One Under

by JL Merrow

  “Yeah, with colouring like yours, the sun ain’t your friend, is it? I freckle and burn like a ginge anyhow if I don’t slap on the sunblock, so it’s no skin off my nose sitting in the shade.” Mal grinned. “Literally.”

  They sat down. Jory took a couple of cheaply laminated menus from the stand in the centre of the table and passed one to Mal, who took it with a smile and a brush of fingers that Jory was almost certain was deliberate.

  Almost. He looked down at his menu quickly.

  “Now, what I want to know,” Mal said with an air of significance that had Jory tensing up automatically, “is, are you eating? Cos I don’t want to sit here stuffing my face while you try and make an espresso last half an hour.”

  “I had half a slice of toast for breakfast several hours ago, so yes, I’m eating.” He’d woken up early and been unable to either get back to sleep or force much food down. Nerves.

  Sometimes he envied Bea’s way of remaining untroubled by strong emotion.

  “In that case, the full Cornish sounds good to me.” Mal shoved his menu back in the stand.

  Jory did likewise, and managed to catch the waitress’s eye so he could give their order.

  “You don’t know her?” he asked a few minutes later, as she bustled away from them. She was a pretty girl, with bleached-blonde hair up in a doughnut on top of her head. It made her look curiously doll-like, and her ivory-and-pink makeup seemed designed to accentuate the impression of unreal perfection. Her name tag had read Aurora.

  “What, her? Never met her before. Why?”

  “Oh—I thought maybe she was a friend of your . . . friend’s friend. The one you said used to work here.” Jory frowned. Put like that, the connection seemed embarrassingly tenuous.

  “You mean Ceri? Nah, she ain’t got a lot of friends round here.” Mal, who’d been fiddling with his phone, turned back to Jory and grinned. “Why, you fancy her or something?”

  “What? No. I, um, I don’t really . . .” The heat was rising in Jory’s cheeks, and he hated it. “I’m not looking for a girlfriend.”

  “No? Nah, you’re probably right.” Mal’s voice was off-hand as he flicked through messages on his phone. “I’d be shit-scared she’d bite my balls off if I messed up her hair.”

  Jory swallowed. Did Mal realise the sort of imagery he was conjuring up? Was he doing it on purpose? Jory wasn’t sure how to respond.

  And then he didn’t have to.

  “Well, fancy meeting you here,” a familiar voice said in ringing tones that had half the occupants of the café turning to stare.

  Jory’s stomach lurched. Kirsty was beaming down at him. She was alone, which was the smallest of mercies. Her hair was up in a headscarf, wrapped African style, and she was wearing a pair of voluminous harem pants printed with brightly coloured elephants. Her shoulder bag looked like she’d crocheted it, possibly while drunk, and incorporated little mirrors that caught the light and flung it back at him, accusingly.

  Oh God, why now? This was terrible timing. “Kirsty. Hi. Um. Yes. Fancy.” Jory cringed internally at himself.

  Kirsty pulled out a chair with an obnoxious scrape on the ground, and sat down. “So who’s your mate?”

  “Oh, this is, um, Mal.” Jory swallowed.

  Kirsty leaned forward on the table and smiled up at him. “Mal? Now, would that be short for Malachi, Malcolm, Malik . . . or something I haven’t thought of?”

  “More fun to keep you guessing, innit?” Mal, who didn’t seem the slightest bit bothered by her appearance, flashed her a wink that left Jory feeling even less at ease. “So how do you know Jory, then?”

  “Me?” she said with an easy smile. “I’m his missus. Been married twelve years, we have.”

  Mal had had half his mind on how he was going to answer his latest text from Dev, and if he ought to mention meeting Jory just in case Tasha did. He hadn’t thought twice when the woman had joined them.

  Well, all right, maybe he had. Stuff like, Huh, she’s not what I’d have expected one of Jory’s mates to be like. And, So how come he ain’t that pleased to see her?

  Then she dropped her bombshell, and it was like, What the actual, literal, honest-to-God fuck?

  He stared at her.

  She made a face. “Aw, you’re gonna be one of those blokes who don’t go for married women, aren’t you?”

