near the mosque does a wicked coffee—I went there with Dev last year.”

  Jory blinked. “You were here last year too?”

  “Yeah, came down for a week to join Dev. Drove down with Tasha. Missed all the drama though. And we were here again over Christmas, but that was just for a few days.”

  That was . . . appallingly unfair. Jory could have known him for a year already, if he’d only been in the right place at the right time.

  Then again, given what had happened with other members of his family, maybe not. “Um. The trouble with the Seven Stars is that there’s an outside chance we might bump into Bea or Bran there.” Jory couldn’t help glancing nervously around in case he’d somehow conjured them up.

  “Gotcha. Tell you what, we’ll go down the front. They ever go to the Square Peg?”

  “Is it touristy?”

  “Just a bit.” The way Mal said it clearly implied a place crammed to the rafters with families eating cream teas, half of them pronouncing scones incorrectly and the other half putting the jam and cream on in the wrong order.

  Perfect. Neither Bran nor Bea would be seen dead in a place like that. “Then no.”

  “Right, that’s where we’ll go, then. Tasha’s mate Ceri used to work there,” he added as they turned down a side street.

  The Square Peg Café, when they reached it, turned out not to be quite as tacky as Jory had imagined, but it was every bit as touristy. He wondered how long it had been here, considering he hadn’t even known about it, but was afraid to ask.

  “Do you mind if we take this table?” He gestured to one set back against the café window and shaded by the awning. It’d give them some cover in case anyone who knew them happened by. Jory was damned if he’d avoid Mal just because his brother and sister wouldn’t approve, but he didn’t fancy having a public argument about it. And the last thing he wanted was to get Mal in trouble with either Tasha or Jago Andrewartha.