  “We’re separated,” Jory blurted out, loud and awkward and all red in the face, and shit, this woman really was his missus, wasn’t she?

  Mal stood up, cos while there were some things you could deal with on an empty stomach, finding out the bloke you fancied—even if you’d been trying not to on account of reasons—who you’d spent the whole morning talking to about childhood and families and all that shit, had somehow forgotten to mention he was sodding well married was not one of them.

  Kirsty stood up too. “Oh my God, were you two on a date? Oh my God. Fucked that right up, didn’t I? Seriously, though, who goes on a date at eleven o’clock in the morning? Oh my God, it’s a morning after, innit? Jory, you sly shit. You never told me you were seeing someone.”

  Okay, so yeah, that fit with the whole separated thing, but why the hell hadn’t Jory just told him about her?

  “It’s not— We’re not seeing each other,” Jory said, looking so bloody miserable Mal almost started feeling sorry for him. Bastard.

  She arched an eyebrow. “Uh-huh?” If the sarcasm had come any thicker, they could’ve slapped it on a scone and served it with a nice cup of tea.

  “It’s . . . complicated,” Jory told the table, cos he still wasn’t meeting Mal’s gaze.

  “Too fucking right it is,” Mal had to agree. He wasn’t sure whether to sit down again or just get out of this mess, but then the waitress turned up with a couple of piled-up plates of full Cornish breakfast. His stomach decided it was giving the orders, and his bum hit the seat before his brain could get a word in edgewise.

  “Will you be eating too?” the waitress asked Kirsty.

  “Oh no. I’m out of here. You two have a good time. Jory, I’ll catch you later.” She hitched her bag up on her shoulder and walked off.

  Jory was staring down at his plate as if he was worried another ex-wife was going to jump out from behind a slice of bacon and shout, Surprise!

  “So, anything else you forgot to mention to me?” Mal asked, then tucked into his food, just in case this all went even more tits up and he ended up walking out before they’d finished.

  Not that he’d, like, had any experience of that sort of thing happening.

  Jory’s face was defeated when he finally met Mal’s gaze, and when he spoke, his tone matched it. “You mean, apart from the fact I’m married with a child?”

  Mal choked on his sausage. “You got a kid?”

  “Gawen. He’s twelve.”

  “Bloody hell.” Twelve? She hadn’t been joking about how long they’d been together.

  It was well weird when Jory answered the thought. “We’re not together—we never have been.”

  “Uh, yeah, mate. See, that don’t exactly fit in with the whole having-a-kid thing. Way I’ve heard it, that usually takes at least a little bit of togetherness. And yeah, married? This ain’t 1950, and she don’t look like the sort who’s got a dad with a shotgun.”

  “No, that was Bran.”

  “Seriously? Your big bruv came over all big brother on you?” Then Mal’s brain finally managed to do the sums. “Hang about, how flippin’ old were you twelve years ago?”

  “Nineteen. Kirsty was twenty-one.” Jory pushed a fried egg around his plate. The yolk broke and started to spill all over the white. “I was in my first year at uni, and I met her when I was home for the holidays.”

  “You mean ‘met’ as in ‘shagged,’ don’t you?” Mal threw up a hand at Jory’s flinch. “Nah, don’t tell me. None of my beeswax, innit?”

  “Yes, it is.” Jory’s eyes were wide, and his gaze fixed on Mal. His expression was open, honest, and vulnerable all at the same tim
e, and it did weird things to Mal’s insides. “I should have told you.”

  Yeah, he should have. Except . . . should he? Because if they were just . . . just two blokes, going for breakfast together (and the voice inside Mal that said When does that ever happen if it ain’t a date? could just fuck off right now, yeah?), it shouldn’t matter if he was married, divorced, or living in poly bliss with the entire cast of the latest Pirelli girlie calendar.

  Which meant . . . Jory must’ve thought this was a date. Or he’d wanted it to be one.

  Mal wasn’t sure how he felt about that. He’d been working bloody hard to flip the mental switch from bloke I want to shag to Dev’s long-lost uncle. All that stuff with Jory in his bedroom had been doing a number on his head, not to mention other bits, but he’d thought he was safe once they got out in the open. And okay, yeah, he’d been having a bit of a tease when they’d talked about the waitress, but that had just . . . That had just been passing the time, that had.

  Kind of.

  “So tell me about it now,” he said, cos at least if he got Jory talking, that’d give him time to think.

  “There’s not much to tell. We . . . I . . . They were having a party down on the beach, the one below our house. Kirsty and her friends. Although to be honest, I think she’d only just met them . . . Anyway, I went for a walk, and she invited me to join them.”

  “Got you pissed and had her wicked way with you behind the beach huts?”

  Jory winced. “Behind the lifeboat station, actually. It was a couple of years before they built the new one.” He must have caught Mal’s WTF? look. “The old slipway wasn’t on stilts, like the new one. So. More cover. I think. I don’t remember it all very well.”

  His face was so red it made his hair and beard stand out bright blond in contrast, reminding Mal of some old negatives his mum had shown him once from back when she was young and people had taken photos with actual cameras with film in them. Mal felt bad for him but, well, he was supposed to be vetting the bloke, wasn’t he? To see if he was the sort of uncle Dev would want to get to know.

  Shit. His kid was Dev’s cousin. Dev wasn’t going to want to let that go, was he? Despite the fact that he had about fifty of them on his dad’s side. The Malakars, up in Sheffield. Dev had been up there and met half of them, and he’d said they were all welcoming and that. Even his dad’s missus, who might have been a bit pissed off about proof that her husband had been shagging around when they’d been as good as engaged, had cooked Dev a big meal and told him to visit anytime.

  He’d been a bit quiet when he came back home, though. Showed Mal a couple of pics of him and his half brothers, who were all younger than him and doing really well in school. When Mal said how much they looked like him, he went even quieter.

  Mal hadn’t wanted to push him on it, but . . . it’d been like when they’d been at school, him and Dev, and he’d come round to Mal’s for tea. Mum had always done her best to make him feel welcome, but Dev had always been sad afterwards. Maybe it wasn’t the same, but it had sort of reminded Mal of when he’d been little and had dreams he could talk to his rats, like properly talk to them and understand what they said, and sometimes even be their size and go on adventures with them. And then he’d woken up and remembered he couldn’t. He’d always felt a bit flat for the rest of the day.

  “I’m not doing a very good job of persuading you to trust me, am I?” Jory said. “I’m sorry.”

  Mal realised he must have been silent too long. “Just . . . it’s a lot to take in, yeah? So tell me about your kid. Gow—uh, Gavin?”

  “Gawen. It’s an old Cornish name.” Jory smiled, looking genuinely happy for the first time since Kirsty had left them. “He’s great. Brilliant, in fact. Already doing GCSE standard maths. The school wants him to take his exams early.”

  Great. Another perfect cousin for Dev. He was going to love that.

  “So how’s it work with you and his mum? You’re not living together, right?”

  “No. She has her own house. That was part of the deal.”

  “‘The deal’?”

  “Bran offered her a house in Porthkennack and financial support, in exchange for her agreeing to legitimise Gawen.” Jory stared out across the street. “So we got married, and then I went back to university.”

  Mal laughed. “Bet your mates were surprised.”

  “Nobody there ever knew.”

  Okay, so now he wasn’t laughing any longer. “So it’s always been your dirty little secret?”

  “It’s not . . .” Jory made a jerky gesture and knocked over the brown sauce. It landed on the edge of Mal’s plate with a clatter of jumping cutlery. “Oh God. I’m so sorry.”

  He sounded wrecked.

  “Hey, chill, bruv. No harm done. I get it, yeah? You were young, you didn’t wanna let it cramp your style.”

  “That’s not . . . I was ashamed of myself.”

  Mal looked at him sharply. “For sticking your dick where you shouldn’t of? Mate, we’ve all been there. It’s part of being a bloke, innit? The little head wants what it wants.”

  “For . . . for lots of things.”

  Jory didn’t seem to want to go into details, which was fair enough. Mal had another bite of sausage while he thought about what to say next.

  Jory beat him to it. “I hope this hasn’t changed the way you feel about me getting to know Dev.”

  Had it? Mal wasn’t sure. Except, yeah, he really was. “Nah, it’s okay. But that’s it, innit? You ain’t got no more kids stashed away somewhere?”

  “No. I can say that with the utmost certainty.”

  Translation: Kirsty’s was the only vag he’d ever shagged. Well, either that or he had shares in a major condom company. Mal grinned, and it was only a little bit forced. “Then we’re golden. You gonna eat that?” He pointed at the toasty-brown slice of hog’s pudding Jory had left untouched on his plate.

  “Uh, no. Feel free.”

  “Cheers.” Mal slid it onto his own plate. “Ain’t had this since I was down here last year staying at Mrs. Quick’s B&B. I keep trying to get Tash to cook some, but she says she’s trying to save my arteries from myself.”

  “Tash . . . She’s Dev’s sister, you said?”

  “Yeah. Well, foster sister. They ain’t blood. Been through a lot together, though.”

  “What made her move down here?”

  “Liked it, I guess. And she had a bit of grief with the last place she was living, so . . .” Mal shrugged. He wasn’t going to mention Ceri. That was Tasha’s business, not his and Jory’s.

  “Landlord not maintaining the place properly?”

  Mal had to laugh. “Something like that.” But not very. He finished up the hog’s pudding with his last bit of fried egg, then put his cutlery together on the plate. “You working today?” Maybe Jory could show him around the local history archive, help him dig out some stuff about Pirate Mary.

  “No. The museum’s closed today.”

  Bollocks. Maybe not, then. “So what do you do on your days off?”

  “It depends.”

  “On?”

  “On whether I’ve got company or not.” Jory gave him a direct gaze.

  Mal appreciated that. “Let’s say you have, then. What’d you fancy getting up to?”

  “If I had company, it’d be up to my guest.”

  Mal bit his tongue before he could blurt out, Right, shagging it is, then, because seriously, did his dick have it in for the rest of him or what? “What’s the castle round here like?” he said instead. “Worth a look?”

  “It’s . . . okay. It’s not Tintagel, though.”

  “I’ve always wanted to visit there,” Mal said with a pang. “Come on, who wouldn’t want to see the actual place where King Arthur’s dad got his mum up the duff with him?”

  “While he was magically disguised as her hours-dead husband. I feel I ought to point out that the historicity is a little suspect.”

  Mal could picture the bloke in front of a class
of students, one eyebrow raised and with a funny, sceptical twist to his mouth just like now. He must give great lectures. “Yeah, yeah, I know. And the castle was built a few hundred years too late. But it’s s’posed to be really atmospheric. Inspiring, and all.” He tried not to sound too sad about it, but to be honest he was gutted at finally being so near the place and with no means of getting there.

  “Why don’t we go, then?” Jory said. “Today. It’s only about an hour’s drive from here. Well, in the winter it is. Maybe a bit more if there’s traffic. Um. Maybe it’d be better to make an early start tomorrow.”

  Mal almost laughed at the way Jory’s voice started out all enthusiastic and then trailed off, but he was too busy fighting the hope that had surged up in him. “Yeah, but, whatever day we go it’s gonna take most of the day, innit? You’ve got to have stuff to do.” He wasn’t sure if he was protesting to be polite or . . . because of the other thing. But whatever it was, it came out sounding pretty unconvincing.

  “I’m not working tomorrow either, and Gawen will be at school. There’s nothing else I need to be doing.” Jory took a deep breath. “I’d love to take you there. I’ll be happy to drive, unless you’d rather?”

  Mal avoided his eye. “Nah, I, uh, left my car in London. Flew in to Newquay.”

  “Oh? Most people prefer to have transport available while on holiday in Cornwall.” Jory shrugged. “Trains and buses can only take you so far.”

  “Dev told me about the planes. It ain’t a bad service.” Mal swallowed, and went for it. “So, uh, yeah, we could take your car.”

  Jory, who’d been frowning more and more as Mal spouted that load of disjointed bollocks, broke out into a smile. “That’s great.”

  Mal couldn’t help smiling back, even if it did feel a bit wonky. He’d be fine. Honest.

  And tomorrow was another day. It was, like, famous for it, even. “Right, so that’s settled, then,” Mal babbled on. “So how about we have a butcher’s at the local one today, so we’ll have something to compare it to?”